Published in Issue 2 of Pendulum literary journal, 1998.

Nightlife By Day

by Barbara Welton

There was something wrong at home, she just couldn't remember what it was. The woman sat on the railway bridge, singing a Roy Orbison song softly. It wasn't easy to swing one's legs in an apparently carefree manner whilst sitting atop a bridge's metal siding, but she somehow managed an approximation.

She was 56 and loved trams. She knew 17 different tram conductors by their first names. She travelled various routes for hours, adoring the green machines' shunting, rocking motion. She didn't care much for trains, silver serpents ripping through the places they serviced. Trains needed demolition crews to precede them, dynamiting rock-faces, digging into hillsides to get them through. Not like trams which serenely trundled down roads already there. And trams didn't blast people with alarming horn noises as trains did. Trams 'ding-dinged' instead. Strangers talked more on trams, too. She rarely heard train passengers asking others about an upcoming stop, but on trams, entire conversations ensued from a simple "Do you know how far Commercial Road is?".

It was a tram which rock-a-byed her away from her disrupted home five days ago. She had returned from shopping - she remembered that much - and the house was curiously quiet. Even the budgerigar, quick black eyes blinking behind bars, appraised her arrival with nothing more than a mute ruffle of green feathers. But there was a noise. A soft, intimate noise, drifting out of the bathroom. She and the budgerigar cocked their heads and listened. It was the radio, a golden-oldies station, playing a song she'd danced to years ago. Something was wrong. She remembered taking an old Avon case from atop the wardrobe and stuffing it with clothes, toiletries, some fading photographs. Walking to the nearest tram stop, she blew her nose on a man's handkerchief and wondered for the first time what it was she couldn't remember.

Since then, she'd spent as much time tramming as possible. She was yet to calculate the maximum kilometres she could do on one all-day ticket, but it had to number in the hundreds of hundreds, surely. At night, she tangled herself into the grey bedsheets of the drear motel room she'd booked, sleeping fitfully until morning appeared and the trams ran again. The room was too vile to spend any conscious, wakeful time in, and plus the trams were warmer.

Her first weekend away from home was bitterly wintry. Saturday wasn't too bad, tram times only marginally less regular than during the week, and people seemed cheery despite the weather, talking loudly about bargain hunting and the approaching night's entertainment. The woman sighed often, peering out of windows overcast with condensation, catching snippets of others' happy chatter. Loneliness was setting in and the trams seemed suddenly full of lovers and shopping-buddies, friends and families. She alighted in the city centre and sploshed along the streets, wishing for an umbrella and wishing she could remember why she'd left home.

The pub she found herself at was hot and deliciously sultry after the pelting rain. A girl perched on a stool by the door demanded payment of five dollars "to see the arvo band", stamping her wrist with a purple "PASS" smudge in return for the purple note. She hadn't intended on seeing a band, but the pub looked so inviting from the sodden street, its windows fogged from the inhabitants' heated laughter inside. Unlike the boisterous prattle she'd left on the tram, the discussion amongst the assortment of motley youngsters here was warm and companionable. Genuine and passionate, it revolved around music and intellect, not bargain basements or the weather. The woman weaved her way among the deliberating groups, searching out the toilet. As she read novels of cubicle-wall graffiti, a gigantean noise began, so loud and of such acute sonic boom, the light fitting above her buzzed excitedly with sympathetic vibrations. This, she surmised, was the "arvo band".

From the toilet, via bar, she made her way to the noise's source. The four boys on the stage were smiling and dreamy, in love with the sound they produced from their heads and hands. She watched the bass guitarist, a craggy, coarse-looking young man in scruffy jeans and singlet. Despite looking like he'd just stepped from a building site and would probably deck anyone who alluded to anything feminine about his manner, it seemed he couldn't stop his hips swaying from side to languid side whilst slamming notes from the instrument. Fingers long and articulate on the strings, his left hand curved around the huge guitar lovingly, reverently. This slob was creating music! The woman applauded and cheered at the end of the assault, tears stinging the corners of her eyes, unself-conscious under the smiling nods of the outcast children around her.

She was sad when the alternating euphony / cacophony was over, and the ebony-clad youngsters donned coats and wound precociously bright Indian scarves about their pale necks. The bartender caught her eye across the room, smiling tiredly. He wore a collarless shirt and blue braces... that reminded her of someone else, something else. The exact memory evaded her however, and she shuffled outside with the others, out to the rain, the tram stop and the journey back to her motel to await Sunday's arrival.

A young man sat opposite her on the number 72 out of the city on Sunday morning. A very tall young man in understated black and leather jacket. He travelled alone, too, and seemed to study every detail that trundled passed. His eyes darted over all the window pane offered while his big hands lay marble-like in his lap. The woman watched him, the movement of the tram swaying them both from side to side. He was talking to himself. What he told himself about, she couldn't guess, but every so often, his lips curled around a soft smile at some thought or other. She simply couldn't stop her own lips mimicking the sweet gesture.

