Boy Swallows Universe. Trent Dalton

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СКАЧАТЬ puzzled, mute.

      ‘What are you waiting for?’ he asks. ‘Mum wants to meet you.’

      ‘Why does your mum want to meet me?’

      ‘She wants to meet the boy who didn’t rat about the rat.’

      ‘I can’t go up there.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘It’s nearly 1 a.m. and Lyle will kick my arse.’

      ‘He won’t kick your arse if we don’t want him to.’

      ‘What makes you so sure?’

      ‘Because he knows who we are.’

      ‘And who are you?’

      ‘We’re the bad guys.’

      *

We enter through the sliding glass doors off the balcony. Darren marches confidently into the living room, ignoring Lyle sitting in the armchair to his left. His mum sits, elbows resting on her knees, on the long brown leather lounge suite, her husband resting back on the lounge beside her.

      ‘Hey Mum, I found this guy spying on you all in the yard,’ Darren says.

      I enter the living room in my pyjamas with the hole in the arse.

      ‘This is the kid who didn’t rat about Jabba,’ Darren says.

      Lyle turns to his right and he sees me, face filling with rage.

      ‘Eli, what the hell are you doing here?’ he asks, soft and intense.

      ‘Darren invited me,’ I say.

      ‘It’s 1 a.m. Go. Home. Now.’

      I turn around immediately and walk back out the living room doors.

      Bich Dang releases a gentle laugh from the couch.

      ‘Are you really going to give up that easily, boy?’ she asks.

      I stop. Turn around. Bich Dang smiles, the porcelain white foundation on her face cracking around the wrinkles of her widening mouth.

      ‘Plead your case, boy,’ she says. ‘Please tell us why exactly you are out at this time in your pyjamas flashing that cute white tush?’

      I look at Lyle. He looks at Bich and I follow his gaze.

      She takes a long white menthol cigarette from a silver case, lights it, leans back into her lounge as she draws in her first puff, then blows it out, her eyes sparkling as though she’s looking at a newborn baby.

      ‘Well?’ she prompts.

‘I saw the purple firework,’ I say. Bich nods knowingly. Fuck. I never realised how beautiful she is. She might be in her mid-fifties, early sixties even, but she’s so exotic and so cold-blooded exciting she has the presence of a serpent. Maybe she’s so attractive at this age because she sheds her skin, slips out of her own body when she finds a new one to wriggle through life in. She keeps me in her gaze with that smile until I have to look away from it, drop my head to fiddle with the drawstring on my loose pyjama bottoms.

      ‘And . . .?’ she says.

      ‘I . . . ummm . . . I followed Lyle here because . . .’

      My throat thickens. Lyle’s fingers dig into his chair’s armrests.

      ‘Because of all the questions.’

      Bich leans forward on the lounge. Studies my face.

      ‘Come closer,’ she says.

      I move two steps towards her.

      ‘Closer,’ she says. ‘Come to me.’

      I shuffle closer and she places her cigarette in the corner of a glass ashtray and she takes my hand to draw me so close that her kneecaps rub against mine. She smells of tobacco and citrus-scented perfume. Her hands are pale white and soft and her fingernails are long and fire-engine red. She studies my face for twenty seconds and she smiles.

      ‘Oh, busy young Eli Bell, so many thoughts, so many questions,’ she says. ‘Well, go ahead, ask away, boy.’

      Bich turns to Lyle, a seriousness across her face.

      ‘And, Lyle, I trust you’ll answer truthfully,’ she says.

      She fixes her hands on my thigh and turns me towards Lyle.

      ‘Go right ahead, Eli,’ she says.

      Lyle sighs, shakes his head. I keep my head down.

      ‘Bich, this is—’

      ‘Have courage, boy,’ Bich says, cutting off Lyle. ‘You better use that tongue before Quan here cuts it out and drops it in his noodle soup.’

      Quan beams, raises his eyebrows at the prospect.

      ‘Bich, I don’t think this is necessary,’ Lyle says.

      ‘Let the boy decide,’ she says, enjoying this moment.

I have a question. I always have a question. I always have too many.

      I lift my head, stare into his eyes.

      ‘Why are you dealing drugs?’ I ask.

      Lyle shakes his head, looks away, offers nothing.

      Bich sounds like my school principal now. ‘Lyle, the boy deserves an answer, doesn’t he?’

      He takes a deep breath, turns back to me.

      ‘I’m doing it for Tytus,’ he says.

      Tytus Broz. The Lord of Limbs. Lyle does everything for Tytus Broz.

      Bich shakes her head: ‘The truth, Lyle.’

      He dwells on this for a long moment, digs his fingernails deeper into the armrest. He stands, picks the Styrofoam ice box up from the living room carpet.

      ‘Tytus will be in touch about the next order,’ he says. ‘Let’s go, Eli.’

      He walks out the sliding doors. And I follow him because there was care in his voice just then, his love was in it and I will follow that feeling anywhere.

      ‘Wait!’ barks Bich Dang.

      Lyle stops, so I stop too.

      ‘Come back here, boy,’ she says.

      I look at Lyle. He nods his head. I shuffle cautiously back to Bich. She looks me in the eye.

      ‘Why did you not rat on my son?’ she asks.

      Darren is now sitting up on СКАЧАТЬ