I closed the fridge again. Right, I was going to Tiffany's for breakfast.

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It seemed to me I'd spent a disproportionate amount of time banging on doors today.

"Bugger off!" a voice bawled from inside the pub. "We're closed!"

"I know!" I shouted back. "I'm here to see Simon."

A blurred shape, vaguely recognisable as a face if you knew in advance what it was, appeared in the smoked, green glass of the door. It was the sort of pub. Heavy wood and good beer drawn from pumps by smart-aleck barmen. It was called MacLeod's. When Simon had started working there, the Highlander jokes hadn't stopped for a week. We'd all stormed the bar his first night working there, screaming: "There can be only one!"

His boss hadn't thought it was funny at all. We hadn't been able to show our faces there for a month.

"Who wants to see him?" The voice was muffled by the heavy door, but it wasn't Simon.

"Me."

"Who's me?"

"Mike."

The blurred figure turned away from the door, raised its voice in a bellow. "Oi! Strathmore! Lefty's here."

Faintly, I heard the response: "'Bout fucking time."

I squeezed through the door the boss held open and gave him an apologetic smile. He snorted, and bolted the door behind me.

Simon was stacking chairs towards the back of the public room. His dark hair made a short plait at the base of his neck, and he was dressed in his customary worn jeans and band T-shirt. I'd seen him in dress pants precisely five times in the entire nine years we'd been friends. (And one time more when he'd just been in a dress, but that was another story entirely.) Two had been first dates, before he'd decided that romance was a fucking waste of time and effort, and if the girl couldn't handle him the way he was, then she could find some other wanker to torment, once had been his uncle's funeral, and the other two had been job interviews. Si was a man with a laid-back attitude to fashion. A laid-back attitude to just about everything, really.

Except the aforementioned dirty socks. Everyone has their breaking point, I guess.

"Where've you been?" he greeted me.

"Watching The Big Lebowski with your stoner housemate."

"What, he found the remote? Don't eat those, they've been on the floor."

I took my hand away from the pile of peanuts on the table. "Seems it was under the couch cushions all along."

"I fucking told him so."

"You are the remote-finding god."

"I am. It's on my resume."

"Is that how you got the job here?"

"No, I got that through my sterling oral sex skills."

"Si, look behind you; there's the line."

He finished one table's worth of chairs, moved onto the next. "You're a spoilsport tonight. Where've you been, anyway? You can't have been watching inane movies with Mo all afternoon."

"Uni bar."

"Did you contract any communicable diseases?"

"The place isn't that bad, Si."

"I hear the carpet's been classified as a new lifeform."

Suddenly, the usual banter just seemed like too much effort. I picked at the unclean peanuts, splitting them with my thumbnails. Simon didn't push the point, just continued stacking, the steady scrape, thump of wood on wood.

"I'm off home." The boss, calling from the front. "You right to lock up?"

"Sure thing," Simon called back. And then we were alone in the pub.

Simon headed back behind the bar, started performing arcane barman magic. I dunno. Whatever the fuck they do when closing it all down. I watched dully.

"Oh, yeah, guess who came in tonight," Simon suddenly said, turning off fridge lights.

"Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club Band."

"Close. Kelly Newbury." My face must have registered my blankness, but I realised just as he said: "You remember, your sister's best friend from high school."

Yeah, I remembered. She and my sister Jacqui had been inseparable since primary school. Seemed like most of my childhood memories had two giggling girls in the background. They grew up differently - I maintained Jaq was the silliest person I'd ever met, which was saying a lot, but Kelly actually had some sense - and somehow they'd still remained friends in high school. Then Kelly had gone away to uni somewhere else, and that was that. Name never mentioned again, except when Mum did the usual: "Oh, whatever happened to that lovely Kelly, she was such a nice girl." And Jaq would roll her eyes and say: "Mum!" drawing out the vowel to the point of insensibility, and investing the entire syllable with the feeling that our mother was the most embarrassing creature on the planet. Jaq might have turned twenty this year, but she's one of life's eternal teenagers.

"So what's she up to?"

"Still at uni. Back in town for the summer."

"Cool."

"Yeah. I invited her to the party tomorrow."

Oh fuck. I'd forgotten about Simon's end of exams party. "Um, about the party, Si. Ronnie won't be coming."

"I figured as much," he replied, performing some complex ritual involving a cloth and the beer taps.

Of course he'd heard. Complete fucking strangers had heard. "Yolante, right?"

He looked up with a rueful half-smile. "I ran into her at Ali Baba's. Couldn't make a polite getaway because I had my mouth full of lamb shawarma. So I just had to stand there while she told me that she put Veronica on a bus at six this morning, and how the poor girl was in tears, and I should get that bastard friend of mine to behave himself, can't he see that he's tearing the girl apart. By that time I'd swallowed, and I pleaded an urgent need for dental work and fled."

I flicked the shredded bits of peanut off the table one by one. Simon returned to his cleaning. The silence stretched.

"Aren't you going to ask?"

He met my eye. "It's none of my business, man."

I flicked another peanut into the corner. "Wish the rest of the fucking city felt that way."

Simon said nothing. The true source of Si's coolth was his ability to know precisely when to shut the fuck up.

"My typewriter ribbon ran out of ink today," I said later, when I was standing on the footpath, waiting for Si to wrestle the locks on the back door of the pub closed. It was what, I suppose, they refer to as a 'balmy' evening. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Lot of twinkly stars. I considered them as I made my pronouncement.

"You still use that archaic piece of machinery?" Simon asked. "Ow, fuck. Turn, you bastard."

"Says the man wrestling with the lock that hasn't changed since 1946."

"The building was only built in '78."

"Minor detail."

"Fuck off." There was an audible click, and Simon came out of the shadow of the building, into the moonlight. "Thank God. Anyway, there has been a minor invention called the computer, you know."

"Haven't we had this conversation before?"

"Many times. Like all our conversations."

"I like my typewriter."

"I know." He pocketed the keys. "You want a lift home?"

"Thanks." I fell into step beside him, along the quiet street. It was, I estimated, about half past one.

"So what's the problem with the ribbon?"

"Told you. Ran out of ink. About a sentence and a half from the end of my novel."

"Fuck me, you're almost finished that monster?"

"I would be finished, but for the fucking ribbon."

"But... wow. You've been writing that thing forever, Mike."

I kicked at a rock, and it went skittering along the gutter. "Tell me about it."

"What are you going to do with it now it's finished?"

"It isn't finished yet," I reminded him.

Simon waved a dismissive hand. "Close enough. You get a new ribbon, you finish it."

"I might never get a new ribbon. Missed out this afternoon by five seconds. Don't give me that look; I'm not kidding. Guy closed the door in my face. What if I get killed in a horrible accident this weekend and never finish the novel? What if it's fate?"

We'd reached Simon's car. He stopped on the driver's side, regarded me across the roof of the car. "Well, in that case, I think you'd better walk home, because fucked if I want to be collatoral damage for your fate."

"Nah, fate'd at least wait until I got home and wrote a Will."

"What are you going to write it on? Your typewriter's out of ink."

"Open the fucking door, smart-arse."

As we waited at an empty intersection for the lights to turn green, I said: "What if it is, though? What if I'm not supposed to finish the novel?"

"I think you've had too much to drink. You're saying the typewriter ribbon is a message from God or something?"

"Yeah."

The lights changed. Simon looked over at me, then back to the road, made the turn. "Then you're the agent of a miracle. We'll campaign to get you canonised."

"Don't you need two miracles for that?"

"The other one's finding the remote control. We've been looking for that for months. Obviously it was your divine inspiration that found it."

"I thought you said you knew it was there all the time."

"I was bull-shitting."

"Oh."

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The blonde wasn’t on her way to break up with her boyfriend. She was on her way to discuss breaking up with her boyfriend with her best friend. And her hair is retro chic, okay?

It wasn’t that there’d been some revelation about the direction of her life. She hadn’t woken up to face a bleak future, she was just well, bored. Don’t think poorly of her, she isn’t a cruel person at heart, it was just that the relationship was doomed from the beginning. He was a darling, he really was, but - how to put this - he wasn’t the most stimulating conversationalist.

Absolutely fabulous in bed mind you, no problem of stimulation there. Sorry, too much information, but you get that, and he was. That was the main reason the relationship had lasted that long, come to think of it. Blonde thought about it for a while. Yeah, that probably was the main reason.

