Part 5 1/2
To there and back
Click here for Part 4

Right now, I’m on the road again. I’m Driving back through torrential rain because something crap has happened to me. No, not that. Something else.

But before that, I was having the best time that I could possibly afford to have in the past few days. Sitting by the pier on a bright sunny day. Fresh crusty bread and two cans of tuna. There was the cool sea breeze. The dolphin cruise boats, or ferries or whatever you wish to call them, lined up one after the other. Even the seagull poop seemed to miss me every time. There was a group of Japanese tourists lining up to see the dolphins and one of them took a picture of me. Maybe Astrid did some spell on me and made me look like a dolphin. But I was feeling good there for a while. I maybe went a whole hour without thinking of her. And the rest of the trip had been pretty good too.

The drive up to Port Stephens was uneventful enough.

Well… I suppose there were the three exploding tires that was kinda freaky. I mean, what are the chances of that? I got the same NRMA mechanic twice.

‘Dude, you sure you don’t wanna just ride with me the rest of the way?’ he says. I told him no and twenty minutes later, I got another puncture.

And then there was also that freak electrical storm that seemed to only be above my car.

But these things happen.

Anyway, when I decided that I had to leave the house, there was only one place that I could think of going. That's Port Stephens. It's always been my happy place and I needed that. Ever since childhood, it’s been the one place where I can’t remember ever feeling sad.

I stayed, last night, at the Paradise Island Motel, which in itself wasn’t a bad thing at all. The room was basic and decorated like a 70s love motel but it had a TV and kettle and I was allowed to borrow a microwave from George, the owner. He was very nice.

Then, in the middle of the night I was visited by a ghostly figure (who looked a bit like Dennis Franz except with fangs and a tail) who told me I should go back home. Thank God that was only a dream though. Would have been real scary otherwise!

So anyway, things were going quite well, given the circumstances. I was on the pier, as I mentioned, and whistling the theme song to Bewitched when I saw a newspaper fly straight past me, catching itself on a pole. Flapping around noisily like a makeshift flag. So I got up and picked it up.

And here’s when things went to crap. See, I wasn’t really trying to read the paper as I grabbed it but I glanced at it. As you would. And when you glance, you end up reading. Except I didn’t. Couldn’t.

I couldn’t read a single word. I mean, I could sort of tell the letters apart and it was all clear and not blurry or anything. And I was pretty sure it was all English. But I couldn’t make out a single word. These… symbols… these… things just danced in front of my eyes but giving me no joy of meaning!

I turned the pages but they were all the same. Just pictures and undecipherable symbols. And I realised it was the same everywhere. I looked up and I couldn’t derive any sense out of anything I tried reading. The name of the boats. Signs on the pier. I turned around and it was the same with all the shop signs.

I panicked. How am I going to survive? How will I work? I need words! Was this Astrid? Why? Why would she do this to me? What did I write in the note again? Was it that bad? I can’t remember. I can’t read. Dammit, I can’t read! If I can’t read, how am I supposed to, like, read stuff?!

So here’s where we’re at. I feel like all I do is pack and run. Back and forth. I’m driving now. It’s very wet. And my inability to read is no longer possible to ignore. Road signs point me in to foreign towns, while speed limits have become mere educated guesses from how fast the other cars around me are going.

I’m thinking of my next step. What now? What do I do? Do I go and face Astrid? Is that what she wants? Is that an ice cream van that just passed me? What’s this thing on my head?

Oh, it’s seagull poop.

_____

When I get back into the city, I decide that I’m not yet prepared to face my wife. These past couple of days, I’ve had this growing feeling of pride that I don’t think I ever had in me before. Going back to her now, after all she’s done, would just make me the loser that I always assumed I was. So instead I go to Newtown to see the only other magic person I can think of.

I park my car behind Coles, hoping that I am allowed to park there. Of course, I can’t read the parking sign. But I don’t really care at the moment. I run to the magic shop.

