Author: LT Page 1 of 5

Laura was many things, as all people are.

But she hadn\’t realised how much of herself was bound up in the Australian myth of egalitarianism until she stepped through the colonnaded entrance of the palatial Ascot home she had been escorted to in an expensive, yet discreetly classy, limousine. Part of her really had believed that most people were the same and were treated the same and that therefore nobody here really lived this way.

Marble benchtops, imported tile floors, chandeliers. How did they deal with the cognitive dissonance of it? The jarring disconnect between who Australians were supposed to be and this? This excess?

Six bedrooms, six bathrooms. A library. A conservatory. And all wrapped around the expansive ice-blue pool; the guest bedrooms running down each side so they could step straight out of their rooms and into the refreshing sunlight-dappled waters.

It was bigger than her room. The pool and the pool alone had a larger floor space than her entire home.

As a servant ushered her down the terrace towards that pool, Mrs Park stood up from a small table laden with chocolate cake and plunger coffee but waved to the servant to remove it as Laura approached. So she had made that clear. This was not a social call and she would not be offered refreshments.

And if Laura had not been so overwhelmed by the overstated grandeur of the home and the immaculately elegant Mrs Park she may have remembered that she had seen her somewhere before. She may have remembered the little voice muttering away in the back of her head in the car ride over here. The annoying little narrator she never could stop whispering away in the back of her brain.

The one that wondered if this overt display of wealth was obnoxiously oblivious or meant to either entice or intimidate her. Because if it was designed to intimidate then it had worked. She was intimidated. And so the inner voice was drowned out by other, more primal sensations.

Who picks up an unemployed Uni student in a limousine? drowned out by the wave of social anxiety, of being suddenly out past the breakers and out of her depth.

As she\’d left the limousine, driven by a man so detached and effortlessly polished that she suspected he may be a butler from some Victorian novel, she was aggressively ignored by the most beautiful woman she\’d ever seen in her life. She strode past her as though life was a catwalk, dressed in exquisite understatement and seemingly unaware of Laura\’s existence. Her long brown hair, golden skin and round brown eyes spoke of a perfectly blended melange of ancestries, seemingly having received the very best qualities of all of them. A scent of spring floated through the air as she passed and then she was gone in a silent exchange of understanding between her and the driver.

Laura was acutely aware of, in no particular order, her store-bought fading suit, her generic shoes, her $15 hair cut, her utilitarian scent of cheap soap and Pantene and the fact that life had not taught her how to be in a place like this. How did one behave? Were there rules that she had never learned? At Uni, a friend whose father was a lawyer had invited her to a wine tasting at the Brisbane Club. She\’d felt like that then; like this was a world she had not been raised to move around in.

\”Chen Li Hua,\” Mrs Park said officiously, using Laura\’s Chinese name correctly. She moved out from behind the table with conviction and said curtly, \”Please accompany me to the study. We can have our conversation there.\”

Laura simply nodded, her natural politeness stepping in to cover for her feeling of being off-balance.

\”This is my mother-in-law\’s home,\” Mrs Park explained to her as they moved through the elegant residence to the muted wood-panelled study. This was a serious room where serious things happened. Laura felt the weight of the need to be serious as though someone had thrown a winter blanket on her. Did people whisper in this room? She felt as though they should.

\”My family lives in Hamilton and that is where you will move if you choose to take this position,\” Mrs Park added, as she moved behind the desk and pulled over a file that seemed to relate to Laura. She had large stylish glasses that somehow seemed fashionable, even though until now Laura hadn\’t known that glasses could be fashionable at all.

Her expression as she looked over the file was ice cold with just a hint of disdain and she somehow managed to remain completely professionally expressionless while also communicating that the student standing awkwardly before her was beneath her.

\”I\’ll be blunt,\” Mrs Park said. Bluntly. \”I have a job that needs to be done. You\’re not qualified for it. But you are,\” she pursed her lips as she squeezed out the word, \”available\”. Squeezed it out in a way that left Laura in no uncertain terms that her availability reflected poorly on her but was nonetheless convenient.

\”I also trust Cynthia\’s judgement and that is the main reason why you are here.\”

Laura just nodded, her curiosity, terror, inadequacy and sheer overwhelming desperation leaving her uncharacteristically speechless. If Mrs Park had wanted her overawed then she had succeeded. And the display of wealth paled before the knowledge that she needed this. A fact she wondered if Mrs Park knew.

Mrs Park gave her a glance that suggested that her silence spoke volumes as to her unsuitability but nonetheless continued.

\”If you take this job, you will defer your studies for a year. That is the term of the employment. The remuneration is $150,000.\”

Laura almost gasped at the pay – far above the starting wage of a data scientist.

\”This is commensurate with the commitment to the position that I expect,\” said Mrs Park severely, \”The job is to be on call 24/7 so you will also receive full bed and board. And,\” she paused as though she realised this would be the carrot that would most entice her, \”at the end of the year we will pay for your Masters in full. Depending on your performance, there is the option to earn a $50,000 bonus as well.\”

Laura\’s knees nearly collapsed. Two hundred thousand dollars? No living expenses for a year? Her degree paid in full? Not just the remaining subjects but the whole thing? This… this offer didn\’t make sense. It was too good to be true. She had a commerce degree, she knew very well that…

\”You may think that this offer is too good to be true,\” Mrs Park continued, relentlessly reading her mind. \”Trust me that it is not. There is a stick with this carrot. Aside from the job, which will be difficult and exhausting, the bonus and the degree are the golden handcuffs. But if you leave before the end of the year, you not only get nothing but you have to pay a hefty break fee equal to the total remuneration package. Do you understand, Ms Chen? I am buying a year of your life.\”

\”Is that legal?\” Laura asked before she could stop herself.

