Satellite City

Satellite of la-ah-ah-love.

When I was growing up in Melbourne they had this concept of satellite cities or towns. Such a fancy, futuristic name for what were suburbs twenty or thirty kilometres west of the centre of Melbourne. The idea being you had no need to go into the city because you had everything you needed in, shall I say, the town of Satellite. And I always loved the name so when I was twenty-three and moved over to Western Australia on my own and was lonely, I looked at the map and saw that Rockingham was thirty kilometres from Fremantle, where I had made my home in a small flat. Rockingham was home to the monstrous nickel refinery with its steam, shining steel, smoking chimneys, hazy futuristic lights and these massive pipes that curled around like a huge waterslide or stood straight up. It reminded me of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and I went at night, on my own, to just sit and stare at it. So enormous, stuck out there on Kwinana Beach Road, an eyesore, like Gatsby’s mansion at West Egg.

I went in winter and despite what you think when you live in the eastern states, Perth and Fremantle and my Satellite City were freezing cold in winter. That wind; it cut right through you. A couple of times I ended up sleeping in my car and the next day, very early, wandering all over the beaches down there in Rockingham and feeling like I was the only person on the planet. Afterwards I’d drive over to Dome Café on Kent Street in the heart of Rockingham for a coffee and a smoke and as it was early I never got bothered by people offended by my smoking.

This was 2004, and I was trying to get all deep and meaningful about life. Probably because I was on my own so much. You know: Why are we here? And what happens when I die? Is that it? Or will I get to the see the bright light and follow it to paradise? And don’t get me started on Buddhism. But that nickel refinery, it had damn well got inside my head. Let me tell you what happened.

Let’s say it is June 30, 2004, and I am living in Fremantle. I work as a kitchen-hand and just quietly, I get the dole as well, because the Mexican restaurant I work in pays cash-in-hand. It’s not actually a Mexican restaurant because all names have been changed to protect the innocent, my employer, and others in this story. Anyway, I was also in the habit of going for a swim every day at the Fremantle Aquatic Centre and there was this one girl on the counter but I didn’t know her name. She didn’t wear a name tag like everyone else so my immediate thought was that she was sort of giving the finger to the world in a quiet respectable way—stuff you, I’m not wearing some crazy name tag, this isn’t Metropolis.

So on June 30 at 8 p.m. I walk into the Aquatic Centre and she smiles at me and asks,

“Are you trying to lose weight?”

“What?”

“You’re trying to keep fit?”

“Oh yeah. Do you think I’m fat?” And then before she can answer I just blurt out, “What’s your name?”

She gives me this huge, broad grin, and she has a really nice smile and her teeth, they’re not bleached or professionally whitened, they’re normal. And in fact her whole face changes with the big smile to make her even more beautiful and she says, “Tamara.”

And no one is around so I feel more confident because no one is listening and I say, “How come you don’t wear a name badge?”

“I just think it’s stupid. How come you’re asking?”

“I just wondered why you didn’t wear a name badge, thought it might be your way of not conforming.”

“I never thought of it in those words but it is kind of a silent protest, however shallow and weak.”

“Hey, I noticed.”

What the hell do I say now, I thought, but we had a brief chat and I went for a swim and on the way out I asked her out for coffee, at Dome in Fremantle, and she said yes. Dome is like Starbucks except they make good coffee and we were to meet at 10 a.m. A very civilised hour indeed.

At 10.10 she sat down, tall and lithe, sitting up straight in the chair, we are outside, her black hair let down now, she has a severe fringe, like Cleopatra. Big brown eyes shaped liked almonds; there is something Asian or oriental about her and I ask her, “Where are you from? I mean your background, your parents?”

“My dad is from a Russian background but he was born here and mum is from Myanmar, the old Burma. You think you can see a little something in my looks?”

“Yeah, your eyes and, um, something, it’s a compliment, you look great.”

“Thanks. I wondered about who you were turning up every day, swimming laps. Being so polite to everyone.”

“Well, I’m from Melbourne. I’ve been here three months and it gets colder here than I thought it would.”