A bright smile lit her face, inertia was such a driving force on occasion. Yeah, yeah, she gets the irony and all that shit.

But sometimes you need someone you can have an intelligent conversation with.

Anyway, the plan of attack was to have a light dinner with her best friend over which she would have the final pre-breakup conversation. Confident that this conversation would strengthen her resolve and lend her moral support, she was then going straight over to his place with a bag of licorice. She was going to sit him down, feed him, and then tell him it was over. It seemed the most humane thing to do you know? Like when you put down a pet, do it with class and compassion and so on. Premeditated breakup, dumping in the first degree. Hell she’d been spending too much time with law students. In fact it was a testament to how much of a darling he was that she was putting in so much effort. Boys have been dumped via phone or even SMS before. Not by her of course, a friend of a friend and all that jazz.

Yeah, so anyway, she stopped and checked her watch. Damn, if she continued at this rate she’d be on time, so she stopped and pulled out her tobacco and papers. Punctuality is something normal people indulge in. She found a seat and started to roll herself a smoke.

All the bogans seemed to be out tonight. Greasy slicked back mullets and wife-beater shirts. Charming, truly charming. One of them approached, his eyes making a beeline for her cleavage.

“Hey pretty lady can I have a light?”

Blonde was completely arrested, a million answers ran through her head. Most involved being churlish and swearing like a sailor. Wordlessly she held out her lighter.

Bogan took a seat and lit up a cigarette, “So where are we off to tonight?” he asked her breasts.

The familiarity made her skin crawl. She contemplated asking him to speak up because her tits were hard of hearing, but thought better of it.

“I’m about to meet my brother for dinner.”

“Lucky bastard, ay?” the bogan commented. Blonde resisted the urge to look down just to check that she hadn’t spilt something down her front, his scrutiny was so close.

“It’s going to be a quick dinner, he has to go back on duty.” She darted a glance over to the cop shop just across the courtyard, “That’s why I’m waiting here,” she lied with a sweet smile, “he should be coming off any moment now.”

The bogan wasn’t visibly shaken which was unfortunate, bastards like him needed to be shaken. “So what are you doing after dinner with him?”

Blonde almost cried out loud in frustration, bloody bogans don’t they ever get the picture? They’re just so fucking thick that nothing penetrates their skulls. Except maybe a steel spike. Now there was a happy thought to focus on and fly.

“Oh I hadn’t planned that out yet, I’ll probably meet up with my girlfriend, give her a long, sensual, nude massage. Then probably have wild lesbian sex. I might invite over some of my guy friends to watch, they like that sort of thing,” she said with a nonchalant shrug. Fuck but she hated men at that moment. At that moment, a tall, mean looking policeman, walked out of the shop. Blonde had never seen him before. “Sorry, it looks like he’s off. Got to go.”

She didn’t look around to see the expression on the bogan’s face. She didn’t really care. Fuckwit.

“Evening officer,” she said with a provocative smile and marched right past the bulky cop. Just doing her bit to spread the random, men in uniform need a bit of spice too.

She walked on towards the café where she’d arranged to meet her friend. Bogans always added hilarity to a conversation. The antics of a moment ago would need little embellishment to set the tone of the evening. She was itching to turn around to see whether he was following or watching, but knew from experience that would lodge in his head the belief that she was desperate to have sex with him.

Blonde arrived at the café. Her best friend was dressed in a brown dress, brown hair obscuring slightly her brown eyes, casually sitting outside, sipping water and smoking.

“I’m sorry darling,” Blonde greeted her, and explained the incident outside in apology.

Brown gave a crooked smirk, this ritual amused her, they both knew blonde was always late, “Not at all, you poor thing, being accosted in the street, orta.” Blonde grinned back. Brown was a law student and ‘orta’ was the joke of her favourite law lecturer. “There ought to be a law against it.” Brown was maybe the only girl in blonde’s acquaintance who openly admitted to going gooey over stuffy old academics. To each their own, and shit.

“You bet there ought to be,” blonde replied, “I had the worst night last night because of the boguns.”

“Oh?” brown asked with the familiarity of someone hears this story every night, “anything in particular?”

“Not really, just the usual, ‘oh sorry, didn’t see your breasts there, so I had to knock against them as I walked past’ because he’d only been looking at them since the moment I walked in and clearly they were going to disappear as soon as he needed to push past and make a judgement of how much room he had to leave between his sweaty smelly body and myself. Which bit of, Personal Space is so hard to grasp, fuckwit?”

Brown laughed, “What did you expect?”

“And another bastard asked me for my number because I had the hide to not snarl at him on sight. Someday I’ll have the guts to use your line.”

“My line? ‘040 fuck off bogan. Got that down? Great, looking forward to your call. Can you go away now?’”

“Yeah,” blonde answered, lowering her voice as the waiter came over to take their order.

“Get any more good pickup lines to add to the collection?” It was a running competition, who had been hit on with the worst line.

“I got, ‘How do you like your eggs in the morning?’ but couldn’t for the life of me come up with a witty response.”

“Unfertilised, thankyou.”

“Damn, now why couldn’t I think of that?” blonde smiled, this was what she needed a nice little bitching session.

“Because you aren’t as brilliant as me,” brown answered with a wink.

“I’ve just had enough of the whole deal,” blonde continued.

“That’s just what happens though. You just cope.” Brown responded.

“That’s not a good enough answer. It shouldn’t happen.” Blonde regarded brown, this was one of those few points at which their philosophies departed from the common road.

“Perhaps,” brown conceded.

“I’m just so sick of men. Leering, jeering, groping, judging, fuckwit men.”

Brown looked at blonde for a moment. One of those moments that stretched out until the waiter brought their food. He wore all black, had a cute butt, and shining blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. An activity he indulged in often, especially when brown was patronizing the café. He lingered a little longer than necessary in setting down the vegetarian bagel and long black. Hovered a while and asked again whether they wanted more water. Brown returned his smile and nodded in assent. A little water never killed anybody.

“What do you care?” she returned to blonde, “you’re married to the nicest boy this side of the Great Divide. You need not fret.”

“I thought you didn’t like him?” blonde queried, “and we’re not married.”

“No ma’am, not married at all.” Brown teased, “I like him well enough, think he’s a bit of a sap, but he’s harmless enough.”

“I’m thinking of breaking up with him. Tonight, when I leave here.”

That floored brown. The waiter with the crinkly eyes returned with the water and was disappointed to find that he got no more than an absent minded ‘thanks’. He thought he had been doing quite well.

“Breaking up with him?” brown repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Why?” at blonde’s surprised look, brown quickly elaborated, “I mean, I know I’ve been a bit nasty about him, and yeah, I refer to him as a puppy dog but, come on, he’s perfect for you.”

“He’s stupid. Boring. Not perfect for me.”

“Hang on,” brown interrupted, “He’s not stupid. Clever in a different way to you and me, sure, but not stupid. And when did you decide he was boring, he wasn’t boring yesterday.”

“Well he is today. And frankly, I thought I’d have your support on this. Isn’t intelligence on top of your list of impossible requirements for possible candidates?”

“Yes, but that’s my list and my preferences, and you do have my support, it’s just that I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

“Oh so, obviously intelligence isn’t going to be as important to me as it is to you,” like a freshly opened dam, the waters of accusation fell fast, “just because I don’t have nose in the air morals post-dated 1867 and half a law degree I must have lower standards.”

“Whoa hang on, where are these attacks coming from?”

“I don’t know, you tell me. You’re the smart one.”

If brown hadn’t been sitting, she’d have taken a step back. This conversation didn’t seem to be about boyfriends. “I thought you were happy. If you aren’t happy, of course you should change the situation.” Not even brown knew if she was talking about herself or blonde’s hapless boyfriend.

“I don’t know,” blonde was calmer now, “I don’t know if I’m happy.”

“Well, give it time, don’t go crush him on a whim.”

They ate in silence for a moment, the waiter watched them surreptitiously every moment he had spare. Brown glanced at him again and gave him a tiny smile, as if to say, ‘it isn’t you’ and his eyes crinkled again.

Blonde looked about in an attempt to think of something to talk about. She didn’t like the silence. The other patrons continued their conversations. Behind them some kids who clearly weren’t old enough, were smoking cigarettes and exclaiming at the fact that they got bread with their soup. Wow.

An older gentleman was giving another gentleman an indepth analysis of the results of the US congressional election and their likely ramifications. He spoke ominously of another war, the impotence of the UN and the breakdown of the world order.

