"Exotic Illnesses" - third chapter (part 2 of 2)

[Continued from previous entry due to character limit]

“I just said you and I had been hanging out, ‘cause I knew he came from your school and would know you.”

“Okay. I do have friends, though.”

“Okay.”

“My best friend, Rosemary – we’re just in a fight right now.”

Luke nodded and looked at me. I felt his eye contact in my body, like a stabbing. “It’s okay, Thom. I don’t care.”

Luke and I rode our bikes to Main Street, the only road in Rosella with shops or offices along it.

We got hot chips and gravy from Hope, the surly woman who operated Café on Main, which was not a real café and was barely on Main. Hope had sagging skin under her arms that she tried to hide with a flowing dress like a tablecloth. The dress had sweat patches on the side and under her breasts.

“You kids gonna pay for that?” Hope asked us, glaring with suspicious eyes.

Luke glared back at Hope. He handed her a ten-dollar note as a response.  

Luke and I sat on the curb side, our feet in the gutter, and shared the chips.

“Why wouldn’t I pay for it?” asked Luke, still baffled by the interaction with Hope.

“Oh. There’s heaps of kids that do shit to her, like, get her to make the chips and then when she put them down, they’ll distract her and run off without paying.”

“Really?”

 “She hates kids now,” I said, nodding. “Her name’s Hope.”

“Hope,” Luke parroted meaninglessly.

We ended up back at Luke’s house watching The Meaning of Life. The fan sites were right; it was the weakest Python film.

Midway through, Luke complained of being sweaty from our bike ride and stood up. He took his jersey off and changed into a sleeveless singlet. Even the singlet was branded. I watched him through a sideways glance. I wanted to take a photo with my brain or paint a portrait of him in that state of half-undress. Luke sat back down next to me, and I noticed he was a tiny bit closer to me than before. I wondered if it were on purpose.

When the movie finished, Luke turned to me. “I know, it’s not as good as the other movies they did.” He said this as if he were apologising for it.

I shrugged. “I thought it was really good."