This Is It

By Oliver Carey

Eddy is in a relationship that is crumbling around him. He starts to wonder if it is him that is the fault. He uses this time to reflect, to claw back and try to save against all odds the possibility that two people, himself and Beth-Annie can unite once more, just like they did at the beginning. During his personal search he delves into his past relationships. Thinks about where they went wrong. If he can use any of those failings to make this a success. He then aims to leave. Aims to try to get back on track by disconnecting. Just when he thinks he can do it, his life changes completely. He then starts a different journey. Different people get involved and he starts to look forwards, never back ever again, alone but not alone…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398416994

Oliver Carey

Oliver Carey grew up in East Sussex, England. Reading and writing was a way for him to remember and embrace what was happening around him. He would walk with a dictaphone to describe something like a fragrance with eyes shut to learn how to feel his surroundings. This Is It is his first book to date, after writing many short pieces of work. A novel which has taken him on journeys over time to develop.

Book preview

About the Author

Oliver Carey grew up in East Sussex, England. Reading and writing was a way for him to remember and embrace what was happening around him. He would walk with a dictaphone to describe something like a fragrance with eyes shut to learn how to feel his surroundings. This Is It is his first book to date, after writing many short pieces of work. A novel which has taken him on journeys over time to develop.

Dedication

For the Carey and Delassise Family

Copyright Information ©

Oliver Carey 2022

The right of Oliver Carey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398416987 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398416994 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I am extremely grateful for my parents, Robert and Nicole, for always encouraging me to be who I wanted to be and not what people wanted me to be. My sister Céline, my brother Scott, for being well adjusted heads when I was losing my own. I cannot express my thanks to my family who tirelessly read early drafts, shared advice on the cover and supported me.

Is This It!

The Moment is Now. What was Eddy’s now? Was it when Eddy’s pen fell? Was it when he finished writing? Was it when he stopped thinking? Stopped liking? Loving?

The involuntarily taken, smoothly flowing, black ink-nib pen rolls off his exercise book. The slight bump of the black clip thuds like a jackhammer as it trips the short circular roll to the creased brink of the end. Across the thick, red paper-covered landscape hiding the paper, torn in places. Worn on the bind. Notes are scribbled in different colours. Passages scrawled like some poorly done, doodled graffiti. Some crossed out on the coffee-ringed cover with a forceful scratch that nearly drives through the jacket, showing glimpses of the blue-lined paper. Where he devises his thoughts. His simple, but unrealistic pipedreams.

The pen reaches the end with one last echoing thud. It falls. In slow motion. Days, rather than seconds, pass slower than weeks of yearning. The pen descends the short drop to the ominously varnished wooden-planked floor below. It takes just two tinny short bounces before the pen lays to rest. Then, the World. The scene. Eddy’s scene. Eddy’s entire world. It stops. At that precise moment. At the precise moment that the pen stops. Eddy stops. Was this, now, the moment?

Peculiarly enough, in his mind’s eye, Eddy still plays the animated scene laid out before him. The many people scurrying like mice on a mission for cheese. Hurrying in all and every direction. Finding the scent, but not following it. It is no longer peak hour, but the station is seldom quiet. For this station, in the very centre of Sydney, is the heartbeat. The people the blood, the essential matter in all life. The trains are the venules that collect the blood from the capillaries, the platforms. The tracks are the veins that carry the blood into the city, giving it the life to beat, pulse, be alive.

With a choreographed dance-like precision, the crowds of individuals move around the platform dancefloor. To avoid every stranger, they stop, dodge and negotiate each other with preamps of clarity. With each and every step, they improvise an unrehearsed dance of irregular proportions. It is a great mystery how people do not bump into each other when they stop, turn and pivot on a five-cent piece. Thus, it does become a prime area for people-watching. Almost hypnotic. This dance. This monotonous, tedious and pedestrian exercise that a majority of these people do Monday to Friday, that does not seem to get tired. It has been an unwritten tradition for many years. At the same time, they are here. The safe money bet is waged that come this afternoon or late in the evening, they will be the same people, dressed in similar attire, at the same place, going towards the same direction.

These people are halted with the pen at precisely seven minutes past ten in the morning. The dark wood of the train platform is smudged in rainwater, carried from outside. This gives a brooding, slightly sinister darker hues that bleed into the clear pattern. Spreading its darkness. The droplets of rain are precariously close to disconnecting their tenuous connection to their host. Like frozen icicles their hanging on for a few more moments by the slightest thread of a silver-string rain drop from the hat, umbrella, nose, earlobe. Glittering as lingering in suspended time. Collecting rainbows and lights from the huge screens transmitting the train times.

The flashing lights are still transmitting the estimated times of arrival, but they do not move with the time as if a nervous twitch in the electronic muscles. This exact time is not a fire in which they burn, but a block of ice in which they stay frozen. The footsteps that echoed in an unmusical arrangement that were competing with the lazy voice of a single lady bellowing out of the talon are extinguished.

It is an eerie moment when so many people and unseen noises are silenced simultaneously. The motion is paused. Not even the slightest breeze is felt. As if watching a painting through a glass globe to this precise moment, the world has stopped turning. Gravity seems to have stopped as a coin is suspended in the air as it leaves the pocket of an older man retrieving his mobile. No noise. No sound. No beeps. Nothing but the flash of the red and golden light. Although, life still beats.

Eddy’s thoughts pause with the light above his head shining only for him. An epiphany. An idea. A notion. He knows what he needs, nay must do. His deep, brown eyes look straight ahead, to where he is going to be. His focus is unfocused on his surroundings. His focus is focused on the eventual verdict, his end, climaxing final result.

