Ninety-Nine:

NINETY-NINE:

Steve

Steve Brown wanted to scream.

Instead, he focused on catching his breath. The skinny kid next to him at the bus stop—who looked like he’d been too busy doodling his notebook instead of some schoolgirl like other normal kids his age—hadn’t reacted. Good. His cool was in check.

Poor shit, Steve thought. He’s better off.

Or maybe he knows something about women that I don’t.

Although he doubted that.

Steve’s thoughts turned back to his wife. She had the wonderful ability of confusing him into anger, which hurt because he loved her like the world was ending. No wonder he wanted to bellow frustrations into the new day.

Bev appeared okay with him quitting his job as janitor at the James Bridge Public School. He gave his reasons, citing differences with the principal and harassment in the workplace. Bev nodded along, understanding.

Or so he thought.

In reality, he’d been fired—caught smoking pot under the year-six dormitory where the kids stored their bicycles. “You can do whatever you damn well want in your own time,” yelled the principal, “which, Charlie Brown, there is going to be plenty more of. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and let you burn the place down. Jesus, there’s a fire ban at the moment.”

Man, he hated people calling him Charlie.

Fuckers.

Bev stared at him, her look almost feline, and right then he understood why Babylonians sealed cats up in bricks. “Okay,” she said. Ice cold. “I guess I’ll pick up a couple of extra shifts at the mill. Until things pan out. You’d do the same for me, right?”

A test. “You got it, babe.”

Two days passed and over a dinner of mashed potatoes and homemade rissoles, Bev snapped. “Would you eat with your trap shut! Watchin’ all that meat there going in and out of you is making me wanna puke, you lying cockroach.”

She pronounced it cock-a-roach, like a sing-song.

He swallowed, hard and slow.

“Nope, don’t say anything! Don’t say a single bloody word. I don’t want to hear it.” She stood and left the table. From the next room, he listened to her bang plates, to mutterings loud enough for him to hear—an aggravating, deliberate move. “I work so hard. I work so hard and he does this to us.”

Steve didn’t get it. I try to do right and hold back on the details so she doesn’t have to worry, because she’s the one making the dinner and buying the food as well, and look where it gets me?

He hated the entire situation, especially now that every time he laid money on the dogs down at the James Bridge Federal, guilt near crippled him. It didn’t stop him from laying that spectacular ‘winning’ bet, though. And losing. He loved his wife, but he didn’t think that was enough anymore. Not by a long shot.

Bev blew her top when he told her he was thinking of going to the Maitland golf club with mates that morning. “It’s okay, babe. Eddie’s gonna pay for it and you know it’s only a couple of bucks. They’re going to be showing the Grand Prix on those big screens they just put up near the bar, and I read in the Saturday papers that Bon Jovi’s going to sing afterwards. Bon Jovi! Come on, Bev, it’s a Sunday.”

“Sunday? Jesus, Steve, you’re on the dole!” She shook her head and banged a hand against the kitchen countertop. He grabbed his wallet out of Saturday’s football shorts, traded flip-flops for running shoes—club regulation required closed footwear on the course at all times—and pulled a jersey over his bare chest.

“If you’re going, don’t even thinkabout taking the car.”

“Oh, come on, babe. There’s never police on the road. Not here.”

Her look silenced him. Babylon had it right, he thought.

***

“Shaping up to be a hot one, eh?” Steve asked the kid.

“Excuse me?”

“Hot one, don’t you reckon?”

“Oh, right. Sure is.” A moment passed. “Aren’t you burning up in that jersey?”

Steve laughed. “This ain’t no jumper, mate.” He puffed his chest out, chin rising. “This here’s a second skin. You follow the Newcastle Knights, then?”

The kid looked at his pigeon-toed feet, straightened them out. “I don’t really follow League all that much.”

“Shit a brick. Don’t tell me you’re a Union fan?”

“Yeah, don’t really follow Union either. Soccer’s all right. I play it at school every now and then.”

Steve snorted. “Soccer. Ha.”

The kid snatched his backpack off the ground. “Looks like the bus is going to show after all.”

Steve studied the horizon and saw the gilded reflection of sun against glass up ahead. Heard the whine of an approaching vehicle. A dull, lifeless sound.

“Better late than never,” Steve said.