The Day of the Gecko by Robert G. Barrett Read Free Book Online

drama of conflict and intrigue in a seventeenth-century Icelandic fish factory. Les switched off the TV and went into the bedroom. He switched on the lampbehind Susie’s bed and pulled the curtains shut tight.
    He cleaned his teeth and let go a couple more yawns, then climbed into Susie’s bed, switched off the light and closed his eyes. The bed was comfortable, so were the pillows, and Les felt pretty good. So what’s on tomorrow? he thought as he began to drift off. Nothing really. Train in the morning, tape music most of the day and work that night — if you could call it that. Les was lying there happily when something made him open his eyes. Susie’s big poster of the universe was luminous and you could see all the constellations and galaxies quite clearly against the wall in the darkened room. It was almost like standing out in the countryside on a crystal clear night and it was quite fascinating. Les stared at it for a while and before long he was drifting along somewhere in the cosmos himself.

 
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    It was after eight the next morning by the time Les surfaced, got cleaned up and wandered into Susie’s kitchen wearing his faded Levi shorts and a white T-shirt. He had woken up earlier and was lying in bed half asleep thinking how sweet it all was, when some bloke arrived in an old mini-van and started whipper-snippering the front lawn. And with Susie’s unit being right at the front, the machine sounded like it was about a metre from Norton’s head. There were plenty of goodies, sauces and pickles in the landlady’s fridge. Les settled on some Roman focaccia, which he toasted with cottage cheese, sliced tomato and onion and a splash of salsa, and washed down with a plunger of New Guinea Blue. Peering out the kitchen window while the kettle boiled, he noticed it didn’t look like too bad a day outside. A bit of a southerly blowing again with some clouds around; pretty much like the day before. Les took his breakfast over to the kitchen table and got stuck into it, and couldn’t help but think again how sweet it all was.
    Susie had a small radio on the table tuned to AM.Les switched it on and while he was eating, all he seemed to get was these three miserable radio announcers ripping into greenies. It was one non-stop tirade interrupted only by commercials and Les couldn’t believe so much venom could pour out of one tiny speaker. All some poor souls were trying to do was stop what’s left of the rainforests from being turned into chopsticks and glossy wrapping for the Japanese so a couple of hundred beer-bellied truck drivers could keep their jobs. But the way these radio wallies had whipped themselves into a lather, you’d have thought the greenies were ruining the economy, raping women in the streets and throwing babies up in the air and catching them on bayonets while they ran around growing pot everywhere. When the announcers weren’t howling for the communist, tree-hugging greenie scums’ blood, they were mentally stalking the Minister for the Environment and wanting to hang him up by his heels with piano wire over a slow fire too. He was some kind of crazed, woozy heterodox just for holding his portfolio in the first place and having the unmitigated gall to argue against their carping, didactic bullshit. Norton gave the tirade about another minute, then shook his head and switched the radio off.
    Communist, greenie, tree-hugging bastards. Les took a sip of coffee and turned around in his chair. Haven’t me and Warren got a photo in the kitchen of Dick Smith with his arms around a tree? Bloody oath we have. Next to that one of the two dolphins jumping in front of the ship. And what’s that goose call greenies? Watermelons? Green on the outside and red in the middle. I know what would be a good nicknamefor him and his prima donna mates. Chinese Gardens. All sweet-smelling and nicely manicured on top, but full of shit