“Wait till summer, Perth scorches, by the end of it you’ll be hanging out for the cold. You didn’t tell me your name last night.”

“Everyone calls me Sonny but since I don’t know anyone over here you can call me Jason.”

“Jason is better, much better than Sonny.”

“Tell my family that.”

And then she went on to tell me everything about her. Where she went to primary school, who her best friends at school were, that she had drifted away from her old school friends, they were so boring. She was getting over being dumped by her first serious boyfriend and she had loved him and you know what they say about your first love. I had never been in love so I didn’t know. She loved her mum and dad and she was twenty years old and she simply must show me the town one night. Take me to Northbridge with its bad reputation and on a pub crawl around Fremantle.

I said, “I don’t drink much these days. I think I’m a fool when I drink.”

“Wow, you’re so honest.” And then she started up again, telling me she had taken a gap year and was frantically saving the money she got from the swimming pool job so she could go overseas. Man she could talk. And then she had to leave and she said I was easy to talk to and I felt like saying, all I did was sit here, but I just smiled and we agreed to meet the next day at the same time.

              ***

We were talking easily again the next day and in a short lull in the conversation I decided to ask her. “Have you ever been to Rockingham and seen the nickel refinery?”

“No. I know it’s there, but no. Why?”

“Would you trust me when I say it is amazing at night? And that I’d like to take you to see it, but it has to be at night; we can drive down in my old Ford.”

“Um, yeah, why not. I’m not working today, we can go tonight if you’re not working. This is like some weird mystery.” I agreed to pick her up at her parents’ house at six and I did.

I love my old white Ford Falcon sedan. I drove across the Nullarbor in it and it didn’t let me down once. No problems, just fill up the tank and keep driving. We drove out of town and I found the Kwinana Freeway and sat on one hundred clicks and put Boz Scaggs in the CD drive. My aunt, my dad’s sister, had turned me onto Boz and it was great driving music and then this bird, a fucking sparrow or something, flew straight into the windscreen and in shock I swerved into the right lane because I didn’t know what the fuck had happened and I had to jerk the car back onto the left lane just as this other car was about to hit us in a head-on collision. My heart was beating like a drum and I pulled over and I could see the bird stuck against the windscreen where it joined the hood. Tamara just sat there without talking, freaked out, so I got out of the car and pulled the bird off the windscreen and then stood in front of the headlights and held it up like a hunter would hold up his prey and yelled at Tamara to look and I heard her burst out laughing and the tension was over. Fucking crazy bird!

We made Kwinana Beach by seven and I parked in what I thought was the best spot in a off-road carpark and turned off the engine. I could see Tamara staring at the refinery and I said, “What’d you think? Describe it for me so I don’t think it’s weird to like the great massive thing.”

“It’s amazing. All that steel tubing and the steam rising off the plant and the smoke from the chimneys. It’s like it’s a living thing. Post-apocalyptic.”

“I’m not mad then.”

“No, it is post-apocalyptic but like those cool end-of-the-world movies …”

“Where Ben Affleck saves the day …”

She laughs and we stare at the beast and she says, “I have some dope.”

“Not for me, but go ahead, I don’t mind. I have my cigarettes.” We talk and she gets stoned and I don’t mind people who are stoned they’re better than drunks but not a big group where they’re all laughing maniacally.

She says, “I feel like I’ve known you forever.” And I look at her and she slides over to me on the bench seat and we kiss and the kiss lasts forever and it is getting late and I want to ask her to get into the back seat but I feel like it would sound a little crass but she says it while I’m thinking about it.

And we climb in the back. The rain comes down—in sheets—thumping on the roof. I have two rugs and we pull them over the top of us and we fumble around and feel each other up and laugh and kiss.

I sit up and the rain is still coming down but not as heavy. Back to work tomorrow for me. I start at 5.30 p.m. and finish around eleven. Scrubbing pots in hot water stuffs up your hands; even the steel wool I use to scrub the pots sometimes cuts my hands. Don’t talk to me about coffee stains on cups, and the grease, it comes off everything, the plates, the frypans and the bain-marie, and I finish my night by sweeping and mopping the floors. They entrust me with locking up the joint and I walk out and home alone. I wouldn’t mind a nice clean job like Tamara has. I’ve seen guys working on the front desk at the pool.

