Good Oil by Laura Buzo Page A

gets hazy. They do it around my three-year-old sister. It really shits me.’
    ‘My sister smokes,’ Chris says. ‘But Mum and Dad make her smoke outside.’
    ‘I wouldn’t mind if they smoked outside. But they act like it’s me that’s being unreasonable. When I was little I made all these signs with red texta and stuck them around the house. Smoke-free zone , Smoking causes cancer and stuff like that. My dad made me take them down. That pissed me off. I thought I should be able to express my opinion.’
    ‘By putting up signs around their house?’
    ‘It’s my house too, isn’t it? And my lungs as well. And did I mention the asthma?’
    ‘Dramatic much, youngster? Maybe you’d have asthma regardless.’
    ‘Well it will be pretty dramatic when they both get cancer.You asked me what I hate, and I really hate that.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘I hate that Pip still believes that Estella secretly loves him and that she’ll come good one day. She won’t.’
    ‘Are you still reading G.E. ?’
    ‘Three quarters through. And Pip needs to grow up.
    It’s never going to happen. He clings to this belief that they are not together because of cruel circumstance, and because Estella feels that she owes it to Miss Havisham to do as she’s told so she can’t be with Pip, blah, blah, blah. When the real reason is that she doesn’t love him, plain and simple. What’s more, she’s a bitch and she doesn’t deserve him. But Biddy does. Biddy is a tops sheila and Pip doesn’t even notice her.The Biddys of this world never get the guy.’ I pause for breath.
    ‘Don’t worry too much about Biddy. She does fine in the end.’
    ‘Don’t tell me the end!’
    ‘You’re pretty hard on old Pip. You think he can just decide not to be in love with Estella anymore? He can just decide that?’
    ‘I don’t know. I guess sometimes it’s . . .’ I look directly into his eyes ‘. . . out of our control.’
    ‘Yep. I wish—’ he breaks the gaze ‘—we could just decide to stop.’
    ‘Fancy yourself as a bit of a Pip do you?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘Because of Kathy?’
    ‘Nah. The Kathy thing is a means to an end.’
    ‘I thought you really dug her.’
    ‘I do. I did. I have for a long time. In a way. But the crux of the matter is that I’m seeking distraction from . . . well, from the real issue.’
    After a few swallows this beer doesn’t taste too bad. I take a generous swig before enquiring as to the nature of the real issue.
    ‘The real issue is that I’m in love with someone else. Actual love, not a crush that makes the shifts go faster and feeds my addiction to misery.’
    Well. I’d figured from the get-go that I had no chance with Chris because a) he is too old, b) he would never be interested in me in that way and c) he has some jerk-off crush on vacuous Kathy from work, but now add d) he’s in ‘actual love’ with . . . hey, with who? He didn’t say who. Maybe it’s me! Maybe he can’t bear to tell me because . . . because he’s worried my father would shoot him or something. I lean in and say, I hope casually,
    ‘Actual love?’
    ‘You’d better not be mocking me.’
    ‘I’m not mocking. So why aren’t you with this girl?’
    ‘Was with her. Am not now.’ Again Chris has that gutted look that he does so well. He sort of looks down into his glass and then over my shoulder and into the distance, swallowing hard. He broods good.
    ‘Anyways, youngster,’ he says. ‘Moving swiftly on, you say that Pip should grow the fuck up and see things as they are.’
    ‘Well, yeah.’
    ‘Gatsby did that, right? He grew the fuck up at long last – realised that everything he’d hoped for was for shit, that despite all his elaborate efforts to be the kind of man Daisy would want to hook up with again, despite all his longing and obsession, the object of his affection had chosen that Tom fuckwit and had no intention of leaving. And then what did he do?’
    ‘He killed himself.’
    ‘Damn straight. So,