Beside them, two people were playing pub chess, time limit to moves thirty seconds, two others looked on, one was giving a running commentary, “is he going to move the white knight, the knight, the knight, he’s moving the knight and it’s check, it’s check, but no, in a brilliant move the white queen sweeps and the knight is down, I repeat the knight is down.”

A lanky guy with ears that stuck out loped past, deep in conversation about (something really interesting to be decided later.) with a shorter man, both wearing T-shirts with messages.

“You know I didn’t mean that shit,” blonde finally broke the impasse.

“Yeah. Sure, Think about it though,” brown looked earnest, “I only want what is best for you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

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I did what anyone in my position - slightly drunk, thwarted and belligerent - would do. I got a large chips from Chicken Gourmet and sat on a park bench, glowering at the hopeful pigeons that clustered at my feet. Occasionally I aimed a kick at them, but the pigeons were used to that sort of treatment, and got out of the way.

Eventually I finished the chips, down to licking the chicken salt off the foil lining of the bag. Now my hands were really greasy, and I considered going back to the Law Stationers and writing a suicide in grease and chicken salt on their window. Goodbye Cruel World. Now aren't you sorry you didn't sell me that typewriter ribbon.

But I really couldn't be arsed.

I just sat there on my bench, and watched the world go by. The pigeons got bored and wandered off to greener pastures - the young couple sharing sushi and dropping rice all over the ground. The sun malingered closer to the horizon, and the temperature started to drop.

An almost sheepishly inoffensive-looking fellow slid onto the other end of my bench. I nodded absently to him, went back to my depressed consideration of the world at large, mentally composing bad poetry. Maybe I was on the wrong track with this whole novellist thing. Maybe the world would remember me for my stirring "Ode to a crumpled Mars Bar wrapper". Brief avarice, sudden glut, cast aside as the burden of guilt and left to lie, forgotten and -

"Excuse me." It took me a moment to realise it was the inoffensive fellow. His voice was as soft and pliable as the rest of him. "Sorry to bother you." Alreay, in my head, I was sifting through my pockets, wondering if I did have any spare change in easy reach, when he added: "Do you read the Bible?"

A wonderful mental turnaround. From vaguely accommodating to completely blank in .05 seconds. That's a new world record. "Constantly," I told him, and stood up. "I have to catch a bus."

Because the sort of guy who chats up complete strangers in public asking after their religious practises is not the sort of person who can be reasoned with. Maybe I was a Christian, maybe I had read the Bible cover to cover, backwards, had memorised sections and lived my life by them, but unless I was his particular brand of Christianity, I was in for an ear-bashing, albeit a quiet, inoffensive one. Which was about as appealing as being poked with a limp noodle.

I could catch a bus, it suddenly occurred to me. The 35 was at the stop, the last person in the queue stepping up the stairs. I ran, got there just seconds after the doors slid shut. I banged, feeling not an ounce of deja vu. The driver opened the doors again, which just goes to show that bus drivers are nicer than Law Stationers. I hoped they had better karma, too.

"Student." I flashed the card and paid my money, staggered up the aisle as the bus pulled out into traffic.

I found a seat halfway up, an empty pair with a frazzled mother and child returning from grocery shopping behind, and a business woman steadfastly reading her novel in front. I peered curiously over her shoulder. Raymond E Feist, I noted with a satisfied nod. I had an ongoing hypothesis that three quarters of all people who read in public outside the university campus were reading fantasy or science fiction.

The bus trundled out into the suburbs, full of people, each in their little bubbles. The mother and child got off at stop five. The reader was still there when I got off two stops later. The last rays of the sun were disappearing behind the mountain as I stood at the bustop, watching the bus lumber off into the dusk.

It was only two blocks from the stop to Simon's place. The lights were on, the stereo belting out vintage Rage Against The Machine and the front door was open. I banged on the screen.

"Yo!" a voice shrieked from inside. "'S open."

The screen banged behind me, and Maurice, Simon's housemate, moshed his way out of the kitchen. "Mike, man! Wassup?"

Maurice's living habits were possibly even worse than mine, but Si said he could live with them, because he could scream his head off at Maurice, and Maurice didn't give a shit. The dynamics of shared households were peculiar. There was probably a PhD topic in there. There was in everything else. Maurice made his money working graveyard shift data entry jobs, and spent it on weed. He wore his hair at a number 2 buzzcut, because he just couldn't be fucked doing anything with his hair. Some days, his stubble was longer than the hair on his head. His clothes had some sort of five-day-slept-in preppy chic with faint reggae influences. I'd never seen him wear shoes, not even during his brief forays into university.

He currently had a open bottle of soy sauce in one hand, and a lit joint in the other.

"Hey Mo," I said, loudly to make it over Zack de la Rocha screaming about taking the power back. "Si here?"

Maurice took a drag at his joint, and then a swig at the soy sauce. He blinked, raised the bottle to eye-height. "Fuck. This ain't my beer." He turned and wandered back into the kitchen.

It was a little quieter in the kitchen. A stirfry was steaming on the stove. He dumped some of the sauce in, and poked at it with an eggflip.

"Is Simon here?" I repeated, as he found his beer on the range hood.

"Nah, he's gone to work." Maurice always gestured as he spoke, using his fragrant joint and half-full beer bottle as strange sorts of punctuation. "Dude, like, he called you, right?"

"I didn't get any -" Oh shit, yeah, of course. I'd turned my mobile phone off back at the uni bar. Reese Witherspoon could have been calling, saying that Ryan Phillipe wanted a divorce and she needed me badly, and I wouldn't have known. "Shit. Yeah, he probably did."

I rummaged around in my bag, and pulled out my phone. I only had two messages; the one from Simon - "Are you still in the exam or something? Anyway, I gotta work tonight, see you there?" - and one from Paul - "Staying at Meg's tonight. Don't forget the milk." Apparently Yolante had got bored of stalking me. Or maybe she was waiting at home, poised behind the front door with a hand axe.

"I'm gonna eat," Maurice informed me. "You wanna eat? I've got some -" He put down his beer and poked at the stirfry again, sniffed dubiously. "Like, I dunno what the fuck it is, but it's food, you want some?"

"Nah," I told him, shoving the phone back in my bag. "I had some chips. I'm right."

"Chicken Gourmet? Aw man, that's the shit. Fuck, man, I've totally got the munchies now."

"Eat your shit."

"Fuck you." He dumped his stirfry out into a bowl, slung the pan into the sink. "You want a beer?"

"That's the soy sauce."

"It's a metaphor, man."

"It's a condiment."

Maurice blew smoke at me. "In the fucking fridge. I'm going to watch Big Brother."

He wandered back into the lounge room as I opened the fridge and found a beer. The music stopped mid-outrage. By the time I came out, Maurice was sprawled on the couch, eating as he watched. I took the armchair, and a long pull at the beer. Maurice ate with the fork in the same hand as his joint. Every time he took a drag, I expected him to stick the tines up his nose.

"I reckon," he said, leaning forward to stub out the final butt, "that there're, like, alien communications in this program."

I looked at the TV screen, where a scrawny brunette had paused at cleaning the sink to bitch at the slab of muscle scrubbing the shower. "Don't you think she's a total cow?" she whined, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

"I reckon even aliens have better taste," I replied.

Maurice shifted position, and the channel changed abruptly. The Wheel stopped at $365, and Kaylene chose an M for Mickey Mouse.

"Fuck!" Maurice cried, jumping up off the couch. "I think I just found the fucking remote.

"Marlene Dietrich," I told the television, and ducked a flying couch cushion.

A triumphant shriek came from the couch. "Eu-fucking-reka! You know what this means? This means we can finally watch videos again. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I watched The Big Lebowski?"

I shrugged, and leaned over to retrieve the cushion. "I've never seen it."

"Never fucking seen it?" The only time I'd seen Maurice look that offended was when Ronnie suggested he'd bought his shirt from David Jones. "Dude, that's just not fucking on. You're not leaving this house until you've seen it. Get another beer, and plant your arse back in that chair."

Well, it wasn't like I had anything better to do. I went for another beer.

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I'm not really that fit. Come on, I want to be a novellist, not an ironman. I made it across Union Court and up the stairs before I stopped running, and started walking quickly, breathing heavily. I thought that was doing pretty well. Cut me some slack.