Mrs Park just stared at her between the perfectly coiffed hair and the flawless makeup, as though to say, \”try me\”. Her stare wasn\’t ice, she realised, it was steel. Reinforced and thick. Cool, impenetrable steel.

Laura shook herself, \”I don\’t…,\” she was almost stuttering, it was embarrassing, \”I don\’t even know what the job is,\” she finally managed.

Mrs Park gave a strangely-familiar ghost of a smile as though she knew she had her and just needed to get her into the best permission to slap on those gilded restraints.

\”The job,\” Mrs Park continued with her apparently trademark directness, \”on paper is Personal Assistant to the CEO of Park Holdings. I\’ll send you a background briefing on the holding company and the subsidiaries. Memorise it.\”

\”I don\’t… you know I don\’t have secretarial experience or…\”

\”There will obviously be secretarial tasks and I would of course have preferred somebody with that kind of experience. However, what my son really needs is… management.\”

\”Management?\”

\”When he\’s supposed to be somewhere, he\’s there. When he\’s not there, we know why. If he has a crisis, somebody helps him solve it. When he commits to something, that commitment is undertaken. Do you understand?\”

Laura did not understand. She didn\’t understand at all. What she was describing seemed to be basic adulthood. Unless… she was a babysitter? Someone to get him up and tuck him in and force him into meetings. Some kind of strange overpaid nanny. Or au pair? Or…

\”So if I take this job, then I\’d be his personal assistant and he would be my boss? I\’d report to him?\”

\”You report to me,\” Mrs Park said. Her tone was clear. This was not a negotiable part of her employment.

\”Ahh,\” she said, thinking she\’d finally understood the job. As though she\’d somehow grasped the subtext here. What kind of mother hires someone to spy on their own son?

\”I need to think about it.\” Laura did not need to think about it. Laura had no choice. But Laura was not so far gone in desperation that she didn\’t realise how badly this whole thing could go.

\”And I need someone right now. So don\’t think long. I\’ll email you the contract. You have until the end of the week.\”

Even as Laura walked through the mansion and into the limousine and then into her concrete slab of a building, past her busted up car and into her overpriced hovel, she knew.

She was in. She had absolutely no choice. A fact that Mrs Park must know.

\”This is a huge mistake,\” she whispered to her bathroom mirror.

But she was going to do it anyway. It was an offer perfectly pitched to make it impossible to refuse.

\”You have no choice,\” she told herself. And she was right.

Family feuds were funny things, Cynthia thought as she sat in her car looking at Lolly in the cafe having the desired breakdown.

You thought you were outside of them, oblivious to them. That they were products of a distant, less civilised era. That they’d been swept away in the egalitarian banality of suburbia, left in a past of feudalism and family registries and small petty wars over small petty fields.

But when Mrs Park – her friend and confidante, one of the few people she could rely on – had asked her for help. Well. Here it was. Singing in her blood, vibrating through the years. A war cry torn from the throat of her ultimate grandmother: the start of the MacDonald family tree. 

Mei’s line may have decided to forgive and forget the Chens but the giver of that name was a black sheep only two generations back. Marriage between the rebel son and an Irish woman they didn’t know linked back to her. The original MacDonald, nee Xu. She who the Chen family treated with such disregard and disrespect. 

It’s true a nice girl like Lolly didn’t deserve it.

But vengeance didn’t care about casualties. And in the end, it could even be for her own good. 

She imagined the current Grandmother Chen, a woman that seemed to replicate in every generation like cloning. The kind of soul that made her wonder if there really was reincarnation. She imagined her finding out her granddaughter was marrying into a Korean-Vietnamese family and cackled.

She actually cackled. Like an evil witch from a Sageuk. The scheming woman in the court, bent on revenge.

She would be all those things, those cliched things. The name Chen would hardly be lost to history but this branch would be. She’d see, that old woman, that vicious Chen. She’d see who was left standing at the end.

Cynthia slipped on her sunglasses, picked up her phone and made the call.

She was ready. It was time. 

“I’m sorry, Lolly. You’re fired.\”

Laura looked at Phil for a moment unable to process what she was hearing.

She’d come into the club because Phil wanted to talk to her. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting but it wasn’t this.

“I don’t understand,” she said finally, “Is this about the beer? Because you said…”

Phil waved his hand to stop her talking and had the grace to look ashamed, “I know, Lolly, I know. Everyone there said that yuppie bastard deserved it. Hell, Kelly was just in here telling me if you hadn’t done it, she would have. I don’t have a problem with the beer incident. Honestly, if you were my daughter I’d buy you a car.”

“Then what?”

Phil was a large man, one who was uncomfortable sitting for too long so Laura wasn’t surprised when he came out from behind his desk and started pacing before sitting on the desk in front of her instead.

“Lolly, the owners sold the building last week. No, I didn’t know either,” he waved his hand again to break her off. She was starting to find this annoying.

“I didn’t know until they activated the clauses in our lease contracts that said they come up for review in the case of a sale. If they don’t renew this lease then I’m…”

Phil stopped to stare blankly into the distance for a moment and Laura felt an unexpected empathy for the man. He was clearly stressed and probably over-stretched financially due to the shutdown.

