The Fine Color of Rust by Paddy O'Reilly Read Free Book Online Page B

concentrate on a book. I should be planning spectacular entertainments for the visit from the education minister, but that seems too much like hard work. Now I’m bored. I sound like Jake. Bored, bored, bored. If I was a bloke, I’d wheel the computer out of Melissa’s room and look at porn for a while.
    The only trouble with the secondhand computer stand I bought is that it squeaks whenever you move it. Melissa half-wakes and moans, and I shush her and hurry the computer out of the room. I’m not interested in porn, but Helen’s promised me a whole other world of fun on the internet and I think it’s time I found out more about it, as research of course, to protect my children. Last time I played around on the computer, Melissa, through child technomagic, tracked what I’d been looking at the night before. “Are you going to buy a motorbike, Mum?” she asked. “What are spurs, anyway?” Now I’ve learned how to clear the history of what I’vebeen browsing, so I’m feeling daring. I pull down the ancient bottle of Johnnie Walker from the top of the cupboard, pour a shot, add a splash of water, and realize the only ice I have is flavored. What the hell, I think, and drop the homemade icy pole upside down into the glass.
    Outside the flywire screens, the night noise of the bush carries on. It’s not the white noise of the city where I grew up—the drone of cars and the rattle of trams, the hum of streetlights and televisions muttering early into the morning. It is an uproar. When we first moved out here I was terrified by the racket. It sounded as if the bunyips and the banshees had gone to war: screaming, howling, grunting, crashing through the bush, tearing trees apart, and scraping their claws along the boards of the house. Soon enough I realized that the noises were frogs and cicadas and night birds. Kangaroos thumping along their tracks; rutting koalas sending out bellows you’d never imagine their cute little bodies could produce; the hissing throat rattle of territorial possums; and an occasional growling feral cat. Against all that the whirring of the computer is like the purr of a house pet.
    Once I’m connected to the internet I do a search on myself, in case I’ve become famous while I wasn’t paying attention. I’m not there, so I try my maiden name, Loretta O’Brien. Someone with my name is a judge in North Carolina, and another person called me died recently and her grandchildren have put up pictures of her. She has a touch of the old scrag about her. I wonder if it’s the first name that does it to us. All that unfulfilled singing potential.
    The lemon icy pole sure adds a distinctive tang to Johnnie Walker. I top up the glass with water and take another sip, shards of melting ice sticking to my lips as I type in Gunapan. We’re part of a geological survey. The Department of Landshas posted a topographical map of the region. Gunapan is an Aboriginal place name. Well, duh, I think, tossing back more of the tasty lemon whisky and adding a touch more water. The next hit is an online diary of a backpacker from Llanfairfechan in Wales who stayed for a night in a room above the Gunapan pub. One night is plenty enough in this place , she writes. I had very bad dreams.
    Jake calls out in his sleep. He does this—occasionally shrieks in the night—but it means nothing. Bush pig, I think, refilling my glass and pulling a strawberry icy pole from the freezer. It’s weeks since I’ve been tempted to drop the kids at the orphanage and drive to Melbourne to take up my new life of glamour with a hairless, odorless body. The little bush pigs have been behaving quite well. Now I realize that was the calm. Something’s coming, but I don’t know what.
    I lean back and sip my drink—Johnnie and a strawberry icy pole, it’s a Gunapan cocktail—and click away until I’m looking at the guest login for