It was still light outside - hooray for daylight saving, stealing an hour of sleep right when we need it most just to make sure that the sun's still high in the sky well into the early evening - and the sun was hot, beating down from where it was loitering above the mountain. It was, in fact, an absolutely beautiful evening. The fluff had stopped falling, and the insects weren't in plague proportions just yet. The lawn between the Humanities and Languages buildings was ankle-deep in young couples in love. Picnicking, giggling, playing with frisbees and dogs and the other accessories of youth.

I felt old and jaded.

I'd spent four years in the buildings on either side of me. I didn't know much else of the campus. Well, I'd been through other bits of it. I'd waited outside the Chemistry building for more hours than I could count, scribbling in my notebook while waiting for Ronnie to finish a lecture or lab. She'd laugh when she saw me, and accuse me of cluttering up the landscape, and being obnoxiously artsy.

"Sorry," I'd say. "Am I ruining your scientific rationalist feng shui?"

Plus there was the Maths building, which I'd got lost in trying to hand in an assignment for my best mate Simon. It had just seemed to be an endless succession of rooms with no purpose and lots of people and nothing had labels or signs. At least we had signs in the arts buildings. Even if all of them were two years out of date.

But still, you see, I knew the arts buildings. I knew where all the staircases were in the Languages building, and moreover, I knew where they all led, which was no mean feat, considering MC Escher was apparently one of the consulting architects to the project. I knew the story behind the water cooler on the third floor of the Humanities building, which had sat there, empty, for five years without being claimed or moved, until finally some enterprising student had affixed a plaque to the wall beside it, declaring it an artwork called "Hydro-space", which depicted the soulful but ultimately vain struggle of mankind to find himself a place within his natural environment.

Two months after that, someone had stolen it.

I knew that if you cut through a tutorial room on the second floor of the Humanities building, you didn't have to go down the stairs, along the corridor, and back up again. I'd done it once in the middle of a class on a dare from Simon. In return, he'd had to pretend to have a bath in the fountain outside the Law School, complete with bathing cap and rubber ducky.

That had been second year. All the really insane shit happened in second year. In first year we'd been somewhere between too eager and too petrified to really have fun. We'd tried so hard, but hadn't really known what we wanted, or how to get it.

The three of us had ended up at one of the university colleges for first year. Veronica was from out of town, and her parents showed up with her, looking very nervous about leaving their precious baby girl at this horrible place. Si and I were diplobrats - the children of parents who spent most of their time in glamorous places overseas that we never got to see because we had to get an education. We'd been in the same high school, and went on to the same college.

Ronnie had caught Si's eye first. He been constantly on the prowl that year, stalking a succession of pretty first years. Ronnie had come up her for her share of the attention pretty early in the year. At the time, I'd thought she was just another insipid, spoilt child.

Eventually, I got over that.

But second year, we knew it all, or thought we did. We moved out of college, and Simon and I got the smallest flat in the world. My parents came back to the country, to stay this time, and my mother just about had a stroke upon coming to visit. But Si and I liked it well enough, because it was ours. Living together wasn't such a crash-hot idea, though. We alternated between having the time of our lives, and trying to kill each other.

He's my best mate in the world, but that year proved that Simon and I simply cannot live together.

Which is how I came to be living with Paul, who'd been a vague friend in college, and who proved to be much more well-suited to flatting with me. By the end of the year, Simon had been about ready to strangle me with my own casually discarded, dirty socks. Paul just ignored them, and occasionally gathered them all up and piled them on my bed. Usually with a note attached, declaring: "How the fuck did you get so many socks?"

I have a lot of aunts.

Suddenly I realised I'd stopped walking altogether. Just standing in the middle of the path, with the flow of people diverting around me. Two little Japanese girls, matching indecently-short skirts and amazingly large shoes, looked at me askance as they swerved around me.

I was staring at a girl, lying on the grass, laughing with her boyfriend. In the afternoon sun, her hair was gilded and tumbling haphazardly over her shoulders.

I looked at my watch. Five to five. Fuck.

I started running again, overtook the two Japanese girls a few metres along. I cut through the Humanities archway, only to be foiled by the new fence they'd put around the carpark that I kept forgetting about.

"Fuck it," I muttered, and started hauling myself up and over. It was one of those wire fences in diamonds that were really quite easy for climbing, except that the toe of my boot didn't quite fit into the hole.

I suddenly felt like I was in an army training camp, backpack full of supplies on my back. Covered in mud, of course. Sergeant screaming from the sidelines: "Get a move on, you lily-livered pack of pansies!"

Which just proved I'd never had anything to do with military training. I don't imagine Sergeants use the word 'lily-livered' outside my imagination.

I swung myself over the top of the fence, let myself drop on the other side. A short jog across the carpark, and I took the pedestrian crossing at a run, waving apologetically to the stopped cars. Sorry, sorry, inking emergency.

A small group of pigeons took flight as I ran along the pavement, flapping their winds frantically as they clawed their way into the air with faint, recriminating, "Woot" sounds at every flap. I just about got myself run over at the next intersection, ignoring the instructions of the little red man to stop. I stopped half a metre short of horrible, painful death, and the Camry shot past with a blast of its horn. I kept going, reaching the pavement on the other side just as the little green man made his appearance.

I've always had bad traffic light karma.

Now where was the sodding shop? There was a small open area, and various shops all around it. There was the Vietnam Restaurant, and... yes, there was the Law Stationers, and fuck no, they were closing up.

I hit the double glass doors about five seconds after the guy shot the bolts. He'd turned, was heading back towards the counter, and turned in shock as I hammered at the glass. It was solid, unmoving.

"I'm sorry!" I called through the locked doors. "I'm so sorry, but please. I just need a typewriter ribbon."

He shook his head. "Sorry, mate," he called back. "We're closed."

"No! No, please. You don't understand; this is an emergency."

He looked doubtful. As you no doubt would when someone demanded an emergeny typewriter ribbon. He was a young guy, probably only a few years older than me. Couldn't he understand the vibrant necessity of youth? Hadn't there ever been anything he needed right there and then.

Well, apart from sex. Something material. Something he had to purchase.

Right, that metaphor was going nowhere. Back to pleading. I splayed both hands on the glass, and did my best to make pathetic puppy-dog eyes. "Please. I'm desperate."

He shook his head again. "Sorry. I've already logged off the till and all. Come back on Monday."

He turned and walked away into the dim depths of the shop. I dragged my hands down the glass, noted how they left greasy prints.

It wasn't much, but it made me feel a little better.

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Here's the deal: you take your exam paper - the actual question paper part, not the answers; obviously, you hand that part in so you don't fail the exam in a screaming heap - to the uni bar, and they give you a free midi of beer for every schooner you buy. It's fucking awful beer. Tooheys New on tap or some shit like that. But it's cheap alcohol, and when you've just finished the last exam of the semester, that's all that matters. And, of course, once you've finished the first one and a half beers, you might as well just keep on drinking the pigswill. So it actually works out better for the bar in the long run. Capitalism at work. You gotta love it.

The uni bar was not one of my favourite places to hang out. It was dark, and stank the way only carpet that had soaked up a hundred beers and as many regurgitated ones could. Not to mention that it was always full of fuckwits, and on a day like today was hot in a way the three over-burdened air-conditioning units simply couldn't cope with. But there are certain university traditions. It was our fourth year, now. That's a lot of tradition. So we intimidated our way to a table in the corner near the video machines, so that when Lorelei got pissed she could waste Darren's spare change playing Haunted House.

"What can I say?" she always declared, groping her way into his front pocket on a search for another fifty-cent piece. "I like shooting the zombies. If I squint just right, they look almost exactly like accounting students."

If Darren was being particularly possessive of his coins, she'd resort to mumbling: "Brains! Brains!" while nibbling on his ear until he gave in.

Our party of three grew, of course. Nature of all drinking places. There were more people from our course, toting their schooners and midis. Other friends, and friends of friends, were just passing through and came over to say hi and commiserate with the exam trauma. A flow of humanity passing around us like a river. I was in no mood to go swimming. I cultivated a scowl and kept my eyes on my beer.

My phone rang twice in the first half hour. Yolante each time. I just let it ring. The third time the chimes started, I reached into my bag and turned it off without even looking. And then I went to get another round.

