Hoping That Cormorants Migrate

Never before had I la’la’la’ed so frequently by the side of the road, the other days always the same and the bedrooms always the same and the beach the same. The cars are parked under the verandah but they are always in the same place and we don’t really have the keys. There’s a flower overhanging, purple jacaranda and I’m scared that soon I’ll be sitting and watching it turn brown and fall. The petals will slide down onto the windscreen and no wiper will push them aside, maybe not forever. Sometimes I sit and hold my phone like a tiny oblong television and watch as the digital minutes jump by and nobody rings to tell me to get in the car. Sometimes I wonder if my phone has a number, maybe it only rings after an octagram chant and a lit sparkler in a skeleton’s hand, a ritual I forgot to note in the email.

There’s a house somewhere that I’ve lived in before, but not in this country. It has hardwood floors and a fridge where nothing’s vegetarian. The freezer’s got coffee grains all through it but I can take the foil packets out if I want. It’s only around during the night and when I wake up. Other times it doesn’t exist, like trying to see from a point five inches above your hair. Nothing there. I can slip out and slip back in holding a plastic bag full of whatever and a ticket to somewhere else in my back pocket.

Here the walls are like a jail only I can see them from the outside too, even when I’m lying in the sand far away the walls are still waiting for me. The gum trees and banksias and other scrubs tangle up around me. Every window has at least a hundred sunlit leaves scraping at it and trying to get in. Sometimes when I’m quiet and I look out of the corner of my eye the wind has stopped and they hardly try at all.

I hope the sparkler ritual will start soon and my little oblong television will tell me to get in my car as I hold it and watch it and smile at it. Then the walls will fold down and the world of leaves will receede a bit and maybe that cormorant I see every day will leave for some magnificently filmed and well-narrated journey. Pasta will no longer be pasta it will be that pasta we had that time. The beach will be just as sparkling but my camera’s batteries will no longer be low and I’m sure I’ll walk that grassy headland to get a new frame of reference.

red onion

I stepped through the supermarket's automatically sliding glass doors with two heavy plastic shopping bags in each of my hands. It was raining outside, but I was pleased; the warm night smelled wonderful. My evening was planned perfectly. I would take a short detour through the carpark to the liquor store, where I'd buy two large bottles of Tiger or Sapporo. Then I would walk home past the empty bus loop and through the train station. When I got home I'd open up the balcony doors to let the warm night come inside, then cook a simple stir-fry with beef and green chillis. I stepped off the curb sure of this.

"Hey, sir," I heard a woman say. I kept walking. "Hey, in the blue, could you do me a favour please?"

There was nobody else outside, and I was wearing a blue t-shirt. I turned around. The woman was standing with her back against the white brick wall of the supermarket. She was soaking wet. Her curled hair was sucking to her pale face. I noticed that her lower lip was cut and swollen on one side. She lowered her head when she realised I was examining her.

"Sure, what do you need?" I asked.

"I need you to," she hesitated, "I mean can you go in and buy something, buy a red onion for me?"

"Sorry, I really can't spare the change," I said. I didn't turn around and leave.

"No, just, here." The woman dug into the pockets of her shorts and pulled out a five dollar note. "Here, just buy it for me. I can't go in there, I can't, I can't."

"Just one red onion?" I asked.

"Yeah. A big one, maybe," she said. "Look, can you hurry up please? Sorry, I mean, I'm in a rush."

I walked back to where she was standing and took the note. She looked up at me quickly, then dropped her head again. She had dark crescents beneath her eyes. I couldn't tell what had caused them.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm fine." she said.

I nodded and walked back to the automatically sliding glass doors, now holding two heavy plastic shopping bags in my left hand, and two heavy plastic shopping bags and a five dollar note in my right hand. I was relieved that I only had to pass the paperbacks and magazines before I got to the fresh produce. When I did get past the paperbacks and magazines, I realised that fresh produce was really quite a large section. Within it I still had to pass the baked goods, the french loaves protruding like weapons from woven baskets; the tomatoes and mushrooms, propped up in green plastic trays and cardboard boxes; then the fruit - the bananas, the apples, the oranges. I then still had to round a corner of nuts, and only on that distant aisle, just this side of the potatoes, were the red onions.

It seemed a long way. I thought that maybe I should turn around, slip the five dollar note into the pages of a bestseller, and leave through the supermarket's other exit. I'd go home and cook my stir fry and drink my beer, and tomorrow some middle-aged woman would find a pleasant surprise in her new novel.

Before I had chance to act on the idea, I realised I was standing in front of the red onions. They were all quite small, and most of the bigger ones had attracted fruit flies, which hopped about on the onions' flaky purple husks. I didn't think too much about it though. I grabbed one and retraced my path through the fresh produce to the checkout, which was right beside the magazines.

I was careful to use the same checkout that I had used earlier. I declared my four bags of already purchased groceries, placing them on the rubber conveyor behind the lone onion. The lady was the same red-haired woman who scanned my shopping and took my money ten minutes earlier.

"How are you, darl?" she asked.

"Just forgot the onion," I said.

The woman weighed the onion and put it in a plastic bag. Twice she looked over her shoulder at the glass doors. I looked over my shoulder at the glass doors, too. You couldn't see the lady waiting outside from there. I gave the cashier the five dollar note and took back the four heavy shopping bags and the one shopping bag with the onion in it.

"Sorry, love, I should have just put the onion in with those," she said.

"It's okay," I said quickly. "I... No worries."

She gave me a lot of change and a receipt, which I crumpled up and put in my pocket.

"Thanks. Have a good one," I said. I left quickly, walking back through the automatic doors and once again into the night. It was cooler than before, and the rain had become a light spray. The woman, still soaking wet, was waiting against the wall. Her hand was on her mouth.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you" she said when she noticed me. I put down two of the plastic bags to give her the one with the onion. She took it without looking inside. "Is the change in there?"

"Oh, shit, sorry." I took the change and the crumpled receipt from my pocket and gave them to the woman. When she took it I noticed that her fingertips were bloody.

"Thank you so much," she said.

"No worries," I said. "Hey, I know I asked before, but... are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. "Don't worry about me."

She walked away through the carpark, and I waited until she was gone. I picked up the two heavy bags of groceries. I stepped off the curb. The rain was spitting at me, and I had no idea what I was going to do.