Two months ago, he did not know what he knows now. Heck, six months ago, it seemed perfect. He did not see the future as he felt safe. He felt that everything was going well, so why look too far ahead and miss the moment you are in.

Today is the day that I officially come in. I will not introduce myself. Most books would take you to the beginning. I will tell you what happened, but over the course of telling you the beginning. The beginning of the end of a relationship that was built on fragile bricks, on a fragile foundation. That left a fragile heart. Shattered. Destroyed. Unfixable. I have been pivotal in Eddy’s life. I have watched him live his life through various emotions. These have proved a gulf of knowledge for me. I have learnt so very much. The time is for Eddy to learn from me.

Six Months Ago…

Like a thread of cotton caught on the exposed rusty nails of the house of cards, their love story was beginning to unravel. The house of cards contained so much promise. So much joy. Alas, the house was collapsing slowly as the thin thread pulled the nails further and further out. Regrettably, eventually, it will be coming down around Eddy.

In the moonlit darkness, a soft beep comes from Eddy’s mobile, followed by an immediate illumination. With the skill of a magician, it enters his hand with a slight, unseen flick of wrist. It is not a message he so badly craved. He discards his mobile on the small glass coffee table in disgust. It skips and bounces away as he goes back inside his own head.

The messages were becoming less frequent. Eddy was placing calls that were increasingly becoming missed. Worse still, not returned. The deafening silence vibrates within Eddy’s as warring silences. Unbearable. Like the slow drips of a leaking tap that seems to echo louder and louder. When the drip turns to daggers, stabbing his head, causing unseen pain. It is in these moments of aggravating pain when his mind wonders. Racing around like a rat in a caged maze. Going out of control, in different directions. Arriving at different dead-ends every time. Each route a question, each question provides no answers. Just the ability to turn around to travel another route to ask yet another unanswerable question.

Ultimately, Eddy concludes that it is he who needs to change. He who has done wrong. He who has done something. He can’t think where? Or what? Or when? But he is convinced that he has done it. He wrote the wrong, it is up to him to save his love story. He must write the right.

Eddy starts by repeating each and every conversation in his head that he had had with Beth-Annie. He re-reads messages left on his mobile. Notes, letters. He lives through the time together, living through his body language. Her body language at response to her questions that he gives. He is bordering frantic uncontrollable energy which will overflow as he sees nothing.

He slides doors to a different scenario. Reliving in the mind-maze as he stares at a projection film of each moment. A moment that has been. Has been gone to the archives of the past to never be coming back. No matter how hard Eddy wishes for a repeat of a precise moment, to change the outcome, it is impossible. The past is just that, completed. It has elapsed on time. No-one on this Earth can process the key to turn back time to one specific moment. Just for the future to be rewritten. The past is wistfully vanishing in the breeze of time to become just a vanished moment in yesterday.

He lets himself smile. A half smile that flashes across his face as quick as lightning, for people would blink faster. As a different action, word, sentence is imaginatively created from the past to flawlessly perfect the dreamtime picture. His mind races. his stomach is in knots trying to wring out the thirst, his hunger, his negatives. He lives another make-believe whim. He asks another question. His mind is exploding with telling a glorified story of ‘what ifs’, ‘buts’, ‘maybes’ to generate an edited magnificent fictional exploratory story of this love.

His face solemnly shows a glimpse of what he is hiding. What he is going through inside. His inner torment is shared with o-one. He deals with it each, and every passing second of every day.

This morning he went through his normal, morning routine in a walking daydream. He left his home, went to work without a single interaction. He did not check his phone at all rather than check that the yearning for message had come. In himself the lights were on, but no-one was behind the wheel. His vacant stare, hidden behind his inner torment that burns furiously as the devil stoked flames of hell.

Eddy’s hands are masked in a beautiful velvety shine of deep red. The Ferrari shine flows over his knuckles, through his fingers like a caressing viscous untamed river. As fast as his years of experience would allow, he is skilfully flaunting the joints laid in silver metal shallow dishes. He chops, slices, cuts and rearranges the joint for different uses, different prices, different uses. His hands and brain work in a rehearsed play for which no thinking is required.

Eddy has been a butcher for most of his adult life. He knows meat, poultry and game as a surgeon would know the mechanics of a human body. For the soft drone of music in the background, the splatter, the razor-sharp precision cuts of the tears of fibres and muscle would only be heard above Eddy’s own soft unnoticeable shallow, rheumatic breathing. He has a white apron, for which he uses for preparation before the doors of the shop open.

Considering the amount of meat that he has prepared thus far, his work station is still kept considerably clean. The signing, delivery of stock and the general lifting, pulling, pushing and tugging this white apron shows the smallest blemish of fresh claret. The ragged, threadbare white apron itself is not holding well to the tests of time. Yellow-stain spots from previous explorations in the adventures of meat are forever remained after more washes than Eddy has had hot dishes. This was one of his service aprons before.

He wipes his hands on a linen cloth that hangs over the apron strings as he walks into the cool room. The door easily slides on the runners as he puts little effort into opening. A soft bounce at the end announcing the end of the line as he pushes through the plastic ribbons of curtain and into the cold air inside. Everything is labelled with dates, products. Everything has a home.

This is for the raw meats, so poultry is spread out on one of the longer sides, the meat on the other and the smaller end of the backwall is reserved for game, special orders and promotion. He knows exactly what he is after as he stoops over-so slightly to pick up a metal tray containing a joint of glistening topside of beef. He returns to the red chopping board, places the meatal tray to the left as he is right-handed. From behind him, he collects a nest of white melamine containers of various shapes and spreads them out in front of him, behind his board.

