Free The Family Men by Catherine Harris

“I don’t know, some fries,” he says, partly to appease her, anything so they can move along.
    â€œFries?” she repeats. “That’s all you want?”
    â€œYou heard me.”
    â€œDid you get that?” she says in the direction of her friend. And then back to him. “You’re a barrel of laughs.”
    They drive to the Esplanade and eat staring at the swell, Rosie winding down the window but quickly raising it again as seagulls descend on the car, lured by the aroma of hot chips. “Careful,” he says, despite himself, as one dogged bird lunges at the grease-smudged glass. Could it happen? Could they join together and drag her from the vehicle? He allows himself the fantasy, her skirt billowing about her hips, plump legs kicking at the sky as her body is transported aloft by a mass of marauding wildlife.
    Rosie is unperturbed, diving into her nuggets with the enthusiasm of a fox raiding a poultry coop. “Look at this one,” she says, holding up one of the pieces.
    â€œWhat?” he says, thinking maybe she’s found one resembling the face of Jesus or Robert DiPierdomenico, that distinctive moustache (his mother is always looking at crap like that on eBay), but it is nothing as illustrious.
    â€œIt looks like an egg,” she says, amused at the irony. “Which came first, the chicken or the nugget?”
    Which came first, the air or your head? he thinks, knowing it is mean, puerile, the stupidity making him grin. “I don’t know,” he says, glad for once for the distracting thrum of his mobile, repulsed by the idea that she might think they have shared a joke, that they have something, however small, in common. He is glad and then he isn’t.
    It is Margo trawling for gossip. “Do a girl a favour, give me something. It’s a slow news week.”
    â€œWhat kind of gossip?”
    â€œLet’s start with Sportsman’s Night. Jack and Eddy are back, they suggested I talk to you.”
    Rosie, her mouth full of chicken nuggets, is wiggling her thin pencilled eyebrows, a wordless attempt at asking who it is.
    â€œWhy? What did they say? I told you there is nothing.”
    â€œCome on Harry, this isn’t my first rodeo. Why won’t you tell me what happened? They always haze the rookies. Club initiation. Whatever they call it. I know there would have been a strip show, but I’m getting the impression there was something else. What did Jack mean by saying they had to ‘blood’ you? In my notes I’ve got, quote, ‘We had to blood the young fella,’ end quote.”
    Those motherfuckers. He remembers stepping off the lift that night smack into the middle of a Probus tour group on their way out to dinner, thinking maybe he should just keep going, home, right through the middle of them – the shortest path between him and the street – the muted atmosphere of artificial lighting and mellow muzak already getting under his skin. He’d wanted to be outside, to breathe fresh air, but Matt grabbed his arm before he could get any purchase on the idea, pulling him back like he was a wayward child on a tear at the supermarket. “Steady on. The taxis are this way.”
    â€œBut it’s just around the corner.”
    â€œYou’re not walking. We’re not walking.”
    The taxis were lined up next to the fountain, barely twenty metres from the exit. Even so, the doorman summoned one with his whistle. “Have a good evening, sirs,” he said, holding the door for them.
    The vehicle smelled of air freshener, a small sachet swinging from the rear-view mirror, the same overwhelming floral scent as in the hotel, or so it seemed to Harry, wondering how the driver could spend an entire shift in the car without wanting to throw up.
    Margo presses him again but Harry shakes his head. “No. It’s not true. They’re just fucking with you. You know what Jack and Eddy are like.