“Everything’s riding on this re-opening, Lolly. Everything. And my other club can’t open at all. If I have to close again…”

“So it’s the new owners who have a problem with the beer incident?”

“I don’t even know how they found out about it. But they’re convinced it shows poor customer service or something, convinced it’s bad business. I tried to tell them he had no right to insult one of my staff and the other patrons were on your side but they just kept on with this ‘customer is always right’ nonsense. Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on with the world today. All anyone cares about anymore is money. We\’re raising a generation of entitled brats.”

Phil looked so genuinely upset at this point that Laura didn’t have the heart to interrupt him. 

“Anyway, they told me it’s the lease or you. And…”

And she was a casual who did a few shifts a week. Phil had a choice between bankruptcy and firing her. Laura deflated. She couldn’t argue with him, couldn’t even rail against him. He really did have no choice.

“I’ll pay you for last night but I’m afraid that’s it. I can’t offer you any more shifts. Not if I want to keep afloat.”

“I understand, Phil.” Really it was all she could say. 

“Besides,” he said brightening a little bit, “this isn’t your only job, right? Your main job is studying. And you have other casual positions?”

Laura nodded. She did indeed have other casual positions. And study to do. But also a fast-approaching financial apocalypse of her own. Still, that wasn’t Phil’s problem and there was nothing he could do about it anyway and so she found herself wishing the man who’d just fired her good luck as she stepped out of the cool building and into the spring sunshine by the river. It was a genuinely beautiful day and the dusky rocks on the point gleamed copper in the light. She closed her eyes and tried being in the moment.

It worked until she took her phone out of her bag and saw the missed call from her manager at 7-Eleven and had a sudden sinking feeling, like the ground beneath her feet was sand and had just given away with the tide.

“Chen, it’s me.” Unlike Phil who was overly familiar, he didn’t even bother with an honorific. She was just Chen. 

“Chen, I’m not happy with your studying on your shifts. I’ve got dozens of people lining up for work, ones who will actually work. And ones who are a lot younger and cheaper than you. So you’re fired. Don’t bother showing up for another shift.”

Laura thought she might cry. Might actually cry here in public, at the steps leading down to the ferry platform. Might cry in public for the first time since she’d sprained her ankle in cross country in high school and had to be stretchered out of the reserve.

The agony.

Maybe she should drop and pretend she’d hurt herself, pretend she was in actual physical pain so she could just cry right here, right now and nobody would judge her. There had been a dam, she realised. One that was just at the base of her throat. One that she’d been using to hold back a whole river of emotions; one that was finally about to break.

I can’t handle it anymore, she thought, I don’t know what to do. It all just feels so unfair. Is it unfair? Should I expect fairness? Is it me that’s wrong? It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like the world’s wrong. 

She couldn’t pay her rent now. Her parents couldn’t pay her rent. Nobody could pay her rent. She was functionally homeless suddenly, the reality of it washing over her in a sudden burst from that breaking dam. She was homeless. The world just hadn’t realised it yet. 

She needed to stop being childish and start thinking. Needed to stop lurching towards some kind of public breakdown and work her way through this. There was a path, she just needed to see it.

She had a few dollars in her wallet and she used it to buy a notebook, a cheap pen and a coffee in a small place tucked away in one of the back streets. Her secret place that nobody else seemed to have discovered. The place she went to drink espresso and study and nobody could find her.

Option 1, she wrote in confident letters in the cheap lined notebook.

Option 1 : Defer Masters, go home to Darwin, work in family business.

Pros: Roof over head, hugs, Mum’s cooking, a job, home
Cons: Roof and job are all in doubt. Grandmother Chen. I’d be a failure

She didn’t write that last one. But it was there at the base of her skull, knocking and waiting to get in. She’d been the one who wanted to stay when her parents had gone home; who had insisted she could survive well on her own. Grandmother Chen was waiting with a newly-arrived trust fund kid with a bad haircut and flashy car to marry her off. She really didn’t want option 1. Not right now. Once she got her hooks into her she’d never let go. 

Option 2: Find somewhere to doss, try to get an internship. Get money and work experience while finishing her Master’s

Pros: Money, work experience, possibility of full-time afterwards
Cons: Living in someone else’s house again, the recession. This plan is total fairyland

Option 3. Option 3. Option 3. There had to be an option 3. She just needed to see it.

Her phone rang and she remembered there might in fact be a third way, one that she’d forgotten about in all the chaos. Cynthia was calling. And she had said she had a job. So there it was. Option 3. She didn’t even know what it was yet, but at this stage she almost didn’t care.

Whatever this is, I’ll make it work, she said as she looked at her third path vibrating silently in her hand.

Whatever this is, I’ll take it.

And she picked up the phone. 

By the time Lolly heard the crunching sound of metal hitting metal, the accident had already happened ten minutes ago. At least that\’s how it felt. She\’d paused in the carpark, her indicator on as she prepared to manoeuvre her car into the newly-vacant space when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the reversing lights, the car backing out and then… fifty-seven minutes later… the back end of the BMW crunching into her passenger side door.

It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, as her friend Jennifer was fond of saying. Except it was literally watching a car crash in slow motion and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

And yet there was a part of her that felt that it was somehow her fault. That her distracted, spiralling mind obsessed with all her current concerns was the reason the accident had occurred.

She hadn\’t really been paying attention, had she? She hadn\’t really been as focussed as she should be? Surely she was somehow complicit in this moment of slow unfolding disaster?