And so I’m there in the alley behind the bar but the shop isn’t there. I run out the front to check it’s the right bar. It is, but the shop isn’t there. Has it closed? No, the shopfront isn’t even there. It must be the wrong place. Or have I…

‘Oi!’ says a voice, ‘it’s you again.’

I look around. The voice seems familiar though. I reply, ‘Hello?’

‘You’ve been locked out mate,’ says the voice again. ‘That’s why you can’t see it anymore.’

‘Who’s locked me out?’

‘Can’t say, really. Could be anyone.’

I look around a bit more. There’s nothing and no one around that could be speaking. Then I look down and I see a doormat against the wall. It’s the same one that was in the shop! I stoop down and say, ‘is that you?’

‘Of course it’s me!’ the mat shouts, ‘who else could it be?’

‘Well, I guess it’s just that I’m not used to talking to doormats. Are you magical?’

‘"Enchanted" is my preferred description.’

‘Oh, alright then. So I can’t get in?’

‘Well it’s kinda hard to get anywhere if you can’t see where you’re going.’

I give him a perplexed look. Quite possibly because I am perplexed.

‘Well let’s put it this way, mate,’ the mat continues, ‘what’s a doormat doing without a door?’

‘Ahh’ I smile, figuring out that the door to the magic shop must be the part of the wall next to the doormat. Well, duh!

‘You’re not as dumb as you look.’

I step on the mat and smile to myself. I hesitate a second and then walk through the door.

Bang! On the head! And I reel back, with what distinctly feels like I just banged my head against a brick wall.

‘You said there was a door there!’ I demand of the doormat.

‘Well there is, you dickhead.’

‘So how come I couldn’t walk though?’

‘Cause it’s a friggin’ door, you moron. You need to open it first!’

‘Oh,’ right, I knew that. ‘So where’s the knob?’

‘You gotta be able to see the door first.’

‘And how do I do that?’

‘Step back a bit. If you squint, you’ll be able to see it.’

So I do that. I squint. And I could see…

‘Nothing. I just see bricks.’

‘Keep going.’

And so I do. And so it does. And slowly, out of the blurriness of the bricks doubling into each other, I can see the beginnings of a door. Like a Magic Eye picture materialising from the page before me. A door never looked so amazing. I walk up to it slowly and reach for the knob. It’s icy to the touch. I turn it until it clicks. The door then opens effortlessly and I’m inside the shop where it’s still as musty as ever.

‘Thanks,’ I say, looking back to the doormat.

‘Dickhead.’

_____

Francis stands by his counter with a wand pointed at me.

‘How did you get in here?’

‘I opened the door.’

‘You can’t be in here.’

‘Why did you lock me out?’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘Aren’t I a valued customer?’

‘I can’t sell you nothing no more.’

‘Why?’

‘If I tell you, they’ll kill me.’

‘Really?’

‘Er… yes.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Don’t make no difference.’

Despite being the one in the power position – you know, him having a loaded (with what?) wand pointed at me and all – he’s the one who looks scared. I can see he is sweating and his white vampire skin makeup is running down one cheek.

‘Look, I’ll be quick. I just need your help. You’re the only… um… magic person I know. Other than my wife of course.’

I step closer. He takes an air swing of the wand. I pull back. Hands raised to head level.

‘I think somebody’s put a spell on me.’

‘Of course they have. They’ve put a few spells on you.’

‘But why?’

‘I got no idea. But whatever it is, you must be in trouble, and if you’re here much longer, I’ll be in trouble.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Can’t say.’

‘Was it my wife?’

‘Listen, leave please!’

‘Can’t you help me?’

‘No, I told you.’ Francis looks really nervous now.

‘How about someone else? Do you know anyone who can help me? I need these spells removed.’

‘No, I can’t risk that.’

I take out my wallet slowly out of my back pocket. Francis flinches and I raise my hand again. But after he sees that all I have is a wallet, I fish out a note from it that I can tell is a fifty. From the colour. Because of course, if you’ve been following my story, I can’t bloody read anymore!

‘Even if I just happen to drop this on the floor?’

‘No,’ he says, eyeing the note as it floats gently to the floor.

He doesn’t move or say any more so I bend down to pick up my note.

