His door window had vanished, Harley noticed when he walked back to his cab.

“I don’t suppose you ripped out the roof lining as well?”

“Duct tape is a marvellous thing,” Sharkey grinned, “but not even you can see through it.”

Harley nodded.

“It’ll do for a bit. I’ve got a mate’ll fix it up, good as new. And fit you a new window. I’ll give him a hoy tomorrow”

Harley nodded again, settling down behind the wheel. He took a sip of his cold HeartBake coffee and grimaced at the taste of fresh bullet, spitting the acrid liquid through the empty space to his right.

“Hey, Sharkey. You want to hear a good joke?”

“Sure.”

“So do I. You know any?”

Sharkey chuckled. “Knew we could cheer you up!”

Harley drove through Fyshwick’s deserted streets. One thing about the nightshift, there were never any traffic problems.

Cold Canberra winter nights, on the other hand…

He pushed the heater up to the maximum, but realistically there was no hope of countering the cold air pouring in through the empty window. Much more of this and his ear would freeze and snap off. As they accelerated onto the 80 km/h stretch along the Monaro Highway heading back to Campbell, the breeze became a blast. This trip would have to be his last for the night.

And fair enough, too. He worked insane hours to begin with, and tonight had been stressful in several ways.

The massage had worked to reduce the immediate tension of being shot at and having his cab damaged, but when the soothing hands had finished their work on his body, and it had become obvious to all parties that some body areas were anything but relaxed, he had balked at the range of solutions offered.

Not a prude, not inexperienced in any of the proposals – well, one or two, maybe, and he’d wonder about the sort of pressure that could be brought to bear by those magnificent breasts for some time – but the whole thing had seemed wrong.

It wasn’t as if he had a girlfriend to be faithful to, either. Just himself.

Sharkey sat beside him, perhaps privy to the problem, perhaps not.

Harley’s phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mrgble whssssh?”

Too much noise in the cab for speakerphone. Harley pulled the handset out of its cradle and held it to his ear. No cops around this time of night.

“Hello?”

“Harley, this is Olivia here. Are you anywhere close?”

“Five minutes.”

Bugger. He didn’t really want to do another job and risk his brain freezing. But he couldn’t refuse Olivia.

“I’ll be at King O’Malley’s. I’ll be the one freezing her tits off.”

Harley laughed. “Always ready to help a damsel in distress! See you soon.”

Harley turned up Blamey Crescent instead of Monash Drive, dropped Sharkey off just around the corner from Erstwhile Garden, waving aside the proffered twenty, and headed into Civic.

The King O’Malley Irish Pub was inside the Civic bus interchange, and until midnight, off limits to taxis except from the Bunda Street cab rank. But it was far more convenient to make the right turn into the interchange from London circuit, rather than wade through the turns and traffic lights to get in legally. Besides, there were never any police there this time of night.

Harley pulled up outside the pub. Olivia and a companion detached themselves from an alcove and bundled into the back seat. Harley got a glimpse of a skinny young woman with short blonde hair – another officer cadet, obviously – before the door closed and the light went off.

“Turn the heat up, would you, Harley? It’s a fridge in here!”

“Sorry. My window’s broken.” He turned the cab and took the easy but illegal way back out onto London Circuit.

“How’d you do that?”

“Stuck my elbow though it.”

Olivia giggled. “Right.”

London Circuit to Constitution Avenue, turn onto Parkes Way at Coranderrk Street. As they passed the Convention Centre, the zebra crossing lights shone into the back seat and Harley automatically checked the mirror, wondering why Olivia wasn’t riding her usual shotgun beside him.

“Eyes front, driver!” The other cadet was glaring at him, before returning her attention to Olivia, who hadn’t been distracted.

“Don’t worry, Rose, he’s a darling.” Harley heard Olivia’s sigh.

Silence from the back seat, apart from the soft embracing sounds that every night cabbie hears. Harley kept his eyes front and his eyebrows raised.

Flashing red and blue lights on Parkes Way beside the ASIO site. Half a dozen police cars, officers in reflective vests, orange wands. Random breath test. They never pulled cabbies over – a taxidriver would have to be insane to drink on a shift.

But a policeman was waving him to the side.

