Sample Dialogue 3
‘Hang on, you’re the guy from that show!’
The man addressing me is the newest waiter at my favourite restaurant. All night I’ve been regarding him the way a four-year-old must look at the new Yellow Wiggle.
‘What show?’ Usually it’s Enough Rope and I’m not the person they’re thinking of at all.
‘You know the one. That show!’
‘ADbc?’
He looks at me blankly. He’s not the first.
‘Nah, you know…The Serenity.’
This is a new one.
‘The Serenity? You mean The Castle?’
‘Nah, The Serenity. It was on the other night.’
‘Yeah, that’s The Castle. It’s a movie. I’m in it for about nine seconds.’
‘It’s a show, isn’t it?’
‘The one with the Kerrigan family? With Eric Bana?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. “How’s the serenity?”’
For some reason, he delivers this last line in a broad, rolling ‘eye-talian’ accent.
‘Yeah, that’s the line. But it’s called The Castle.’
‘Nahh.’ He shakes his head slowly, unconvinced. Clearly I’m the one in the wrong. It was a regular TV series. Every week, the Kerrigans waged a (presumably identical) battle to keep their home, and thus, their serenity, on The Serenity.
‘Can I have my change?’
He hands it over, almost reluctantly. It’s like he’s worried about me. And fair enough too. What sort of person forgets the name of their own TV show?
***
I am extremely clumsy in the kitchen. Breakfast is like an episode of Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. Finally, a year ago, the plates and cups and bowls had been so depleted by slapstick that there was no more than three of anything. If four people were eating, one would always be hunched over a salad bowl or drinking wine from a mug. Now, twelve months after buying a whole new everything, I’m back at the shop, looking for matching teacups. There had been six, but numbers are down following an incident with a badly packed dishwasher, a slippery floor and an obese, scrabbling dog keen to lay claim to a stray piece of cheese.
‘Excuse me, have you got the cups and saucers that go with this set?’
I recall the man I’m questioning from last time. He’s the department’s Captain Peacock, hovering in the background, spectacles forward on his beak, but not actually dirtying himself by interacting with the customers. But today, all the help seem to be at lunch. He’s going to have to deal with this one himself.
‘Um, they’re in the box, aren’t they?’
He’s casting an unimpressed eye over a teetering stack of crockery sets like mine, priced to clear.
‘No, the cups are sold separately.’ It’s the sort of thing he should be telling me.
‘Right, well, these are all we have. It’s stocktake.’
‘Could you maybe…order some in?’
He reacts to this suggestion with visible distaste, like I’ve offered to take a dump in one of his china tureens.
‘Ooh no. Couldn’t do that.’
‘No? Don’t people order things in all the time?’ I can’t be the only person dropping the odd saucer, can I?
‘I’ll tell you what I can do,’ he says, his eyes glazed with boredom. ‘I can put your name in the book, and if any come in, we can call you.’
‘In the book?’
‘Yes.’
‘In case some come in?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, you are expecting some?’
‘I couldn’t say for sure, but if…’
‘But wouldn’t the only reason for some “coming in” be…that you’ve ordered them?’
‘Like I say, I can put your name in the book.’
‘On the offchance that some arrive? Possibly by accident?’
‘Well, not by acc…’
‘So, manufacturers are basically sending you crockery sets at random?’
Now he’s just glaring at me with pure hatred. But there’s no turning back.
‘When you say “I can put your name in the book”, what you really mean is “Get out of my shop”?’
He makes no attempt to disagree. I leave immediately and head home on the tram. For a hot glass of tea.
***
I’m standing in a bookshop looking at the book I’ve been hearing so much about, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I’ve no intention of buying it; the back cover pretty much says it all. The title alone seems to have most of it covered.
‘You’re not thinking of buying that, are you?’
A man has materialised beside me. Mid-fifties, a pale grey suit and eyes bulging from his head. And I mean really bulging. Like he’s just been exposed to the Martian atmosphere in Total Recall.
‘Um,’ I manage, transfixed by the eyes.
‘Because it’s a load of nonsense, you do know that?’
‘I hadn’t…’
‘If I had my way, every copy would be pulped.’
‘I…’
I’m struggling to say anything. It really does look like the book itself has caused his eyes to pop out, like he’s a horny cartoon rabbit who’s just spotted Betty Boop.
‘I wasn’t going to buy it anyway.’ I return it to the shelf. I’m kind of annoyed, but am dissuaded from remonstrating by both the eyes and the realisation that I may be forced to mount a theological argument in Dymocks. Establishing the title of The Castle is one thing, proving the existence of a Supreme Being quite another.
And I know there’ll be trouble if I get backed into a corner and end up calling him ‘Marty Feldman’.
I walk calmly to the street. Score this round to the Big Fella.
***
I’m standing inside the front door of Video Busters on Smith Street, keeping watch over a large basket of electricals. I’ve just finished shooting a piece for The 7PM Project about the sad decline of video shops, something that I fear the segment will hasten rather than arrest. There are five of us on the shoot and everyone else has something heavy to carry. In order not to look like such a pampered milquetoast, I’ve offered to help lug stuff out to the van. The crew never like this; it’s against some kind of regulation, and you end up looking like Prince Philip, wielding a shiny new spade for the cameras while real workers look on with fixed grins. And, even more awkwardly, I’ve raced out ahead with the basket of cables to find the van locked and everyone still back inside, dismantling the really heavy stuff.
As I loiter self-consciously by an enormous Paul Blart, a man in several flannel shirts and a beanie approaches. I can tell by his bearing and the range of welts and wounds on his face that he is one who likes the occasional snifter of horse. The words, when they come, are extruded in the thin, dry whine familiar to anyone who’s ever been asked for ‘tenbuckssoIcanbuysomegoey’.
‘What’reyousefilming?’
His eyes keep flitting down to the basket.
‘It’s for The 7PM Project.’
It’s like he’s valuing the potential haul.
‘Ohyeah. Don’thaveaTV.’
He looks like he’s calculating whether he’ll be able to grab something and make a run for it.
‘And yet,’ I start, fully intending to add ‘you’re at a video shop’, but my voice has struck a chord and for the first time he looks me in the eye.
‘You’reoneofthemfuckin’…’
I’m one of them fuckin’ what?
‘Youknowthem…Shitscared!’
He’s named a segment on a show I worked on seventeen years earlier.
‘You’rethemstuntmenaren’tyou?’
I’m them stunt men. ‘Yeah, I was on the show, but that wasn’t me.’
‘Shitscared!’
‘Sure.’ There’s no point further clarifying the distinction. And besides, the momentary confusion has made him forget the basket.
‘What’reyoudoingnow?’
‘It’s a thing about video shops.’ I realise that what I’m doing is pretty much what I used to do on the show he’s referring to.
‘YouwannadomoreofthatShitscared, mate.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ I pick up the cables and start to walk back out to the van.
‘Iliketheonewherethetruckhitsyoufrombehind,’ he shouts. I turn back. He’s miming being hit by a truck. Distracted by this, I bump into a stand of one-dollar weeklies. He laughs. I laugh, like it was intentional, like it was something from ‘Shitscared’.
Everybody’s happy.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). Most recently, he directed new episodes of ‘The Librarians’, which returns to ABC1 on October 13.
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