He reaches to his right and picks up his favourite rosewood-handled Victorinox knife. He was given this in the early stages of his apprenticeship by a chef that taught him so much. Not just about the chef’s life, but navy life. He was a navy chef born and trained but managed to leave to create a following as a respected chef in Sydney that owners and managers alike wanted him in their kitchen. Service staff would let him know if positions were available. He was loved in the kitchen, outside on the floor and for his life. A wicked sense of humour that bordered on the dark side of whether he should be able to get away with it, but after all it was a joke. Not seriously meant, but he was respectful enough to know his audience, thus not upsetting anyone.

It was he who told Eddy to focus on an area. Of course, he meant within the kitchen brigade, but Eddy was drawn to meat. Maybe he had underlining currents to a psychopathic tendency. This was by far the heathier option.

The blade of the boning knife had curved due to the amount of times it has run down a steel to sharpen. The wooden handle knows his hands as well as he knows it. The knife is an extension of his arm. If he ever lost this knife it would feel like a lost limb. The knife moves around the bloody palm, twirling like a cheerleader with his baton in celebration of the artwork he is creating before him. His fingers gently feel for bones as each cut is with the precision of a pit-crew of mechanics working on a Formula One Ferrari with pace, speed and perfection.

He has been at this shop down a lane off the main streets of Sydney for over six years. He knows his job well that it has become second nature to him. Many people in hospitality in particular, move often. However, he has frequent holidays, enjoys the customers, the staff and the owners so why would he change. Only for the money. It is not the best, but as he puts it—you cannot beat enjoying work for enough money to live than to hate work to reluctantly enter the doors five days of the week to doom, gloom and pessimism.

To the right are silver bowls for different usages. As he cuts, weighs and positions the meat into the melamine trays for service, he uses the silver bowls to obtain the whole use out of the joint. The fat and sinew go into one of the silver bowls with a splish, splash and splat, to be rendered for cooking fat. Scraps that are too small go for minced products such a sausage rolls or burgers with larger offcuts diced for pies. Nothing goes to waste. All the bones and other wastage items go to a separate bowl to be sold to catering companies to use in their stocks. When he has enough wastage in the bowls, he decides what to make.

From experience, he knows the best sells. This is not to mean that he gets caught out every now and then. Being cloudy outside, not the greatest day in Sydney, he is opting for pies. Although it is coming into summer, so burgers and barbeques are on the agenda. Yet again, it is only Tuesday. He finally opts for the pies. He is still undecided on the flavours to incorporate. This, coincidentally, is the first time he has consciously used his brain since waking up today.

He glances at the old-looking dark-brown stained wooden clock that sits above the entrance as he places the last piece of meat in the desired tray. He carefully lifts his red chopping board, so the blood does not spill everywhere, to place into the sink behind him. With the slightest sidestep to his right he spins around fluently. With his right elbow he turns the dog lever of the silver tap with its shining blue crown to allow the water to pour into the small square-bottomed metal basin. Blood and soap squelches from his white calluses ridden hands on to the basin sides and the metal splashboard. When rinsed thoroughly, he turns the tap off.

He returns to his station. Glad-wraps each of the display containers as tight as a drum and places them in the cabinet ready for service. Just in front on the small ledge is the spikes of the meat and the price for which he places in order. This will be the first job of the next staff member, so he can see the cut and price before placing it in view of the customer. He wraps the silver bowls with a label ensuring date and product before sending them back home in the correct place in the cool room. He washes his station down for any blood. Sanitises it. Washes his board, knife and scales as he leaves them to airdry as he returns to his station and using a dry paper towel finishes the cleaning, so it is as he entered in the morning. Ready for use. He glances at the clock again. It is almost time. In half an hour, the shop will be open. In fifteen minutes, normally punctually on time without a second to spare, the next worker will enter.

He returns to the handwash sink. Using the red crown, he adjusts the water to a hypnotic whoosh of steaming hot water. Every day he always makes sure that he has time to meticulously wash his hands properly. Using his own hand-wash-kit he picks under his fingernails, in the carves and brushes his nails. Using his cleansed palm of his right hand he hovers under the soap dispenser that proceeds to place a perfectly measured amount of soap into the palm of his hand. He scrubs up to his elbows in a frenzy of soap suds, steamy hot water bellowing up. Scrubbing hard like a surgeon after a triple bypass operation he checks numerous times his hands and arms before for one last time returning to the hand soap dispenser. The pink liquid with a hint of lemon beckons as he lathers himself once again.

He wonders why the hand soap is only nighty-nine-point-nine percent focused on killing bacteria. Why not the full one hundred percent? Is it a legal obligation so as not to get sued on the off-chance someone would blame the soap for not cleaning their hands properly. That nought-point-one percent could be the defining moment in being sued or not. Or, is it that the point-one percent can go off on a mission to warn its mates of the impending danger that they are nearly extinct?

Bizarre thoughts often enter Eddy’s mind. This is not an exception. He finishes washing his hands and turns off the faucet. He pulls a sheet of paper towel to wipe the splashboard, the taps and the sinks with its stubborn lingering remains of a few bubbles of soapsuds and meat to make the area as dry as it was on arrival. He discards that sheet and the folded remains to the bin as he reaches for another sheet to dry his hands and arms thoroughly.