“Random breath test. Just turning the meter off,” Harley informed his passengers. He always did this if a delay was his fault or outside the limits of normal traffic.

Both cadets were sitting upright now, he noticed. Seatbelts buckled, two respectable young women at opposite ends of a wide back seat.

“Taxi 377?” A policeman leaned in through the empty window. Gold badges and a fancy cap.

“That’s me.” As if it wasn’t visible on the number plate.

“Mister Barnardo?”

“Right.”

“Did you leave a parcel at Canberra International Airport this morning?”

“No.” Oh, hang on. Maybe he had.

“Sure about that? A book with a picture of a bomb on the cover?”

“Uh, yeah. Forgot about that. You found my book, then?”

“There’s a few people would like to speak to you about that, Mister Barnardo. I’ve been asked to request that you attend the Civic police station tomorrow at nine AM. Be there. These are the kind of people you don’t want to upset even more.”

The officer rapped the roof of the cab twice and Harley indicated, pulling back out onto Parkes Way.

“Your pet cabbie’s a terrorist, Liv!”

Harley sniffed. There was a new fragrance in the cold cab. Warm and musky and penetrating directly into the bit of him that had wanted to say yes to the suggestions made to him in Fyshwick.

“Sorry about that.”

Harley reached down to the console and took another automatic sip of his coffee. He gagged at the taste and launched the whole cup out of the window.

“And a litterbug!”

“Home, Harley, and step on it!” Olivia was holding the hand of her slender blonde companion, sliding back across the seat.

“Eyes front, Osama bin!”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

Harley had two regular customers call that evening. The first was Olivia, phoning for a pickup from the Australian Defence Force Academy.

She and Harley went back years, starting with an act of charity to a drunk, penniless, cold and emotional officer cadet walking back along Constitution Avenue one rainy night.

Olivia repaid Harley’s initial kindness with loyalty, and whenever the cadets scored a night away from their studies, she would call him up, usually with a few mates, and they’d split the fifteen dollar fare, exchanging news on the five minute ride into Mooseheads, where the cadets did their off-base drinking.

“Five months until graduation, Harley!” Olivia exclaimed as she thumped into the passenger seat beside him. She wasn’t heavy, but she was tall and well-built and red-headed, and if Harley spotted her in a taxi queue late at night, he’d pull up beside her instead of taking the passengers at the head of the line.

Two other cadets took the back seat. Once the cab was outside the academy grounds, they leaned in closer, holding hands, swapping a quick kiss. Olivia looked back and rolled her eyes at Harley. They shared a smile.

Sometimes it had been Olivia in the back seat. Cadet affairs tended to be short and intense, and five minutes in a taxi could seem like a whole passionate night. Harley kept his eyes on the road at such times, turning up the radio to give his passengers some cover.

“You’ll be over the hill next year, Officer Cadet Price,” Harley observed.

Olivia groaned. “Over the hill” meant transferring to Royal Military College on the other side of Mount Pleasant. Another year of study, another graduation, this time as a junior army officer.

“Another year of late cabs and nosey taxidrivers and awful jokes, hey, Mister Barnardo?”

“You’ll miss me out in the real world. You’ll wish you were back in Canberra.”

“I’ll be doing what I’ve always dreamed of doing. I’ll miss you, and I’ll miss Canberra, but I’ll be getting on with my life.”

Harley looked across at her. “There’s a war on in Afghanistan. You want to be out there, instead of here?”

Olivia looked out over Lake Burley Griffin. The big roundabout at the bottom of Anzac Parade. Parliament House, National Library, Questacon, floodlit in the night. And a fleeting glimpse past Harley’s nose of the pearl lights in their graceful curve leading up to the Australian War Memorial, where the memories of those who served and those who died were kept fresh.

“If life was easy, it wouldn’t be so sweet. There’s got to be a contrast. Hard and soft. Service and reward. You know what I’m saying?”

“I know you’re someone special and I don’t want to see you hurt. Or in danger.”

“I’m a big girl now, Harley. I can look after myself.”

Harley smiled again. “You need me for a lift home, I’m here.”

They drove in silence, swinging onto Constitution Avenue, onto London Circuit, making an illegal u-turn and parking in a bus bay.

