Free Something Fishy by Shane Maloney

squeezed past me and Tony rose to relieve her of the bottle and glasses. In doing so, he found it impossible to avoid pressing against her. She squirmed free with practised ease, but not before he managed to grind his groin against her rump.
    â€˜A tasty drop,’ he smirked, sniffing the cork. ‘Bring another glass, will you, honey?’
    I stepped back to give the waitress plenty of exit room. She raised her eyebrows as she sidled past, and rolled her eyes.
    â€˜Not for me,’ I said. ‘Had a couple of beers upstairs and I’m driving. Don’t want to end up blowing into a bag.’ Or providing the pretext for a repeat demonstration of Tony’s amatory technique. ‘Nice meeting you, fellers.’
    I went back through the kitchen, amused and wondering. Jake Martyn was a long way out of Tony Melina’s league. Finding him at La Luna was like bumping into Coco Chanel in Woolworths. Whatever had lured him there, Tony was keen to impress. There was definitely business in the air. Was Tony trying to flog him something, I wondered?
    Vice versa, as it turned out. And Tony paid far too much for it.

I drove down Mount Alexander Road in a thinning trickle of traffic, harness-racing enthusiasts home-bound from the track, then cut through North Melbourne to Dudley Street and parked behind Festival Hall.
    The old boxing stadium was looking its age, a relic from the days of ‘TV Ringside’ and ‘Rollerderby’, a grimy shed redolent of hotdog water, cork-tipped cigarettes and extinct chewing gum. But, more than just a shrine to the gladiators of the glove, the House of Stoush was also a centre of excellence in the musical arts. Little Richard had played there. The Easybeats. George Thorogood and the Destroyers. The Clash. Dolly Parton.
    Tonight, the bands were called Chocolate Starfish, Bum Crack and Toothbrush Messiah. The gig was a cut-price show for under-age punters, sponsored by a zit cream manufacturer. It had just finished and teenagers were pouring from the building, gathering in droopy-jeaned hordes at the kerbside and malingering around the kebab vendors and doughnut caravans. I double-parked across the road from the main entrance and scanned the crowd.
    Red was standing with a cluster of kids beside the box-office window. His hair was gelled into a cockatoo crest, his shoulders were slouched and his clothes hung off his frame like a scarecrow. He merged, in short, with the crowd.
    I recognised some of the gang, friends and classmates, male and female. They were full of beans, teasing and joking. Their weekend had already begun. I sat watching from the Magna. Red was looming over a smaller kid, listening intently. There seemed something self-conscious about his stance, as though he was making an effort to appear relaxed. His hands were thrust into the back pockets of his jeans and his hip was cocked in an attempt at nonchalance. Then the other kid turned a little and I saw that it was a girl. A wisp of a thing, a pixie-faced waif with chopped hair and cast-off clothes. Her arms were folded across her barely-there chest and she tilted her head sideways when she looked up at Red.
    I couldn’t place her among the usual suspects, the crowd from school. But, even from thirty metres away, it was plain that she was reaching parts of my boy that hadn’t been reached before. Not, at least, to my knowledge.
    Girls were nothing special in Red’s circle of friends. They were peers, pals, members of the tribe. The boys and girls treated each other with the casual camaraderie of brothers and sisters. But this, if I was not mistaken, was something different. The lad was mooching like a man smitten. Was the young sap rising, I wondered? Was he feeling his oats? Or the unexpected sting of Cupid’s dart?
    The poor little bugger didn’t know where to look. His gaze darted from the girl’s shoes to his knees, alighted on her face for a moment, then moved back to his knees.