She didn\’t know what to do so she parked. It was all she could think of. And then she got out of her battered old Corolla and surveyed the damage. He\’d hit a crumple zone and the passenger door was jammed open. She tried to close it. Stubborn, it would not close.

\”You can\’t drive that,\” a passerby told her. \”Door\’s fucked\”.

She could only nod helplessly at just how \’fucked\’ the car was. The driver of the BMW, an older Korean man, had handed over his licence wordlessly and they\’d all photographed the various damage and then he\’d driven away and she was left wondering how to deal with the sheer weight of her life\’s latest disaster.

\”At least nobody\’s hurt, love,\” another woman told her. She had the dyed blonde hair and bronzed wrinkles of a white woman somewhere between the ages of 50 and 90. And she was right, of course. But it was scant comfort. Deep inside, Laura wondered if maybe it would have been nice to be hurt. Like seriously hurt. In hospital and unable to get up and forced to just lie there for a few weeks doing nothing. Nobody could blame her. She\’d have no other choice.

At least nobody was hurt. She repeated it like a mantra because she didn\’t really want to be hurt. She may have had the flicker of a thought but she didn\’t really mean it. At least nobody was hurt. But she still had a car she couldn\’t drive, a shift at the servo to get to and absolutely no money in her bank account. Oh and yeah, a car that wasn\’t roadworthy parked in a busy suburban shopping centre that she couldn\’t afford to get repaired.

Her insurance had lapsed, why had she let her insurance lapse? She couldn\’t afford her insurance, that was why. The bill had come and she\’d pretended it hadn\’t. As though her insurance wouldn\’t expire if she didn\’t notice the Due Date on the notice. But it had. She knew that.

The guy who hit her would call his insurer and make the claim and the car would be repaired but when was the question and what did she do now? She had no choice, she had to get the car towed home at least and then hopefully claim it back from his insurance company when the time came.

Idiot, idiot, idiot. What kind of adult is uninsured? It\’s Adulting 101.

Laura put her head for a moment, for a single raw moment, on the steering wheel and allowed herself to feel completely overwhelmed. Just for a heartbeat. But in that heartbeat somebody knocked on her passenger-side window.

It was a guy, maybe early 30s with a roll of duct tape. Behind him, she could see his freckled-shoulders girlfriend with matching boardies and a singlet standing next to what must be their 4WD. It was the \’door\’s fucked\’ guy. She opened the door and got out.

\”Let\’s get you fixed up,\” he told her. He managed to be laconic somehow, although she didn\’t see how it was possible in that situation. \”Get you home at least\”.

He and his devastatingly-efficient other half proceeded to work wonders with rope and tape until the door was closed and wouldn\’t open at least while she was driving home. Lolly was so grateful she almost cried.

\”Can\’t believe that bastard just left you here like that,\” he capped it off, but the whole time not entirely looking at her as though he was fixing a car belonging to nobody – or everybody. \”Didn\’t even offer you a lift or call a cab. Fucking asshole,\” he concluded to the air and Laura found it weirdly comforting, as though the act of helping her was something that was just happening and another human being wasn\’t involved at all.

Before she could barely work out how to thank them for their help, they declared \”she\’ll be right\” and headed off into the shopping centre with a dozen shopping bags and a cooler bag. They were going camping she guessed and had treated her extreme crisis as if it was at the same level as doing their groceries.

As she drove off, Laura was in a small bizarre bubble of happiness as though her trashed car paled beside the small routine act of human kindness. It was a glistening, pink bubble of groundless euphoria that lasted as long as the drive to her afternoon shift. Where she got fired.

I really believed you, Laura wanted to say as she stared unblinking at her boss. I really believed we were family.

That\’s what they\’d always said to her, after all. \”We\’re a family business,\” Rick had said so often. \”Our workers are family.\”

Implied. You\’re family.

Family didn\’t fire you with no notice just as you were about to start your shift.

She didn\’t deal well with confrontation, at least with those she knew. So she left in a haze, drove off in the car she shouldn\’t be driving and hesitated for an hour two, assertively procrastinating while the voice in the back of her mind told her she needed to at least ask them. In the end, while she lay on her bed staring at the monochromatic ceiling in the monochromatic cupboard of a unit she desperately wanted to leave, she found herself texting the wiry middle-aged former mechanic who owned the service station that had been her favourite part-time job.

\”I\’m sorry,\” he replied quickly, too quickly, as though his reply was there waiting for her inevitable message for him to press \’send\’. \”Because of Jobkeeper, it makes sense for us to keep our full-time staff and get rid of our casuals,\” he explained bluntly. \”It\’s not personal. I\’ll give you a reference. Just typing it now.\”

A reference. For her to apply to do what? Work as an Uber driver in a car with a duct taped door that she couldn\’t legally drive.

And there it was, thrumming even louder on the back of her skull. Driving her crazy with his incessant drum beat.

Money. Money. Money.

Money.

\”A Margarita, a lychee martini and a Pisco Sour, please,\” the overdressed office worker asked her, with only a slight slur in her lightly accented voice.

When Phil had asked her to take some shifts, she had assumed he was opening the moshpit cesspool that was his downtown venue. She was pleasantly surprised when she found herself at Thursday\’s by the river.

