Degraves
Beth Brown
I follow the lines of lunchtime suits as we spill out of Collins Street’s Block Arcade and empty onto Degraves Street. Degraves is a burrow. It serves the anaemic office worms like me. We emerge from our holes—pale-faced and mouths damp with coffee and red wine rot—and charge into the laneway paved with cobblestones, lined with cafes. The art-deco lofts overhead block out Melbourne’s pewter sky and filter winter’s dying sun in thin fingers of light. At the laneway’s mouth, overflowing dumpsters spill refuse onto the bluestone. I take a few steps, and the smell of fetid trash is swallowed, replaced by the heady fumes of hot bread and coffee grinds.
I join a line. I go to the same hole-in-a-wall takeaway place every Monday to Friday. I like it because the line moves quickly, and the food is consistent. If someone asked me if it was the best food on Degraves, I would have to say no. Not the best. But the most consistent. Which, in my opinion, is better. My fragile, starved cerebrum could not handle anticipating the best, only to be disappointed when it is sold out or when menus change. A tall glass counter houses hundreds of baguettes ready for the lunchtime suits. The queue disperses like waves crashing on a sheer cliff face. There are four people in front of me, and only one Chicken Waldorf baguette left. Fuck. This could be bad. What will I have if one of these jerks takes the Waldorf?
Three people. Perhaps Brie and Bacon? No, I get indigestion just thinking about all that soft cheese and animal fat. I’ll end up with lucid dreams again.
28
28
Two … and that’s when I see her, sitting at a café across from me. It’s her hair that I recognise first. Her Afro is smoothed and tamed into six braids that run down her scalp and then explode into puffs at the nape of her neck. She wears gold rings pierced through the braids and lacquers her baby hairs in perfect coils that frame her heart-shaped face. After my eyes have studied her crown, I let them drop down to her breasts, where a baby is suckling. Her breasts are bigger now. All of her seems bigger. She takes up so much more space. She looks like a balloon that’s been inflated, stretched, then deflated. One … fuck! The bastard has taken the Waldorf.
‘What will it be?’ the woman behind the counter is asking me.
I stutter. Not the Brie and Bacon. Fuck. The man behind me doesn’t hide his impatience, letting a long sigh escape with each exhale.
‘Roast beef, please.’ I immediately regret my choice. I’ll hate it. I hand over a five-dollar note, and the woman behind the counter hands me my baguette wrapped in a brown paper bag. Like a swaddled baby, I think. I walk across the lane to get a better look at her. I join another queue at Degraves Espresso to order coffee. This one moves more slowly.