"Hey Mike!" The bartender's name was Richard ("Call me Rich. Everyone does. And it's better than the alternative.") He was a foreign student - American - who preferred Australia because of the 'political freedoms'. He was a pol sci major, but we'd taken a European politics course together in second year, and been in the same tutorial group. He'd always argued the socialist position, and been very vocal, so I'd taken the opposite side just to be argumentative. The rest of the tute group had been brainless, so most tutes had degenerated into slanging matches. He'd once called me a scum-sucking capitalist swine. I'd called him a rabid socialist psychotic who didn't think beyond the propaganda.

We'd both enjoyed ourselves far too much in that course. And we were still nodding acquaintances.

"Hey Rich," I replied, slapping a note down on the barmat. It squelched unpleasantly. "Four beers and a bag of peanuts."

"Sure thing." He moved behind the bar with ease born of experience. He'd been working here since second year. "Nice designer stubble, man."

I rubbed my chin, producing a sound like sandpaper. "Thanks. I'm trying to grow a beard. Think it'll suit me?"

"Nah, I think you'll look like shit."

"Fuck you, too."

"You're not my type, Lefty." He lined the beers up on the bar.

"Aw, Rich, you're breaking my heart. Speaking of which, how's the quest going?" Richard was trying to impregnate an Australian girl so he could marry her and stay in Australia. Otherwise, so he declared, the fascist forces of governance were going to force him back to America once he finished his degree.

He shrugged, fetching the packet of peanuts from the stand at the back of the bar. "Not as bad as yours, I hear."

I paused in the act of gathering up the beer glasses. "What?"

"You and Ronnie. I hear there's trouble in paradise. Again. You guys are worse than a soap opera. What'd you do to her this time?"

"Give me those." I snatched the peanuts from his hand, took up my beers, and left.

When I got back to the table, Li was on the machine, waving the gun around and swearing. "Motherfuckers! Think you can take me on! Hah! Take that, and that, and that. Suck shit and die! That's what you get for fucking with me!"

She finished the level with a triumphant crow, and span around as the score tallied, posing with the gun and a wicked grin.

"Lara Croft, eat your heart out," Darren commented.

Li stuck her tongue out at him. "I'd totally kick Lara Croft's pansy white ass, yo."

"You tell him, valleygirl," I said, setting the beers on the table.

The next level started, so retribution was limited to two rude fingers, before she turned back to the game.

"What took you so long with the beers?" Darren asked, as I took a long pull of mine.

"Oh, you know. Rich was giving me shit, I had to slap him around."

Darren nodded, watched his girlfriend blow the head of an undead ninja. "Was it about Ronnie?"

I slammed the beer glass down on the table so hard the beer slopped frothily over the edge, spilled fizzing across the table. "Jesus Christ, Daz. Is there some universal symbol I don't know about that indicates Mike and Veronica are having issues again? Like the Bat signal, emblazoned across the sky. Do they print it in the fucking paper?"

I pushed the chair back and stood up. Darren laid a hand on my arm. "Easy, tiger."

I shook off his hand, and shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm going to take a piss. If anyone tries to steal my beer, set fire to them."

I pushed past the pool tables, kicked open the door to the gents. There was another guy in there already, standing at the urinals. He looked up curiously at my noisy entrance, before turning back to his own business. I obeyed the careful laws of urinal etiquette, took a position towards the other end of the urinal, but not at the very end. I glared at uncaring white tiles. Well, they were white once. In a past life.

If I was in a movie, this would be about the point, this other guy with whom I'm pissing, who I've never seen in my life, would say: "Hey, aren't you that guy who's having trouble with his girlfriend?"

But life isn't a movie. Irony's all in the mind. He finished his business and left, and I was alone.

When I got back to the table, something had obviously been said. There was a great big space above the table, practically filled with the words: "Don't mention Veronica". I looked pointedly at Darren, who suddenly pretended to be very interested in Lorelei's zombie-slaughtering.

Well, hell. If they could make an effort, I could live in denial. I pulled my long face out of me beer, and made an effort to join in the limping, stilted conversation. Eventually things flowed more smoothly. Someone was trying to read Kafka, and we piled the shit on. (Although masochism was all fine and good, we were entirely open to alternative lifestyles, but man, there were easier ways to make yourself suffer.)

We got onto plans for the forthcoming summer. Somehow, a law student had joined our table. Probably my fault; I was usually head wanker bouncer. He boasted about his summer clerkship at Minter Ellison. "And, you know, there's a heavy implication that if I play my cards right, there's an article clerkship for me, and then a position in the firm." He smirked. "And there's my future mapped out."

I usually had a firmer grip on myself, but who knows how many beers I'd had that afternoon. I'd lost count. "Oh Jesus," I spat, and every head at the table swang my way, the smirk slipping on Minter Ellison's face at the vitriol in my tone. "Can you think of anything more depressing? One summer, and suddenly you're doing the same thing every single fucking day of your life, working nine to five in a firm so large that you're just another worker ant dribbling your life away for the Queen. You're living in some shoebox in the suburbs with a wife and two point fucking three children like everyone else in the world until eventually you have a midlife crisis and kill yourself, and the fact you had the guts to end it all is the only thing that distinguishes you from a million other grey-faced little men. And all because you couldn't be bothered thinking beyond what tradition dictated you should be satisfied with."

Minter Ellison looked like he was about to explode. "Yeah, well," he shot back, "at least my girlfriend's happy with me."

There was a collective indrawn breath around the table, but I was beyond caring, just pissed off with this ignoring, unimaginative little maggot. "So she's about as interesting as you, then."

Minter Ellison had had enough, apparently. He stood, made a point of draining the last of his beer, and slammed the glass back on the table. "Fuck you, Leftfield. You've got no future. You ain't got shit."

Silence descended as he stormed away. Behind Darren, Lorelei cleared her throat. "Well, some of us can't laze around here all day, you apathetic bastards. I have to go or I won't get to work."

I blinked. "Shit. What time is it?"

She was reaching over Darren to get her coat, looked up at me. "About quarter to five," she said easily.

"Shit!" I jumped to my feet, snatched up my bag. I took two steps away from the table, then rethought, came back. "Where would I get a typewriter ribbon?"

"You still using that archaic piece of equipment?" Darren asked. "Fuck, I dunno. Try that speciality stationers? Y'know, the one near the Vietnam Restaurant."

Why hadn't I thought of that? "Thanks. Bye!"

"Mike, wait, your beer!"

But I was out the door and running already.

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“Why do you think they get up in the morning?”

It was a familiar scene, the same game, the same conversation. Every Wednesday the group of raucous Uni students would wander in and set up camp by the window. The staff were well used to it. Cheap coffee and an uninterrupted view of the world outside were on offer and all a group such as this could ask for. The group had been there since early afternoon, plotting world domination, solving social ills, bemoaning assignments and, passing judgement on the people walking by outside the window. This particular question had been prompted by a couple of girls walking past, giggling and talking in that hand waving sort of way. They wore the uniform; short skirts, sandals, dangly earrings and shirts with the collar turned up.

“Come on kids I want to know, why does a footy fucker get up of a morning? I mean really, in that sort of life, what is her motivation in this scene?” The challenge came from the boy wearing a Che Guevara shirt with the words, “I’m a law student” proudly emblazoned beneath the idealised face.

“She has to get up, in case the ‘in’ shade of mascara has changed. Can you imagine the shame of showing up in blue-black lashes when the fashion was brown-black? The horror of it all, it is too much to be borne,” and with that the lovely girl in green fell back in a dramatic swoon.

Che Guevara grinned, “But if she never got up, no one would see her wearing the wrong mascara.”

The girl in green gave him a disapproving look, “Don’t you know anything? Simply the prospect of not knowing is too dreadful to contemplate.”

For an unusually long time, a pair of bright blue eyes had been staring blankly out at the scene on the street. Outside someone had spilt or thrown a packet of chips on the ground and an urban war was being waged between the ravens and the magpies. The Ravens were holding the fort, but the constant swooping by the smaller birds was making in-roads into their defense. Already some of the chips had succumbed to the red-eyed monsters and more seemed likely to fall.

But now blue eyes swung back to the group.

“If I was a footy fucker, I think merely the prospect of having to talk to the creature that I woke up next to would be sufficient motivation to get out of bed.”

The group laughed in appreciation and Che Guevara piped up again, “Hmmm… Early morning conversation between the footy fucker and the footy fuckwit, doesn’t get better than that.”

“A series of giggles and ughs. I’m soooo wasted.”