Thursday\’s was an open plan bar with a large deck overlooking the water. The huge glass doors swung open to let the inside merge with the outside and to let the cool spring air swirl through the room. With the Covid restrictions in force, patrons were scattered at tables drinking cocktails and champagne; the (currently) polite 9 to 5 crowd of power suits and designer boots.

The bankers, lawyers, engineers and accountants were going to end up as obnoxious as anyone else after dark – maybe even more so – but for now they were content to sit in distanced tables watching the the sun set in a blaze of reds and yellow over the bridge.

Laura tried to avoid fiddling with the mask on her face as she poured drink after drink and handed out increasing amounts of water. It was hot for this time of year and everyone was taking advantage of the generous drink specials that Phil had used to lure them back into the club.

“They’re getting drunk fast,” Jennifer noted, her pure blonde hair gleaming with copper light as the sun finally set and the main band for the evening started their set. 

Phil had contracted a series of live bands for their grand reopening as a way of providing music without encouraging people to dance. The first band had been strumming out classic pub tunes, 80s rock and Powderfinger songs since mid-afternoon. It seemed to be going down well, even though few people in the club were born when most of the songs were written. 

Laura nodded, not entirely sure whether she and her best friend, Jennifer – possibly former? – were back to their status quo after the share house incident that had caused her parents to pull her out and put her in student accommodation. She’d spent the lockdown doing remote lectures in a room so small she could almost reach out and touch every wall and she still hadn’t decided how much of that she blamed on Jennifer.

Still, she owed this job to her. As well as a lot of other things since they met on the first day of Year 8. One incident, however terrible, shouldn’t ruin a friendship like that. Should it?

“Move it!” Kelly yelled from the other drink station, “They’ll be finishing their set soon.\”

Kelly was the quintessential blowsy blonde Aussie chick with a thick tan and a boundless confidence; the ability to don a bikini in public despite the muffin top hanging over it and no fear of drinking 20 pots in some suburban beer garden with a group of men. She was the kind of girl from her high school years that Laura both feared and envied and the exact opposite of the studious and serious Jennifer who had gravitated to the Asian students more than the white girls from day one.

“Sorry, I’m on it,” Laura apologised and focussed back on the growing crowd. She was sure it was starting to get too crowded in here. As the sun set, people began to move inside and mill around. There were restrictions on numbers and it was beginning to look too crowded. At least to her. 

“Gosh it’s so busy,” Kelly said as she joined them at the bar to help clear the crowd, \”Don’t these people know it’s a pandemic? I only took this shift because I thought it’d be quiet. And I need a new carby.”

“A what?” Laura asked, hating it when the slang of her own country flew over her head. It made her feel othered, like she was back in high school and relegated to the Asian group. She hated that feeling. There were few things about high school she remembered with fondness because of it. And not just because her feelings about her friendship with Jennifer were complicated these days.

“A carburettor. For my bike,” Kelly explained. Kelly rode motorbikes. Of course she did.

“Merciful Lord,” said Jennifer suddenly from the next station, “That is the best looking man I have ever seen.”

Laura grinned at her friend’s outburst, all ambiguity gone in the common interest of a hot member of the male species. She swung her eyes over to where two men were standing near the back of the room. They were both impeccably dressed of course, clearly of the professional city crowd and even slightly above it. Both seemed to be in expensive designer labels. One was wearing a large number of rings on his hand, while the other sported a designer earring.

Both were of Asian descent, which made Laura’s inner eye roll. She was never sure if Jennifer’s predilection was something she should have a problem with but it seemed to be based on nothing but a genuine attraction. And possibly an adolescence of too much Kpop. Jennifer fricking loved Kpop.

They were both tall for Asian men; their lean legs and well-sculpted chests filling out their tailored shirts nicely. And as for their faces… their faces…

“Fuck!” Laura said out loud and instantly had the immense shame that came with swearing. Her parents hated swearing. If they’d been here they’d throw her looks of intense disappointment. But the word escaped her before she knew what was happening.

“You alright, hon?” Kelly asked, her concern genuine. Jennifer simply looked taken aback. She knew how rare it was for Laura to swear anywhere outside of her head.

“It’s him!” she said, “Him!”

Him.

Here.

Why here? Why here now?

She realised they had no idea who ‘he’ was. She wasn’t close enough to either right now to tell them and the mask hid most of the blotchy yellow damage from the weekend before.

“Last weekend, he… oh dear God, here they come.”

And they did, the two men sauntering up to the bar like large cats after their prey. Like a cheetah.

“Here they come!” yelled Kelly, cheerfully and Laura glared at her. She had no idea what had happened but she was still ready to microwave virtual popcorn and watch the show. Then Kelly winked at her and gave her shoulder a sympathetic hand and Laura felt bad tempered and mean spirited. Maybe the Kelly’s of this world had the right idea. The cheery enthusiasm. The unstoppable ability to do.

As he approached the bar and she realised he hadn’t seen her, she got her first chance to really look at him. 

The dark brown hair fell softly at a perfect angle down his forehead, highlighting those chocolate-brown eyes. His eyes were large and only gently slanted, presently crinkled to an amusement that danced ironically around his lips. His hair was slightly too long and slightly wavy and he had a smattering of growth on his chin and upper lip. Not like he’d forgotten to shave but had simply been too busy in the boardroom.

The boardroom? The boardroom! She’d been watching too many of her mother’s Taiwanese dramas. But oh God, that’s what he looked like. He looked like a male lead. He looked like Aaron Yan’s straight older brother. His much taller straight older brother. Why was she fixating on him being straight?

