Day 7

He stands well back from the car

This morning, the Mazda’s pulled off the highway, parked on the verge.  The boy walks onwards towards school, notices the car well before he’s come to it, knows it’s one of his regulars, and wonders why they’ve stopped.

He keeps walking.  Towards school.  Towards the car.

When he draws alongside the Mazda, the boy can see the scratches and imperfections in the paint on the passenger door. He wonders whether it’s the original paint.  Whether they’ve had some work done, been in a crash.

If he hadn’t been looking at the car, he wouldn’t have noticed the man in the passenger seat talking.  He sees the lips moving first, can’t hear over the music in his ears.  The boy reaches up with his free hand and pulls the buds out of his ears, first the left, then the right.  The other holds his i-Pod.  He stands well back from the car, up near the blond-brick wall that protects a house fronting the highway.  He’s no fool.

“Have you got the time, son?” the man in the passenger seat asks.

The boy is offended by the logic of the question.

“I’m not your son,” he thinks.

He answers, anyway, polite to the end. “Er,” he intones as he reads his watch, taking his eye off the men for a moment, “It’s eight minutes past eight.” Precise as ever.

The boy looks up.

“Thanks, mate,” the man in the passenger seat says.

The other man, the tall one in the driver’s seat, remains looking ahead, keeping his eye on the traffic.

The car pulls into a gap in the traffic. The boy puts the white buds back into his ears and keeps on walking.

In the shit

“Good evening.  I’m Tiffany Robson and this is Six News for Thursday the first of February.  And our top story tonight is breaking news from the waters off our north-west coast, where it seems yet another boat load of refugees has entered Australian waters.  Authorities were first alerted to the boat when someone on board used a mobile phone to call triple zero to announce their arrival.”

Tiffany’s voice rises to indicate shock at the effrontery of these boat people.  She’s following the auto cue as diligently as she can:  words, phrasing, notes on expression and all.  Doesn’t want to rock the boat tonight, so to speak.  Her internal auto cue reads ‘groan’ at this latest thought.  Still, back to the story.

“For more details we now cross live to Darwin and Six News reporter, Rohan Jones.  Rohan, what can you tell us about this latest group of boat people?”

There’s the obligatory pause while the signal bounces from satellite to satellite and the reporter listens intently.  These are the moments where it can all go terribly wrong, which is why Bob Mullen, Six’s news director usually insists they pre record and then throw as if it’s live, pauses included for greater realism.  Tonight is one of the few times when the story really is breaking as they go to air, so live it has to be.

“Tiffany, as you said, a triple oh call was picked up by authorities in Darwin just a short while ago.  The caller claiming to be an Afghan refugee on a boat that has arrived in Australian waters just off Christmas Island.  Details are sketchy at the moment, but reports are that the boat is carrying twenty-seven Afghan asylum seekers and four Indonesian crew.  All are reported to be in good health and a Navy ship has been despatched from Darwin to intercept the boat.”

Tiffany cuts in with a question that’s neither on the auto cue nor on the running sheet.  Bugger this not rocking the boat business!

“Rohan, it’s a little late for the Navy to be sent to intercept, isn’t it, when the boat’s already made it into our waters?”

The reporter on the monitor listens, straining to make sure he’s heard correctly and then stares down the camera looking both confused and angry.  Tiffany can’t quite figure out which emotion has the ascendancy, but she’s enjoying the moment.

“Um, Tiffany, I didn’t quite get that last question.  Can you repeat, please?”

The first refuge of the witless reporter, technical failure.  Works every time.  Tiffany turns from the monitor, switches back to camera one, just an instant before the control room and the camera man are ready for her.  The vision going into lounge rooms shows the side of Tiffany’s head for a moment, when it should be focused tight on her face.  Tiffany begins speaking before the shot’s properly composed.

“Well, looks like we may have to go back to that story later in the bulletin as events continue to unfold.”

As she starts to read the next story from the auto cue, the silence in her earpiece tells her she’s in the shit.  Again.

A physical and emotional double blow

Chris Baker’s at home.  It’s almost the end of his first week back at work.  Hasn’t been too bad, really.  There’s times, when he’s had a bit of a break, where he wonders if he can remember what it is he’s supposed to be doing in his job.  It all seems to work out, though.  He muddles through, but he’d much rather be doing something else, if he had a choice.

He’s sitting watching the news, wondering what he’ll do this evening.  That story about the boat people; bit cheeky calling triple oh to let us know they’re here!  Still, who can blame them, wanting to come to Australia.  Chris was a migrant himself once, a long while ago.  Now, he considers himself more Australian than anything else.  He can’t imagine what it would be like to be a refugee, but he can see why you’d want to get away from things sometimes, do whatever it takes to find a new life.  Getting on a boat and crossing oceans is a bit extreme in Chris’s book, though.  He’s always been a bit nervous when it comes to action; more the stuff it all down inside and see if you can’t just sit on it type.

Chris misses Tiffany’s stuff up while he’s thinking about what oceans he wants to cross.  He studies the newsreader without taking in the content of the stories she’s reading.  She must be mid twenties, maybe just a bit older.  There’s wear on her, but it’s well masked by make up and camera angles.  The thing that intrigues Chris most is how impeccably female she is.  Perfect in every detail:  the clothes, the jewellery, the hair, the mannerisms.  Chris has followed this line of thinking many times while watching the news.  Every time, the unattainability of the newsreader is a physical and emotional double blow.

She’s every drop of water in an ocean he knows he’ll never be able to cross.

Chris sits for a while longer, waits for the male sports reporter to come on, then gets up, goes through to his bedroom.  He gets out of his work clothes and gets dressed for the evening.  When he’s ready, he emerges from the bedroom and goes into the room next door, the one he uses as a home office.  The computer’s already on, Chris turned it on on the way to his bedroom so it would be up and running by the time he was ready.