“Here’s twenty, Harley. These two are buying the first drinks.”

“Might see you later, Olivia?”

“Might. Might come home early. Wednesday’s not a big night.”

The second call was from Sharkey. Not far from Mooseheads to Erstwhile Garden. Not in terms of distance, anyway.

The bullet came in through the top of Harley’s window, scored a hot crease along the roof lining, hit the roof with a clang, and wedged itself behind the passenger side visor.

“Holy fuck, Batman!” yelled Harley, who had had the benefit of a classical education. He stood hard on the brakes.

“Just keep driving, Harl,” said Sharkey, whose education had been more practical. “That was the second shot, and most guns have more.”

“Bloody hell! Was someone shooting at us?”

“Yeah.” Sharkey was twisted in his seat, looking out through the rear window. “I think we’re okay now.”

“Fuck!” said Harley, looking at his window. The glass had shattered into a classic bullet-hole surrounded by a web of splinters. As he watched, a shard wobbled loose and dropped into his lap.

“You all right, Harl? You’ve got a cut on your forehead.”

“Fuck.”

He held his hand up to his head. He felt a wetness. No gaping wounds, apparently, but when he looked at his palm in the changing light of the passing streetlights, it was covered in blood. He blinked.

“Fuck it.”

He reached under his seat for a cleaning cloth. Microfibre for the windows, but it would keep the blood off his seat covers.

“You got any enemies, Harley?”

“About half of my passengers.”

Sharkey’s gaze was aimed at him like a rifle.

“Um, no. Just joking. I get along fine with everyone.”

“Let’s just keep this quiet, eh? I’ll ask around.”

“Shouldn’t we tell the police? I mean, this is serious.”

“You get the police involved, they’ll have you making statements for the rest of the night, they’ll keep your taxi for evidence, they’ll stuff you around, and they’ll ask questions that I don’t want answered.”

Sharkey sniffed and looked up at the sun visor. He plucked Harley’s coffee – HeartBake coffee, now well cold, but still good for a caffeine jolt – from the centre cupholder, held it in front of him and tilted the visor down. A little metal ball rolled out and plopped into the coffee.

“Still hot. Burnin’ the plastic.”

“Fuck. This is going to cost hundreds to fix.”

“Coulda been worse, mate.”

Harley considered this. “Yeah. Could have been me.”

“And me.”

“Fuck.”

Harley was over “red-light district” jokes when they hit Fyshwick. The neon signs were mostly pink, anyway, and stood out amongst the dark warehouses and caryards. “Northside Studios”, “Butterfly Girls”, “Bordello’s” and Sharkey’s preferred establishment, “Golden Hands”.

“Just a massage parlour, Harl,” Sharkey winked as they drew up. “Let me have a word with the management and we’ll get that cut looked after.”

“Um, I dunno, Sharkey.”

“Well, whattya gunna do? Go home to clean up? This’ll be quick and you can get back on the road.”

Harley looked dubious. “I’ve never been inside before.”

Sharkey rolled his eyes. “You’ll be fine. Come on. You want, you can get a coffee and relax until I’m done. Or something stronger…”

Harley sighed. He was too frazzled to drive, anyway. And he’d have to inspect the damage to the car as well as clean up.

“Good man.”

They made a fuss over Harley. Sat him down in front of a marble basin while a blonde with the biggest breasts Harley had ever seen leaned low in front of him, gently sponging his cheek clean of blood.

“Just a scratch, honey,” she purred. “Let me dry it off and put something on it.”

Harley had no objection to a lotion being soothed into his skin, a bandaid applied, and a cup of tea being offered, but when coaxing fingers began unbuttoning his uniform shirt, he felt uneasy.

“There’s blood on it, babe,” his new and buxom friend said. “We’ll clean that out before it sets. We get rid of all sorts of stains, you know.”

“Relax, Harl!” Sharkey said. He was leaning in the doorway, a glass in his hand. “They’ll have it back in five minutes, good as new.”

Harley let his shirt disappear. But the blonde remained.

“Ooh, you’re so tense, darling,” she sighed, her hands moving over his shoulderblades.

