Free The Infernal Optimist by Linda Jaivin Page A

was already lost in the forest a Babak’s paperwork. Babak saw April looking and tapped Sue on the shoulder. Sue looked over like she just woke up and didn’t know what bed she be in. ‘Sorry, April!’ she called out. ‘You all right there?’ Pointing at Babak’s papers, she said, ‘It’s a bit of an emergency. I just have to…’
    ‘No worries,’ April said. ‘Do what you need to do. I’m with these two gentlemen.’ Then she blushed, like she’d said we’d all just hooked up, like we was at some club.
    ‘Good-o,’ said Sue, giving her the thumbs up, and went back to it.
    April wore one a them smiles people wear at a party where they don’t know no one and they don’t reckon they’re gonna have a great time, but they know they ain’t getting a lift home till midnight so they better make the best of it.
    ‘Let’s go sit over there,’ Thomas suggested. His tone made it clear to me that no part a the word ‘let’s’ be spelled with the letter Zeki. Sometimes the asylums was like that with them visitors.
    You know, for one crazy moment I wished I was one a them. The asylums. They was in this country—what—two, three years, not a day of it outside the razor wire and they knew every classy lady and cute chick from the Blue Mountains to the North Shore, I swear. Some of them had women writing to them from Perth and Adelaide and country towns all over Australia. Me, I lived in Sydney me whole life and who did I know? She Who Busts Me Balls. Oh maaan. I was feeling fully apprehensible about her visit.
    April, what didn’t know any a the subtextuals, turned and gave me a join-us type wave. I didn’t wanna seem too eager. It’s never good to let the ladies think you’re keen. I looked round like I was considering me options. I nodded to some other Turks, and winked at that cute new Chinese girl what overstayed her visa—Ching or Chong or something like that. You know, one a them names that sounds like what happenswhen you drop a tray a cutlery down the steps. Ping pong ting tong. I waved to Bhajan, what was with some lady what visited him every week.
    Finally, I strolled up to where April and Thomas was sitting, me Nikes kicking up little clouds a dust. I was glad I was wearing a clean T-shirt, me gold chains and me best trackies—the nylon blue-and-orange ones with the white stripes and the zips what start at the ankle and go up to the knee. They was unzipped to show off the Nikes. I’d put some product in me hair, what takes after Mum’s not Dad’s, thanks God, and it was standing up in spikes. I reckon in that gear I could almost pass for the good-looking one in Pizza.
    For all that, me arrival didn’t make much of an impact. April’s eyes were glued to Thomas’s face. I pulled up a chair. He was telling her his story. When he got to the point where he tried to hang himself in the refugee camp, April’s eyes was leaking like taps what had worn-out washers.
    Thomas’s story was too full-on for me, even if I heard it before. I needed to focus on something else or I was gonna stress out. April’s chest heaved. That was one excellent set. I focused.
    ‘I can’t believe they didn’t give you a visa,’ April said.
    Thomas leaned forward and locked his eyes onto April’s. ‘Sue told me about your husband.’
    ‘She…Gee. What did she say?’ April frowned and glanced over in Sue’s direction.
    ‘She said your husband is the Minister’s doctor. And that they are friends too. April, I have a letter in with the Minister for a four-one-seven. Sue helped me write it.’
    ‘A…sorry?’
    ‘A four-one-seven. It’s when the Minister himself decides to give you a visa. Which he rarely does. But a connection could make a difference. Sue said your husband could be that connection.’
    Talk about putting on the pressurisers.
    ‘Surely once the Minister hears your story, he’ll give you a visa anyway.’
    ‘April.’ Thomas shook his head. ‘If this Minister was locked in detention by some