A few short steps to his right, he discards the soggy paper into the bin with one hand as he reaches to his shelf with the other. His wallet and keys are to the right. His mobile is propped up in a manner that enables him to see the banners that spring through the screen with a soft beep, softer light. As he cannot always get to his mobile in times of service, he finds this is a way for him not to miss that important call. To the left are the folded, freshly washed and ironed service aprons. He discards his preparation one to the shelf below the pristine ones, jams it into a red and white stripped canvas bag to take away later at the end of his shift for washing.

During the passage of time in as a butcher, he has resorted to a three-striped blue tricolour apron for the customers’ benefit. Also, so he does not keep getting mixed up with what he uses for preparation and service. No matter how long, hard or frequent he washes his preparation aprons, the stain of blood remains. Whether in colour, or the rich metallic iron smell of blood and raw meat. It is as if the meat wants to live on in clinging onto the last piece of fabric that he or she contacted with. Eddy goes into the cool room and brings out a joint of glistening topside of beef. He places this on the plastic red chopping board.

He places the new apron over his hand and ties the strings as he returns to the display counter to carefully remove the Gladwrap. Using a yellow-handled brush with plastic blue bristles, he delicately brushes each of the display meats with a swift, gentle stroke of vegetable oil to give the meat a fresh, inviting and appealing look.

He enjoys this time of the day. He is the only one at this early hour at Jones Family Butchers. Eddy likes it that way. He gets lost in his thoughts. As peculiar as they can be. He sometimes is accompanied by the low murmur of the radio. Other times the shop becomes his own disco emporium. Most days, the slight buzz of the various fridges and freezers. The hum of the lights. The clicks of the irregular defrosting cycles or the fans cooling cycles are the only sounds he hears. A rush of unwater water from the ice around the fans in the cool room and freezer are in time with a surge of power that turns the fans on and a knock at the door.

He hides his disappointment behind a grin as he reaches for his keys. Eddy’s best time of the day has ended. He enjoys the lull. The time where he is busy enough to be alert in his surroundings. He has not had to engage with anyone with meaningless talk. As he walks around the counter, he puts his pretending happy face that everything is okay for himself, the customers and staff.

As if he has bene waiting around the corner for the correct time, at exactly six-forty-five, he knocks on the door in tune with the second-hand crossing over the middle twelve above him. The door is slightly ajar when Kai, pronounced Car, comes bouncing through. An interpolated jumble of questions and answers follows as he works through, not really listening. Just the mundane course of the everyday verbal dialogue that opens the communication. The ‘G’days’, ‘How are yous?’, ‘What’s happening?’ and ‘How has your morning been?’, that are clipped short with even shorter answers, ‘fine’, ‘good’, ‘no worries’.

The great thing about the morning spiel is that it does not really matter. They have a great code that they sit down, sometimes over a coffee, other times a beer to go through the plan of action for the next day. They clear down the operation, put things away and just before doing the mopping of the floors they stop. They have a single list in front of them split into tables, each with a heading. Another one for the ordering. The messages get checked on the phone and email. The invoices are written straight away. Eddy brings them over in tune with Kai bringing the coffee.

Some places have standing orders on specific days which make it easier, so these are done at this time for the next day. If the companies ring before five, before they shut, they get their orders on the first run, early before eight in the morning. Depending on the order Eddy sometimes stays late to prepare and pack them, other times he does it in the morning. These are written in the first column, under the simple headline, EARLY. As he goes through the invoice, he separately writes the orders.

He has a great understanding with the farmers that they order before six, they get their stock before six. As each invoice, with a duplicate, is placed in the manila folder, they are placed in order of route. Later when Kai goes, he will type out the route, cost, and signature column so this can get signed as well as the invoice. Each customer is a number; hence each prepared carton is marked clearly with that number. If there is more than one box, after the company is a number in brackets that signifies the number of cartons. Fool proof, well, most of the time.

Fortunately, Eddy can get a lot of these done during the day. He checks the messages on a lull and prepares what he can. Places them in the cool room ready to be packed, or sometimes he can pack them straight away. Kai is here for the second run. This is before twelve, midday. These are the ones placed after the cut off time. It tends to be shorter but still a hassle.

Eddy follows Kai as he scoops up the Manilla folder and the keys to go outside. Eddy stands on the concrete step to tell him it is packed in the order with the first at the front and so forth. Kai gives a peace sign through the white van window as he leaves a trail of dust in his wake from the carpark that is in dire need of resurfacing.

The second column is for Kai. Another is for third. This is a royal pain. It is basically that phone call after eight in the morning where a business has forgotten to order something, or that the functions and events team have dropped a bombshell of a surprise function. Although Kai will get back just after the shop opens, sometimes he has to go out again and complete these orders. The mornings are seldom busy with the exception of long weekends and holidays.

Eddy is alone again. The tornado that is Kai has swept through leaving a messy trail of wet boots through the shop. He sighs as he clears it up and prepares the shop fully for the day. It is a quiet day of orders. Although there is no quiet day normally, just a more manageable day.

Eddy has worked at Jones Family Butcher for a few years. The name is a bit of inside running joke. The signage is only thirty-three-point three percent true. The name. The owner, for whom they see more of a solar eclipse than they do of Sam Jonas. He is a great boss in the way he stays out of the way. He gets the figures daily, at the end of each shift. He comes in when everyone has gone to collect the cash from the mincer, bank it and leave a post-it with any questions or simply a smiley face. He is a man of few words. Nice enough.

Eddy or Kai send a text at the end of the day with takings, summary of service and issues. They get a reply of an emoji with some thumbs up or a thumb down. He anglicised his name to sound friendlier for the sign. He is one-hundred percent blue-collar Australian, but his parents were immigrants from Slovakia. His siblings do not work here. His name is not spelt or even pronounced correctly. The only part of the signage that is true is the trade—butchery.