‘Well maybe.’

I leave the note. ‘Please.’

‘I know this guy.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘You can’t. But you can call him.’

‘OK.’ I gotta say. I’m sceptical.

Francis digs around behind the counter and pulls out a teabag.

‘Here,’ he says and hands me the teabag. ‘Make a cup of this…’

‘It’s Lipton!’

‘No… well yes, but it’s magic Lipton.’

‘That’s crap!’

‘No, serious! Look, brew this tea for two minutes. While you’re waiting, find a pillow and tie it to the back of your head…’

‘What? You’re just having me on!’

‘… drink the tea. Then call this number.’ He writes me the number on a piece of paper and hands it to me. ‘Then, when it connects, start chanting this mantra: “Owa Tagu Siam”. Keep going until he responds.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You don’t have a choice.’

‘This is true. But what the hell do I need to tie a pillow around my head for?’

'You'll see.'

I leave the shop after that and I start thinking of where I can spend the night and where I might make this phone call. I ended up settling for this backpackers’ hostel in Surry Hills that has private rooms for a little more than the cost of a bed in the dorm. Well, quite a bit more really but that’s not really important right now.

‘Oh by the way,’ I say to the reception guy, a tall skinny redhead, named Dave, who’s obviously on weed – something I disapprove of quite strongly but that’s also something that’s not really important right now – I say, ‘Do you have any string or masking tape?’

_____

So I have this pillow tied to the back of my head and I’m drinking the tea which, it turns out, is certainly not Lipton. Maybe really old Lipton. Like Lipton that’s so old even the maggots have discomposed. I hold my mobile phone in my hand and I take out the piece of paper with the phone number on it. I unfold it and… well, yes I am an idiot once more, because of course I've forgotten that I can’t READ THE BLOODY THING! So I run out the door and down the stairs to Dave who on second thoughts may be not on weed at all. I think he’s just tired. Maybe he’s been playing too much Xbox. Or maybe he has a sick mother that he has to tend to. But anyway, I digress. So I give him the piece of paper and I ask him to read it to me.

‘Why dude?’

‘Just read it please.’

‘OK dude.’ And he reads it out to me. It doesn’t sound like a home number. And it’s rather easy to remember, thank God.

I then thank him and start to walk back up the stairs.

‘Hey dude,’ he calls out to me. ‘Why do you have a pillow stuck to the back of your head?’

‘Well,’ I start, ‘it’s just that when I sleep, I toss and turn so much that the pillow often ends up falling off the bed. So now I just tie it up.’ I’m grinning at him.

Dave looks puzzled. Then smiles and starts nodding.

‘Cool, dude. I might try that.’

So now I’m back in the room. My stomach starts to rumble and my head feels light – probably from the bad tea bag. I get the feeling that Francis has scammed me again but I go ahead anyway as people with nothing to lose often do. I ring the number and I start the chant.

Owa Tagu Siam.

Then it connects.

‘On the third stroke, it will be 10:32 and 30 seconds.’

Stroke.

Stroke.

Stroke.

That bastard Francis has given me the time information service! And the bad tea! And he’s made me tie a bloody pillow on my head! I bet he’s having a good old laugh now!

I’m about to put the phone down but then I think ‘eh, why not.’ Just go with it. What can I lose? And besides, my head feels light now and I’m resting it on the phone in my hand.

‘On the third stroke, it will be...’

I think I’m smiling. No. I’m just… um… what am I doing? Oh, I’m still chanting. I didn’t even realise.

Owa Tagu Siam.

Stroke.

Stroke.

Oh wa tagu Siam.

Ah… this is nice. And maybe if I start rocking back and forth on my chair it will be nicer.

Oh wat agu Siam.

Yes. Rocking is nice! Wheeeeeee!

‘… it will be 10:39 and…’

Oh what agoo siam.

I’m a rockin’. I’m a rockin’.

Oh what a goose…

And I snap out of it. The bad tea or whatever. One moment of clarity. But my momentum is already going backwards, in a violent jerk at the realisation. And I’m falling backwards onto the floor.