He pulled the request chord on Burke Road and the tram shuddered to a stop for him. The woman alighted also, smiling at the back of the leather jacket, following the young man to the market that sprawled behind the shops like a suburban bivouac, full of colour, noise and movement. Although his walking pace was lethargic, his long paces soon left her behind. Upon losing sight of him in the crowd, her smile faded and her thoughts returned to the security of the trams.

Some distance from the market's buzz, the calm of a bridge over the railway line distracted her. Without thinking twice, she manoeuvred herself onto the concrete support on the other side. There was ample room to do this, and she wondered fleetingly why engineers made bridges so easy for people to clamber onto the supposedly dangerous parts of. Even hoisting herself onto the top of the bridge's side was easy, though it was vaguely slanted - an apologetic deterrent. She wasn't thinking about jumping, she told herself. She simply wanted to sit there, thinking. Perhaps remember something. Legs swinging in the air nonchalantly, hands at repose in her lap, she started humming a Roy Orbison song, enjoying herself.

'You alright there?'

The quiet voice at her shoulder alarmed her, but anxiety left quickly when she turned to find the young man from the tram leaning against the bridge beside her. Shopping bags drooped at his feet, except for one containing a huge earthenware vase - the plastic bag flapped around that one in the slight breeze.

'I should be waiting for a tram.' She knew she sounded vague, and hated herself for it.

'Never seen trams leave from a railway bridge before...' His smile was lop-sided, but his face shone trust-worthiness. He was a tram traveller, afterall. And he loved the market and huge earthenware vases. She liked him.

'Well, no. You're right there. I don't know why I'm up here.'

'Do you want some help down?'

She sighed, looking out across the cutting she sat above. 'I think there's something wrong at home, but I just can't remember.'

The man exhaled slowly. '"Nightlife",' he announced.

'Sorry?'

'The song you're humming. "Nightlife" by Roy Orbison, isn't it?'

'I don't know. Is it?'

'I'm pretty sure. "Nightlife ooh lalala..." That's how it goes.' His voice was low and gentle, a lovely reverberation in the back of his throat. The woman smiled broadly.

'Yes! Yes! Have I heard it recently?'

He smiled back. 'I wouldn't know. Have you?'

The woman's smile promptly slid away. 'Yes, I think so. On a radio. Oh,' she grabbed his arm suddenly, 'Something's wrong at home! Can you play me that song?'

'Now?'

'Yes! Immediately. I heard it at home. Everything else was quiet...' Slowly, the man was directing her feet back to the concrete pylon by which she had come to her perch. With great care he guided her back around the siding until she was safe on the pavement again. She nattered absently all the while about the song she must hear at once.

'Well,' he gathered his shopping into his large hands and offered her his arm, 'We could try some of the market stalls. You never know.'

The second stall holder they asked jabbed his thumb toward a crate of cassette tapes. 'Sure - got some Big O tapes there. You might hafta dig around a bit, but he's there somewhere.'

The woman and the young man both delved into the box of silent music. The clacking sounds of plastic covers hitting one another reminded the young man of the clicking-beetle toys he'd played with as a boy. The woman thought the noise resembled a mid-baking search through a kitchen's utensil drawer. Between them, they found five Roy Orbison cassettes.

'"Nightlife", she announced, 'Found it!'.

'Me too,' he grinned, 'It's on three of these.' He chose one, replaced the others, and paid the stall holder. Smiling, he waved the cassette triumphantly and proceeded to wrestle a personal stereo with earphones from a pocket of his leather jacket.

Plugging his ears into the tiny machine, he fast-forwarded the tape to where the sleeve said "Nightlife" should appear. Past "Pretty Woman" and "Only the Lonely", whizzing through "Dream Baby", "Nightlife" lay waiting at the end of side one. He cued up the song, placed the headphones carefully on the woman's head and pressed 'play'.

Her face lit up as music flooded all around her. Oblivious to all the market-goers mingling around her, she felt the world shrinking, contracting, until it consisted only of herself, Orbison's lilting voice and her new friend's kindly face. She laughed, swaying, humming along, feeling it flow through her as it had so long ago when she'd danced to it in a bayside dancehall. She remembered beehiving her hair, remembered her husband's first stuttered invitation to dance, remembered the home they built together. She remembered their succession of budgerigars, all named Chippy. And she remembered hearing this song on the radio, a golden-oldies station, quietly, in the background, as she found her husband's fallen body in the bathroom.

The young man's brow furrowed as he saw tears slide slowly down the woman's cheeks. Her face seemed to crumple before his eyes, her mouth screaming a silent howl as she wrung her hands in front of her. He removed the earphones from the sides of her head, letting them fall about her neck as he put his huge arms around her shuddering body and held her.

All around them, a tide of people ebbed and flowed, giving a wide berth to the odd couple embracing in the middle of the path. If they gave them a passing thought at all, they dismissed them as mother and son sharing a moment together. The woman looked upset but the son seemed to be comforting her well enough. Besides, it was none of their business.

the end.