He’s an asshole, she reminded herself. No, a jerk. A non-sweary jerk. A Jerky McJerkFace. She replayed for herself his lack of concern over her bleeding when she bumped into him. He was instead furious at the stain on his shirt. She wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to charge her for his dry cleaning because of it.

“Two pints,” his friend said as he got to the bar and both Jennifer and Kelly shook their heads at him to signify they were busy. Yeah, thanks friends.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re like the moon in a clear night sky.”

Laura kept her head down and began pulling the beers. She was many things but beautiful was not one of them and besides, “The moon’s a waning crescent tonight. Are you saying I’m dim and barely visible?”

Gosh, why on Earth did she say that? She was trying to avoid their attention. Wasn’t she?

She snuck a glance at Aaron Yan’s older very straight brother and he was thankfully surveying the room with a slightly bored look on his face. His jerk face. 

“I’m saying you’re full of potential and will still shine even as you wax and wane.”

Wow, this guy could flirt. Seriously flirt. The most she usually got from the average Australian male was Can I buy you a beer? or I think you’re hot, let’s hook up.  This was some next level flirting. It wasn\’t even the words themselves, as impressive as they were, but the gentle self-mocking tone as though he may not be entirely serious and was therefore absolutely no threat.

Laura wasn’t used to it and reddened slightly despite herself. Nonetheless, she studiously ignored him and the dawning fact that he was also extremely good looking in a fine-boned, metrosexual way. The kind of man who could pull off the guyliner he was wearing around his almost-black eyes and the long hair pulled back to reveal his emerald-cut cheekbones. 

She put the two pints on the bar and looked up to ask for the money, thinking she’d managed to get through the encounter unscathed when…

“It’s you.”

There it was. 

She looked up despite herself, her eyes betraying her recognition before she could pretend she didn’t know him. 

His tone was flat but his face was ice and stone. For some reason she was reminded of the strange woman in the store from Monday night. This was the same look. He was beneath her. 

“That’ll be $12,” she told them, trying to stay calm.

“Do you two know each other?” the jerk’s friend asked him, looking between them with an interested glance. 

“You know you ruined my shirt,” he asked her rhetorically. Superciliously, even. She wasn\’t sure how he managed to sound both bored and arrogant at the same time but he had pulled it off. 

“It was Gucci. You should have seen my dry cleaning bill.”

Wow, he really had brought up the dry cleaning bill. She couldn\’t believe it. 

She took a deep breath and managed to calmly say, “I’m sorry I accidentally bumped into you while I was running for help while covered in blood. Do you want me to pay your dry cleaning bill?”

Personally she didn’t think she should have to pay his dry cleaning bill but it had occurred to her she probably would have made the offer to somebody who wasn’t him.

He looked pointedly bored, suddenly, as if talking to someone like her was too much effort. He shot a look up and down her cheap Target jeans and t-shirt. “Just forget it,” he said dismissively, “I doubt you could afford it.”

“To be clear, we’re talking about the dry cleaning bill. Not the shirt itself. I think I can afford a dry cleaning bill.”

“It’s fine,” he said, waving his hand in a display of what he appeared to think was magnanimity, “I can just buy another shirt.”

“Hey!” It was Kelly, who she realised had been quietly shuffling her way over, leaving her queue of thirsty patrons stranded, “Don’t you talk to her like that.”

“Yeah,” Jennifer said, belatedly realising that standing up for Laura was supposed to be her job. Jennifer seemed to always be late in this particular regard.

Laura was as tired of this conversation as the customers building up behind him were.

“Look, I’m happy to pay the bill. Hand it over. Or do you want to drop it by the service station? I can pick it up on Sunday morning.”

“And I’m telling you, it’s okay. Someone who works in a place like this needs to save every cent.”

“What’s wrong with where I work? It’s a job. Those are hard to come by these days. I consider myself lucky.”

He rolled his eyes, “Minimum wage, plus what? Time and a half? And you’re what? 24? 25? Maybe if you’d worked harder you wouldn’t be stuck in unskilled work when everyone else our age is buying their first home.”

Buying their first home. In what universe… Of all days… It was just too much, she thought. Too much.

“You know what,” she snapped, her adrenaline overwhelming her common sense, “I happen to be proud of the fact I have a job. I happen to think every job is equal. And yes I could use more money but that\’s hardly a reflection of how hard I work. And not only can I afford your dry cleaning bill, I can afford to do this.”

And she picked up the two pints she’d just poured for them and dumped them both over his head. The beer sloshed in a frothy wave down his perfect hair and his perfect face, all the way down to his patent leather shoes. And he stood there agape at her audacity as it dripped off his eyelashes and pooled in his socks. 

“And when you get the dry cleaning bill for this outfit,\” Laura finished, \”make sure to send that to me as well,”. She then gestured to the two woman standing behind him.

“Next!”

Laura didn\’t have to get up early the next morning so of course she found herself wide awake and staring at the ceiling.

As the light drifted through her blinds and began to spread like molten gold through her tiny student apartment she turned to look at one wall to her left, the desk and chair barely three steps away and then to her right the tiny kitchenette. The space was so small and cost her nearly $400 a week. 

It was a rort designed to gouge Chinese students, the irony of which was not lost on her.

Money. Money. Money.

It was all she thought about these days. 

Money.

She’d dragged herself home from her late shift and fallen gratefully into bed, awaiting the blissful sleep she needed. Instead her brain that had been screaming for rest started to whir and jerk and grind in her frustrated skull. Money.

