‘A calculated risk-taker,’ said Troy. His family thought he played blackjack all day long.
Logan said something under his breath.
‘What?’ Troy looked at him.
Logan lifted a shoulder. ‘Didn’t say anything.’
How could he have that smug grin while driving a car filled with Subway wrappers?
‘Do you have a . . . partner?’ asked Savannah.
‘He’s straight,’ said Logan. ‘Just likes to act camp.’
‘Do you?’ said Savannah to Troy. She’d lifted her head, interested. ‘Like to act camp?’
‘Apparently so,’ said Troy.
He didn’t care when people thought he was gay. He kind of liked it. Kept everyone on their toes. He didn’t do it on purpose. Or maybe he did. To differentiate himself from Logan, who was a ‘man’s man’。 Logan thought there was only one way to be a man: their father’s way.
Silence filled the car as they drove down the highway, every traffic light inevitably turning red as they approached, causing Troy to just about lose his mind. Logan hummed under his breath, elbow halfway out the car window, head back against the headrest, as if he were a layabout teenager off to the beach with his friends. He probably still went to the beach with his friends. They probably had barbeques and played beach cricket. Logan was still in touch with his entire circle of high school friends, which made Troy feel both contemptuous – how parochial, how very Sydney – and envious.
Troy liked the idea of old friends, just not the reality. When old friends tried to get in touch with him, he always shuddered. It was like they were trying to take something away from him, to peel off an outer layer and show everyone the uncouth, unsophisticated kid he used to be. He was always kind of surprised old friends still existed.
Logan continued to whistle. The guy needed a haircut, a shave, probably a shower, for fuck’s sake.
It was the same toneless, two-note tune Logan used to hum on long car journeys to tournaments when they were kids, the tune that would malevolently worm its way into Troy’s consciousness until he had no choice but to resort to violence, because come on, now, how many times did he have to ask him to stop?
‘Don’t.’ He touched Logan’s shoulder. ‘Please don’t.’
Logan stopped humming abruptly. He glanced once at Troy, switched on the radio and changed lanes unnecessarily.
Troy closed his eyes so he didn’t have to see the next traffic light turn red, and it occurred to him that maybe Logan’s humming was a nervous tic, and in the way that a random thought about your childhood can suddenly offer a startling new adult clarity, he saw in a flash that this was true: Logan hummed when he was nervous. He had hummed on the way to tournaments because he was nervous and Troy couldn’t stand the sound of it because he himself had been suffering pre-game nerves.
So Logan was nervous right now.
It wouldn’t be the threat to his own safety worrying him, but the possibility of being involved in a disagreement. Logan had a severe conflict allergy. He’d pick up his cutlery and eat rather than tell a waitress, ‘That’s not what I ordered.’ Even if it was vegetarian. When he used to play the most notorious cheats on the circuit, he never questioned their calls. It was his brother’s most significant and, for Troy, most mystifying flaw.
Of course, Logan’s conflict allergy hadn’t applied to Troy. The two of them used to fight to the death. Troy traced his finger down the faint white line on his forearm. Sixteen stitches. He and Logan had smashed through a window onto the front lawn while they were fighting, like a scene from Die Hard. Logan had a similar scar on his thigh. It was one of Troy’s favourite childhood memories: the two of them looking at each other with shocked, thrilled eyes, bloody limbs, glass fragments shining in their hair, their poor mother screaming her head off.
Now Logan competed against Troy by not competing, which was fucking genius. You couldn’t win if only one of you was playing.
Savannah spoke up from the back seat. ‘When I said that about not sponging off your parents, I hope I didn’t come across as . . . ungrateful.’
Troy opened his eyes. ‘Not at all.’
He slid the words ‘at’ and ‘all’ together to make the one word ‘a-tall’， a linguistic habit he’d taught himself as a teenager, when he’d heard it used by someone on the radio and decided it sounded sophisticated. It still gave him pleasure. Like a fashion choice.
He saw the harbour and his heart lifted at the sight of apartment blocks, office towers, skyscrapers, the Harbour Bridge: civilisation, even if it was only Sydney civilisation, not proper civilisation.