Things I overheard from Yarraville

My friend in Yarraville sends me scenes instead of letters — a man on a phone, a woman at a desk — and never says where she was standing when she caught them. I give each one a body to see through and a name to answer to, then write it back to her. She has never once mentioned that she is in every one. Neither will I.

Minh set the little sauce plate beside a bowl of piping hot pho. The woman it belonged to had been restlessly waiting for it a moment ago; now she let it sit. A hardback the size of a brick lay face-down beside her bowl — a black-and-white photograph of a man’s face on the cover — and she was staring instead at the middle-aged Chinese man two tables down, and especially at the glass of wine in one of his hands. Minh had just served that man a plate of chicken fried rice, with the strange addition of a bottle of Riesling.

She was, Minh thought, even more surprised by the man than he was. The man definitely knew how to enjoy life while getting things done. At first Minh reckoned it was probably a spontaneous business call, until the man grew more and more intimate, moving from civil greetings to very personal topics, almost as if he were dictating to a partner, but in the most tender manner. By the time the call ended, the woman’s pho had gone cold and the hardback had not been opened. She paid and left, as though she had come in only to overhear.

Ten minutes’ drive from the Viet-Chinese restaurant, Alex had just wrapped up her shift at the town library reception when a loud voice carried out of the reading room. She wasn’t one to be easily bothered in the last five minutes of a shift, but she went to look anyway, just in case. A ponytail woman stood among the desks, yelling into her phone with the speaker on, quickly typing something on her laptop as she did. A few desks away, the only other person there did not look up. In front of her lay a hardback the size of a brick, shut, its cover a black-and-white photograph of a man’s face turned up at the ceiling; an open laptop sat beside it. Alex knew the cover on sight: A Little Life. It looked unread. It always did. The woman had come in to read, and was listening to the phone call instead.

Ponytail kept repeating “Queensland,” as if she were planning a trip, then the topic suddenly jumped to lunch, obviously. The person on the other end — Ponytail opened every sentence with her name, Michele — had a ginger biscuit for lunch.

Alex was fascinated by the thought of a ginger biscuit, even just the name of it. She couldn’t help but fantasize: what was it like, was it fluffy or more on the crunchy side, did it have chocolate chips in it…. Her ginger-biscuit reverie was interrupted once again by a change of topic: “Michele, you should be more vulnerable.” Alex thought, it must be a crunchy one, then. Ponytail again: “You’re still taking me to Queensland, right?”

Alex smirked — “Okay, I’ll make some ginger biscuits tonight” — and on her way out, glanced at the woman with the book. A Little Life lay shut, as ever. On the laptop beside it, brought up somewhere in all that listening, was a photograph of a ginger biscuit — the exact one Alex had been picturing.