I turn to her and ask, “Want to sleep here? You can smoke another joint and I might take a hit.”

She sits up and wraps the rug around her and says, “It looks kind of beautiful in the rain, your nickel refinery.”

“I’ve heard about people parking at airports and sitting there all day watching the planes land and take off. Maybe it’s a little bit like what we’re doing here tonight.”

“Maybe. I don’t think it’s strange, Jason. Like I said, it looks beautiful in this rain.”

“Have you been to the beach here? It’s brilliant. We should get up at sunrise or just before and take a huge long walk along Kwinana beach—it goes on forever.”

“I like the beach in winter. You do too, don’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s invigorating and mostly deserted. They have kind of touristy stuff around here too. They have Penguin Island. It’s a five-minute ferry ride and they feed the penguins but I think the earliest is ten-thirty.”

“Hmm, maybe, but just walking around would be alright too,” she says. “This is going to sound, um … I said it already but I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

“Maybe you have,” I say, and chuckle to myself. “Don’t worry, I’m not teasing you. I’ve been reading about Hinduism and Buddhism and the whole damn shebang. Perhaps we met in a past life.”

She’s been rolling the joint while talking and she lights it now and takes two big drags of it and winds the back window down and blows the smoke high up into the air and hands it to me. I take a small hit and smile to myself. I’ve never been good with dope; makes me stupid. But not in a laughing giggly sense, it just shuts me up, and I take another small hit and wait. It doesn’t affect me too badly. I’ve had just enough and I feel drowsy and I hug Tamara tight and it feels absolutely out of this world in the dark in my old Ford and I want to squeeze her tight forever.

“I’m tired,” she says, “let’s lay down.” And we do and there’s just enough room for both of us and we fall asleep entwined in each other until I wake up at five.

I untangle myself from Tamara, who mumbles something, and I put my blanket on top of her. It’s not raining but it is bloody cold and I get out of the car and zip my jacket up to my throat and take out a cigarette and light it and jump up and down a little to get warm.

Tamara surprises me by getting out and she says, “Let’s drive to a roadhouse for breakfast. I saw one when we were driving in last night.”

“Alright, it should be light by the time we finish and we can go for that walk.” I stamp my cigarette out and put the butt in the ashtray in my car and start her up and Tamara slams the passenger door and I ease out onto the road and drive slowly to the roadhouse.

Inside it is warm with coffee and bacon and eggs in front of us. I say to her, “The nickel refinery reminds me of Metropolis, did I tell you that?”

“No. What is it?”

“There’s this film. An old silent film from the 1920s and it’s about this place called Metropolis. A city of the future where the wealthy people live above ground in a kind of utopia while the poor work hard and slave away underground to provide power and energy to them. You know, like a class system. The haves and the have-nots. Only the son of the guy who runs Metropolis falls in love with one of the workers and yeah, I won’t spoil the ending for you but it’s a very cool film and the factory in it reminds me of the nickel refinery.”

“I can’t watch those silent films, but the concept of what you’re saying, I like that.”

“I’m the same. Not in a million years would I have thought I’d like a silent film but Metropolis is different than those other silent films. Those silent comedies with people running around like crazy everywhere, they remind me of the Benny Hill Show, they’re so ridiculous.” She doesn’t say anything and we tuck into our eggs and bacon and slurp our coffee and pay at the counter and drive back down to Kwinana Beach.

“About Metropolis,” I say, “I’m kind of interested in that whole utopia thing. Like after we die it is supposed to be heaven or hell and we all want to go to heaven and in the Bible it says that heaven is something we as humans can’t understand, it’s beyond our comprehension. I’m not quoting exactly from the Bible but that’s the gist of it. What d’you call it, I’m paraphrasing.”

“You really want to know what happens, don’t you,” she says as we get out of the car and walk through the tea-trees to the beach.

