Well, Gordon thought as he watched her hips swing off towards the bus stop, it is a widespread problem, the underemployment of the middle-aged. It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t laziness and defiance, it wasn’t a tired fuck-you, it wasn’t a reversion to adolescent surliness. It had to be something important, a social phenomenon. He had had so many reasons to think that the problem—the cause of all his problems—was someone else, a long list of suspects, or better still, something else. But what if it really was just him? What is wrong with me? The considering way Kelly asked made him think she had been discussing him with others. What if she was right? Or what if his worst enemy was inside himself, a dark shadow blocking the doorway through to the brightness other people seemed to think lay on the other side of the mornings they woke into? As he set off from the cafe, he mouthed the words. What the fuck is really, really wrong with you, Gordon? The question—never mind whatever answer it might be harbouring—carried the sickening stench of truth.

BEN

Ben

Gordon spent the day as a refugee from his home. Unlike Kelly, he didn’t have a job to go to, only a series of barely necessary activities in Capri which he tried to dignify by listing on a lined pad under the heading Tasks, their sole useful purpose to spare him the scene which, in his current mood, he preferred not to face.

For many years The Lodge had been the daily clubhouse for Gordon’s cronies, but only in the six months since moving in had he realised that they camped in there literally every day. Red Cap and his mother Josie would be doing jigsaw puzzles; Tonsure Man would be going through the bookshelves and second-hand clothing bins; Cnut would be napping on Gordon’s bed; Snake would be on the phone lying to his clients about how flat-out he was; various shifts of Chookalikes would be rotating in and out, not a single item of footwear between them; and lording over them all would be Dog, sticking his nose where it ill belonged.

By mid-afternoon, Gordon judged that Ben must be home from school and Lou from TAFE. The breeze had swung onshore, clearing Bluebird’s prized main break of all but a couple of surfers. As he climbed the wooden stairs, he heard loud voices from above. A red cap moved behind the picture window. Josie’s voice pierced the air like a crow’s caw. Something in her irritated tone told him that Dog was in the conversation.