THE BALCONY

I WAS WALKING down the street and the sky seemed lower than normal. It wasn’t cloudy, the blue just seemed closer to me. I’d known this feeling before and I always got it when I felt vulnerable, lonely, and in a city I had no idea about. I’d always wished I comfortable in my own skin but it’s never been the case.

I was heading to this scaffolding depot for an interview about a job. I’d heard about it through word of mouth and really, I don’t know why I was going. I guess I just didn’t understand what jobs were or what people could do. Jobs in cafés or restaurants, going to university, working in an office; I had never even considered how somebody would go about getting their life onto a track like that – I just expecting the only thing I could do was work hard for somebody, for some reason.

The guy hired me and I started the next day. I didn’t even know what they did, really. I didn’t know what the hell scaffolding was. I was put with two guys in a truck and as they pulled out of the depot one looked at me, Mike, and says “I needa put my sunglasses on whenna look at your legs mate” then he gave me this cheeky grin, took a huge gulp of Monster energy drink, lit a cigarette that wasn’t tobacco and slumped back in his seat “let’s go Davo” he said, and he threw a refedex in my lap.

In those times we had to consult road maps to get to where we were going. Mobile phones were few and far between. Each truck had one assigned to it and nobody owned one personally. I figured out that the new guy always gets the refedex on his first day and if he can’t read it and direct the driver to the next job, taking into consideration traffic, accidents and all other foreign matters then he wasn’t worth shit. It’s safe to say nobody who worked there considered anybody else to be worth shit.

After the first day I caught a train home and walked the rest of the way. The day was twelve hours of work with an hour and a half travel each way; a total of fifteen hours. The money wasn’t particularly good either upon reflection but I didn’t understand what the going rates were back then.

When I arrived at the share house I was living in there were empty beer cans in the front yard, front porch, living room, kitchen, and wherever else. My shoulder felt broken from carrying hot steel on it all day. I wasn’t physically up to the effort yet and the boys tried to break me like I learned they tried to do with every new guy. I was insistent I’d turn up the next day though. I cracked a beer myself from the fridge and Shane came out around the corner.

“whatchoo doin’ man” he said

“Fucked man, job sucks”

“True” he’d say, he said that to most things

He lit a cigarette and wasn’t wearing a shirt. It was too hot for that. There was a broken AQUA CD on the floor, rotting ice cream in the sink and a piles of dishes everywhere.

“We should get outta this shithole man” Shane said

“Ok” I replied

“Yeah man, let’s just fuck off”

“Easy for you to say, you’re not on the lease”

Shane didn’t respond

“Where do you suppose we go?” I asked

“I dunno man, anywhere. We fix up that you pranged that’s sitting out front and just drive it somewhere; what else we gotta lose?”

The funny thing was, I DID feel like I had something to lose, and it was the job I’d just gotten. A weekly paycheck. I needed it to pay rent and utilities for both of us in a place neither of us even wanted to live in.

There was a knock at the door and Sandra walked in “eyyyyy, what’s up guys?”

“Nuthin’”

“Nuthin’”

“Well, let’s drink this bottle of Johnny Walked in dacked from the bottle store.”

“WHY NOT INEED!” Shane said excitedly he jumped up and started rinsing out some glasses.

“How was the first day? Sandra asked me

I shrugged “I get paid Friday”

“How much?”

“Dunno yet, maybe six hundred”

“sweet!”

Sandra had left home early like the rest of us but we’d all only met each other as acquaintances at bars in town. It seemed really that we were all still acquaintances; it always felt that way.

“I met this guy today” Sandra began “he has knuckle tattoos, I LOVE knuckle tattoos”

“Is that so”

“HERE WE GO!” Shane said as he pulled up a plastic seat and handed us pint glasses he’d pinched from the pub up the road “to new beginnings!” he said as reached his glass to the sky, skulled the whole thing and poured another.

“Sandra’s met a new guy; tattoos on his knuckles” I said to Shane

“Whadda they say?”

“HOLD FAST” Sandra replied politely with a smirk

“Nice” said Shane

The night went on and I woke up at three o’clock in the morning with an anxiety attack and couldn’t sleep until 4:30. The time to get up was five so a five I woke up again in pain, red eyes, stomach ache. I didn’t bother showering or changing clothes I just put shoes on and walked to the train.

Mike was first at the depot, I realised after a while he always was. There was talk of some jet skis getting around. Apparently Mike had come into twelve jet skis somehow and was flogging them off cheap. A guy crawled out of a bush and started stretching his back

“Aye Johnno, yaw anna jet ski?” said Mike to the man just out of the bushes

“Fuck off” he replied

Mike laughed and winked at me, he was always winking. He told me Johnno had never been the same after the house fire but didn’t go into it any more than that. I heard whispers over time but it seemed nobody knew the whole story. He had severe burned over his hand and up his arms.

Mick and I were in the truck again with Davo, the driver. Mick sparked up his joint.

“Good to see you here agin today” he said to me

“Yeah”

“We won’t go as hard on ya today, takes about three days to adjust, two weeks to fully get into the swing of things. Most people fuck off after the first day but if they turn up a second day maybe we get six months outta ‘em or they never leave”

“ok” I replied

The refedex was back in my lap and I was directing us. Mike was asleep. Davo kept the station on classic rock.

We arrived at this huge house where they were building this massive extension to their house. We scaffolded it in the heat and when the job was done a lady who lived there looked at us and grimaced. She looked the other way and walked off into another room.

Years later I made it into university. I’d found some way to get mature age entry. I started working at a law firm in my first year after a guy befriended me there. His father owned the firm, that’s the only reason I got the job. Anyways, one afternoon this guy says to me “hey, come for a drive, I gotta pick up some stuff from my mate’s house and I can drop ya home”. I was worried about him dropping me home because I didn’t want him to discover my tattered clothes weren’t an act like a lot of the people at uni put on. I felt genuine in that regard.

Anyways, when we got to the house it was that very same house I’d scaffolded with Mike and Davo all those years before. The same lady came out and offered us drinks and shook my hand and wanted to know all about the new guy working at the law firm. She didn’t recognize me from all those years before.