Harley had to agree. The touch of her fingers kneading into his taut muscles was relaxing. And pleasant. Even more pleasant when the skin on his back informed him that whatever scant top the blonde had been wearing was no longer present. Her hands moved forwards, gliding through his chest hair.

“On the house,” Sharkey chuckled, closing the door.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

Typical Wednesday morning queue on the airport rank – about a hundred people shivering in the winter chill waiting for a cab. Mondays when Parliament was sitting, you’d get two or three times as many. Passengers, when they finally got a cab, would complain about the nation’s capital being unable to organise a decent taxi service.

What passengers didn’t see was the flip side of the long queues – the hours that cabbies put in idling on deserted ranks, including at the airport. There would often be a hundred cabs waiting, two lines winding through the boomgates, through the cabyard, and spilling out onto Nomad Drive.

“I had to wait twenty minutes for a taxi!” a passenger would complain, not knowing that his driver had spent an hour or more waiting for a passenger.

This passenger was a first for Harley. “The ASIO building site,” he said to Harley, adding, “Do you know it? It’s on Constitution Avenue.”

He got into the front seat and two companions sat in the back. No luggage – just briefcases or small backpacks.

Engineers, thought Harley. He’d seen plenty when the new National Portrait Gallery was under construction. They’d be employed by one of the major contractors, and they’d spend their lives flying between several projects scattered around Australia, doing day trips to Canberra, overnights in Perth or Darwin, back to Melbourne or Sydney for the weekend, repeating the process the next week.

Mostly young – in their late twenties or early thirties – and full of the energy and enthusiasm they would lose within five years. But for the moment, they were nation-builders.

They talked amongst themselves of basements and heating plants. The hole in the ground for the main building wasn’t more than an outline on the muddy grass yet, but it had to be excavated just right.

Harley let them out at the site offices. The Portrait Gallery had been an open site, with taxis able to drive in, but here there was a sliding metal gate and a guard checking documents.

They paid with a corporate credit card, but that was par for the course – daytime work rarely involved cash. Some cabbies got so desperate that they pretended the card terminal was broken. They needed actual money for gas. Or a meal. They couldn’t wait seven days for the bank to make a deposit – they needed it immediately.

Harley wasn’t up for such shenanigans. Well, not unless he was desperate. Which he wasn’t at the moment.

He had the price of a coffee and a rock cake in his pocket, the Campbell shops were close at hand and it must be morning tea time, the Statistics page on the despatch screen showing vacant cab numbers rising everywhere as the morning rush dropped away.

The ASIO site would be a good source of work. Those engineers he’d dropped off would be looking for a ride back to the airport in the afternoon. Or maybe a hotel. There would be others, day after day, week after week. Public servants, consultants, visitors, all needing cabs there and back.

Heartbake’s barista with the film star looks must have taken some time off. He had been replaced by a young woman. Skinny, short black hair, big smile for Harley, about fifteen years old by the look of her.

The world was being run by children. Or at least the important bits.

“Flat white, please. Family size!”

She smiled as his hands outlined a coffee cup about the size of the America’s Cup. Harley liked making people smile, and this one had a smile that would melt any man’s heart.

“Sugar?”

“Two. And one of your happiest rock cakes, please.”

Her smile could have floodlit Telstra Tower for a night. That was one of the benefits of being a cabbie. You could use the same jokes over and over.

Too cold this morning for a place outside. Harley took his coffee and cake to a table beside Ann’s Official BookCrossing Zone shelf. His previous book was now out in the wild, released at the airport rank this morning, Who knew where in the world it would go?

This was fun. He’d signed up as Bookcabbie, not a brilliant name, but the best he could come up with when confronted by a sign-up screen and a blinking cursor. Nobody had found the books he’d read and released, but it was early days yet.

The BookCrossing shelf was looking sadly depleted. He’d have to hunt up a new batch from Ann. Or add some himself. He had any number of old books gathering dust at home. He’d never read them again, so why not pass them on to others, and maybe see if they had some adventures?

The website indicated that labels and stickers could be bought online, though obviously it would take a few days to airmail them from the USA. In the meantime, there were free labels to download and print out at home.

