Green by Nick Earls Read Free Book Online

questions?’
    â€˜Um, yeah. Clockwise or anticlockwise with the coil? The swirl? How do you want me to do it?
    â€˜The coil? Clockwise,’ he says indignantly. ‘This is Australia.’
    And he goes to check on Frank as I’m doing a practice clockwise coil, and uncoiling a large amount of soft-serve onto my wrist and then my left shoe, and I hear him saying, ‘Hey, where the fuck have you been, pal? Not more than two strawberries in the Super Strawb, and I don’t care how small they are.’
    Frank apologises, and Leon says, ‘I don’t know what kind of fancy joints you guys have been working at before now,’ and shakes his head. ‘Customer loyalty’s one thing but three strawberries is bloody madness.’ He goes out the back, muttering something about stock levels and people ‘tossing round the strawbs like there’s no tomorrow.’
    And Frank turns to me, and says, ‘We’re in,’ and throws a few strawberries into his mouth.
    We get working, and the crowd builds up quickly and business is good at Whipster. I’m coiling and coiling and occasionally using a lid from one of Frank’s tubs to scoop the spillage onto the ground outside where, hopefully, Leon will never see it. Frank’s working the scoop down firmly into the tubs and saying, ‘Jeez, they freeze this stuff hard,’ and rewarding himself with mouthfuls of fruit.
    And he’s chucking on nuts and cream and squirts of topping when he’s not supposed to, and telling me it’s customer loyalty (when I know it’s all about girls). And he’s engaging as many as possible in go-nowhere conversations about spiders and recommending lime, large, two scoops of vanilla.
    â€˜For the price of a regular,’ he says, and I know his eyebrows are twitching up and down like a sleazy old showman’s, and surely none of them’ll go for that.
    Leon comes back from one of the other Whipster outlets, takes a look at technique.
    â€˜Yeah, nice coil,’ he says to me, in a one-pro-to-another kind of way. ‘Good on you.’ And he goes down to Frank’s end and I hear him saying, ‘Balls. I said balls . Good, firm balls. People aren’t paying you for those little scruffy bits of ice-cream. They can do that at home. Put a bit of wrist into it. Here.’
    And he takes the scoop and does a couple before striding out again.
    â€˜He’s tough,’ Frank says. ‘But he’s fair. He can scoop, you know.’
    And we start getting queues, and there’s some pressure on my coiling and I’m going as fast as I can, bunging in Flakes, losing lumps of ice-cream in the choc dip. But mostly getting away with it, mostly keeping them happy. Hardly noticing any girls, though. This is too much like hard work.
    At lunchtime a guy called Steve comes to help out and he says, ‘So you’re the pros, hey?’ and Frank says, ‘Yeah.’
    â€˜Yeah, Leon’s been talking about you. The one of youse on the 480, mainly. Reckons you’re good. Reckons that’s why you’re up in this one.’
    â€˜What do you mean, this one?’ I ask him.
    â€˜This one. This stall. The flagship. Noela’s pride and joy. Whipster Central. You didn’t think you blokes got the stall at the entrance to sideshow alley for nothing, did you?’
    This gives Frank confidence, even though he’s never been near a 480 in his life. He bosses Steve around and Steve’s happy to go with it, figuring he might learn something. Steve likes Frank, mainly because Frank’s rude to him and because he’s called Joo-ahn. Steve’s impressed by both of those things.
    Most of the time I’ve got my back to them, and my day’s becoming a blur of slow, white clockwise swirls. Sometimes Steve appears next to my elbow, staring down at the nozzle of the 480 at another perfect coil, and then saying something like, ‘Joo-ahn