Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 11.2

I'd gotten in the habit of taking Fred for walks around Ambrose. He liked going for walks with me, old Fred. He'd stop and examine everything we came across. He'd poke his finger at a snail oozing across the path, for example.

"Snail!" I'd say, as if it was some exotic beast.

"Nail!" he'd cry.

He was convinced there were snakes in the thicket behind Ambrose.

"Nakes!" he called. "Where are you?"

But the snakes never showed themselves.

We usually took a piss together at the edge of the thicket. It's just this thing we did. It makes me laugh how kids piss – how they drop their pants right down to their ankles and concentrate fiercely as they take aim. He'd look in wonder from my penis to his own little pecker, then he'd tell me that I peed for a really long time.

He'd come back to the hotel with his pockets full of rocks and crap. Sophie would try to take them off him but he wouldn't let her have them. I knew better than to try and take his rocks off him. Eventually we'd find them on the rug in the lounge room or in the toilet or something, and I'd have to take them outside, and the whole thing would start over again.

The green door fascinated him. He knew it was the only way out of Ambrose. When we passed by he'd always ask me about it. So I'd tell him about the magical land outside, where cars rattled by through the city, and boats floated about on the big wet thing called the sea.

"When do we went froo?"

"When you're older, Freddy."

"How older?"

I didn't know. I didn't want to think about it to be honest – about Fred out in the world, where everyone seemed to want to take him away from us. So instead of answering his question I'd pick him up under the arms and hold him to my chest and breathe in his good smell and roar into his chest like a lion, and he'd giggle like mad and forget all about the green door for a while.