Harley finished his coffee, wrapped the uneaten half of his rockcake away in a napkin for future consumption, nodded to the barista – received another dazzling smile for a pudgy cabbie rapidly running into middle age – and went to Ounce Books.

Closed.

He checked the opening hours, on a discreet sign beside the door, and though Ann kept long hours, Wednesday morning wasn’t among them.

Hmmm. Perhaps she visited her elderly mother on Wednesdays. Perhaps she did her banking and other chores during these few business hours. Perhaps she had a lover, and they spent the mornings rolling around in sweaty lust and heavy breathing.

Harley liked that last thought, inserting himself into the fantasy, kissing Ann between her bookshelves, embracing her in the romance section, leading her into the backroom where they disrobed amongst boxes of unsorted books…

He caught himself, smiling. Sharkey was right. He had sex on the brain.

How long had it been? Too bloody long. Cabbies might brag about lady passengers paying in kind, but it had never happened to him. Just a kiss on the cheek now and then from passengers happy with his line of chat. And twice now a male passenger, coming home alone late at night, had laid a hand on his thigh. He’d gently brushed them aside, saying he didn’t swing that way, but took no offence.

Maybe he should follow up on that fantasy. He’d not seen any significant rings on Ann’s fingers, not that meant much nowadays. Perhaps a little innocent internet stalking. The shop’s website, Facebook.

“Make Google your friend, Harl!” he thought, smiling at his lonely reflection in the shop window.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

Harley was having himself a good Tuesday in his taxi. Of course, every day spent driving around Canberra was a good day, and he gave heartfelt thanks that he was not a cabbie in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane, where the traffic was fierce and the drivers more so.

Cabbing in Canberra was a delight. There were morning and afternoon peaks, of course, but rarely did they last more than half an hour, and if you spent five minutes in stop-start motoring, it was usually because of something extraordinary, such as roadworks or an accident.

And in the evenings, when Harley preferred to work, the roads were all but empty. Just set the cruise control and drive, Nat King Cole telling you where he got his kicks.

Public servants coming home late from work, paying with a Cabcharge voucher. When the new government had taken over, there was a lot of midnight oil burning, and Harley had had more than one mid-level manager fall asleep in the passenger seat. Two years on, and the government had decided that it didn’t need a press release prepared for every possible contingency, and those late night jobs dried up.

People going to and from dinner. These were always nice. They paid in cash, they were well-behaved and after a bottle or two and a pleasant cab ride home, there was the chance of a good tip.

Airport work. Sure, there were a million cabs lined up on the feeder rank – unless three flights came in together, in which case there were none – but it was guaranteed work and for every passenger who said “Campbell” (a short fare) there was one who said “Banks” or “Dunlop” and that was an easy fifty dollars, empty motorway cruising there and back.

And then there were the drunks coming home from nightclubs in Civic. After late-week midnights the city centre changed its character, becoming more colourful and rowdier when the young folk came in to enjoy themselves and hunt up partners. But by three in the morning, all the sensible drunks had gone home, and those left were getting ratty, with every chance of throwing up in the cab or running off without paying because they had spent all their money on alcohol. Harley didn’t work that late unless he was desperate.

Harley got the call about eight, a quiet spot in a cabbie’s night. He pulled up at the shops, and soon Sharkey came walking briskly from the direction of Erstwhile Garden.

They headed off, down Blamey, left past Russell Offices and the front gate of Duntroon, before turning right at the roundabout for the Monaro Highway across Dairy Flats, Fyshwick ahead. They were caught by the lights at the Ipswich Street corner.  Harley stared at the grey bulk of The Canberra Times building ahead. Something running through his mind.

Bloody traffic lights. He inched forward, hoping to trip the road sensor again, give it a hurry-up.

“Must be the red light district,” he said without thinking.

Sharkey gave him a look. “Sex on the brain, mate. Was there much in X-Wing when you were there?”

The lights changed and Harley took off smoothly, taking the slip lane into Gladstone Street.

“The only screws I ever heard about were wearing blue uniforms,” he said, remembering the prison officers and their petty corruptions. “If there was any action, it was kept bloody quiet. Mind you mate, I didn’t think that way when I first came in. Thought I was going to be gang-banged stupid, and I was real careful about not dropping the soap in the showers.”

