Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo Read Free Book Online Page A

but Kathy has definitely been less withering lately. You never know your luck in a big supermarket chain.
— Donna (token youngster) Yeah, okay, she’s only just turned sixteen, but, like I said before, she’s sixteen going on thirty-five. She hangs out a lot after work. She never gets carded at the pub. There’s a certain enduring appeal in a young woman who sports tattoos, holds a cigarette and a glass of Scotch in one hand, lights said cigarettes with a huge-flamed Zippo, wears more pieces of jewelry than you can count and can beat you at pool. Could I consider going out with a sixteen-year-old? It’s a tough question. I’m pretty lonely and pretty desperate. Watch this space.
    Yesterday I was standing at my register looking down toward the service desk at Kathy when Amelia piped up abruptly from the next register, “Hey, why does Gatsby love Daisy so much? She’s a superficial skank.” Then muttered more to herself than to me, “ She doesn’t love him.”
    She even takes the goings-on of fictitious characters personally. These are the things she thinks about when she is packing groceries.

December 14
    Prepare for another well-lubricated sob story. It’s that time of night, I’ve come home from the pub and you, like Coleridge’s wedding guest, are as compelled to listen as I am to tell. Or maybe this is just drunken rambling that will never be read by any living soul. Even if my diaries are discovered after the apocalypse, people will trawl through the first few pages and say, “Who is this loser?” then, more importantly, “Who cares ?” and chuck them on the post-apocalyptic scrap heap. Either way, I’ve digressed.
    I had an odd experience at work tonight. It was about 8:45 p.m. and pretty quiet. I was chatting to young Amelia on the next register. At some point the chatting dwindled. She was tired. She’d been at school all day and it was the end of the week. She leaned both her forearms on the counter, bowed her head for a moment, then flung it up and exclaimed, “I’m star ving!”
    Instantly I was somewhere else.
    I was in the one-room cottage in Leura, where Michaela and I stayed last March. Late afternoon, approaching evening. We are lying on the bed, the covers strewn this way and that on the floor. She is lying diagonally across the bed on her back. I’m lying with my head on her belly and one arm flung across her thighs. I listen to her steady breathing and watch the last patch of orange-pink sunlight on the wall fade, casting the room in dusky half-light. I take a deep breath of the skin on her belly, which rouses her from her sleep. She gently pushes my head aside, stretches luxuriously, then sits bolt upright and declares, “I’m star ving!” She turns to face me. I push a lock of her teased-up hair away from her face. She bounds out of bed, pulls on her slip (birthday present from me) and sets about making a fry-up. I watch her. I love her.
    Then I’m back at Coles, a little disoriented, but definitely back. I’m cursed with an extensive and detailed memory, so I’m no stranger to being laid low by a vivid Michaela moment. I try to get them out of my head as quickly as possible and am usually successful. But this was different. It was reliving, not remembering. The sights, the smells, the feel of the linen, the warmth of skin on skin. Real. Immediate.
    Unsettling.
    I’m going to sit out the back with my beer. It’s after midnight, so it will be quiet, and there’s a moon tonight. Our backyard is pretty unsightly and uninspiring, but on a brightly moonlit night even the rusty tin roof on the garage seems to gleam, and Eastlakes bathes quietly.

December 20
    Work is getting crazy. Four more shopping days until Christmas. I had better get off my arse and do my Christmas shopping. I am tossing around the idea of whether to send Michaela a Christmas card or present or anything. I saw a pair of earrings that she would love in the window of a shop called Kashgar. Are you crazy ,