FROM SYDNEY WITH LOVE

I clip on his lead, slamming the fire door shut with the other hand and inhale remnants of cigarette smoke and urine staining the brick grout beneath my feet. I try to hold my breath but it isn’t long before I give up and let out the gust that had been held tightly in my chest, blowing onto the mass of black figures pacing.

Pacing quickly. Quicker. Quickly. Must not miss the bus. Must go to the gym longer tomorrow. Must get home. Must cook dinner. Must feed kids. Must keep working on proposal. Must get promoted.

I carefully shoulder through, beginning my path, weaving and winding against the pack. The muffle behind pushes my stride as sirens blare and P platers in cars with fully sick mags pump the bass until my ear drums feel as if they are about to impound from pressure. The sirens bully their way through red lights and add to the chaos. I look down at him and his ears prick up but he doesn’t stop moving.

Across the road large feathered creatures gather outside The House of Priscilla. They cluck around and fuss about something before letting out a jittery laugh under glitter glue makeup while their sequined head dresses dance around at seven foot.

‘Scuse me miss. Scuse me miss! Ya got fifty cents. I need to use the pay phone’.

I pull him away from the boy in a football jersey and dirtied baseball cap crouched in front of the convenience store. He scratches at the scabs on his face and smiles at him as we keep walking.
On the corner the old lady weathered an extra twenty years from too many nights spent sleeping on shop steps sips from a plastic cup. A silver crumpled bag leans against her torn maroon track pants as she calls out through missing teeth for a spare ‘durry’.
A middle aged man bearing at least ten centimetres of midriff taps me on the shoulder. His eyes almost pop out of his head as he taps his foot impatiently. ‘Got a light?’
We are going a little faster now. My breath is getting shorter.

Its getting late but there is still a bustle amongst the shops peppered in terraces along the side streets. Two girls carry at least seven paper bags, souvenirs of the trendy boutiques they had been spending up big in. They were the kind of boutiques where it was strictly ‘vintage’—i.e. second hand clothes marked up at ten times the cost. But of course it’s worth it to look like an individual. Their thick opaque tights, leather jackets and lace up brogues are so hip and happening just like the other thirty people I had seen wearing a variation on the theme just yesterday. They chatter, laugh and reach into their large handbags swinging off bent elbows and pull out two pairs of dark wayfarer shades.

In my head I run over what their conversation was most likely about. Being so fucked up. Getting so fucked up. Where they were going to get fucked up tonight.
We wait at the traffic lights. He sits on my right foot facing the curb. Ten other people stare down at him and anxiously wait for the man to turn green. I try to block out the rising sea of grot and turn down the street where the long thick branches filter some of the contaminated air. I tie him up outside and make my way in through the cold, stainless steel automated checkout gates towards the fridges.

The lady at the register barely speaks any English besides hello and receipt? Her thick Russian accent makes me wonder what she is doing here working in the supermarket day after day.
I put the coins back in my purse, the milk in my bag and we make our way home, soon sucked back into the sliding glass doors and air conditioned comfort. We step inside the elevator, I hit floor ten and we are swiftly lifted up to the cocooned apartment I wished I had never left.