“Yeah. Everyone reckons that. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I wouldn’t take you the wrong way. You ain’t no oil painting.”

“That’s why I’m a cabbie,” Harley smiled.

“There was one bloke that I took advantage of,” Sharkey said. “I forget what I was in for. Nothing bad, just a short one. Six months and most of that in minimum. There was a young jockey came in near the end. He’d been in some race-fixing rort and he was about the only bastard who wasn’t guilty, so of course he wore it. He’d been watching too much television – like you, Harley – and he was scared shitless. He was young and small and quiet.”

They had arrived, and Harley turned the meter off, but Sharkey kept talking.

“He kept a low profile the first days, and when I saw him taking a shower after lunch, all by himself, I knew what was what. So I went in, stripped off, and stood there facing him when he came out to get changed. Cute little thing, he was, and there might have been a few old lags who’d of been tempted.

“He stopped and looked at me, and he bloody near shat himself. ‘Sonnie,’ I said, ‘there’s men on this wing, hard men, who would root you ragged. And give you to their mates. But if they think you’re spoken for, you’ll be safe. I don’t swing that way, but I do like me coffee.’”

Harley grinned. “And you did okay for coffee after that, I bet!”

“I had the lot. Coffee, bananas, half his weekly buy-up went on chocolate for me. Ice cream slices, yoghurts. He couldn’t give me enough.”

Each inmate had had a ration of five coffee sachets a week in Harley’s wing. They were an unofficial currency. The really rich inmates had been able to buy jars of instant coffee, but with prison wages running at ten dollars a week and everyone smoking rollies, who could afford coffee? Let alone chocolate.

“Right-oh,” said Sharkey, handing Harley a twenty. “I’ll be done here in about an hour. You’ll be right to give me a lift home?”

“Too right!” Harley agreed. He was enjoying the old coot’s yarns. Better an old crim than a young drunk in his cab. And, to tell the truth, he was wondering where Sharkey got his energy.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay

Harley’s passenger was waiting with a suitcase outside the Civic police station in the dark. When he saw who it was, Harley almost drove off again.

“2A Monash Drive, Campbell 2612,” Quint said.

“I know,” Harley replied. Just how did taxidrivers become so instantly forgettable? In the same way that most passengers all ran together after a while, he supposed.

Quint stared out through the windscreen as Harley turned into London Circuit. Only a short fare, but shorts were the best if you could string them together. That $4.40 flagfall made up for a few longer kilometres.

Harley pulled up exactly outside 2A. “Ah, that’s exactly $7.30, please.”

Quint jerked his head around. Dazed or drunk, Harley thought, having seen a lot of both in his time.

“Seven dollars and thirty cents, please. I’ve got plenty of change.”

Quint offered a ten, and Harley poured as many five cent pieces back into his hand as he dared.

Quint shoved the coins into his pocket, opened the door and walked towards his flat.

“Bloody hell,” Harley muttered, popping the boot.

Harley’s suitcase was light. Must have gotten rid of the morning’s bricks. Perhaps the police had kept them.

He caught Quint just before the front door closed, jamming the case into the gap.

“Oh, thank you,” Quint said. He appeared to wake up. “Is that all right?”

“Everything’s fine, thank you,” Harley replied.

He had a job offer on the dispatch screen when he returned to the cab. A timed booking in ten minutes time, for a pickup not far away.

Seize the moment. Harley drove to the shops, parked, entered Heartbake and made his usual “bloody big mug of coffee” gesture to the barista.

“Flat white. Takeaway. Family size.”

He looked at the free bookshelf while his coffee brewed. A good book helped fill the empty hours in a cabbie’s life.

He drew up outside 65 Monash Drive two minutes later, fresh coffee secure in the beverage holder, fresh novel in the door pocket, a fresh job ahead.

A door opened and a blonde woman came out. “You can start your meter if you want. My husband just called and he’s only a few minutes away. We’ll be going to the Griffith shops.”

She went inside, back to where it was warm. Harley could see inside to a sitting room, where the woman joined another, a younger redhead. They were chatting as they drank glasses of wine. Harley sipped his coffee.