She tried to think about the border being open, going to see her parents in Darwin after being away for so long, money.

Tried to think about the semester nearly being over, going gratefully into her final year of study, money.

Thought about wanting desperately, viscerally, to drive up the coast and stay at the beach for a few days; swim and surf and drink a few cocktails with her friend who had moved up there to be an accountant, money. 

Money. Money. Money.

All she thought about was money. It consumed her every waking thought. Her rent. Her food. Electricity. Internet. Tuition. The car. Her parents’ ballooning debt.

Money. Money. Money.

She couldn’t handle it anymore and threw off her thin sheet, squeezed herself into her old speedos and drove to the University pool. Parking, she glanced at the petrol light on her dashboard and grimaced. She needed petrol. She’d sent her parents all her savings. Did she even have petrol money? She would need it to get back home. 

The pool was large and strangely empty, the smell of chlorine and the feel of the goggles on her face oddly comforting in their familiarity. She dived in cleanly and swam, and swam, and swam. Trying to clear her head of that incessant pounding voice.

Money. You need money. You’re drowning.

You\’re drowning!

She pulled up short in the middle of the lane and took a deep, sharp breath of humid air. Then she rolled onto her back – something she wouldn’t be able to do if the pool was busier – and just lay floating for a moment, feeling the tension of the water support her.

The problem wasn’t her, she thought, finally organising her panicked thoughts into some semblance of order. Yes her grades were suffering because she was working too much but she wasn’t failing. Her parents would be disappointed but she could add MDataSc to her CV whether she got a 5 or a 7. Even in the pandemic, data science was a burgeoning field. 

She could get special dispensation to defer her fees. Extend her study for another year by going part-time. Find a permanent part-time job. She could make it work. 

But this wasn’t about her. She was just one part of a vast tapestry involving a lot more people than herself. Her Uncle had cleaned out her parents right before Covid hit. The business was struggling. They’d have gotten through with their savings but those savings were gone. The bank was being unreasonable. They’d secured their business loan with the house.

Would they lose their house? Would her parents, her own parents, her 60-year-old parents be homeless? Homeless and unemployed in the shrinking Darwin economy during a pandemic? 

With a sudden swirl of movement, Laura flipped back onto her stomach and began stroking furiously down the pool. She needed her brain to just turn off for a moment, just for a minute. But it ticked on incessantly regardless of her and still failed to come up with a solution.

“Whatever you do,” Mei had told her when her parents decided to move home to Darwin after 30 years in Brisbane, “don’t get talked into going home or marrying some imported trust fund kid. Because that grandmother of yours will try it on at some point. She’s just waiting to make her move. That branch of the Chens was always obsessed with staying Chinese, whatever that is supposed to be.” And Mei had given her red hair an assertive flick that spoke volumes about her position on the matter.

Laura reached the end of the pool and hoisted herself up with one smooth movement onto her feet. She picked her way over to her towel and took a moment to get her breath back. In the bag by her left hand, she felt a vibration and fished out her phone. She’d put it on silent the night before and forgotten and now she had 8 missed calls and as many texts.

“Lolly, it’s Phil,” the latest message said. Another man who called her Lolly. When she’d first gone to work for him he’d laughed at her name and said he had an Aunt Laura who everyone called Lolly. She’d made the mistake of admitting that had been a nickname when she was a kid and here she was. Permanently Lolly.

“We’re finally reopening,” Phil said and Laura let out a whoosh of relieved air, “Get back to me. I can give you some shifts this week, Thursday to Saturday. If you want them. People are dying to get back to the club scene. God, that\’s a bad choice of words. Anyway, we have restricted numbers and no one can dance but they can drink and it should be busy.”

Laura hated bar work, hated nightclubs. Hated the hot crush of people, the dark small sticky room of drunken strangers, the endless thump thump thump of the unchanging music. But Phil paid well and didn’t tolerate any nonsense. Three shifts this week would make a big difference. At least to this week.

She moved quickly through the other messages – two from her mother, one from her store manager complaining about her studying during her shift and one from the University. And then she noticed a text from Cynthia yesterday that she’d missed in the excitement of staring vacantly at an empty 7-Eleven for three hours.

It was about a job. That was a little weird. She knew about Cynthia of course and had even met her a few times. But her branch of the family tried to pretend the Macdonalds didn’t exist for some reason. Nobody would tell her why. That usually meant a scandal the likes of which had rarely been seen. 

She often suspected the existence of the MacDonalds was the reason behind her Chen grandmother’s obsession with them ‘going native’, especially if there really was a MacDonald somewhere in the family tree. As there must have been.

Thanks, Cynthia. I’d be interested in hearing about it she texted back and left it at that. If Cynthia was genuine she’d come back to her. And you never know, this may even be something that could help with her current predicament. 

And with that thought, the brain lurched back into his new obsession.

Money, it whispered.

Money. Money. Money. 

She grabbed her things and headed to the showers hoping she had enough petrol money to get home.

Money.

A woman came into the 7-Eleven and Laura slid her study notes surreptitiously under the till. If there were no customers, she should be cleaning. At least according to her boss, “There is never nothing to do, Chen!” she heard his aggressive voice booming in her head. But if Laura didn’t study during her evening shift then she’d never get the work done.

She was simply doing too much casual work for someone trying to do a Masters in Data Science. What she needed was a stable part-time job, not this hodgepodge of underpaid causal shifts. But permanent jobs were rare beasts before Covid and now they were drying up like grasslands during the summer.