The conversation continued to swirl around, but blue eyes had gone back to regarding the World War outside. The Ravens were severely outnumbered. Magpies had formed an unholy union with pigeons and both were playing tactics against the larger blacker birds.
The magpies swooped and the ravens responded, sweeping into the trees to take the battle to the air. The ravens were stronger, but the magpies bolder and more numerous. As the black and white birds battled in the foliage, the pigeons sneaked in under the wire, pecking daintily at the scraps littering the pavement.

Blue eyes had always associated herself with the ravens. There was something about the glossy blackness of their appearance and the sinister darkness of their persona that fascinated and intrigued. Something she had always wanted in her own life, but blue eyes was human and no bird.

Now, watching the birds attacked from all sides, defending against hostile wings and indifferent humans, cornered and soon to be defeated, losing face over a few scraps, the affiliation seemed disturbingly acute. Her throat seemed a little tight as she battled to keep metaphors in their proper place and not allow whimsy to over take her.

“I’ll have a hazelnut latte, thanks.” The girl in green was holding a note out to Che Guevara.

“Any one else?” No affirmative answers met Che’s question so he walked over to the counter to go through his ritual of flirting with the pretty assistant who weekly made his coffee.

“Hey,” girl in green was regarding blue eyes with a little concern, “everything all good?”
Blue eyes stared back. It was always the same hesitation before answering; did she want the truth or the polite answer? Did she really want to know if something was wrong or did she want a salve to her conscience, a convenient answer that took the onus off her and allowed the conversation to flow on?

Blues eyes let one corner of her mouth curve up, “Yeah, all good just tired as all hell. Bloody law lecturers working me to the bone.”

“Yeah sure,” Che Guevara commented as he walked back with the lattes, “it’s the law lectures that are keeping you up and working you hard…”

“Dodgy bastard,” the girl in green chastised, and the conversation went on to assorted lecturers and their assorted habits.

By now the ravens were in full retreat. The battle had now started between the magpies and pigeons.

“Houston calling.” Che waved his hand in front of blue eyes, “What’s so fascinating out there?”
The game was familiar, the answer was easy, the lie was glib.

“That guy, in the tweed coat what do you reckon? A commie who’s hidden from the capitalist propaganda so long he hasn’t read a newspaper since 1965 and hasn’t realised yet that the soviets have collapsed into a puddle of second-rate vodka?”

There was general laughter. “I’m writing an essay on European history. Fucking Europeans, they get so het up over nothing.” The girl in green seemed genuinely annoyed.

“Yeah, damned Europeans with their world wars and shit.” Che was up for this conversation. A major in European studies and another in History makes you ready for any conversation involving wars.

“I mean it though, I’m writing this rubbish about whether the two wars were actually the same war over a long time and it’s just so damned boring.”

“Boring?” In mock outrage Che stood and started to proclaim.

“Have soapbox, will travel.” Blue eyes laughed, “Tell us the story then, you know you want to.” Being a science student herself, this was her cue to tune out again.

Che thrived on this so, “Europe in the twentieth century is a family, you have to understand this.”

“Of course. So why did the world wars happen. Domestic tiff huh?”

“Precisely, you see, all of Germany’s actions can be seen within the context of him being the youngest child. Mummy and Daddy aren’t getting along, because Mother England is pretty clearly fucking with every bit of the world but Father France isn’t getting any.” Che paused for appreciation from his audience, now including not only the group but also some interested but unrelated observers.

“Now Daddy can’t take his anger out on Mummy so he displacing it onto the kids.”

“Very Freudian,” came the reply.

“You just wait,” Che promised, “We have Russia, right, the eldest. Now Russia is clearly going through that whole, adolescent, ‘I’m way too cool for this shit,’ stage. Probably having issues with his sexuality.” At the sniggers, Che took a mental step back but chastised them lightly, “You know, if you were having a revolution, led by the very charismatic Lenin you might be too, don’t judge until you’ve been there.

“Italy is the middle child. He’s trying to be clever and play everyone off each other but basically just gets ignored because, well, he's the middle child, who listens to the middle child? And he's stupid anyway.”

“Oi!” The girl in green tossed her black hair and Che grinned. He’d only said it to annoy her so he eloquently ignored her protest, “Evidently starved for attention which just explains Mussolini, yep right there.

“Then there's baby Germany, the obnoxious, spoilt brat of a youngest child who wants anything he sees anyone else having and just whines all the time, "Daddy, Mummy gets an Empire, why can't I have one? You love her more than me don't you? I hate you, I'm going to hold my breath until you give me an empire."” At this Che took a deep breath and made great show of keeping it. His antics even got a smile from blue eyes even though she didn’t really get the joke.

“So what about Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland?” The girl in green tossed at him.

“Austria is a daughter, but she’s lusting after Germany in a big way. Incest doesn’t mean a thing to the Europeans. And Germany is stringing her along so he can piss off Dad.”

“Because we all know France will just die if Germany and Austria ever like, you know, unify.” The girl in green joined in the act.

Che nodded in approval, these games are always more fun when you had someone to bounce off. “But Germany has the hots for Czechoslovakia. She’s not so happy about that, doesn’t believe in the whole mixed marriage business, Germanic-Slavic thing. But Germany is the king of fuckwits and is going to take what he wants no matter.”

“The rest of Europe is turning a blind eye as happens so often in situations like this. Fucking patriarchal society.”

“Indeed,” Che agreed, “except Russia. But you can’t trust that Russian bastard, when he’s not run by the ‘little Father’ he’s being run by Uncle Joe.” He turned to his audience again, it was clear that this conversation was beginning to go over people’s heads. “Think about it.”

“And Poland?” the girl in green inquired sweetly.

“Poland is everyone’s bitch, the slut.” The group erupted in laughter, even bright blue eyes. “Ah, smut; appeals to everyone.” Che laughed again, “Then half-way through the century Germany takes up with an Asian! And the whole neighbourhood goes to pot.”

“Damn, didn’t his mother teach him anything?”

Che’s answer was dry, “His mother is Britain remember?”

“And Freud enters again with a neat little Oedipus complex.” Bright blue eyes threw in. The pigeons were all but gone, the magpies overwhelming them also.

“And then we have America,” Che announced, “some self-righteous maiden aunt that no one really likes and really doesn't have a legitimate reason for being there but always seems to be meddling in the family's private business, going, ‘this is what comes from getting married and having sex.’”

“You never can resist a dig at our own dear hegemon can you?”

Che’s response was just a smile. It was too true, he never could resist a dig at the United States.

“What do you think of the guy with the dirty hair?” It was time for a new game.

The girl in green took the bait, “Guy with dirty hair is on his way to the record shop to buy a replacement CD for his good friend. He’s doing this because he lent the original CD to another guy, who he doesn’t associate with anymore and so can’t get it back.”

“Why doesn’t he associate with the other guy anymore?” Someone asked.

“Because he and the other guy had an argument over whether Ned Kelly’s eyes were blue or brown.”

“That’s a sad thing to lose a friend over,” Che answered.

“Well, some people feel very passionately about that sort of thing. Don’t ask me, I’m not the one who got into the argument, ask him.”

Che laughed, “They were blue weren’t they?”

“Brown.”

“Blue.”

“Look do you want to take this outside?”

Che shook his head and then inclined it to a figure outside, “The brunette.”

A dog had wandered onto the battlefield and was proceeding to snuffle about the chips. The magpies watched powerless from the trees.

“Oi,” Che ruffled blue eye’s brown hair, “your turn, sleepyhead, the Brunette.”

Bright blue eyes flashed back to the group and then went searching for ‘the brunette’. “Right, the brunette. Well, she’s clearly on her way to break up with her boyfriend.”

“Clearly,” Che answered dryly, “That seems to be a running theme today, everyone you see seems to be breaking up.”

Blue eyes gave no clue to how astute Che could be on occasion.

“You just keep choosing people who are breaking up for me to talk about” It was said with a smile. “Look at her,” the brunette had stopped and was now hovering near one the seats that were scattered over the courtyard, tugging gently at a red skirt that was obviously not going to cover whatever it was she was hoping it would cover, “note how she stands, not with her chest out but with cleavage on display, slightly nervous but not so nervous as to actually be self-conscious. She clearly has spent hours waiting for this moment. She’s gazed into the mirror wondering, 'Should I wear the little blue mini skirt, or the little red mini skirt, three layers of mascara or four, and damnit, is it blue-black or brown-black today? Pink lipstick or pink lipstick, and damn what earrings am I going to wear?’ No one spends that much time on looking as much like a slut as possible unless they’re dumping someone or out to pick up. It’s too early in the day to pick up so, I’m going with the breakup. Like, you know like like.”