Fifteen minutes later and the meter total was growing to a respectable size. Inside, the women looked out every few minutes, to check that the taxi was still there, Harley supposed. It looked like the wine glasses had been refreshed and a party was developing. He could almost hear the jazz playing. Harley sipped his cooling coffee.

Finally a BMW pulled into the drive and a man emerged. Through the window, Harley saw the two women embrace. The blonde came out, joined the man, and they got into the cab.

“Christ, Lee,” said the man, looking at the meter, “Why didn’t you call another cab? I said I’d be late.”

“You said you were just around the corner, darling.”

“I got tied up in Civic. Cabbie, could you go past the Campbell bottle shop? If they are still open, that is.”

Harley backed down the driveway, the redhead standing in the window, watching them, waving.

The bottle shop was open. “Just turn the meter off for a moment, will you?”

Harley complied, although he was entitled to waiting time.

Five minutes passed. Through the lighted shop window, Harley could see the man apparently having an animated conversation with the proprietor. The way things were going, they’d be opening a flagon together.

But he came out eventually, a bottle in a paper bag.

“That guy really knows his wine. Or at least he talked this one up.”

“Kim, dearest, we’re going to be late, and you know how they like you to be seated on time at Aubergine.”

“Right. Griffith shops, driver. And step on it.”

Harley stepped on it. A bit. He wasn’t going to go too far over the limit – it wasn’t worth risking his licence for some dickhead who couldn’t plan his time – but he could be brisk.

“Zoe’s looking after the twins,” the woman said. “She’s back from Brisbane for a while.”

“Is she?” Kim said, an expression of what might be surprise appearing on his face. “I hope we’re paying her well.”

“I’m buying her dinner on Saturday. We’ll see a movie. Have a girls’ night out.”

“I don’t suppose I could come along? They tell me at work I can be a real bitch sometimes.”

“We’ll need you to babysit, dear. I hope you don’t mind. I see so little of her nowadays, and we used to be so close in school.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing more of Zoe, too.”

“Kim!”

He shut up. Harley took the Kings Avenue bridge over the lake, the floodlit Carillon golden-white and sharp-edged against the dark water. Frank Sinatra came up on the golden oldies station, singing about Chicago.

A phone rang in the back seat. Harley turned Frank down.

“Kim here. I’m in a taxi. No, that’s alright. I was called into Civic. Some fu… um, fruitloop on the site. The security guys hauled him in, thought he might have a bomb or something. Yeah, he might have blown up a tree before they could chainsaw it. Didn’t say much. They gave him a hard time, I think. No, of course he wasn’t charged. It’s not a crime to sit under a tree with a suitcase in a public park. He seems harmless, but he doesn’t like ASIO one little bit. Okay. You’ll have the report in the morning.”

Kim put his phone away. Harley turned Sinatra back up, just in time for the song to end.

“Sorry, Lee. Work never stops.”

“It better stop right now. We don’t have an anniversary every night. Five years we’ve been together, and this should be a special night for us. Just for once, can we enjoy ourselves a little?”

They arrived at the restaurant. Kim paid with a credit card – no tip – and he ceremoniously took Lee’s arm as he escorted her into the restaurant.

Harley cleared the meter and headed for the Manuka rank. Just a couple more fares and he’d call it a night. His phone rang.

“Harley? Sharkey here. You driving? I need you for that job I mentioned.”

 

Copyright (c) 2009 Peter Mackay

It took all sorts. Harley helped Quint with his suitcase – “Full of bricks, is it?”, realigned his GPS so he could see it over the curve of the steering wheel, and u-turned the cab smoothly around, heading back up Monash Drive. Morning tea time, and the bakery at Campbell shops made the best coffee in the world.

Not to mention a superior rock cake. Their pies had won prizes too.

“Flat white, please. Hot. Big.” His hands sketched out a shape approximately the size of a beer keg. “And a stone-cold rock cake.”

The barista, an altogether too handsome young man, smiled politely behind his mirror-gleaming machine. He’d seen Harley’s comedy routine far too many times. He wished he had a dollar for every time he’d heard the same jokes.

Harley paid and took his coffee and cake outside. Cold in July, but he could keep an eye on the cab. One other hardy soul sat at a table, his chair angled to catch the sun, steam curling gently from a mug. Eighty years old, at a guess.