‘Ahh, the pillow,’ I think to myself. But I hit my head hard and I black out anyway.

_____

When I open my eyes, I’m upright. On my chair. One hand is still holding the phone to my ear. The pillow on my head is gone. I feel great. Doesn’t seem to be any effects left from the tea. The room is deathly silent.

‘On the third stroke, it will be 3:56 and 45 seconds.’

It’s still the time information service. Has it really been over five hours? How much is this going to cost me? That bastard Francis!

Stroke.

Stroke.

Stroke.

Oh what a goose I am!

‘On the third stroke, it will be 3:57 and I should be in bed right now dreaming about Jessica Alba or my hot next door neighbour who kinda looks like Jessica Alba. So tell me who the hell you are, who gave you my number, what you want from me, or just bugger off, will you?’

Part 4
'I'm taking the tuna with me'

From the bottom of this here glass, even this guy looks pretty hot. In a drunken smelly guy sort of a way. Wait… or is that me? Oh, it’s just the toilet I’m sitting next to. Yeah, that’s it. Bloody frickin’ toilet. Close the damn door or something! Lock it up! I’ll swallow the damn key. It’ll probably taste better than this smells... smells better than this tastes. What do you mean I can move? Of course I can move but I don’t want to. No! Leave me the hell alone with my smell.

I’m drunk.

I am thinking of Astrid and what she has done or what I think she has done and I am thinking of whether I will ever see her naked again or if I could ever find anyone else that I love and is hot and is all that Astrid is. I feel that what I am thinking may be frowned upon by some as superficial and I am thinking where such a voice is coming from in such a drunken state.

Am I really drunk?

Is this all real?

Will I wake up in the morning to find that it was all just a bad dream?

Does she seriously think he’s better-looking than I am? Surely not! He was short. He had bug eyes and the mouth of a horse. Surely she has eyes!

Is this biased?

Is there a God?

Is that a beer stain on my pants or did I just wet myself?

I need to pee.

_____

I’m talking to this guy, right. He’s been sitting next to me all this time and he’s a little shorter than I am and a few years older, and I think he’s fully covered in flannel but that seems unlikely. He’s saying… um… no, I’m saying ‘Would you leave your wife if you found her sleeping with another man?’ and he says ‘Your life is bleeping with another fan?’ I say ‘Fair enough’ and he hesitates, but then nods in enthusiastic agreement and pats me on the back, shouting ‘Good man!’

But, well, of course she may not have been cheating on me at all. I have, to be sure, often seen her on top of guys naked before. Although it’s never been the case where the man ends up creeping out the front door. It typically ends in blood. A lot of it. ‘You see,’ I tell him, ‘she’s a witch.’

He nods again. With a positively solemn sincerity that only drunken men can exhibit, he pats me on the back again and says ‘Me too, mate. My wife is also a bitch.’

‘No, I said “witch”!’

‘She’s rich?’

I try to say no but he’s already patting me on the back again.

‘Good man! Better to leave it all on the cricket pitch, I say,’ he tells me and I nod even though I have no idea what he’s on about.

‘It’s OK that you live in a ditch.’

And that’s when I leave the conversation. He extends his hand and tells me ‘the name’s Mitch’ and I tell him my name and he says ‘good man!’ I turn to leave and that’s when he grabs my hand and, looking almost sober, tells me ‘I know magic… if you ever need any.’ I wave the drunken man away and I say ‘magic is the last thing I want to hear about right now.’

_____

I suspect it’s not so late when I stumble out of the pub, although it could be anytime, really. The walk home seems surreal in its quietness. I look up at the sky and the stars are bright blurry dots constantly coming in and out of focus.

When I come home I have sleep on my mind. Momentarily I remember that I haven’t had dinner yet, but it doesn’t bother me enough to do anything about it. Even though, from where I am, I can see the eighteen cans of tuna that we had bought for 99c each from Coles.

In the morning I wake up with all the pretty symptoms of a hangover. I get up off the couch, which I decided to sleep in last night, and I go upstairs to the bedroom.

