The Square
‘The circus is in full flight today,’ her co-worker, James, said to Mel as they walked through Parramatta Square to get their coffees.
The encampment had grown, she saw. Two torn tents flapped in the breeze; three shopping trollies heaved with roll-on suitcases, sleeping bags, and old jumpers; dirty blankets sucked up mud from the grassy knoll outside the church; a portable speaker pumped out hip-hop; empty drink bottles and take-away food containers spread around the site.
It was like a Bedouin nomad camp crossed with a St Vinnies op-shop, Mel thought to herself.
But it was the homeless folks themselves that intrigued her more. When she went for a soy cappuccino at Bourke Street Bakery, where she diligently got her coffee card stamped, Mel would watch them from a distance, careful they didn’t notice her.
The beautiful Sudanese woman who tied plastic bags through her long dreadlocks and who sometimes wailed at the sky. The bearded, old Aussie bloke in the fading Penrith Panthers jacket, rolling durries with one hand. Two young guys, with the wiry edge of hyenas, maybe junkies; they were taking turns spinning in circles and then spray-painting fluoro on each other’s sneakers. One fell down and the other ‘dero’s’ — as James called them — laughed.
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‘Geezus. What a disaster,’ James said as they got in the coffee queue. ‘Council and the cops should move them on and clean up the mess.’
He always had strong views, Mel knew. What was wrong with the women in the on-line dating scene. Who he was voting for. Why UNSW where he’d gone was better than WSU where she’d gone. Which partner at their accountancy firm was a dickhead. The need to cleanse the carefully curated public square of the haphazard homeless people who offended his sense of civic symmetry.
At times, Mel envied James his certainty. How it must be easier to see in black and white. To be clear about who the good guys and the bad guys were. At other times, she dreamed of not getting off her commute at Parra, but going to the airport and flying to a fearless freedom where she would never need to listen to James again.
Mel saw a younger woman her age at the camp take a fag from the Penrith Panther. It was May and getting colder; wind blew through the tunnel of the office towers on the square. But the woman only wore a halter top, yoga pants and Havianas. She got a light from the Panther and then sat down next to the Sudanese lady. She put her pale, skinny, and track-marked arm around the dark-skinned woman and pulled her tight.
As they got closer to the café’s service counter, James’ phone pinged.
‘Mel, order for me, okay. The usual,’ he said and stepped away. ‘It’s the boss and I need to take it.’
Mel got to the cashier. She asked to ‘pay forward’ five coffees.
‘For the people on the square,’ Mel said.
