Free Living As a Moon by Owen Marshall Page B

was unchanging, yet passing in futility day by day. It would move through me like a liquid shiver and leave just dull despondency.
    ‘The thing is, you got to make things happen sometimes. Strike out on your own in some way. Badminton’s no bloody living,’ said Ramon. ‘No good just waiting for Godot.’ He was testing the last of the cheese round in his fingers, and the sunlight brought out the ginger in his hair, although he didn’t have a single freckle. There was cloud drift over the hills, and the traffic noise rose like the sound of a great river in a canyon. Gusts of car fumes and the persistent fragrance of the ethnic food malls overlay the smell of the tar sealant on the roof. Sensory perception was most acute, yet the sum total of it had no connection with my life.
    ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ I said. I could do that for myself.
    ‘You need to get your arse into gear,’ he said.
    Ramon was a friend outside work as well. On a Friday or Saturday night we often drank at his place until midnight or so, and then went into the city. It made a cheaper night of it. But weekday nights he did advanced courses in business management and bookkeeping, or accounting — I’m never sure if there’s difference. And he didn’t play any sport at all. He said it was non-productive, a debit not a credit, unless you were able to do it professionally. Apart from women’s beach volleyball he never even watched it on television. I played a lot of badminton myself. I was a top club player and that was as far as it went. It helped me forget what I did weekdays on level four: the physical focus of it and the team mates who cared nothing about the supply chain for office equipment. Sometimes when I was on song there were moments of euphoria, moments when the shuttle seemed to hang above like a light bulb, and the high leap to connect with it was effortless. Exquisite relief to put all into an overhead smash, and with the next shot delicately finesse the shuttle a whisker from the net. While Ramon beavered at evening classes during the week, I played badminton, or watched asthmatic, psychopathic serial killers hunted down on television. At weekends we went together into the city in search of one-night stands, though hangovers were the more regular outcome. What could I offer a woman that wasn’t over with the orgasm? It was life in a holding pattern, but whereas Ramon created prospects for better things, I had no real hope of deliverance.
    It’s odd, isn’t it, that often nothing changes for a long time, and then several things happen at once, almost as if pressure has been building without awareness of it. It was a clear, blue Thursday, almost time to finish on level four, and Becky and I were at the big window above the alley. Two guys in black jeans were going through to the car park and started kicking the Labrador that was in their way at the bottom of the steps. ‘Look at the bastards,’ said Becky. Some of the street people came out of the doorway, including Puli, Jimmy, Sex Slut, the bald head with a name like Saucer, and an older, heavy woman with fingerless gloves, who was only there occasionally. They shrieked and capered like a baboon band, and the two guys shouted in reply and pushed their heads forward to show they weren’t backing down. Matthew, Ramon and Felicity came over to the window to watch. Mr Cusip stayed in his office. It was like being high up in a theatre, seeing something nasty from life being played out below, but safe from the threat of it.
    ‘Listen to the silly fuckers,’ said Matthew. He seemed indignant that the alley people were capable of outrage.
    ‘We should ring someone,’ said Becky, but we stayed there at the window as safe spectators.
    It’s the only group fight I’ve ever seen, and not at all like those sequences in the movies. It was all pushing, falling, heaving, breaking apart and closing again: all clumsiness and malicious opportunity. I can’t remember one clean hit,