He gripped his fist, watching his knuckles. Did he still know how to hit someone? What if everything went pear-shaped and he got charged with assault? He imagined a twenty-year-old cop handcuffing him and leading him away, hand firm on the back of his neck. To lose control of his life would be unbearable.
If he got arrested he’d no longer be able to travel back and forth between Sydney and New York. He knew how lucky he was that he didn’t have a youth criminal record to cause difficulties at the borders, which he sailed through with such ease and regularity. It was all thanks to his mother that he’d been let off with a caution when he’d got caught with cannabis during his ‘entrepreneurial days’。 She’d arrived like the cavalry, following a phone call from Troy’s girlfriend at the time, and launched a full-on Joy Delaney charm offensive that had taken down the older of the two police officers.
Troy had just ten minutes earlier made a profitable sale to the school captain of an ‘elite’ school, which meant he had a lot of cash on him but only a small amount of drugs: small enough that he could argue it was for personal use. Troy could tell the younger officer badly wanted to charge him, that he represented something that guy couldn’t stand. ‘Your luck won’t last forever, mate,’ he’d said to Troy, hatred in his eyes.
‘Don’t talk to me, don’t even look at me,’ his mother had said, rippling with fury, on the drive home.
His mother was also the one who’d somehow magically convinced Harry Haddad’s father not to call the police when Troy punched the kid in the face for cheating.
‘If I’d been there I would have called the police on you myself,’ Troy’s dad had said.
‘Your dad would never have done that,’ Joy had told him in private. ‘He’s just upset.’
But his dad had said those words and never taken them back.
Apparently Harry Haddad was going to release an autobiography next year. Troy wondered if he’d include the story of how his first coach’s son jumped the net and nearly broke his nose for cheating. Presumably not. Didn’t fit with his wholesome brand. Troy wouldn’t be reading the fucker’s book anyway. He hated Harry for dumping his father even more than he hated him for cheating.
Troy shifted in his seat, kicked at an old Subway wrapper caught on the tip of his shoe from the floor of Logan’s car, and for no reason at all found himself considering what had happened in New York, even though he had not given his brain permission to consider it – in fact he had expressly forbidden himself to think of it again for another twenty-four hours.
His ex-wife had met him for a drink and presented him with an ethical dilemma so excruciating he thought it might have given him an instant stomach ulcer. Did people still get stomach ulcers? Nobody seemed to talk about them anymore. The word ‘ulcerate’ seemed appropriate for the sensation he experienced at that moment: like a tiny cyst had burst and flooded his stomach with corrosive acid.
‘This is not about evening the score,’ Claire had said with a tremulous smile, after she’d taken a sip of an overpriced, over-accessorised cocktail. She’d flown in from Austin just to talk to him.
Logan turned onto the highway and stopped at the first traffic light. A dead bat hung from the powerline. Whenever Troy left his parents’ place he got a red light here, and thought, I always get a red light here, and then he looked up and thought, Isn’t that dead bat always there? He got trapped in a permanent loop of pointless thoughts.
Further down the road a bus had stopped and a handful of people disembarked. Troy saw an ancient old lady totter towards the bus stop, face desperate, arm raised. She reminded him of his long-dead grandmother, who’d drunk too much and was spiteful to his mother, but Troy had adored her. She had a scar from when her husband, the grandfather Troy had never met, threw her across the room. She wore the scar with pride, like a tattoo she’d chosen for herself. ‘I threw that bastard out of my house,’ she told her grandchildren. ‘I said, “I never want to see your face again.” And I never did.’
The last passenger emerged from the bus. The old lady picked up the pace.
Troy reached across Logan and banged his fist hard on the horn to get the driver’s attention. Too late. The doors slammed shut. The bus took off. For fuck’s sake.
Logan looked at him sideways. ‘She’ll get the next one.’
Troy kicked again at the Subway wrapper. ‘Eeuuuuw. Christ almighty. It’s stuck on my shoe. Oh God, that yellow fake cheese will stain.’