Free What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? by Alan Duff

over there, in the smoky brown shades you c’n see her (lovely) eyes through, Mulla imagining Jimmy’s sperm running out of her (lovely) twat, hurtin’ at how come a woman wasn’t arranged for him but refusing to think about it, the implications; jus’ keepin’ his distance from Jimmy case he brought up the Apeman incident: you know, of knowing he’d been outsmarted — and when he looked at Loopy’s face answering, it was like a revelation was coming. So Mulla quickly gulped down half a can, first saying, holdit, holdit, tell me in a sec.
    He burped. Wiped his smoothly shaven face, or his mouth, of the beer. Now, gimme a toke firs’. So he an’ Loopy hadda toke together. Mm-uh! As if they weren’t already stoned. Now, he looked at Loopy, his eyes not quite aligned but his mind as sharp as it would ever be, so he truly believed. Who’s that you got on? Hearing his own voice speaking so crystal clear, with the li’l whisper at the end of each word like a back echo, of the smoke reminding it was doin’ good things to a man. But Loopy lifted a finger, waita minute. Went over to the CD player, mus’ be a stolen job, pushed a button, came back, swaying as the music started up on a new number behind him. Volume right up. RIGHT up. Same as everyone’s — but everyone’s — heads came up. So did fingers in instant clicking, and bodies bobbing and swaying, eyes closing. And mouths started to move, to sing. Not loudly. Not yet. Mulla saw Jimmy’s gesture to Sadie who’d taken his years of spunk, not counting the arses he fucked in jail, to turn the volume up even louder. She did so, gave him a slow, sexy smile while she was at it, iner tight, navy-blue leggings hugging and stating her body specially her box bulge to Jimmy in a certain promise he c’d have more of it and her, twat and whatever kinda woman she was with it — if Jimmy was bothered to try and know — lader. (Lader, baby.)
    Out Jimmy came, all bad rhythm thinking it was sumpthin’ else. But it did the trick. Everyone stepped out, which was thecentre of the floor anyway cleared to act as a dance floor or a meeting room or somewhere to kick someone around the room, whatever . They were arms going and eye-closed postures of a kind of released ecstasy that had nothing to do with their two members’ prison release; this was something else altogether. And they took their harmonies like they had rehearsed and rehearsed it, this number, a Negro blasting ask (aks) of Where Do U Want Me To Put It? Hips going, arms like swaying stems of brown leather and brown tattooed arm in an easy breeze, staying with it all the way to the faded las’. ’Bout thirty-five of the total company, the males, having every man’s secret question aksed on CD for him. The females, not all members, mainly associates, not minding in the least bein’ part of the same harmonised question. Fullas like Mulla knew the question was bigger than that, of simple crudity, of basic sexual anatomy. Mulla knew it was in the arms, how they were raised and swaying and flowing in perfect time, it was in the voices, not knowing how far they could go, even in their stoned, drunk state, even as they understood jus’ what this musical expression was about: the question wasn’t what it stated to be — Oh, this’s Solo, bro, Loopy finally answered the question. Groupa bl — ebony fullas name a Solo, bro. Ya like ’em? (Do I like ’em?) Mulla ran a hand down Loopy’s tattooed face, Do I loooove ’em, ya mean. Loving Loopy while he was at it, for the song, for picking it jus’ right, and for love itself. Yet total though the song felt and with it Mulla knowing who the group singing it was — Solo — the question wasn’t answered. Cos it wasn’t aksed.
    The question was about place. These people’s place. That they didn’t have and’d never have. Not even a traditional flow, a musical river full of tragedy and freshwater equivalent of sharks, beaten (nigger) bodies floating down it, of