There was general groans and throwing of scrunched up napkins.

“She’s a footy fucker, they always spend that much time on their appearance. That way they don’t have to actually think about anything.” The girl in green interjected.

“Harsh.” This too was a familiar.

“Astute, thankyou, God gave me wit and intelligence so I could pass judgement on others. Why’s she breaking up with him then? Something better come along? Footy season is over so she’s off to find a cricketer?”

“No, no, you see this brunette is different.” The group fell silent again Che and the girl in green exchanged glances, in this game no one was different. You made a story and then you moved on, to the weird looking guy with cool shoes, the chic with dreds, the businessman with the loony tunes tie. You did not differentiate footy-fuckers, nor give them the benefit of doubt. “The brunette has woken up one day and realised that things in her life just weren’t right.”

Tension was settling, tension shouldn’t settle in these sorts of conversations. “Well, you just said the only reason a footy fucker would have get out of bed is because she’d roll over and come face to face with a footy fuckwit.”

“Yes,” the voice was getting softer, “she woke up and saw her requisite footyhead and thought, ‘there must be more, there must be something else’.”

Bold and brassy, something had to be done to resurrect the conversation, “A second ago, you attributed to her nothing more significant than which belt she’d pretend to wear and now you’re giving her a revelation. Come off it.”

Bright blue eyes looked at the group gathered as always, sitting about in lazed comfort. Really looked, not for the first time, and no doubt not for the last. “What is so inconceivable about waking up one morning, contemplating your life and finding it lacking? Is there something strange about re-examining everything and realising that the way it is isn’t right. That somehow you’ve been meandering about without direction only to find that you have had direction, but someone else has been setting it. That you’ve just been doing what you’re supposed to do and you’ve ended up somewhere you never wanted to be?”

There was silence.

“Hey look…”

The sentence was broken off, by bright blue eyes’ sharp withdrawal of the thought from public scrutiny. She grinned at Che, “It’s your turn isn’t it? The blonde over there with the hair that never left the eighties.”

"Sure, well, she isn't off to break up with her boyfriend."

Revelations are for private consumption only. The dog had moved on and the magpies were searching wildly for crumbs that were no longer there.

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Where the hell did you even get typewriter ribbons from these days? Something told me the preppy little helper-elves at WC Penfolds would just look at me, mascara-ed eyes wide with incomprehension at the merest mention of a typewriter.

You got used to shit like that. One moron had actually asked me why, when you couldn't send emails on them, typewriters still had the little @ symbol. I told him you actually could send emails from typewriters, but I didn't have the correct upgrade to my operating system to allow it.

Some people really are just asking for it.

An invigilator slid past my line of sight like a benign, greying, cardiganed Darlek. She looked like an aged school marm who still got off on the dictatorial powers of running a university exam. "Go on," her look declared, "flee the exam room crying. I will dance on the ashes of your academic career. As long as the dance can be an elegant foxtrot."

I looked away. On the other side of me a third-year engineering student thumped desperately at his calculator. I had the sudden urge to do that thing where you write on the calculator screen so it can be read upside down. Y'know, "Boobless" with eights and sevens, or maybe the more socially acceptable "Hello" made of two sevens, a four, a three, a zero, and a strategically placed decimal point.

Except I was sitting an exam in Contemporary European Society, and calculators weren't permitted material for this course.

I sighed, and looked back down at the exam paper. Flipped to the second page. Candidates should answer one (1) question from each section. It helps if this is the topic the Candidate has studied. It helps if the Candidate has studied, full-stop, instead of drinking a third of a bottle of Jim Beam and not quite finishing the Candidate's novel.

"The rising incidence of nationalist sentiment in modern Europe is the natural reaction of decades of left-wing preference. Discuss."

Sure, why not?

Arts exams were a wank, anyway. And Veronica had responded that science exams were easier, just the pure regurgitation of fact. I told her I could do arts exams drunk and still get HDs. She told me she could hire a monkey to do her exams for her. I noted that monkeys were very expensive, and maybe she'd be better off hiring and training an arts student. I was available, and in need of the cash.

All of that and more said last night, over dinner, in candlelight, with a very acceptable chardonnay that she picked because while I might be able to mix any cocktail you could name, my knowledge of good vintages was practically non-existant. Ronnie was a woman of many talents. She also looked beautiful in candlelight, with her hair turned almost gold...

Open your eyes, Mike. Write your exam.

Continued, but politically unacceptable presence of neo-Nazi elements in unified Germany, check. Nationalist elements in mainstream French politics, check. Britain, Britain... come on, you can bullshit this. You've still got - check the clock - three quarters of an hour. Candidates may not leave in the last fifteen minutes of writing time. If I hurried, I could be finished with time to go looking for a typewriter ribbon shop before lunch.

Typewriter ribbon shop. Sounds like it would be hidden down a small alley somewhere, with a bell still above the door, all in dark wood, and a little, eccentric old man as the proprietor. Entrance to other, fantastical world out the back an option.

"Aah," he'd say as I walked in, blinking in the gloom. "I've been waiting for you."

"Waiting?" Blink blink. There'd definitely be some hideous examples of the taxidermists' profession for me to be thoroughly bemused by. I hate to pass up on a good cliche.

"Yes. You're the chosen one, Michael Leftfield. Come with me. Only you can save the universe."

"But, I just want a typewriter ribbon."

"Come!" And suddenly he's resembling Yoda a great deal more in my imagination, which is rather ruining the old-school rustic children's fantasy bent, but what can you do when your subconscious has been brainwashed.

I resist my fate. All I want to do is finish the novel. I snatch the typewriter ribbon and flee, with his voice shrieking at me not to underestimate the power of the Dark Side.

On the exam paper, I'd written: "It can be seen by the presence of such political elements as Luke Skywalker and the rest of the Jedi..." I scribbled it out with the sort of dedication required to guarantee the lecturer will never know just how stupid what you wrote was.

Maybe I should've left it in. Lecturers need a laugh as well.

I'm not really that much of a Star Wars fan, you know. Veronica was always the real nut. She dragged me to the premiere night of both the new ones. She even dressed up in costume for Episode Two, which was fine with me because she went as Leia, you know, with that gold bikini and all. It had been cold that night, and we had to queue for an hour out on the street. She'd huddled up against my side, inside the circle of my arms and the Dark Lord of the Sith cloak she'd made me wear, and we'd laughed as we watched a mob of costumed Imperial officers and Stormtroopers chasing Jedi up and down the line, shrieking "Rebel scum!" the whole way.

It was her favourite way of relaxing, slipping Empire Strikes Back into the video machine and reciting along. Telling me stories as she used me as a human pillow, that gorgeous blonde hair tumbling across my chest and getting up my nose and really, I didn't care.

"I was so frightened the first time I saw this," she'd say. "I thought they were going to be caught."

Or: "That look, right there, that's when I decided I wanted to marry Harrison Ford."

Or: "She's stoned off her nut in this scene, you know."

"I know," I'd reply, smiling.

She'd smile back up at me. "Oh do you, cleverdick?"

"Yes I do. You told me already."

She'd laugh, then. "Shut up, Lefty." And she'd do that thing where she stretched and wriggled a little and managed to reach up to kiss me.

Then, without fail, she'd try to tickle me. But she's much more ticklish than I am, and things would always end with her squealing: "Stop, stop! We're going to miss them freezing Han!"

The voice of the invigilator sliced through my daydreams like a lightsabre through Imperial armour. "There are fifteen minutes remaining. No candidates may leave the hall until the end of the exam."

Well, there went the idea of getting to the typewriter ribbon store before lunch.

Just enough time left to cobble together some sort of rambling conclusion, and throw in a reference to the "greater European spirit". That was the lecturer's pet topic. It was the panacea of the modern age. Everything - economic downturn, political violence, halitosis - could be solved by reasonable application of and appeal to the greater European spirit.

Don't ask me. I just study here.

At least my pen didn't run out of ink halfway through the second-last sentence.

I finished with three minutes to spare. Just enough time to tidy everything up, make sure I'd spelled my name right on the front, and fold up and pocket the exam paper. The head invigilator called time, cease writing, while the female Darlek glared at the room in general, waiting for someone to be a bit too blatant about finishing off the last sentence. She probably still had her cane. She'd probably built a shrine around it.