“Yeah, but I’m not scared about dying. It would be crazy to worry about it at my age. I’m just obsessed about it, that’s all. I don’t want my eighty or ninety years here on earth to be wasted. And I don’t mean like, It’s a Wonderful Life, where Jimmy Stewart sees the positive effect he had on other people. I mean for myself; just that question again. Is this it? Is that all there is? Not that the world isn’t beautiful but … hmm. I should shut up.”

“I take it It’s a Wonderful Life is another film. I have heard of Jimmy Stewart.”

“Yeah, another film. It’s a bit of a problem with me. Comparing life to films and books all the time, another obsession.”

“I think it’s wonderful. You’re passionate. Most people aren’t.”

We walk for an hour and a half and see plenty of the world’s beauty. Am I being silly when I say that a seagull swooping down onto the water and then taking back off again is beauty? The ocean stretches blue to the horizon and the chill wind blows us about and we begin holding hands but turn it into wrapping our arms around each other’s shoulders, we sometimes stop and hug and kiss each other. It’s six-thirty and the beach is empty.

Later we drive back to Fremantle in silence and I pull up outside her parents’ house and she turns and kisses me gently on the cheek and says quietly, “I have enough money saved to leave for overseas in two weeks. I’m about to buy my airfare. I want to go to the States first and then Europe.”

“You’ll be a good traveller. I reckon people will be drawn to you; you’re so easy to talk to and be with.”

“What are your plans?”

“I have none.”

“OK. Will you call me?”

“I’ll be swimming in the morning for the next five days, so I’ll see you at the pool.”

“I know you will, but I want you to call me and I want to see you too, away from the pool.”

“Deal.” And she kisses me again and gets out of the car and closes the door and I watch her walk all the way to the front door, open it, and see her go inside.

I drive home and lie down on my sofa and pick up where I left off reading a short story collection by Jay McInerney. It’s more than good. At four I go and take a shower and while I’m in there, standing underneath the shower rose, I decide to get off the dole. I don’t want to get caught and end up getting a huge fine and having to pay back all the money. Maybe even get a suspended jail sentence. I’m stupid. I haven’t even been saving the money. Smoking costs so much and I eat out at cafés and I’ve bought clothes. Rent is high on my own. Excuses.

Work is flat out. I can’t believe how busy it is. I finish at midnight and on the walk home I ring Tamara but it goes to voicemail so I leave a message and at home I make a coffee and smoke. I watch some footy talk show on Channel 11. Everything is crucial. It’s crucial that Melbourne win on Saturday because if they don’t it will end their finals chances and that would be a disaster. Crucial and a disaster and all said with the severity of a Mormon preacher. I brush my teeth and get into bed. Lie awake for quite some time and then my cell phone goes off.

“Hello.”

“Jason, hi, it’s me.”

“Hi Tamara. How was your evening?”

“At home with mum and dad in front of the TV.”

“Sounds like you enjoyed it.”

“I did. They don’t hassle me too much plus I’m a pretty good girl. Smoking dope occasionally is about the worst of me.”

“Good, that’s good.”

“I told them about the nickel refinery and they thought I was mad. I said my friend, Katie, came with us and I stayed at her house. Not that it would be bad if … I just …”

“You don’t have to explain. How about coffee tomorrow, back at Dome?”

“I’m working, start at 10 a.m. Come for a swim after your coffee.”

“I will. I had a really good time. I thought you might think I was crazy with all that stuff about life after death.”

“Why do you think you think about it so much?”

“Don’t know. Have you heard about Arcadia?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you about it when we meet again, not at the counter of the pool though.”

“Tell me now.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed, I have to tell you in person.”

“Oh come on.”

“Do you follow the AFL? It’s crucial that Melbourne win on Saturday otherwise they might not make the finals.”

“Alright, fine. I can meet you day after tomorrow at 10 a.m. at Dome. Maybe we could go to your place afterwards.”

“Maybe we could.”

“Bye.” And she disconnects. Maybe we could. It would be very nice indeed.

               ***

A week later she lies down over the top of me at home on my bed. Her long, lithe, exciting body stretched over the top of me and she holds me down with her two hands circled around my wrists and says,

“I bought my tickets.”

