Free The Infernal Optimist by Linda Jaivin Page B

accident, he wouldn’t give himself a visa to get out.’
    ‘Ha.’ April laughed. Thomas wasn’t smiling. ‘Oh, look,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. But…’
    Thomas put his head in his hands. ‘Forget it. I wish I’d never stepped foot in this stupid country.’
    ‘Oh, God, don’t say that.’ She reached out to touch him on the shoulder. She must’ve touched what I touched that time cuz her hand came straight off like she been electrocutioned. He raised his head and looked at her with red eyes.
    ‘Maybe I can…’ April blew her nose on a serviette with a honk. ‘Pardon me.’ I handed her another serviette. ‘Thanks. Uh, when is the Minister supposed to make a decision?’
    ‘Who knows. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe one year from tomorrow. Maybe when hell freezes over.’ Thomas squinted up at the sky, what was full a burning.
    ‘Maybe.’ April spoke in a small furry voice like a kitten, what was deep too, like the kitten be at the bottom a theocean. ‘Maybe you should look at this as your journey. We say when things happen to you, bad things or good, it’s your journey…’
    Thomas looked at her with his eyes still narrow. ‘A journey,’ he repeated, flat as a tyre with nails in.
    ‘I just meant there are ways of looking at things…like trying to accentuate the positive…’
    ‘April, this is your first visit. I don’t want to be rude. But I’ve been Inside two years now. For nothing. That’s on top of three years lost in the refugee camp. My home was burned to the ground. My family is dead. I want to study—I’m not allowed. I want to walk for more than a hundred metres without running into a fence—I’m not allowed. I’m only twenty-three. I should be enjoying the best years of my life—I’m not allowed. There’s nothing positive about any of that.’ Thomas finished speaking and moved his baseball cap round so the beak, what usually covered the machete scar at the back of his neck, was covering his eyes. Then he lowered his head and crossed his skinny arms over his chest.
    I could see April’s spirit reeling outta her like fishing line what got tuna on.
    No one said nuffin for a while. We watched as a group a ladies came in with Christmas pressies for the kids. One a them put a pair a gauzy pink angel wings on Abeer. Abeer mumbled ‘Thank you’ and then just stood there like she didn’t have wings at all. Noor got a sparkly crown but she didn’t look like she be feeling like a princess. April’s eyes went all watery again.
    I could see she be feeling bad. Thinking to detract her, I asked, ‘What do you do in the life, April? Are you a doctor like your husband?’
    ‘Me? Oh. I have a little bookshop? Sometimes I edit books, too?’ April was always asking questions what weren’t questions in factuality.
    ‘What sort of books?’ Thomas asked, lifting the beak of his cap a millimetre or two.
    ‘Spiritual development, self-help, that sort of thing?’
    ‘Self-help?’ he goes.
    ‘Oh,’ she goes, ‘it’s like I was talking about before. It’s about finding the right path.’ Thomas looked at her like he still didn’t get it. ‘I suppose the classic self-help book is the sort that tells you how to make friends and influence people.’
    ‘People in Australia must be very stupid if they need a book to tell them how to make friends.’ Thomas the diplomat.
    She looked like she didn’t know what to say to that. ‘Well, there’s more to it…’ She rattled on for a while, using lots a big words like self-axleisation and vigilisation.
    ‘You believe in all that?’ he asked after a while.
    ‘I…I suppose. I mean, it’s pretty good advice, even if some of it’s kind of obvious.’ She fingered a crystal what was hanging from her neck on a silver chain and then let it go. It fell into her tits. I tried vigilising meself as that crystal.
    ‘Why did you come here, April?’ Thomas wasn’t mincing his words that day, that was for sure.
    April sighed. ‘I’ve been having…a