Praise by Andrew McGahan Page B

weekend. There were parties we could go to, things we could do.
    She’d shake her head. ‘Gordon, I’m needed at home, you know I can’t.’
    Cynthia and I finished the Scrabble game. We packed it up and Cynthia brought her seat around closer to mine. She draped her legs over my lap. We drank and talked. She reached over and moved my legs and arms around, getting them right. Then she leaned back, surveying. She smiled at me. ‘My beautiful
boy
.’ She was my mother, all right. She was crazy. I wondered if Rachel was watching us, what she would think. There was something of the mother in Rachel too, but it was a very different sort of mother.
    But to hell with Rachel, I thought.
    I was with Cynthia now.
    We sat there until closing time. The table was covered in empty glasses. We decided to walk home and leave the car. The police drink-driving teams often had the bridge covered on Sunday nights. We left the bar and climbed up to the bridge. The river was there, moving slow. It reflected the city towers and the lights. I liked this part of Brisbane. I liked the towers. Towers were okay. They were artefacts. The bigger the better. Like the pyramids. Just as long as you didn’t have to work in them. The city, as a workplace, looked odious. In that respect, maybe the World’s Tallest Building really hadn’t been much of an idea. Ten thousand office workers, that was how many they’d been hoping to squeeze into the thing.
    We took it slow across the bridge. We stopped to look down at the water. The bridge was just high enough to make jumping worthwhile. And people sometimes did, although there was one better, higher bridge to jump off in Brisbane. It was because the Story Bridge had class, it had age. It was all iron and rivets and arches. The only problem was, if you jumped off the highest parts of the arches, you didn’t hit water, you hit solid earth. The high parts were over the river banks. Not that it mattered, once you’d got enough free fall behind you.
    â€˜Have you ever been suicidal?’ Cynthia asked.
    â€˜Not yet. What about you?’
    â€˜No. Never. I’m terrified of dying.’
    We got off the bridge and into the backstreets of New Farm. We paused every now and then and kissed, good kisses, leaning up against trees and fences. Life was strange. Only a few weeks earlier I’d seen people doing exactly this and I’d hated them for it. And now here I was. Doing it myself. And it didn’t feel as ugly as it looked. Or as beautiful.
    â€˜Let’s find a park,’ I said. ‘Let’s fuck on the grass.’
    â€˜Not in New Farm. People die in the parks around here. People get their heads cut off.’
    Which was true. We went on home.
    When we got there, we found Leo and Molly sitting in the couches, watching TV and sipping on beer.
    â€˜How’d you get in?’
    â€˜The old guy up the hall opened it for us. We told him we were friends of yours.’
    Leo and Molly seemed as drunk as we were, or maybe they were stoned. We sat down and watched TV for a while. Leo wanted to know all about the heroin. He was annoyed I hadn’t told him about it, brought him in on the deal. I described it as best I could. Molly offered the opinion that heroin was a dangerous, evil drug. It wasn’t
natural
. She was only into natural drugs. Marijuana and sometimes mushrooms.
    I started drinking Leo and Molly’s beer. Over the TV we could hear a fight building in the flat next door, the new neighbours again. Mostly it was a woman’s voice we could hear. Cathy’s voice. Raymond’s was indistinct. They were arguing about money. I told the others about the cut on her face.
    â€˜It’ll be a good-looking scar, though,’ I said, ‘when it’s healed.’
    Things next door began to get violent. Something heavy smashed against the wall. Cathy was screaming.
    Vass came running into the room. ‘You gonna call the