They gathered up the booklets, and the hideous pink scribble paper, and we filed out of the hall. The corridor outside was a riot of students, bags and swearing. ("You got what for question 6? Oh fuck, I'm so screwed.")

I found my backpack, fished my mobile phone out of the pocket. Candidates may not bring mobile phones into the examination room. I had eight messages waiting.

"Jesus, Mike, you look like shit!"

I looked up, slung my backpack over one shoulder. First things first; change the fucking ring tone back to a normal, boring ring. "Hey Daz, hey Li. How'd you go?"

Darren and Lorelei were the odd couple of the course. He wore glasses, and pressed linen shirts with the sleeves rolled up to a politically-calculated point. He carried a briefcase. She had a 'frequent flyer' discount at the local body modification parlour and once taught me how to make a Molotov cocktail. They'd announced their engagement six months ago.

"Caned it with a big stick," Li declared. "You've totally got the woke-up-in-a-gutter look going there, Mike."

"Thanks. It took me an hour to achieve it," I replied absently, as I changed the ring, and went back to the messages.

"You look like shit," Daz repeated dismissively. "Did you keep your paper? It's the last exam. Bunch of us are going to the uni bar for a celebratory piss-up. Coming?"

Eight messages. Seven were from Yolante. The eighth was from my mother. "You'll never guess, honey, we found your violin underneath the stairs while we were cleaning out. Drop by home this weekend, have a look at it. We were thinking we might sell it. All the best to Ronnie."

Li smacked my arm. "Fucking yuppie. You'll die of brain cancer. You coming or not?"

I put the mobile phone back in my backpack, and pulled my folded exam paper out of my back pocket. "Sure. Let's go get drunk."

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The third time the snooze alarm went off I decided it might be about time to get up. Besides, the pillow had fallen off the bed.

Hang on, I wasn’t on the bed.

Ow. Fuck. I’d fallen asleep on the typewriter again.

The typewriter was large and clunky and, frankly, fucking uncomfortable. I levered myself upright, and momentum continued me backwards, slumped against the unsteady back of the chair. I rubbed at the imprint of the shift key above my left eyebrow. Eyes. Open. Come on, not that hard.

First thing I saw, blurred and bleary, was the bottle of Jim Beam. I blinked. Well, that explained quite a bit. I could have sworn there was something in it last night.

Coffee. Now.

In some sort of controlled fall off the chair, I managed to end up on my feet. I grabbed the bottle on the way through. Paul would have a cow if I didn’t put it in the recycling bin. Paul cared about things like that. But I could put up with it if Paul had made coffee before he left this morning.

He had. All was right with the world.

Half-way through the cup I woke up enough to find the recycling bin and relinquish the empty bottle. When I straightened up, I saw the note taped to the coffee machine.

“Dear Mike,” I read out loud, because I was alone in the flat and in that sort of mood. Half a hangover, half-awake and half a cup of coffee induced some sort of whimsy. And added up to one and a half. I was an Arts student; why let maths stand in the way of metaphor?

Anyway. “Dear Mike. You suck. More than usual, apparently. Yolante came round especially to tell me so at six-thirty this morning. I was inclined to agree with her. But I told her you were dead. We’re out of milk, by the way. Yours in collusion, St Paul.”

I managed a chuckle. Well, at least I’d missed Yolante. I missed the bin with the crumpled-up note as well. I dumped my empty coffee cup in the sink, and headed back into my room.

Standing in the doorway, I analysed the damage. Tie and shirt on the floor where I’d discarded them last night. Shirt couldn’t be saved, especially since I’d dumped my shoes on top of it. I was still wearing my dress pants. The typewriter had a half-written page sticking out the top, and a clear indentation in the keys from my head. The hammers, levers – whatever those things are called, the little metal things that fly up and smack the ink onto the page – were all trapped together in a twisted mess. I crossed the room to unpick them, letting them fall back into their allotted spaces.

From the corner of my eye, I caught my reflection in the spotted mirror on the wall, and almost laughed out loud. Haggard, dishevelled, in need of a shave, wearing pants and nothing else, looking over the typewriter. Sometimes I was so much the picture of the bohemian writer I simply couldn’t take myself seriously. Paul always told me I needed to take up smoking so I could have the overflowing ashtray as well. Some things were just going too far.

I’d got a lot written last night, by the looks of it. I’d been fairly close to the end in any case, and I did vaguely remember going at it like a demon. I’d come in fairly late, too het up to settle down to the study I should have been doing, and decided to work off the energy on the typewriter for a while. It had worked, it seemed. And then, apparently, I’d fallen asleep. Mid-sentence. The penultimate sentence, in fact.

“There was nothing more...”

My fingers twitched. I simply couldn’t leave it there. There were some half-printed letters afterwards, the sort of jumbled mess passing out on the keyboard creates, but I fiddled with the page, rolled it back up, got the positioning right again.

I took a deep breath, hands hovering over the keys. This was, after all, the end. The end of The Novel. I’d only been writing this for the past four years of my life, pouring all my dreams and creative energy into it. And all building up to this, the ending.

In other words, not something to be rushed.

“There was nothing more annoying...”

Halfway through the word, it became patently obvious that nothing was happening. Well, not nothing, precisely. The hammer things were doing their part, smacking their negative imprint against the ribbon, leaving the impression in the paper. And that was it. There was no ink.

My ribbon had run out of ink.

Fuck. Halfway through the second-last sentence, and the ribbon runs out? Of all the damn times to run out.

If I was me, where would I put the spare typewriter ribbons? I kicked a pile of clothes out of the way so I could pull the door of the cupboard fully open. Obviously I was still slightly hungover, or I’d never dare to tackle this. The jumbled mess in the bottom of the cupboard hadn’t been touched since Paul and I had moved into this place. Which was... fuck, almost two years ago now.

So, a half-burnt American flag, a pile of magazines – oh, that’s where I put Paul’s sheet music for Mozart – and, finally, under a pile of old cassettes (did anyone, let alone me, ever actually listen to Bros?) were half a dozen typewriter ribbons boxes. I pulled them out.

The first two were obviously, by weight, empty. The third one contained a ribbon so worn it was practically lace. The fourth one wasn’t actually made for my model of typewriter. The fifth one – finally – looked all right.

Once I’d wrestled with the mechanism of the typewriter, those tricky little springs and catches and the fiddly little holders for the ribbon itself, and once I’d put the top back on the typewriter, I tried again. It only took two letters – “an” – for it to become obvious that this ribbon was no better off than the last one.

The last box was empty too.

“Fuck,” I declared to the room in general.

The room didn’t seem to care.

I hit the N key again. Then harder. I held it down, then whacked it as fast as I could, a staccato beat. I wondered if maybe I could manage to push the N completely through the paper, and could just hack the last sentence and a half out of the paper, and get it finished that way. Caveman style.

Before that could happen, the phone rang. My mobile. At least, I assumed it was my mobile, because there was tinny canned midi music playing somewhere in my room. Someone had changed my ring again. I certainly wouldn’t have set it to play Oops I Did It A-fucking-gain.

The ring was just starting its second rendition when I found it. It was in my shoe. Where else would it be?

I hit the little button on the phone, and thankfully the noise stopped. “What?”

“Well, aren’t you just fucking charming this morning.”

I had been crouched, but at the sound of that voice, I collapsed, sagged against the bed. “Oh hi, Yolante.”

“Oh hi? Oh hi? You think you can just pull this shit and then say ‘Oh hi’ like that? Having your trained monkey run interference isn’t going to help you, either.”

I glared at the typewriter. “Don’t talk about Paul like that, Lante.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, you pig! In fact, don’t talk to me!”

Typical Yolante. I honestly didn’t know how Veronica put up with her, but she seemed to actually be quite friendly with her. “Look, you called me.”

“Because fucking Paul wouldn’t let me in to tell you to your face what a fucking arsehole you are.”

“Yolante, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what you did to Veronica, you bastard.”

What I did to Veronica. Ah.

I sagged even more, lolling back against the bed. And as I did so, my alarm clock, pushed behind the lamp by my snooze-alarm-smacking activities of earlier, came into view. I stared at it, and the little red bars stared back at me, declaring blithely that it was 8:50.

8:50?

“Oh fuck.”

“Yeah, you might well –“

Yolante’s voice was cut off as I ended the call, making as close an approximation of a leap to my feet as I could manage. Shirt, shirt, clean shirt. Shoes. Fuck.

I had ten minutes to make it to my exam.

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