The house is on fire. I have been living in Australia about a year and recently moved into a mid century Federation home in Claremont, just west of the city. The house is pretty much original and came furnished replete with a resident kookaburra in the backyard and the compulsory sliding scale array of lethal arachnids but lacking even the most basic form of air conditioning. On any regular summer’s day this meant rising early, before the sun went from overhead to in the lounge. By late afternoon, the house hummed with heat like a giant’s kiln. I have often sat gazing longingly into the cool glow of the open fridge at night.
It’s Saturday morning and I am unwell, caleidoscopic fragments cartwheel through my mind from last night, a friend’s engagement party in downtown Perth. Things went south early which seems to go with the territory in this part of the world. I know that I have to get up, the bedroom is already like the surface of Mercury. I stumble out of bed past the large oak desk parked against the wall towards the bathroom. On my way back to ponder my options, I give my laptop a nudge. I have a new obsession, a chess game and it’s for all the usual reasons. Jenya has a beautiful, dark and funny heart with matching obsidian eyes and she plays chess. She also has A/C. As luck would have it, the laptop came with a game and I have convinced myself that I can steal her heart by mastering the windmill and the poisoned pawn attack, we would then become the bogan Bogie and Bacall. The one obstacle standing in the way of true love is the computer’s chicanery, every time I am a move away from seizing victory the game declares a draw. I have become infatuated with crushing my adversary and dimly recall a pyrrhic triumph in my dreams last night. I stab at the on switch but nothing happens. It’s 1999 and laptops weigh just slightly more than the earth’s core and as I pick it up liquid spills out of the bottom. Surveying the desk for a potential source, I see nothing, no window left open, no glass overturned.
I slump on the edge of the bed, mystified, trying to piece together this jigsaw reality but my head is pounding. I need tea. First, I have to negotiate Nico, my Jack Russell puppy. I tremulously open the bedroom door and am met by his ritual greeting as he sinks rows of razor sharp fangs into my heel and then scarpers. We’re having teething issues and I’m going to need a dog whisperer to rid me of this daily dismemberment. Somebody at work had said that terriers like to establish dominance, he is becoming pack leader by eating the competition. Passive aggression par excellence but to drive the point home, his pieces de resistance are scattered around me on the kitchen floor. Thanking him for keeping me handcuffed to the present, I mutter under my breath something about Korean restaurants. I scoop up his offerings whilst opening the door to the garden and praying that crocodiles have moved into the neighborhood.
After breakfast, I jump in my V8 Holden Commodore Ute. It’s basically a pick up truck with a mullet and a 4.8 litre engine, the sun has blasted the firebird red paint off of the hood — it is now down to its base sheen and the epitome of bogan chic. Catapulted out on to Stirling Highway, I drive into downtown and park outside the computer store, grab my laptop from the backseat and wander in.
The place is empty apart from the guys who work there.
How ya going mate?
I am to technology what Nico is to card tricks but I offer my hypothesis that the liquid crystal display has melted.
Lance, a 20 year old kid, who’s somehow paler than the moon, is dressed in board shorts and a singlet and looks bemused.
Nah mate, they’re not actually liquid.
He picks up the computer and as he turns it over more fluid leaks out the bottom, the stench is suddenly undeniable.
Don’t have a pet do you mate?
I nod. I’m having a vicious relapse.
It looks like something pissed into your laptop, lucky that your pup didn’t electrocute himself, the current out of these things could kill a croc.
A heady cocktail of horror, guilt, contrition, gratitude and Swan lager depth charge in my bloodstream. My laptop was toast and my alibi looking paper thin.
The pieces of my obsession were tumbling into place, checkmate I barked as I lifted the lid and asserted my dominance. Revenge is not always best served cold.