“First stop where?”

“I’m going to Dubai for three days to break the flight to London.”

“Not America first?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you won’t meet me in Europe but you’ll come to the States, to New York. I know that just by listening to you.”

“When will you get there?”

“Four months from when I leave, maybe a little longer.” She lets go of my wrists and falls on me and kisses me on the mouth, pulls away and says,

“You’re coming, like it or not.”

“I think I could have enough money saved by then.”

“Progress at last. A concession that you would like to meet me.”

“I’m worried about what will happen. You’re bound to meet someone. Then I buy my ticket and you call me the day before I’m about to leave and say you’ve fallen in love with Gerard from London who you met at the German Beer Festival.”

“You never told me about Arcadia.”

“Alright. Arcadia is in Greece. It’s in what we would call the countryside and it is supposed to be beautiful, like a kind of Nirvana, only the meaning has changed over the centuries, so Arcadia is like some kind of utopia, yes that word again, only utopia is unattainable in Arcadia.”

“And you’re searching for Arcadia.”

“Yes, but Arcadia is lost, like Eden. But it does appear in paintings and poetry.”

“So, you’re never going to get there.”

“Maybe not, but the last couple of weeks have been pretty good. I’m really going to miss you. Is that allowed? Can I say that without being too much of a wuss?”

“I’m going to miss you too. I was hoping you could take me back to the Refinery before I leave but I’m working in the evenings and trying to catch up and say goodbye to people. But, since I want to spend all my time with you I haven’t seen anyone and they’re asking me about you.”

“And you’re saying, don’t worry, he’s just a kitchen-hand, and he’s kind of weird but there’s not too much in it.”

“I don’t care what you do but I think with that racing mind of yours you should at least be studying something.”

“I checked out the TAFE and looked up the University of WA on their website, to see what they can offer me. I figure I can apply as a mature age student but that’s not until 2005. So, I can probably meet you. In fact I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do than meet you in New York.”

The day before Tamara is leaving I start feeling nervous. I have this uneasy feeling in my stomach and I have to go to the toilet more often than is usual and from time to time my gut clenches and I think that means I’m in love with her. I don’t want her to leave but the truth is she’s been saving for a year and moved back into her parents’ house from the flat she was sharing with her friend Kate specifically to save money. I can’t ask her not to go but if she goes I feel sure that I will lose her.

She’s meeting her friends at Kate’s place to say goodbye. A small soiree she called it, without a hint of snobbishness. I said I wouldn’t go and she said it was fine. She was coming over to my place at 11 p.m., her excuse for her friends being she still had to pack. It’s 6 p.m. now and I think about what she said about my racing mind. I don’t want to be a kitchen-hand all my life but the job could pay my way through TAFE or university. I’ll study arts subjects with the aim of eventually teaching. I could be qualified by the time I’m twenty-eight. All of a sudden I have a goal.

My cell phone goes off.

“Hello.”

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Soiree boring.”

“I’m not going. Pick me up.” And she disconnects me. I call her straight back three times in a row and each time it goes to her voicemail. I feel nervous again. Go to the toilet. Pick up my car keys and walk down the narrow grimy stairs to the car park underneath the block of flats. I drive over to her parent’s place in Mossman Park and ring the doorbell. She answers almost straight away and she’s been crying. I look at her but don’t know what to say. She inches out the door and closes it behind her and says softly,

“I don’t want to go. I don’t want to lose you and if I go I might.”

“Don’t be mad, you’ll go. You’ve given up a lot to save the money and you’ve been dreaming about it every day until we met. There’s plenty of time for …”

“Don’t say anything else, please,” she says.

                ***

Later that night we’re sitting in my car looking at the nickel refinery in all its ugly beauty and she leans her head on my shoulder and I say,

“We’ll drive back tonight, you’ll leave tomorrow, and I’ll meet you in New York.”

“Be quiet about that and tell me about Metropolis and Arcadia and what’s going to happen to us in the next life. Why we’re on this crazy planet.”

“Oh, well, in Arcadia there was the god, Pan, and …”