Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 3.1

When I woke up there was a dog licking my face. It was one of those dogs with the big long ears hanging down and the curly hair all over – I think it was a German Shepherd but I'm not good on dogs. It was on the end of a long leash. Someone outside yanked suddenly on the leash and the dog disappeared. It was all very strange but it woke me up pretty quick.

It was daytime. I could hear cars and trucks and the voices of people going by in the park and the fountains splashing. It was already hot. It was one of those days you know is going to be a real stinker.

I woke Sophie up. The baby was already awake, looking up into the shrub where the sun was coming through the leaves, his pink mouth open and his thumb stuck in the corner. I knew he'd get hungry soon, then he'd start bawling again. We'd be lucky to find another obliging breast anywhere. I asked Sophie about it.

"We could buy him some milk," she said, "but we'd have to warm it up first." She seemed to know a lot about babies. I don't know how she could have. But girls think they know everything.

She tried to feed the baby herself. She held the baby up to her chest, and pretended it was getting a good old drink. She even wiped its chin. Jesus.

"Stop staring," she said. "Pervert."

"Why'd you bring it?" I said.

She ignored me.

"There must've been a reason," I went on.

"Someone just left him there. Banded. The Whistlers were going to send him away."

"Away?"

"I dunno where. Some place for banded babies I guess. We couldn't just leave him."

"Well great idea Soph. How're we gonna stow away with a baby? And there's no milk on a island, everyone knows that."

"Arsehole!" she said.

"Sssh! Someone'll hear us!"

"I don't care, arsehole baby-hater!" She sure could get poisonous when she was in a mood. She picked up the baby glared at me over the top of its head.

I just started picking up the clothes we'd slept on, and putting them in the backpacks, and getting ready to go. I found one of her skirts, a, pink frilly one, and started fooling around, draping it over my waist and doing a little dance with it. Sophie started coughing, then she was giggling. It took all the poison out of her just like that. She could never stay angry at me for long, old Sophie.

The park was like a different place in the daytime. I felt dirty from sleeping on the ground, and it was already getting hot, and I wanted more than anything to jump in one of the fountains and have a bath, but I knew it would attract attention. I looked at them longingly as we went past.

We left the park and went into a narrow lane that smelled like armpits, then came out onto a busy street. There were so many people walking up and down the footpath that we kept getting bumped. Sophie held my sleeve so she wouldn't lose me and the baby.

I started asking people about the Cripple with the Singing Dogs. There was a man in a suit, carrying a briefcase: he took one look at us and kept walking. There was a young guy with glasses and a backpack and a little goatee beard, which is like what a goat has, and he kept saying, "What?" to everything and looking at his watch. There was a woman dressed in a suit, and she wanted dearly to help us, but she was in a frightful rush, because she had a very important meeting to get to. Her smile was like when a dog bares its teeth.

The next person we asked was a bum lying in the doorway of a vacant shop.

"Cripple with the Singing Dogs," I said to the bum.

"Okerfernokee!" said the bum.

"Okerfernokee?"

Bad move. The bum's eyes lit up like torches.

"OKERFERNOKEE," he said, sitting up and pointing at me with a dirty finger. "OKERFERNOKEE!" he screamed at Sophie. "OKERFER – FUCKIN – NOKEE!" He turned around and dropped his pants and started pissing on the shop window, whispering "Okerfernokee-Okerfernokee-Okerfernokee," under his breath all the while, and when he stopped pissing he sighed and said "Okerfernokee" at the same time. He was the friendliest person we'd met so far, but I figured we should get away from him before the cops came, so we slipped away while he was pulling his pants up.

We passed a fruit shop. There was a display of mangoes out the front. My mind was still full of mangoes and islands and old ladies with twelve dogs, and the mere sight of a mango was enough to set my heart racing. But they were expensive so we didn't buy one.

Instead we bought a carton of milk and a packet of chips at a milk bar. We munched on the chips as we walked. We didn't give the baby any milk – we were afraid it would kill him if it was cold. He didn't seem thirsty anyway, maybe because he'd had such a good breastful last night - he wasn't crying or anything, just gazing around at all the people. I thought that if we could warm up the milk somehow we could give him a little bit. One mouthful of milk surely wouldn't be enough to kill such a wicked baby. Sophie thought that the milk would get warm enough just sitting in my bag. She was right of course, but I didn't tell her that.

Eventually we came to a slummy part of the city where there was less people. There were big empty-looking buildings all over the place, and construction sites with cranes poking around on top of them like big water-birds. A hot dusty wind blew through the streets.

Sophie stopped suddenly. "Hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"That sound."

I listened.

It was coming from far away across the city. It rose and fell on the wind. It floated through the streets like smoke.

Me and Sophie looked at each other, our mouths open. The baby gurgled.

We followed the sound through the city, arguing over which street would get us closer, and stopping to listen every so often. We came to a busy street with cars banked up forever. Two lines of trees grew down the centre of the street and away up the hill. There were tram lines in between trees, the trams rattling by and clanking on the rails and whipping along the lines.

And there was the Cripple and the Singing Dogs.