a fifteen minute radius. She liked to be able to get up or leave her home at the last possible minute and still make her destination within a quarter of an hour. Unfortunately, Kirwan was twenty minutes drive away from the Port so that would not work for her at all.
“Oh yeah love, it’s just near The Strand. I’m pretty sure you’re going to love it. I reckon this place would really suit you,” he said giving her a smile and the keys. “Here’s the address, it’s above a set of shops, closest to the water in Gregory Street.”
“Okay thanks,” said Kylie. Taking the keys and the hand-written address, she walked back to her car. With less than an hour to return the keys to the rental agency before they shut for the day, Kylie drove to 71 Gregory Street. She parked her car on the street and saw some shops. One was vacant, one was a noodle shop, another was a Thai restaurant and the last one was an Indian takeaway shop. Looking up she could see what appeared to be an apartment on the top of the shops but couldn’t see a number anywhere. She walked around near the gate and finally saw a 75 confirming that it was indeed 75 Gregory Street. After walking up the two flights of stairs, there was a locked screen door and a wooden door which both opened very easily. The door led into a newly carpeted large lounge room with space for a dining table and to her right was the kitchen. Kylie’s jaw dropped. It was modern, it was spacious and it had been refurbished within the last ten years. She turned around and looked out the window that overlooked the front stairs and she could see the ocean. “Oh my goodness. I’m in heaven,” she said out loud then she walked over to the two large windows that overlooked the Seaview Drive Through Bottle Shop with more ocean views to her left. “Oh my gawd, double sea views – The Seaview across the road, and an actual sea view. I’m on the doorstep of The Strand.”
Kylie walked over to the first door closest to the kitchen and opened it up. It was a bedroom with a built-in wardrobe. She was happy about that as she hated the thought of having to buy a wardrobe and lug it up two flights of stairs. Around to her right was a toilet in a room that was recessed back away from the door. “Jeepers, it’s like another bedroom in here there’s so much room.” She laughed and then walked out of the toilet and to her right again to find a clean, white tiled bathroom with a glass shower door and a clean white porcelain washbasin. Opposite the bathroom were two large linen cupboards and to the right of that was the laundry, complete with a large hot water system tank. She opened the back door and found a set of back stairs and a little storage room that used to house the outside toilet when it was literally an outhouse set up.
“I am so taking this place,” she thought and walked back inside. “I thought ole mate said this joint had two bedrooms,” Kylie said to herself after she locked the back door. She walked past the laundry and the linen cupboards and found another door that opened off the lounge room that she hadn’t been in yet. It opened into an enormous room. “Holy master bedroom Jedi Master McManus,” she said. “Rent this apartment you will. Sell your soul should he ask you to.”
There were two large wardrobes in the room with shelving down one side of the opened door. Two large windows overlooked the street and the entrance to the Seaview bottle shop. “I could fit a desk in here, a chair, a duchess, a bed and two bedside tables no worries,” she said out loud, as she spun around in a circle. “If I had any of that stuff that is.”
Kylie ran into the kitchen. It was the last place she inspected because she figured it was most likely to be the least used room in the apartment. There was nothing to fault in the apartment. Oh, yes there was. No air conditioning. It was not a deal breaker. Kylie took one last look then locked it up and drove back to the real estate agent and asked to speak to the man that gave her the keys.
He came over from his desk and he asked her with a smile, “Well? What did you think love? Did you like it?”
“How much is it?” she asked.
“$180 a week love.”
“I love it. I’ll take it. Can I put a deposit on it so that no one else takes it from me?”
“No one else knows about it love. It didn’t even hit the books. Fill this out and I’ll process the paperwork for you straight away but you can’t move in for about two weeks. Okay?”
“No problems. I just don’t want to lose it. It’s perfect.”
“I knew it would suit a nice lass like you,” he said handing her some forms.
Kylie filled out the paperwork and paid the bond money straight away after running across the road to withdraw the money from the ATM near the piano shop.
“I’ll ring you in a couple of weeks love,” he said.
“Thank you. What was your name?” she asked.
“Nev love. And yours is... Kylie,” he said reading her paperwork.
“Yes I’m Kylie. Thank you Nev, I really appreciate it,” she said and walked out the door grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Back at work on Monday morning Kylie couldn’t wait to share her news with Shonky. He was so excited for her he bought her lunch and they drove past the apartment four times beeping the horn and waving at it.
Kylie moved in a couple of weeks later. On her first night in her new apartment she sat thinking about how much her life had changed in such a short time. She was now working at the Port, surrounded by water, learning to operate the Ship loader over the ship’s hatch, in a cabin suspended over the water and living less than fifty metres from The Strand, the ocean. It was just like the reading from the psychic had said. Content with what she had already, she thought, “Anything after this will be an absolute bonus.”
The Wish Lischt
Another Friday night at home, alone. To be fair, Kylie had tried attending various social occasions but they all ended up being unhappy, lonely events devoid of any real connections with other human beings. Depressed and worn down further by deprecating self-assessment, Kylie finally convinced herself that she was destined for bachelorhood. Her little flat was hot and still with not a breath of sea breeze to relieve the heat and humidity. Front and centre at her own pity party, she was keeping close company with her one and only guest, Mr Jim Beam.
She sat at her dining room table, with a pen in one hand, a Jim Beam and coke in the other. Sketching a rough family tree on the scribble pad in front of her, she realised there were many unmarried, unattached individuals who were clearly unmotivated to be anything but ‘singular sods’ in her extended family. Kylie had always thought that one day she would make someone very happy. But after three months living alone, without any social interaction with anyone from the opposite sex who was single and no one to talk to in person at all after she finished work, it was now clear to her amidst the boozy haze that this dream had come to the end of the road.
Kylie’s main reason for leaving Mount Isa had been to find a husband. Her years of searching the arid man-scape of North West Queensland had yielded nothing but disappointment and an unfurnished ring finger. Since arriving in Townsville, Kylie had kept her eyeballs peeled for possible suitors. Yet all she had seen so far were men holding hands with men on shopping night, married men at work and eighteen-year-old pimply teenage attendants in the takeaway and bottle shops she now heavily frequented.
The trigger for this wallow into self-doom was an email she had received earlier that day from a girlfriend back home. Kylie had learnt that her ex-boyfriend, who she referred to as “Don’t”, had found another girlfriend as soon as she had left town. Despite the fact that Kylie and Don’t were very much split up and she definitely didn’t want him back, the knowledge that she had no one and he had someone made her wonder how fair life really was? She had broken it off with him so that a forever someone could come her way but no one had. Now Don’t was no longer spending nights alone in Single Land, and more than likely being the same prick as he ever was to the new bird, yet Kylie seemed destined to be living in Alone Town forever, population one.
Kylie