Bondi Beach was Sydney’s trendy beach. No one ugly allowed, let alone anyone fat. Paul Osborne was neither, but the way he thrashed about in the sand and the smell he gave off made the girls lying there on towels giggle: pretty girls displaying their curves, asses squeezed into fashionable swimsuits, out for a good time.
Dazzled by the sun, he felt in his pockets and found a pair of dark glasses. The arms were twisted, but the glasses stayed on his nose, more or less. The hardest part now was to stand up.
“Hey, you! Something wrong?”
Rolling over onto his back, Osborne saw a tall lifeguard with a Californian smile towering over him, his hands on his hips. He was wearing close-fitting trunks and a T-shirt with blood-red spatters and the tooth marks of a shark—a great white, in the collective imagination.
“Yes, I’m talking to you! What are you doing here?”
Damned if I know, asshole, Osborne thought, but, occupied as he was with his bladder, his only answer was a vague groan.
The lifeguard grew bolder, as if buoyed up by the crowd. “Get out of here, OK? And for fuck’s sake have a wash. You stink!”
One of the girls burst into noisy laughter, and the others, short on ideas of their own, followed suit.
The lifeguard gave his audience a broad smile and leaned over Osborne, who was still sprawling at his feet. “Hey! Did you hear what I said?”
A woman’s voice intervened at this point. “Stop that! Leave him alone!”
A short brunette in a saffron-yellow bikini had approached the lifeguard, who looked her up and down as if he was a horse dealer.
“I’m a nurse,” she said. “Leave him be. Can’t you see he’s sick?”
Under a straw hat that flapped in the breeze, the young woman’s face was flushed with anger. Osborne had no idea where she had suddenly sprung up from, but she had pretty ankles.
Mary Sparks worked as a night nurse at a public hospital in the city. Although Osborne didn’t recognize her, they’d brought him in to her hospital several times, including the previous week, when a patrol had found him unconscious in a municipal dumpster—not only a stupid place to be, but a dangerous one. A nurse by vocation, Mary liked men in general, and Osborne in particular. She had taken advantage of his coma to undress him and let him sleep it off in a well-ventilated hospital room. His muscular body had been covered in bruises, and his knuckles grazed, but he had beautiful hands, sturdy shoulders, bronzed skin that was remarkably soft—as she had discovered for herself—and the face of a sleeping angel that changed as soon as he woke up. Osborne had tiger’s eyes: that, at least, was the image Mary had kept of him when, suddenly emerging from his coma, he had found her leaning over his naked body.
There was a moment’s hesitation on Bondi Beach. Running out of arguments, the lifeguard burst out laughing. “That’s no reason to foul the beach!”
Mary Sparks shrugged.
Convinced he’d had the last word, the lifeguard feigned a grimace of disgust, and went back to his silly girls.
Mary finally looked down at Osborne, who seemed very preoccupied about his sunglasses. “Listen, Paul, when you’ve pulled yourself together, maybe you should think about making yourself a bit decent? The toilets are just over there, straight ahead of you, about twenty yards.” She picked up her straw hat. “Do you need help or can you manage by yourself?”
Osborne muttered an ineffectual “Get lost,” then wiped the sand from his lips. How his night had ended was still a mystery to him, and he had no idea where the lingering smell of ether on his jacket came from. How long had he wandered before ending up at the beach? How many hours had he stolen from reality? Three? Four?
By the time he managed to get to his feet, his fairy godmother had disappeared, leaving him with the sand and the breeze.
His black suit stank to high heaven, and his pants were sticky with urine, but he could still stand. Osborne moved away, watched by the crowd. As he walked across the warm sand, he realized he had lost a shoe. The left one, his good foot. Angrily, he shook off his right shoe and took refuge in the hut that served as a toilet.
Memory was like an onion to be peeled off in layers. He staggered a little as he stood over the toilet bowl, caught his glasses just in time before they fell in other people’s piss, and clung to his fly like a shipwrecked man to his piece of flotsam. Between his fingers, his penis was soft, shriveled. Osborne took a deep breath, but the smell of ether made him feel dizzy, and he threw up. Bile, acidity, the stench of alcohol, spittle, blood, bile.
As he rinsed his mouth, he caught his face in the mirror. His eyes were feverish and red with tears, his brown hair a complete mess, his six-foot body one big ruin. Osborne shook his head. After all, people came from all over the world to see the Acropolis. As a ruin, he still had a chance.
He felt weightless as he left the toilet. In his mouth, there was a taste that reminded him the world was dead and he hadn’t bothered to show up for the funeral.
* * *
In the sixties, Bondi Beach had been the last stop for riffraff, no-hopers, delinquents, and surfers, who were sometimes found hanging along the sea wall by their feet. Today, Bondi, with its fashionable cafés and promenades, was the favorite hangout of Sydney’s new rich.
Leaning against a lamppost, Osborne waited for the bus to King’s Cross. Beneath his socks, the asphalt was hot. An old aborigine woman was dozing under the glass shelter, a host of plastic bags spread at her feet like so many stray children.
“Got a cigarette?”
Osborne looked in his jacket, but couldn’t find any. His head hurt and he had no idea what he was doing here. The aborigine woman seemed to understand. At last, a mustard yellow bus stopped by them. Osborne dug out a few coins for the ticket and found a seat at the rear. The open windows gave him a bit of air, but no escape route. Sitting beside him was a young boy holding a school bag and a bodyboard on his knees. With a cap pulled down over his head and a Walkman in his ears, even the smell of piss didn’t seem to disturb him.
The bus drove alongside the bay, heading for the city center. Palm trees, cars, blazing sun, and still nothing in the spectrum of time . . .
King’s Cross, an area in the heart of Sydney noted for petty crime. Taking care where he placed his socks, Osborne walked past the ready-to-wear stores with their all-year sales. On the sidewalk, the breeze lifted the whores’ skirts. He went in through the doorway of the sex shop and climbed the stairs that led to his place. On the third-floor landing, one of his neighbors, a junkie, said g’day and asked him what he had done with his shoes, then hurried downstairs without waiting for a reply. Osborne stepped over the floorcloth that he used as a doormat and opened the door of the furnished apartment where he sometimes slept.
“You live in a real dump, Osborne.”
A man was waiting in the kitchen: Gallagher, a cop with a pockmarked face, chewing on a match, his feet up on the table.
“It was open,” he said, mopping his bald skull. “With the heat outside . . . ”
“What are you doing here?”
“I just arrived from Auckland,” Gallagher said, putting his handkerchief away. “You’re not an easy person to find.”
“There’s nothing to find.”
