Free Elsewhere in Success by Iris Lavell Page A

surfboard?
    The note has obviously been left by someone with a great command of the lexicon, some fucked-up adolescent dealer, no doubt, who can afford a sixty-thousand-dollar vehicle through his ill-gotten gains.
    The carpark is emptying out. Harry checks to see if his car has been keyed, but he can’t tell, so he screws the paper up into a ball and tosses it over his shoulder. Obviously he would have known if he’d scratched someone’s car, so either the bloke (he assumes male) has got his car scratched elsewhere and just noticed it, or he enjoys leaving notes around for the perverse pleasure of upsetting decent law-abiding people. Either way Harry wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
    He thinks about how he will talk it over with Louisa when he gets home, and how they will both have a good laugh about it. They’ll speculate about the note-leaver and reduce him to the ridiculous dickhead that he is. She needs a good laugh. She hasn’t been laughing much lately. Harry should take the note to show her. He looks around but it has rolled away somewhere, or been caught by the wind.
    â€˜Never mind,’ he says to himself. ‘Never mind. Leave it.’
    He whistles Buster to the car, turns on the radio, and switches to the jazz program.
    â€˜It’s strange,’ he thinks, ‘that note seems familiar.’
    He’s sure he’s seen something like it before. Déjà vu. He wonders if Louisa has brought one home. He seems to remember her, or someone, claiming that she hadn’t even touched the car next to her, had actually gone out and come back in to leave more room, and had returned to some such note. Maybe it was Yasamine. Could it have been that long ago?
    Then it occurs to Harry that this note could be like a sort of virus being passed on in the community by an organised group, a sort of suburban terrorist cell that has designed it as a way to stuff up a person’s day. This thought makes him angry again. Sure he can take it, but what if it happened to some sweet little old lady or some old guy with a dicky heart? Or some good person who has already been through the mill and is on the brink of giving it all up? This sort of thing could push them over the edge. Or what if he was a good person like a doctor – or no: a carer, or someone like a welfare worker who earns next to nothing for the privilege of trying to make life better for no-hopers like that guy when he falls on hard times? This thought gives him some satisfaction, imagining the guy dirty and unkempt, down and out, asking for a few dollars for a bus fare, getting knocked back, going on to the next person. This train of thought leads nowhere. Harry is feeling more annoyed than he was before. He drives home and catches every red light, thoughts of the guy circling through his head as he waits. Hemisses a green and someone beeps him, causing him to jump.
    â€˜Bastard!’ he thinks. ‘I should have keyed the shit out of his fucking car. I bloody should have.’
    Louisa gets home at a quarter past three, reads Harry’s note, and is exasperated by his dinner directive – more than the situation warrants. It’s been one of those days. She’s felt strange since she woke in the morning. She forced herself into the routine of getting dressed, going to work, struggled through the day, and now she’s arrived home to this. The more she thinks about it, the more it stresses her. Her heart is beating uncomfortably and she has broken out in a sweat. She needs some sort of release.
    â€˜What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you!’ she shouts at the empty room, at Harry, at herself. It doesn’t help. She desperately searches for a skerrick of advice from Lucy that might help. Deep breaths, deep breaths, she tells herself. She breathes slowly and deeply. That brings it down a notch.
    She pulls herself together, changes into comfortable shoes and goes out again. She