Zones. Damien Broderick

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      What does he think it’s like? It’s like a school. But Maddy is really polite, for some reason. “It has a high ethnic component,” she tells him. This is something the Principal’s terribly proud of, and they put it in all the promotional leaflets. It doesn’t make any difference, the funding in schools like ours keeps getting cut.

      “Ah,” says Edward, as if this is something very interesting indeed. “I think this is a desirable feature of well-rounded education that my boys have missed out on.”

      I’ll bet they do, I think, the little private school dweebs.

      “Although,” Edward says carefully, “the place isn’t nearly as homogeneous as it was when I was a boy there. There are a couple of very bright Chinese students in Tristan’s form.”

      Maddy says, “Huh, that’s nothing. Our form has more boat people than a Hong Kong ferry.”

      I nearly choke on my chocolate. Mum stops going on about riding down Sydney Road without a police escort and asks me if I’m all right. I say yes, I’m fine, but I do need a better bike lock and Mum says, “Oh, all right, what do they cost?” I tell her the exact price because I checked them out in Bike World the day before, and Mum fishes her check book out of her handbag and starts to write me a personal check. And a phone starts ringing in my ear.

      E. Thing hauls his little mobile phone out of its holster and snaps the mouthpiece open and says, “Thring!” into it.

      That’s exactly what he says. Not “Hello.” Not “Edward Thring here.” Just “Thring!”, like a word in a foreign language. Or as if his name was some famous trade-mark, like “Coke!”

      I look at Maddy and Maddy looks at me, and we both have to look away to try to control ourselves. Mum hands me the check, and I’m strangling, trying not to laugh out loud. Mum is gazing at me, rather puzzled. I certainly don’t want her to think I’m laughing at her, especially when she’s being so nice and buying me a bike lock. I sort of nod my head in the direction of Thring! hoping she’s heard him and know that’s what’s breaking us up. There’s all this babble coming from his side of the table: “...don’t move until it reaches four point two oh. And we can always cover the deal with the Brazilian perps—”

      It’s actually pretty bloody hysterical sitting in a coffee lounge at the same table as a tacky loon who’s raving that sort of rubbish into a mobile phone. So I push myself away from the table and say, “Look, Mum, thanks for the chocolate and the money and everything, but Maddy and I have to get back to her place to babysit.” This is true, but we don’t have to be there for two hours. I can’t stand to be here for another minute. Mum gives me a perfumey kiss, and says, “See you on the weekend, darling.” And Thring! says, “Hold on a minute, Frank,” and puts his hand over the mouthpiece on the phone, and turns to me and says, “Lovely meeting you, Jenny. And you, too, er...er....”

      “Maddy,” my mother says.

      “Maddy,” Thring! says confidently. Then he looks me in the eye and says, “Jenny, you must meet Tristan one day soon. I’m sure you have a lot in common.”

      I can barely keep a straight face, so I just wave goodbye and Maddy and I more or less run out of the shop.

      Gasping for breath, Maddy and I fall about in the Bourke Street Mall, going, “You should meet Tristan one day” in a posh way. Then Maddy was being Tristan, talking with a stuck-up preppy voice: “Oh, hello, I’m Tristan son of Thring! and I’ve got these awfully frightfully bright Chinese chums in my class. They are called Fu Manchu and Ming the Merciless.” I’m saying: “Oh, I say, we’ve got so much in common!” and “Things were far more homogeneous in my day.”

      And Maddy says, “We’ve got a homo genius in our form, he’s an Eye-talian called Leonardo da Vinci.” Which is pretty good for Maddy. I wouldn’t have thought she’s even heard of Leonardo da Vinci, let alone known he was gay and where he was from. She’s more likely to think he’s a turtle. So we’re falling about and I’m holding on to Maddy to stop myself collapsing in the middle of the late-afternoon Mall when Maddy says, “Jeez, your Mum can pick them.”

      “Pick what?”

      “Boyfriends.”

      Suddenly I’m cold all over and very, very angry at Maddy. “What are you talking about?”

      “Oh, come on, Jen. She’s got to have some fun.”

      “Fun? You’re bloody mad, Maddy. That’s a horrible thing to say.”

      I feel like bursting out crying. Then I am crying. In the middle of the Bourke Street bloody Mall. I’m just standing there with tears rolling down my face, and my chest heaving as if something solid is stuck in the middle of my lungs. There aren’t any cars in this section of Bourke Street, which is just as well, but they let trams through—and one of them is clanging rudely at me to get out of the way. Maddy leads me to a brick bench, and a fat old Greek lady in heavy black shifts along to give us room. I wipe my eyes on my sleeves and say to Maddy, “Sorry. You’re probably right. That creep probably is Mum’s—”

      I can’t finish the sentence.

      So I stopped being angry at Maddy and became very angry at Mum instead. How could she?

      SATURDAY, 8 APRIL, NIGHT

      Anyway, we go upstairs and hang out in my bedroom. Davy sits on the bed. That could be trouble, so I sit in the chair by my desk. Chair’s probably not the word. It’s more like an ejector seat. The thing is gas-powered and it’s got all these controls: height, tilt, swivel, tension, everything. Poppa bought it for me when he started having trouble with his back. He said if only he’d had a proper chair when he was a boy, he wouldn’t be in such pain now. All those long hours of study, bent over like a paper clip. Yeah, well....

      Davy says, “Come over here, Jenny,” and pats the bed beside him.

      “I want to talk, Davy,” I tell him carefully.

      “Can’t you talk over here?” he says and pats the bed again.

      Well, why not? We can talk and kiss at the same time—well almost at the same time. So we lie there for a bit being friendly. And it is nice having Davy for a friend. Poor Maddy, she’s got no one to kiss at the moment. She did have this hulk called Jem once, only he ditched her for a girl called Bo. We all say that Bo is short for Bimbo. Maybe it is. I push Davy away a little bit, not too much, not so he feels rejected, but enough to let me talk. I want to lie in his arms and talk. I feel like talking about true love and what it means. Not soppy true love, the real thing. I don’t even know if the real thing exists. I don’t even know if it’s possible for two people to live happily together forever and ever. Mum and Poppa thought it was forever, and look what happened to them. So I try to ease into a conversation with Davy about relationships and love and commitment and all that.

      “What do you think about monogamy?” I ask.

      “Eh?” His mouth drops open. He’s got a lovely mouth, but I don’t really like it when he does that, it makes him look a bit...stupid?

      “You know, only loving one person.”

      “Jeez, Jen, if you reckon I’m two-timing you, you want to think again.”

      “No, I don’t think that,” I say quickly.

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