He has a late order. Not a huge one so he moves to the walk-in fridge, nearly tripping on the flat red non-slip floor as his grey-scuffed white gumboots are slightly too big for him and make an annoying squeaky noise as they grip the floor. He slides the cold metal grey handle to the right. Piercing through the plastic flaps for which the thin mist of cold air escapes. The slight change in temperature shakes down the slight icicles of frozen water that have attached themselves onto Eddy’s clean white butcher’s jacket.

His look is more of a laboratory scientist than a butcher. An icicle hits his face, but he moves through without noticing. He bends down to pick up the heavy brown carton of short loin beef that he needs to break down into T-bones, porterhouse steaks and club steaks. This is for a local hotel that has a reputation for ordering late, then complaining that it is after lunchtime service. It is a fun game of calls, messages and emails that normally fall to the same deaf-heard response, for it seems to be a weekly treat.

The shop has specific health codes. One is the barcode from the meats. Eddy thinks that this breaks about five different contradictions of the act but follows them anyway. The barcode on each carton displays all the information for the Environmental Health Officers. The numbers tell the story of the breed of meat, farm, abattoir, date of slaughter, date of package and means of transport. He keeps each and every one in order of supplier and date for six months. Each day a new small castaway is placed in these for the end of the day labels and placed in an envelope to sit in the filing cabinet to go mouldy and smell of rotten flesh.

Eddy is once again working on auto-pilot. The shop goes through trends, needs and customer requirements but these do not faze him anymore. He predicts the changes. He has seen the cycles. He is Michel de Nostredame, Nostradamus of the Butchers’ World. He is not an astrologer, a seer nor a prophet; he believes that history, as well as trends, just repeat themselves. Eddy rarely looks at what he is doing. When he does, he is not focusing on his own hands, the knife wielding in the air or the joint in front of him. He looks up as his hands continue their work.

He glances over the glass counter shelf of the top of the refrigerated display unit. Through the water-dripping windows of the Sydney rain that has decided to drizzle down. It drops in a frenzy over the Royal Blue signage of Jones Family Butcher and onto the very quiet street. The people he sees are head deep in their own collars or cowered under an umbrella. They are on their mission to get out of the rain, which he presumes will be work. It is still a little early for the streets to be busy, but being that a very popular coffee shop is next down he normally sees the lingering, loitering suits as they wait for their java.

Occasionally, a truck passes, cascading bright amber hues of lights fleetingly through the window. A van flashes past. The blinking red, amber and green lights play music for the falling rain in a dance party solely for them. They accompany with music that hits the metal corrugated roof of the bus shelter with the delicate touch of a meat tenderiser. The splash in the forming puddles are seen but not heard over this din. A faster, machine-gun burst of rain ratters the shop front windows, ousting the streams that were minding their own business. He sees but does not react. Again, his thoughts go into a wondering format.

Normally, his weekends would be spent with his partner. He would have been enjoying their time together, learning a little more about each other. Thus, falling for her a little bit more. He is wondering why it did not happen again last weekend. They did see each other through the week but those pockets of appearances were not enough for him or, well, previously, her. He predicts, Nostradamus-style, that it will happen again. Or not happen as the case will be.

He was ready for last weekend. But a cold, short, dismissive text message late last Thursday night deflated his heart as if a harpoon had penetrated it. The text simply said, ‘it would not be ideal’. No pleasantries before or after. No kiss marks. No questions about his day. No stories about her day. He was very disappointed. Not just about the nature of the message. But the cold, abandoned action of it. That was the last message he received.

He carried on sending messages. He had given up on the calls as she did not pick up, never returned them. He religiously sent his morning text message when he went to make his morning cup of coffee at four in the morning, before his shower. Eddy continued to do this as if not preforming this task would accentuate his fear. It would be the nail to forever close the coffin of the relationship that was doomed to end. Endorse his thoughts, his feeling that it was over. Eddy wanted Beth-Annie to know that she was his first thought of the day. Eddy wanted Beth-Annie to know that she was close, no matter the reason. She was so close, but too far to touch. Emotionally, physically and, it would seem, electronically.

The funny thing. But not in a ha ha, roll around on the floor until his sides split funny. The thing was that one text message from her would give him respite from the emotions. The grief he was feeling. It had only been the Wednesday since they last spoke, saw each other but the very style of the abrupt message seemed out of the ordinary. He knew something was not quite up. Love is indeed a drug. Beth-Annie was his fix. He needed the high again. The brief reconnection wears off like the aftershave at the start of the day to barely leave a trace. The high, like the smell is instant. The low is the gradual search for reactions. The rain continues to fall. He did not know when he stopped working. The rain is the curtain where Eddy wants to isolate himself, further. He needs the addiction.

Beep beep.

From his mobile came the light, staccato, high-pitched ding of a message. The screen emits a soft light from his silver mobile. For where he was positioned, he could see perfectly his propped-up mobile. The noise brings his focus promptly back into the present. He snaps his neck around to see the location of the mobile. His heart is hopeful. He glances away from the splattering blood to the clean, area of an oasis. The name is there, followed by the first two lines of the message. His heart is heavy with glum pessimistic negatives from his optimistic positives. The message is not the desired person, or one. His phone reads, ‘Paul O’Reilly: Running late, Bro…waiting for bus.’

For some reason that he did not understand, he was angry at Paul. That it was not Beth-Annie. He was back to work but had to move away from the meat as his smooth slices were becoming angered stabs, daggered motions like an American psycho.

