Free Black Teeth by Zane Lovitt

desperation. Mum grabbed hold of my hand and spoke with her eyes shut but I couldn’t hear over the prattle and I asked the staff if they could move the French screamer someplace else and the first terrifying thing that happened that day was that they did.
    as my stilted claim warranted. Perhaps I should tell her about the last two days. About Glen Tyan and how I have no explanation for why he’s a VicPol punchline.
    The problem is: I told her once that my dad was a software designer who died when I was a baby, and my practice is to hold off on revealing to people what a liar I am unless it’s absolutely, painfully necessary.
    Her eyes silently panic. It’s like the eighth awkward pause since we sat down and they wouldn’t bother me except that she seems to experience them right in the pit of her stomach. She asks, with an air of desperation:
    ‘Your mum was a cook, right?’
    I nod. Her red wine returns in what I assume is a red wine glass because she says nothing to the waiter. I look hard at that glass, try to discern a trace of spittle or botulism.
    ‘You never got the urge to pick up a spatula?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘What about, like, football or tennis or something?’
    Every couple of dates like this she sniffs around the edges. Usually I sidestep with a broad, meaningless comment before guiding theconversation back to Game of Thrones . Maybe tonight I can spare a little more.
    ‘I was the boy who hated sport. Mum said it was because I didn’t have a dad. I said it was because I didn’t have a backyard. You know that cliché of the kid trolling the internet from his mother’s basement? That was me. The original vitamin D deficiency.’
    ‘Right. So the computer thing has been, like, since forever?’
    ‘The first real hobby I ever had was, I used to do a thing on PlayStation where I could dox players with just their gamertag and IP and I could tell them, this is live while we were playing , I could tell them their real names, their family members. I called them on their mobile phones. I said I was a psychic and it freaked everybody out. My tag was Mofo the Magnificent.’
    When she realises this is a funny anecdote from my past, she chuckles. Marnie is too much in her head to ever respond spontaneously.
    I ask, ‘What about your parents?’
    ‘What about them?’
    ‘What do they do? Back in Kerang.’
    ‘My mother runs a cleaning business, Dad is…’ She sighs. ‘I don’t want to talk about my parents.’
    This is also nothing new. That she’s from Kerang is about all she’s ever confessed.
    I’m like, ‘How’s work?’
    ‘Fine. Owner’s on my case again.’
    ‘Same as before?’
    She nods. ‘Poor customer service. But, like, I don’t suffer fools lightly, Steve. What am I supposed to do?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I raise the beer to my lips. ‘Working with people. It must be lame sometimes.’
    ‘I wish I had a job like yours. Stay at home all day. Not talk to anyone.’
    ‘Uh-huh…’
    ‘Though it might be nice if you came out from behind your computer every now and then.’
    ‘I come out from there all the time.’
    ‘Only to scurry back as fast as you can.’
    ‘Not always.’
    ‘Well, I may not be Mofo the Magnificent,’ she looks down into her wine glass. ‘But I reckon you will tonight.’
    ‘Maybe,’ I say with a pinch of my shoulder, and I understand in that gesture that tonight is the night. Marnie is based, her hair is giving her confidence, while I’m mourning the loss of someone I’d never met before yesterday. The demise of a mere possibility, but one that has occupied so much of my brain for so long. And as it further dissipates with each passing minute, I want that void to be filled with something meaningful, if not also tall, friendly and familiar.
    In fact, the resolution comes to me now that tonight I’ll tell her everything. It was never that much of a lie to begin with—she knows I never had a dad and she knows how I feel about that. I’ll tell her all about