‘Looks like you’re due for some new shoes anyway,’ said Logan.
‘They’re brand new Armani suede loafers!’ protested Troy.
Logan smirked.
Troy reached down and grabbed the Subway wrapper, scrunched it into a ball and shoved it in the side pocket of the car door, which was filled with coins, a pair of service station sunglasses missing a lens, and a CD without a cover. ‘When did you last clean your car? Sometime back in the nineties?’
‘Troy would rather not be seen in my car.’ Logan looked at Savannah in the rear-vision mirror. Wait, did he just wink at her? He wouldn’t be flirting, because he was in a long-term relationship with Indira. Indira was way out of Logan’s league, as far as Troy was concerned. It was a mystery what these women saw in him.
The only skill Logan had was recognising the good ones. Sometimes, Logan saw something in a woman that Troy didn’t see straight away. When they were in their late teens they’d both dated girls called Tracey, and Troy developed a secret, shameful crush on Logan’s Tracey. She was the superior Tracey! The worst part was, Troy had met Logan’s Tracey first, so he could have made a move, but he didn’t see her appeal until Logan saw it.
‘You’ve got a fancy car, Troy,’ said Savannah. ‘What type is it?’
They’d taken Logan’s car because he had a bigger boot for Savannah’s stuff. Troy was happy not to park his car outside Savannah’s flat, which he assumed was in some crummy low-rent area where it would get keyed within five minutes.
‘It’s a McLaren 600LT.’ Troy tried to say it in a neutral tone and ignored Logan’s inevitable faux awed whistle.
‘How much does a car like that cost?’ asked Savannah. ‘Is that rude to ask?’
‘Are you kidding?’ said Logan. ‘He’s always looking for an excuse to bring his net worth into the conversation.’
‘Fuck off,’ said Troy, because as a matter of fact the very last thing he wanted discussed in front of this potential con artist was his net worth.
‘What do you do, Savannah?’ He turned around to look at her again. ‘For a living? Is that rude to ask?’
Savannah turned her head and spoke to the car window. ‘Bit of this, bit of that.’ Her nose piercing glinted. ‘Mostly retail. Hospitality.’
So she’d worked as a check-out chick and a waitress.
She turned away from the window and looked at him deliberately, her chin lifted. ‘We’d only just moved here to Sydney, so I hadn’t lined up any work yet. Obviously, I will, once this is . . .’ She gestured at her forehead. ‘I’m not intending to sponge off your parents forever, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Troy, embarrassed and wrong-footed, and irritated that he’d been made to feel that way. He turned back around to face the front and shifted in his seat as he tried to straighten his legs. He thought of the lavish leg room on his Emirates flight from JFK, the stunning flight attendant leaning down to refill his wineglass, bringing with her a cloud of seductive perfume （Baccarat Rouge 540: he knew he had it right, but had checked to be sure）， and now here he was, in a car that smelled of bacon.
He shifted position in his seat. Shifted again. He sensed Logan noticing and made a decision not to move for the next minute. He counted it in his head. One elephant, two elephant, three elephant. He made it to thirty seconds and then he had to move. He was eleven years old, the Delaney kid incapable of sitting still.
‘SIT STILL, TROY DELANEY!’ his teachers used to roar, and sometimes, if he liked the teacher, he would try to sit still, he would try so hard, truly, but his body just moved of its own accord, as if he were a puppet with a malicious master tugging strings to jerk his limbs.
He gave up trying and let his legs jiggle and his fingers drum against his thighs.
‘And what do you do, Troy?’ said Savannah. ‘For a living?’
‘I’m a trader,’ said Troy.
‘What do you trade?’ she asked.
He knew she’d lose interest in a moment. Everyone did. ‘Anything that moves.’
‘I don’t know what that means,’ said Savannah humbly.
‘Nobody does,’ said Logan.
Troy didn’t look at him. ‘It means anything with volatility: interest rates, equities, currencies, commodities – that’s my bread and butter.’
‘You’re a risk-taker, then,’ said Savannah, and he looked at her in the rear-vision mirror again and saw that she had her head bowed and was examining her fingernails.