Harley glanced at him, sensing a kindred spirit. The signs were there for those who knew the code.

“Where’d yer do yer laggin’?”

The elderly gent looked up, a trail of blue tattooed tears faintly visible dropping from the corner of one eye.

“All over,” he replied. “You?”

“Goulburn, in the main.”

“Did me first laggin’ there. Evil place, that.”

“Not going back.” Harley stuck out his hand. “Harley Barnardo.”

“Sharkey, they call me.”

They shook. Harley set his coffee down on the table and turned to face the sun.

“It doesn’t get much better than this, eh?”

“I should be on the Gold Coast with the bikini birds,” Sharkey said. “Not stuck in this cold old hole.”

Harley raised his cup. “Let’s both bust out, hey?”

Sharkey shook his head. “They only let me out of Humane last month. Gotta stay in the Territory for a year. Gave me a room in that place.”

Harley glanced over at Erstwhile Garden Retirement Village, a grey slab with windows. “Looks like X-Block without the bars.”

They chatted on, a shared brotherhood of crime. Sharkey told of the old days in Goulburn, when as a teenager he had been assigned a cell with one of the last bushrangers, a man who had ridden with the Governor gang in his youth. The nation had been founded on other peoples’ convictions, unbroken chains of sentences and cant stretching back to the old lags on the First Fleet.

A woman within a sniff of thirty came out of the grocery, pushing a stroller with a couple of infants. Her arms were laden with plastic bags full of disposables, and the children were barely visible noses poking out of hooded garments, eyes gleaming in their caverns. Her own face was grim.

“Ever get married, Harley?”

“I run too fast,” Harley grinned, taking a bite of rock cake.

“Three times for me,” Sharkey sighed. “and me girl’s inside watching telly.”

“She should be making you coffee.”

“She only does instant. Instant everything. Microwave crap and boiling water. Not like the old days.”

“Never is nowadays.” Harley took another bit of rock cake, working his way around the cherry in the centre. “My Mum could make a rock cake so hard you’d be spitting out fillings for a week after.”

“Sounds like me first missus. Scones of Stone, I used to call ‘em.”

The door of Ounce Books opened and a woman emerged with an armload of books. One look at her and you could tell that a life of books, cats and chocolate was a comfortable one. She was smiling, and her t-shirt had a bust of Mark Twain on the front.

“Nice set of buns right there.”

“Nice all over,” Harley agreed. “She gives out free books. Can you credit that? Runs a bookshop and hands them out for nothing!”

“Oh yeah? I could do with a bit of that. Don’t mind a good murder, meself.”

“She fills up a shelf in the bakery. Up the back it is. Only catch is that you have to go on the internet and make a note or something.”

“Bloody computers and internet. It’s just another way of ripping off the little guy,” Sharkey said. “Me girl’s always chatting away to her mates. Twittering, she says.”

Harley took another mouthful of rock cake. The sultanas slipped under his teeth. As a kid, he’d pulled them out and set them aside, worried that a blowfly might have found its way into the mix. One Christmas, he’d spent ten minutes working on a pudding so full of dates and prunes and currants and cherries that all that he could get out of it were tiny shreds of duff. After that he hadn’t bothered.

Life was too short to worry about the little things. So what if a nut got into his cab? He’d be out again in a few minutes, and Harley could drive on in the sunshine. Canberra was a good place to be a cabbie. The roads were wide, the traffic flowed smoothly, the passengers were well-behaved.

And so what if they were putting up an ugly building at the end of the street? There’d be work coming out of it. Engineers and architects needing cab rides while it was going up, and public servants when it was in business. The more passengers in his taxi, the more money in his pocket.

He drained the last of his coffee. Life was good and the future was better. It would be spring soon. He popped the last fragments of rock cake into his mouth, feeling the preserved cherry slide under his teeth, sweet and delicious. That was the best part.

Sharkey was looking at him, smiling.

“Got to get back on the road, mate. Make a quid.” Harley said, putting his coffee mug down firmly. “Good to meet you!”

“Yeah, you too, cobber. Look, I might have something you can help me with.”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay