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singing, standing in the slosh of death.
    Oops, didn’t notice the fuel gauge getting low, never been out this side of the city before, hope there’s a petrol station soon and hope they take my beneficiary bank cash card, I think I got fifty-two bucks credit left, oh, I hope I have, I couldn’t stand the embarrassment, the humiliation. And I only go on welfare in between jobs, which I look hard for.
    I was in a supermarket few months ago, Christmas, had convinced myself the government paid us a Christmas bonus in our benefit. I loaded up that trolley with tins of salmon, fancy cereals, sauces, biscuits. I even bought a big cake from a glass display, enough to feed ten mouths, I just wanted it so badly. And some candles to have myself a four-month-late twenty-ninth birthday party all by my happy self. Felt so good the darkness lightened and my head had lifted higher, my eyes could stare back at the world, and maybe I smiled. All this from a full shopping trolley.
    Then I got to the checkout and I should have picked it my teller was a bitch, making the world pay for her being fat. Put my stuff through, took my card and zap. Comes up,
Transaction declined. Insufficient funds
. Eyes at me swimming in fat rolls and glee: Madam, your account doesn’t have sufficient funds. In a loud voice. I wanted to die.
    Left the trolley right there at checkout and walked out, face burning. Ieven wanted to cry, which I thought wasn’t me. Not over that. Hell, not when I had my heart broken a dozen times and maybe it was broken to start with. Never shopped there again, even though it’s the closest supermarket to us.
    My, the gauge is lower than empty, it’s in minus. A half hour has passed of a nothing life. It’s dark out there, hardly a cloud in the sky, yet as if a massive storm’s about to engulf the world (…
dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent
…).

CHAPTER FIVE
A GENTLEMAN TO THE RESCUE
    A PETROL STATION, thank God. I pull in. Get the thought to say, Fill me up, please, with a sexual tone in my voice. Makes me smile and the darkness kind of backs off a way.
    A middle-age guy takes his sweet time coming out. It’s a pump needs a key. Sign says: NO CHEQUES ACCEPTED. CASH ONLY OR MAJOR CREDIT CARDS. He takes a look at me. Cash or credit card? No howyoudo nothin’.
    I wind the window down. Credit card. (Well, it is a credit card in a way. ’Cept it’s limited by how much cash is in the account.) He’s sizing me up on my car, which ain’t much size at all. It’s a Jap import, the Nips’ discards for us bottom-of-the-heap Kiwis to buy at rip-off prices.
    Twenty bucks’ worth, please. He ain’t gonna like this. But he can’t siphon the petrol out, can he?
    I seen movies with guys like this, who have a little petrol joint way out in the nevernevers, and they’ve always got a grudge against the outsideworld. Like priests of some weird religion gone strange from the isolation.
    The pump stops. The face appears in my window, I hand him the card.
    What’s this? he asks, with a detective’s disbelieving, you’re going to jail look.
    You must have Eftpos, mate.
    No, I don’t have
Ef
tpos. Sign there the width of your windscreen says it’s cash, credit cards, no cheques. You owe me twenty bucks, lady.
    So, take my card, put it through your machine. This is the twenty-first century, pal, don’t you have an Eftpos machine?
    No, he hasn’t got an Eftpos machine. But I got a phone, lady, when he couldn’t mean less a lady. And I’m using it right now to call the cops.
    Is this dude for real? I mean, I’m offering payment, I know I got fifty-two bucks of credit left there. And if he waited one more day, tomorrow the government social welfare puts another $192.50 into that bank account, it’ll show up on my credit.
    Except he’s not waiting, he’s written down my car rego and gone inside to phone. Then this sort of car station-wagon pulls up. Out hops a very handsome