Paul was not his bro. He was the more than capable apprentice. He was always late. Whatever the reason he coined it, more than twice. He was as inept in his time management as he was competent of being the best apprentice that had passed through any butcher’s doors. He was not young. Eddy was starting to regain his calm. Paul was skilled with a hidden talent that was instinctive from a passion to do this job.

Eddy returned to his station after a short recess to pound a few irrational snake in the grass outraged sentences in his head filled with venom. The truth was he liked Paul. But in that instant, he had nothing but acrimony. That ebbed away as quickly as the fury flow of anger. Paul was English-born with an Irish mother. She had firmly embedded the Emerald Eire into his making. He was trustworthy. He was hard-working. He was unique in his appearance in the beauty in the eye of the beholder kinda way. He put on the Irish accent to meet women for nightly escapades. It worked so well.

Eddy had no fear that this was the true reason he was late. Eddy actually did mind being called ‘bro’ by someone that was not his bro, or even a relative. Someone with no relationship to him apart from four days of the week at work. This was not a battle deemed fighting. He brushed it off like the rain of the shoulder of a jacket. In turn he called him bro to soften the remark. It was his own private joke for himself as he was taking the piss out of him. He wished he could brush Beth-Annie off.

With the light quickly fading from his mobile, his heart continued to fade down to the depth of his torment. With his heart falling, his shoulder slumped over the joint of beef. His eyes glazed over at the job quite literally in his hands. The thing that caused that spark of rage was uncomplicated. If that message had been from Beth-Annie, he would have been given that addiction, that fix, the glimmer of energy as a sparkplug on the engine of his Ferrari blood-stained hands. He would have known that she was thinking of him. He would have felt self-worth.

I look on. I have the power. I hold an unseen smile to the future that is unfolding.

Eddy goes effortlessly through the motions of his day. With the opening of the back door, a soft, but heavy drone echoes to inform the front of the shop that someone has entered the rear. Kai has turned up earlier than normal after his deliveries, he must have had a good run. With parking in the city, any city, it is hard. The park rangers are quick as fire to give you a compliment with a parking fine in seconds.

Kai yells out through the open door, ‘Morning Rob,’ He is shouting something about the deliveries which is normally about one of the guys, as Eddy hears the softness of plastic boxes being stored with a soft thud on the tiled floor, hopefully correctly. He knows Eddy cannot hear him properly, but he continues shouting anyway. Then, a sudden stop in his monologue as Eddy hears a skid, followed by his roaring laugh which always seems too loud for his slender skinny figure as he nearly slips over the threshold, on the tiles, as he brings nature’s worst elements inside.

Kai seems to just have that happy-go-lucky attitude to everything that makes him so loveable in and out of the workplace. It is a contagious trait that is infectiously pleasing. Eddy has heard many times that people are an asset to work with, but he strongly believes in Kai. At the end of the day, it requires no talent to be on time, have a great work ethic, energy, attitude and focus but he does these seamlessly. Amongst the laughter, he squeezes out ‘nearly went arse up then’ with another roaring laugh.

Yes, they had seen each other at the start of the day but the yell out was more to tell Eddy that he is the one at the backdoor. Before they went through the procedures of greeting, this time around, it was genuine. They both were listening this time as they asked the same questions as earlier. Together they hear each other, but Eddy, this time instead of a grumble, he shouts simple one-worded answers of being ‘OK’ towards the back, as Kai gets ready in the same white attire that Eddy wears.

Kai has the knack of laughing at himself, over nothing most of the time. Eddy hears a metal clothes hanger hit the floor, a giggle, as he washes his station down again, not for the last time today, but to be prepared for the customer portion of the day. He lets the air dry his clean sanitised work station. He dries his hand with a paper towel as he walks towards the back of the shop, towards the voice of Kai. Each step he adds the layer of make-up to put on a happy shiny veneer over his boiling conflicting commotions.

On approaching the threshold to the changing room, Eddy calls out ‘Morning Kai. Raining out?’ with a slight joke in his tone.

Kai looks back in dry working attire but sporting a soaking face, hair and a red, dripping nose of resilient rainwater. ‘A few drops are in the air,’ he retorts. ‘I guess with that joke, we are ready for the day?’ They continue their small talk and banter as they pass papers of specified deliveries, orders and standing orders to the relevant piles on the large marble thick desk which is as heavy as it is strong.

Then Paul announces his arrival by slipping on the same patch that Kai did. ‘Maybe I should do something about that!’ Kai suggests with no motion to actually do anything. Paul enters just in time, a few seconds before being officially late. He has the all-important coffee in brown paper mugs with ‘Have a Coffee’ printed in white scripture. The smell caresses Kai and Eddy with hooks pulling their eyes to focus on the cups with small steaming streams of water from the two tiny holes. Before looking up at Paul’s face, they have their prize in their hand. Water is essential in the hospitality industry, mainly for this black gold beverage that warms, sooths and energises the body, mind and spirit.

‘So, erm, Paul, did you have a brownie?’ Kai asks in a stifled laugh, which he tries to conceal with his paper coffee cup. However, this does nothing to stop the flooding hysterics as he erupts with the slightest look at the face of Eddy who is about to burst. His cheeks are bulging, eyes squeezed shut, face trembling. He cannot hold it. They look at each other and the floodgates burst into roaring rivers of laughter.

Paul immediately places his coffee down and rushes to the small postcard-sized mirror over the makeshift shower and toilet. All around his face is chocolate war paint. He is a forty-something male. You would think that by now, he would have mastered the ability to eat. That simple process by taking the food from his hands to his mouth. They also have worked together for years. As an inside joke, they have the self-appointed nickname of being The Three Musketeers. It is a little nerdy, but just like them, they are inseparable friends with the similar motto of being there for each other.

