From: taramarie@yahoo.com

Date: 15 August 2007

Dear Thomas,

The only thing Lenina and I have in common is that we’ve both defied cultural conventions by dating one guy exclusively for several months. And we’ve both had misguided attractions to misfits in the past.

Tara Finke

Life just got one trillion times more bearable.

There’s nothing like the Mackee clan all under the same roof to help convince Tom to return to work the next night. He’d rather face Stani and Ned the Cook than deal with a harassed Georgie, or a rundown on how the drought is affecting rural areas and a whole lot of Sydney-bashing. Worse still was the conversation Nanni Grace was having in whispers after lunch about how some tablets Bill had taken for depression had affected him having sex. Even Tom’s father looked horrified and left the kitchen while Georgie was screwing up her face and looking at Tom, as if she had never heard anything so disgusting. After walking in on Sam and Georgie having sex, Tom was becoming a bit numb to the pain of it all.

The Union is pretty busy and he pushes past some of the regulars who are drinking and smoking on the pavement. “No glasses on the street,” he tells them, before walking in. In the kitchen, Ned looks a bit harassed and the plates are stacked up, leaving him with little room.

“Move,” Tom says, pushing him away from the sink.

Ned feigns a frightened sound, which Tom ignores. He doesn’t know how to deliver an apology. It’ll sound contrived now.

Francesca walks in with some dirty plates.

“Are you going to forgive him?” she asks Ned.

Ned stays silent.

“If I told you he can burp the whole of the national anthem, would you be impressed?” she says, dumping the plates next to Tom’s pile.

“Impressed only because a burp would replace the word ‘girt.’”

She walks out and Tom begins filling up the sink with clean water. Some of it flicks Ned, who feigns the frightened sound again, and Tom stares at him, unamused.

Francesca pokes her head back in. “What if he can recite to you the whole of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’?” she says.

Ned looks at him, half impressed.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tom says. “You’re not my type.”

“The whole thing? Not just the first stanza? Not just the last lines about the mermaids singing? Not just the poxy rhyming line about Michelangelo?”

Tom ignores him.

“I’ll make you a bet,” Ned says, wiping his hands on his apron and going to his backpack to retrieve his Norton Anthology.

“You carry your Norton around, you dickwit?” Tom asks.

“I’m an English lit student. I can’t believe you even know what one is.”

“It’s on page 1340,” Tom tells him.

Ned looks at him suspiciously and flicks to the page, looking even more suspicious when he proves him right.

Tom begins: “‘Let us go then, you and I . . .’”

Stani walks in later, glaring at them both.

“Bloody bastards. One minute punching each other, next minute reading poetry. What’s wrong with everyone this week?”

Tom can tell that Ned is pissed off that he’s lost the bet.

“What the hell made you learn that off by heart?” Ned asks. “Didn’t you drop out of construction or something?”

Tom sponges up the last of the grime around the sink. “His name’s Tom. T. S. Eliot. The only Tom I kind of like. I have a cursed name.”

“Try Ned. How many Neds are there in history? Two. Ned Kelly. Neddy Smith. Both crims.”

“You forgot Ned Flanders,” Tom says.

He spends some of the night serving out front, where a cute girl with an uncomplicated walk flirts with him. She’s not a regular, so she’s the first person for a long time who doesn’t have that hint of sorrow in her eye when he speaks to her. He feels normal for a change, flirting all the way back and enjoying it.

At closing time, when the girls are rehearsing in the back room, he takes the lyrics he’s scribbled on a piece of paper from his pocket and hands them to Francesca.

“You play it,” she says, holding out her guitar.

He shakes his head. “No, you said you wanted words. You didn’t say anything about playing.”

“Oh, come on, Tom. At least give us an idea of the melody in your head,” Justine says, peering over Francesca’s shoulder as she holds out the instrument. He loses the stare-off and grabs it from her. He hasn’t played a tune for real in front of anyone but Georgie since he dived off the table.

“Play me something that makes me feel;

This soul inside me is made of steel.

Brain is breathing, but heart’s not beating

And, babe, I need you to make things real.

Walk inside me without silence,

Kill the past and change the tense.

Empty gnawing and the ache is soaring;

Take me places that make more sense.”

He looks up. Justine and Francesca are nodding. Ned, however, looks stunned.

“I never took you for a rhyming guy.”

“It’s a song lyric, Ned. Rhyme is important,” Francesca explains.

“It’s a shame that someone who reads ‘Prufrock’ writes such shit.”

“Fine,” Tom says, pissed off, tearing up the song.

“No!” both Francesca and Justine yell, grabbing it from him.

“I like rhyme,” Francesca argues. “But I think the line should be Brain is beating but heart’s not breathing.”

Ned makes a rude sound.

“And what about the music?” Justine says. “It has a great melody.”

Ned sighs. “You’re right. Very uplifting. Might just go hang myself now.”

“Yeah, you just do that, little emo boy,” Tom snaps.

“Oh, that was pathetic,” Justine says. “As if he looks tortured enough to be emo.”

Francesca looks at Tom and tries to keep the torn paper intact. “I loved it. And I know, for you, that counts for nothing, Thomas. But there it is. I loved it.”

“Loved?” he says, imitating her. It was too easy to slip back into high-school idiotic mode.

“And your voice . . . it was a real turn-on. Really sexy,” Justine says.

“Hush. I’m blushing.”

Ned is still looking pissed off, and Tom figures that it’s truly too late for an apology.

“Regardless of how he comes across, Ned, he’s very sensitive,” Francesca explains. “Stands up for old people on the bus and cries in movies.”

“Bullshit,” Tom mutters, picking up his backpack, wanting to get as far away from everyone as possible.

“Oh, you do too, you liar,” Justine argues.

“You cried in The Lord of the Rings when Sam Gamgee sobbed for Mr. Frodo,” Francesca says, doing an impersonation. “Mr. Frodo!” Tom goes to the greatest of pains not to laugh. “Mr. Frodo,” she continues to cry out.

Even Ned’s laughing. No one’s a bigger show-off than Francesca when she has an audience.

“Ask the girls,” Justine says and Francesca is already taking out her phone to text Tara and Siobhan. “When did Tom cry in a movie?” she says as she texts.

“Okay, back to business,” Justine says. “Put your bag down, Thomas. We’ve got a song for Will, Frankie’s mum, and Jimmy, as well as this one you wrote for Tara. So we just need another two.”

Alarm bells ring in his head. “What are you talking about?” He tries to get the torn paper back from Francesca.

“Tara’s cover will probably be a Josh Pyke, and the original will be your untitled rhyme song.”

“No!” And then for further emphasis. “No.” This time he is more forceful in trying to grab the words back. “That’s not for Tara.”

“Well, who’s this one going to be for? Frankie’s mum and dad? Siobhan?”

“Why not Siobhan? Or your cousin in Poland?”