It looks normal, I guess. As normal goes the morning after you’ve just witnessed your wife naked and on top of another man but without a ceremonial dagger. The bed is still unmade. Astrid rarely makes the bed in the morning. I leave the house a little later usually, so oftentimes that’s my job. But it seems a little more unmade than usual this morning. You know… yeah.

I stand there for a few minutes, not moving. I see from the alarm clock that it’s actually 3pm or thereabouts. Not morning at all. Then I pick up the sheets and put them in the washer to rid it of the human sin that has soiled its usual pristine white lustre. I consider burning them but decide that I’m not that much of a drama queen.

There is anger within me. Yoda would not approve.

My head still throbs so I go to the potion cabinet and get myself some anti-pounding-head elixir. Unfortunately, while it works wonders to soothe a throbbing head, the elixir has a nasty side effect of intense blistering of the foot. So I quickly down a teaspoon of no-foot-blister powder with a glass of water. This powder has its own side effect of a tick in the neck for ten minutes after consumption. But that, I can live with. Happily.

With a clear, non-pounding, head, I feel only slightly less crap than before. I turn on the TV but that’s mostly crap too at this time. I have no idea what to do. Passions is on and I’m less than passionate about that show even at the best of times.

I start to write Astrid a letter but my writing goes funny every time my head jerks involuntarily to the side. And what if she decides she would rather talk to me instead? I don’t want to talk to her. I really don’t. At least not yet. I wouldn’t know what to say. Do I want to leave? Do I want to stay?

Maybe I can go away and leave the note. But that would be too dramatic, wouldn’t it? And I don’t even know what to write. This is hopeless. This is terrible. And maybe I need to find some Anti-tick-in-the-neck potion. It’s starting to annoy me. And it’s been 20 minutes at least.

On the ABC now there’s some British show from the 70s or early 80s that’s set in a pub similar to the one down the road and there are these two guys talking, both drunk, looking pretty much like me and Mitch did last night except what they are talking about is different. This one guy, who actually looks more American than British (if that makes sense!), is telling the other guy about some woman he slept with the other night and he’s describing it all rather crudely, or at least it’s suggestively crude because the language itself was M15+ at most and it is late afternoon free-to-air TV we’re talking about. And so the other guy is responding in pretty much the same manner and making drunken suggestive hand actions and stuff and it’s all quite disgusting and way over the top. This should be funny. There’s canned laughter in the background to tell me that it’s supposed to be funny. But in no way am I laughing right now. I kinda just stare at the screen without absorbing anything, really. Almost creating my own dialogue and my own show in my head. And suddenly the two guys are no longer Mitch and me. But it’s the guy. You know. That guy. And he’s with some work colleague, some bozo in a suit, sneaking in a quiet late afternoon beer and he’s telling him about this hot chick that he was banging last night and how good she was but then her husband walked in on them. Only this guy, the husband, is a gutless, useless loser who didn’t really get all that angry and instead just walked out the room with his tail between his legs and started watching some dumb documentary about pyramids or something while he got dressed and calmly went out the front door. Now what a stupid tosser this guy is who sees his wife screwing someone else and just does nothing about it. Nothing!

_____

I think I know now that this is not a dream. If anything, it’s waking up from the dream. The happy home. The beautiful wife. The magic of it all. I need to go. At least for a while to clear my head. I’ll take some clothes, some CDs and the car. I’ll finish that letter and tell her that I need some time out. I’ll tell her that I’m taking all of the eighteen cans of tuna that we got for 99c each at Coles, and some bread. And then I’m taking this book of hers. It’s called Magic for Beginners. By some German guy named Alexander Wurz. It’s a glossy, full-colour, fully illustrated coffee table book laid out like one of Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks. From what I can tell, it’s like an overview of all types of magic from around the world. And I am going to read this book from cover to cover and if I find something magical in it about sitting naked on top of a guy without a ceremonial dagger, I’ll come back home. Actually, I’ll come back home soon, regardless, but that’s what I’ll tell her in my note anyway.

Yes, I know. I’m a fool.