Pommie Paul has been a bit more of a fly-in, fly-out worker in search for that greener grass. He never finds it so has inherited the nickname of Boomerang Paul as he always comes back. With this connection of mateship through working closely together, they have developed a working relationship that knows when it is time to play, time to work and time to leave the other person alone. Having said this, they are not emotional people. They are not people to talk about their feelings. They are interested in each other’s lives, but they talk more about sport, stories from times gone-by and news rather than love. For this alone, was the basis for the perfect relationship for people that actually spend more time together, with each other than they do with their own family or loved ones.

Over the coffee break, Eddy told in the most blasé way that the good ship Beth-Annie was going through some stormy weather but did not elaborate on it. They did not ask. He respected them for that. Mates.

Although Eddy is sharing in Paul’s embarrassment, the humour he is showing is his own mask. Which he placed on without being subconsciously aware as Kai came through the door. This is the mask until he closed the front door of his place. This mask is on for the rest of the day, firmly in place. As for Eddy, he is no oil painting himself. He is not ugly, but handsome.

Eddy, born Edvard Steven Quarrell, is in his late thirties and has strands of grey hair coming through his dark brown short-shaven hair, which his barber describes as feathered. Shining in the fluorescent light, a customer has told him that his grey hair would make him a handsome silver fox when he is older. That twenty-something customer made his day then, for when she enters the shop he thinks of that exchange. He often shares small snippets of another people’s life and tries to remember them all. He often scribbles down notes like birthdays, events or other information to remind him when people return that he will engage them to address them about the event or occasion.

He strived to say that thing to make the customer feel special. He likes to make customers not only feel special, but he strongly believes that this makes them be special. Eddy is slightly gaunt in his facial expression due to not having a great night’s sleep since, well, he cannot remember when. His eyes are retreating further back inside his skull. His lines under his eyes are getting darker with each passing day. His skinny face is drawn around his angular features with a stereotypical Parisian nose, for which he can thank his Romanian mother for. When he smiles, he radiates his perfectly formed white teeth with the slightest small chip on one of his front teeth if you look really hard. This was done while watching the racing cars, his first love, after food, before finding out what women were all about.

The young, naïve Eddy got too excited during one of the races and fell from his perched metal railing down onto the top of the barrier with his tooth jarring the top of the metal. His thin lips curl into a smile and his crow’s nest in the corner of his eyes show that he has had a beautiful past of laughter and good times. His white pen that is clipped to his jacket has more meat on it than him. For he has not eating properly for a long time.

Since the inevitable started, he has dismissed food. Using the age-old proverb, an apple a day seems to be keeping the doctor away—he literally does just that. He exercises a lot, to the extreme, which would put the world’s marines to task, to enable a good sleep. These exertions fail to get his desired reward. He is an intelligent person that thinks too much over things. He is constantly thinking of ways to make everyone around him better, with himself taking a backseat.

His left-hand man was Kai. Japanese-born, although he was bred in Australia. He came over when he was a baby in arms, still in nappies. He was brought up with the language, the traditions and cultures of Japan, nevertheless he was as Australian as a koala, as a cold beer. Although he was born Hinata—Kai states that means sunlight, warmth and a sunny place. For which Eddy could not agree with more. This was a name that could not have been more aptly suited. He grew up in Western Sydney near Penrith, the school guys thought was from Vietnam. This became a bit of a running joke, then the nickname Kai came in. It stuck. Nowadays, it would probably be deemed as racism but then it was, but not being in the society we are now in, when we must check everything we say so that we are not offending anyone, it was meant in jest. It still is meant in jest.

Kai had the greatest catchphrase that he always executed at the perfect time. For no matter what mood Eddy was in, it never failed to make him smile. They both would accompany this, more often than not, with a silent boyish giggle into their collars. Kai, using his perfect Japanese. Screwing his face up to highlight his already prominent Japanese features. He would stick his teeth out in the cartoon pose that he watched as a toddler growing up and he was ready.

Kai normally waited until Eddy was at his most stressed. His most busiest. When he was feeling the most pressure. When he was verging on the high-pitched urgency in his voice as he was asking for help. Kai would turn to him. Sensing that he was being watched Eddy would turn to Kai. Now, face-to-face in the close confides of the shop, barley any space between their noses Kai would say, ‘easy-peasey Japan-nesy’. Priceless. Simply comedy. They laughed. With each laugh the layers of pressure evaporated. They got back onto the horse and rode it home, through the busy period and to the end with that vigour of a second wind.

Now, for an outsider looking in, this may not seem funny, but the customers in the shop. They laughed and smiled with the playful act behind the counter that they were putting on in front, on their stage, to include them and spread a little happiness to them through the day. To mix things up, Kai sometimes did it with the most Bogan Australian brogue. In seeing this, Australian, with Japanese features, with a thick Australian accent saying this made them laugh. This morning, he needed this.

Seeing that Eddy was not himself Kai preformed it as he entered the shop to ask what was needed first. Eddy was thankful that he did not delve harder into the problem with Beth-Annie, but went with this mateship route. A time and a place, and all that. This was not the time. Later, it may be the place. Mutual respect in their environment, their own being, made their friendship as well as work ship unique, unsurpassed. It is the main reason they have worked together so long. It sure as hell was not the money!

