Read Online This Is the Life by Alex Shearer - Free Book Online Page A

he was in your class. What was it he drank again? Arsenic?”
    â€œCyanide,” Louis said. “He did chemistry, same as me. But he was a geek and a nerd and he didn’t get along with anyone, so he got cyanide out the lab, stopped the elevator between floors, and drank it.”
    â€œHis brother was nuts too, wasn’t he? He’d be there at the weekends, on day release from the asylum.”
    â€œThey lived just down the road from the prison,” Louis remembered.
    â€œThat’s right. They did.”
    â€œWhy were they all weird?” Louis said.
    â€œWhy were all who weird?”
    â€œAll our parents’ friends. All weird or outcasts or crippled or screwed up or they had pieces missing. You remember that couple of friends of theirs? He had a brace on his leg and she had a bad eye that looked at you sideways. All their friends were like that. They all had something wrong with them.”
    â€œMaybe everyone’s got something wrong with them.”
    â€œNo,” Louis said. “Not seriously wrong, not like that. We had more than our fair share of crazy people and mental cases. And what about the lodgers?”
    â€œLouis, no one who takes in lodgers expects them to be normal.”
    â€œI want to forget all about it,” he said. “I want to forget I ever had a childhood. But instead I remember everything. I just can’t recall what happened five minutes ago.”
    â€œWe were sitting in the barber’s, Louis, getting your eyebrows trimmed.”
    â€œYou want something to eat? I’m hungry.”
    â€œOkay. Let’s get some lunch. You want to see the menu?”
    â€œI won’t be able to read it.”
    â€œI’ll read it out to you.”
    â€œAnd the prices.”
    â€œLouis, you don’t need to care about the prices.”
    â€œOh? Why not?”
    â€œI mean, we can afford it. I’ll pay.”
    â€œI’ll pay. You’ve flown all the way over here.”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter.”
    â€œI’ll pay.”
    I read out the menu to him and I knocked five dollars off everything.
    â€œSeems pricey to me,” he said—even with the five dollars deducted.
    â€œLouis, you’re all right for money, believe me, you don’t need to worry.”
    â€œThey’ll never give me any.”
    â€œLouis, I talked to the hospital social worker, to Leonora. She’s dealing with it. It’s all going through. You’ll get the money. No one expects someone with a diagnosed brain tumor to clock in on a Monday morning.”
    â€œYou don’t know how it works over here. They’ll find a way to wriggle out of it. We’re screwed.”
    â€œLouis—”
    â€œI’ll have a melted cheese panini.”
    â€œYeah, okay. Me too.”
    I motioned to the waitress, who came over and took our food orders. We sat there, under the burner, in the cool, crisp Australian winter. The light was high and bright and the­ cars moved along the streets and the pedestrians passed us, and no one knew or cared or would ever have recognized that a condemned man and his brother sat at that table and upon those chairs. Same as I had walked past many a dying person in my time and had evinced no interest.
    Louis pulled his beanie back on and sat with his Buddha smile and milky eyes, watching the world go about its business.
    â€œYou start the radiotherapy in the morning? Is that right?”
    â€œRadio and chemo both.”
    â€œI read about a guy on the Internet, had the same as you, diagnosed with it seven years ago, still going. In remission and still going. Seven years.”
    â€œThat’s good,” Louis said. “That’s good.”
    Any port in a storm. Any straw in the wind.
    The paninis arrived and we ate them hot.
    â€œOkay, Louis?”
    â€œThis is good,” he said, cheese dribbling down his chin. That was Louis for you. Never a stylish eater. More of a