Repeat After Me

Chapter 8

I plucked up the courage to send him a message the next day. 'Enjoyed last night, let's do it again. Maybe next weekend?' But I didn't hear from him for days.

I charted my mood on an invisible graph, from as high as I'd been to as low as I didn't even know was possible. I was a ninja in black fighting my way through the days, somersaulting under boredom, sword fighting with despair, air kicking this forsaken feeling. I hated him so much for brushing me with tenderness and then ghosting me with indifference.

Yet, when he messaged me on Friday and said, 'So sorry, things have been crazy around here. Let's meet up tonight,' I forgave him immediately.

We met at Flinders Street Station again.

'How long did it take you to walk?' he asked.

'Forty minutes,' I said.

'See anyone?'

'Thirty two cars, I counted, one police car.'

'It's insane isn't it? How long do you think the lockdown is going to last?'

'Who knows.'

'It's funny, but I kinda like it. It's like life was so full on and busy and so much pressure and expectation and then someone hit the pause button. But yeah, awful what's happening in Italy and America and all that. I feel really bloody lucky here. America's got Donald Trump as their president, imagine going through all this with him as your leader.'

I felt ashamed of how much I was avoiding the news. I'd hear mum and dad talking about coronavirus in the kitchen, or I'd walk past the news on the TV and I'd want to put my pointer fingers in my ears and scream shut up. Any time a teacher or a student mentioned the pandemic in an online class my chest would seize and I'd find it hard to breathe. I couldn't stand how this virus had infected the whole world and that everything was proved to be so fragile. I missed my old life, when my family went away every second weekend, and I was free to do whatever I pleased.

'Why don't we go down to the UUS and you can paint something massive?'

'Okay.'

We began walking towards the UUS.

'It's like the whole city has become an Unused Urban Space, don't you reckon?' Asten said.

'Yeah, I guess.'

'They're saying rents are going to plummet. With everyone working from home they're not going to need office spaces anymore. Artists are going to move back in, like it was forty years ago, before inner city living became cool.'

I simply nodded my head.

'So the Abandoned Spaces show, you'll be part of it, won't you?' he asked.

'Sure.'

'Excellent. I've told the boys all about you. It's coming together. We've got about twenty artists lined up to be in the show. It has to go up quick. We don't know when they'll be vacating the factory. But we've heard there's only two weeks from the time they leave until it's knocked down. We're talking about hiring spotlights for the opening. I've been thinking about this work called "Jones's", about everyone trying to be like everyone else, even if you're an outsider. But I don't know if it's relevant anymore. Like what's anyone going to care about post-COVID? What about climate change? Will anyone care?' He was almost jumping as he spoke, the words were springing out of his mouth so quickly. 'Of course, it all depends on when the restrictions are eased too. Don't you think the world had this coming? Like it kind of needed to happen? Like the reset button had to be pressed?'