Paul on the other hand was a typical pom. He was an Australian Citizen, lived in the country more than his native England but held the same accent, the same miserable expression and outlook that made him the ridicule of jokes. His father is Australian which brought them over here as a young family. He was a large bald man with a prominent beer belly that strained his white attire. He had grey, thick lensed glasses that balanced at the edge of his wrinkled nose with more hair coming out of his nostrils than his head. He was a gruffly spoken bloke’s bloke that spoke his mind in every circumstance.

A case in point was when he was at his uncle’s funeral and he turned to his auntie. His mourning, weeping widow to state openly in front of the congregation that ‘at least you can spread out in the bed now!’ He did not think he said anything wrong. He had no scruples. For that people loved him with the same intensity that others hated him. He had more jobs than anyone they knew. No doubt he would have done any job of the ones that came into the shop or brought up.

Maybe, and more precisely not for long, or for that matter done well, but somewhere he would have a pay check for it. When he was complaining more, they knew he would be leaving. The thing with him was he was a great butcher. So, with him he would leave with no notice. No problems about loyalty, about upsetting anyone or making anyone’s jobs harder he would send a nonchalant, carefree text message to Eddy in the morning stating that he would not be coming in or he would just write ‘I quit’. Every time they took him back. Each time it mystified them to why he insisted on coming back and being called the apprentice.

Paul, like most Englishmen, loved a drink. Loved gambling, particularly with losing at poker on a Thursday night. He loved women, and surprisingly, women loved him. He was nothing to look at. Did nothing to keep in shape, but he was a charmer. The rare days that it rained in Sydney for more than three or four, he complained. If it was too hot, he complained. Too cold, he complained. Eddy and Kai stopped finding logic in his illogical understandings, but he did make them laugh. He came out with the most random logic that defied reason but was just so Paul. They worked with everyone hard with ethics, passion and demonstrating a rich knowledge of their trade.

It is Wednesday where Eddy’s day changes. He had finished work. He still had received not the smallest trace of information from Beth-Annie. For all he knew she could be in hospital. But, at the late time of night. The quietest, darkness of the night. When he should be sleeping. For, in a few hours, his early start will happen. He lies, imminent for the arrive of his alarm clock to vibrate into life with a loud dinging bell.

For the past few months, he has waited at night. His mind seems to become more active at this time. He cannot sleep with the voices in his head. He is beyond blue at these late stages of his own darkest hours. Eddy has not had a good sleep since, he can remember. He lies in wait for a message, for a call. But normally it is his alarm clock that shakes and stirs him to get ready for the day. Sure, in the wee small hours of the morning, he dozes.

But he drifts in and out of sleep like an unmastered ship. He is captain-less on the seven stages of his death-marked acceptance. He waits for his nautical north to call, to message, to let him know that he is being thought of. That Beth-Annie is thinking of him, as he thinks of her. Periodically it comes. Frequently it does not.

Eddy knows this is the end but by a cruel twist of a hand-operated drill that pierces, slowly, into his heart. He tortures himself worse than any Japanese prisoner of war camp officer could imagine. He does this in hope. Nothing more. The small glimmer of hope that all his wondering. All his overthinking. All his, for a better word, paranoia, is in vain. Nothing but a cruel joke.

Eddy once read ‘A life without pain is not feeling truly alive’. He would love to meet that writer. Go up to him or her without saying a word and punch him or her, in his or her face. He would then ask the writer if that pain made him feel alive. I am sure that the response would be a contradiction to living. With the response to maim, twist and injure, possibly kill. All depending on the writer’s specific mood that Eddy had caught the person in. Eddy’s overthinking often took him down the rabbit hole to the pure absurd.

In trying to curb his reactions and restrain his actions, Eddy has gone to writing. On notes, coasters, receipts. He has written many scribblings and rambles for which make sense. Only to him. Many lands in the bin but some stay in a book for another time. If he has no paper, he makes notes on the phone. He speaks into his mobile, he saves the voice messages. These scribblings are notes to himself, for himself, for no one else. He edits them. He re-words them, formats, and rearranges them. He rarely looks back at them when he thinks they are complete. They never are.

Just like Admiral Lord Nelson in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 when he deliberately disobeyed the flag signal from the commander to stop attacking the enemy, thus holding the telescope to his blind eye in order not to see. Eddy opts to turn a blind eye to his amateur writings. Akin to his relationship. Unlike Lord Nelson he thinks he will not win this battle.

Eddy looks at the ceiling in the dark shadowy light of the early morning for which he has traced and retraced for countless early mornings. He lies awake just waiting for his alarm clock to go off. He thinks if Beth-Annie is sound asleep. The advent of the breakdown of this relationship that meant so much to Eddy was over before he knew. Was he that stupid to not see it happening around him?

With the sound of his alarm, he quickly rises. Eddy puts a mask up, a different face from the one he puts on as he crosses the threshold to his home and closes the door on another day. A mask he sports around the day, to hide behind. In life, as we all do. We do this in different circumstances.

Despite the fact that he wore a mask for many times through his life as a self-preservation survival instinct. Despite knowing he was doing this. Yet, for the first time he met Beth-Annie he did not put on a mask on. He was honest from the start. He was genuine. He did not want to hide behind a mask in front of her. Behind her. This, actually, scared the shit out of Eddy. For reasons that Eddy did not know, and honestly, he did not actually look for, he did not care that he was so open to her. He felt an instant connection. He felt that this person was his companion. His soulmate. His forever.

The farthest star known and seen in the galaxy is Icarus. The supergiant star lives over halfway across the observable universe. Despite this it still took an amazing nine billion years for its shining light to reach Earth. The star that is five billion light years from Earth is official named, MACS J1149+2223. For this reason, they used to have a quirky saying.

‘How much