It was Monday so the 7-Eleven was achingly empty; its crowded narrow shelves of junk food, travel supplies, coffee drinks and a neglected slushie machine reminding Laura of a post-apocalyptic film. The shop was antiseptic in the harsh fluorescent light and felt hermetic after dark, sealed off from the rest of the world. It was as though time didn’t exist here. It was no wonder she preferred the console job. Most of the time anyway. 

She winced as the dull thudding headache she’d been trying to ignore twisted its way back into the front of her thoughts. The pain – dull and unrelenting – radiated out from her black and yellow nose and swollen eyes. Not broken, thankfully. Just dented like her pride and self-respect. 

Good God, that man had been beautiful. Luminescent. Her childhood of surf lifesaving and swimming had programmed her to find a certain type of man attractive. Blonde. Tan. Blue Eyes. Tall. But for the first time she’d looked into deep brown almond eyes and felt like she was swimming in chocolate. 

Yes he was gorgeous. And a total asshole. (Mentally her mother shook her head at her swearing). He was a male creature that would be an asshole if she used that sort of language. She shook herself as she remembered the contemptuous and supercilious look he\’d cast her as he tried to wipe blood and dirt off his expensive business shirt. He\’d shown no concern for her whatsoever. So gorgeous or not, she needed to stop thinking about him.

The woman looked tired and even a bit disorientated; her grimy eyes blinking in the harsh light. She had the glazed look of someone who’d been travelling, someone who’d stumbled out of the hotel next door in search of food and found nowhere else open. She stared with little enthusiasm at the pre-packaged food for a good five minutes before turning around and walking out.

Hunger it seemed was preferable to convenience store sushi and day old sandwiches.

Laura wished she too could walk next door and go straight to bed, to sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just gone to sleep because she was tired. 

She momentarily wondered where on Earth this woman could have come from or been going to. She supposed people could travel again now that Covid was under control. If they had somewhere to travel to. And money to do it. What a thought.

Even if she had time she didn’t have money. Or if she had money she wouldn’t have time. Her cousin, the extraordinary bright blaze of colour that was Mei Chen, had complained she either had time or money but never both. Mei was a lecturer in Chinese literature. Laura Chen quietly wondered how Mei would feel to have neither time nor money. To work endlessly but never get anywhere. To be stuck here at the bottom on minimum wage. (Or below it if the current class action against 7-Eleven was anything to go by). 

Her phone rang. It was her father. She smiled thinking how rare it was for him to pick up the phone and call her. Usually he was happy to sit on the line while her mother talked at her; adding in a soft comment or aside every now and then. Sitting silently and calmly beside his wife in zoom calls, waving every now and then but saying little. 

“Ba,” she said happily as she took the call. 

“Hello my possum,” he said in his soft voice, “Are you at work?”

“Always,” she said, trying to keep the tiredness out of her voice. “What are you doing?”

“I was gardening,” he told her as though gardening was not the only hobby he’d ever had. If he wasn’t gardening, he was walking. Lately the time he spent walking had gotten longer and longer until her mother worried he was never going to make his way back. He’d retired to start the cleaning business but now everyone was working from home, cleaning their own homes. And the large buildings had cut their cleaning contracts by half as they herded their few in-office employees into the same area and mothballed entire floors. Worse even than that, a crop of predatory cleaning firms had flooded the market undercutting existing operators and taking advantage of the new cohort of desperate unemployed.

So he walked. And walked. And walked some more.

“Did you eat?” 

“Yes, Dad, I ate,” she told him with a smile. It was a lie. Her appetite had gone with her swelling face and burgeoning headache. All she’d had to eat all day was soy milk sipped through a straw and a coffee drink that hadn\’t settled properly.

“Call your mother,” her father finished, “Goodbye, possum.”

She put down the phone with an affectionate smile and looked up to find she was no longer alone. There was another woman in the store. A woman who shouldn’t be there. She was her mother’s age or maybe a little older. Mid-50s perhaps and dressed head to toe in expensive, exquisitely-cut, designer-label clothing. Laura didn’t have much time for fashion but her mother and grandmother were obsessed with Chinese and Taiwanese dramas and over the years she’d developed an uncharacteristic eye for it.

The outfit was finished with tasteful – probably real – pearls and tasteful – probably real – diamond rings. She was maybe south-east Asian. Her hair was cut and styled with perfection. Her makeup was flawless. And she was standing in the aisle of the tiny store looking intently at the travel toothpaste and deodorant. A blinding contradiction.

As Laura looked over, the woman glanced her way and their eyes met. And Laura had the strangest feeling she was being appraised. She was suddenly deeply aware of her black and blue face and cheap work uniform. But though every instinct in her screamed at her to look away, she didn’t. She wasn’t going to be made to feel worthless by this strange woman who, despite her obvious wealth, had decided to walk through her front door.

Everything about Laura from her cheap generic clothes, comfortable shoes, and battle wounds were the result of work. Hard work. And that was something she refused to feel ashamed about. 

Laura was almost certain she saw a small smile form at the edges of the woman’s lips but then it was gone so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it. The woman’s face froze into haughty stone and she dropped the toothpaste as though it was something disgusting and she swept out of her store.

Laura shivered despite herself and hoped she’d never see her like again. 

And on her phone near her hand down beside the till, a text popped up from her distant relative Cynthia MacDonald.

Call me! I might have a job for you.