The hulking car sidled up slowly, its exhausts pulsing louder than was decent for the sort of vehicle it was.
‘Prims!’ the familiar voice snorted through the passenger side window. ‘Hey, Prims!’
Primo Nato stopped and stooped to peer into the car.
‘Tone, mate,’ he said. ‘You went and bought it. I don’t believe it. No, I guess I do.’
‘You like it, eh?’ Primo’s best mate Tony ‘Tone’ Gargano said, tapping the steering wheel lightly. ‘She’s a beauty, yeah?’
Primo threw his arms wide and looked the car up and down. ‘Mate, you weren’t kidding, it really is a hearse.’
‘Was. It was a hearse, mate,’ Tone replied skittishly. ‘Got it through my cousin Alfie, the mechanic, like I told you, yeah. Just picked it up. Like an hour ago. Hop in.’
Primo had never sat in a hearse before. Almost by instinct he looked over his shoulder into the rear compartment. To his relief it was empty, save for a backpack and a wheel brace.
‘No stiffs in back, mate,’ Tone teased. ‘Only up front. In my jocks.’ When he laughed, his bottom lip peeled back to reveal almost perfect teeth. ‘Get it? In my jocks!’
Primo shook his head and settled himself into the leather upholstery.
‘Comfy, eh? This is a classic mid-70s Mercedes hearse,’ Tone said and rolled back into the traffic. ‘Nothing like going out in style, I say.’
The engine growled as though something was banked up in the manifold and the exhaust note was just this side of announcing a major collapse. Yet there was something weirdly appealing about the rich black interior, the dusty silver rear tray and the flaky console that made Primo smile.
‘She’s from New South,’ Tone explained. ‘Left over after a funeral parlour shut down.’ He reached across and popped the glove box. ‘Got all the books and shit too, eh. Service history. The works. Alfie made sure about all that stuff.’ Tone grinned expansively and cocked his head to the left, squinting into the middle distance. ‘So, you got nothing to say to a mate who gets himself a new set of wheels?’
Primo took the bait. He touched the Carlton Football Club blue-and-white fluffy dice Tone had already fixed to the rear-view mirror. ‘Fluffy dice, Tone? Really?’ He grinned. ‘What you going to use the meat wagon for?’
‘Delivering pizzas for the old man, of course. And getting laid. Chicks love being scared. In a nice sort of way. You see how much room there is up back, Prims?’
Primo gave the rear another cursory glance. ‘You reckon a chick will want to get laid in the back of a hearse? You’re tripping bad, Tone.’
Tone laughed. ‘I’m calling this baby the Stiff Master. Eh? Good name or what? the Stiff Master. Like its owner.’
‘You’re sick, Tone. Certifiably sick.’ Primo spoke the words but didn’t mean them. He and Tony Gargano had been best mates since forever. Tone was in your face, but he wasn’t a sicko, not really.
‘And don’t knock the dice, Prims.’ Tone smiled, flicking the spinning plush velvet dice with two fingers. ‘Wait till I put the Carlton decals on the rear window, mate. If we get through to the Grand Final I might even consider a flag on the aerial, yeah?’
‘You might want to paint the meat wagon navy blue in honour of the boys, Tone. If we make it to the Grand Final, and if we win the big one.’
Tone shook his head good-humouredly. ‘I love the Blues, Prims, but a hearse has got to be black.’ He leaned across the bench seat and poked Primo on the arm. ‘So, a burger to celebrate your news and my new wheels?’ he asked, easing the long car into the drive-thru of the local McDonalds.
‘Your old man runs a pizza shop and you eat burger shit. Get serious, Tone,’ Primo scolded, but followed his mate’s lead and decided on a burger. It was as good a way as any to mark getting his driver’s licence that morning.
‘You ever heard the saying “Familiarity breeds contempt”? Well, there’s only so many pizzas I can deliver before even the smell of the stuff makes me puke. You follow? Prim, watch this.’
Tone placed the order with the female voice coming through the intercom then edged the car to the paying window. When the attendant looked up to take his money, Tone whispered, ‘The guy in the back’s got a bit of a long trip. You got anything that won’t go off quickly?’
Primo laughed despite himself and was still smirking when Tone moved the car up to the next window to collect the food.
‘See what I mean, Prims? This car gets a guy noticed.’
‘Hey Tone,’ the girl at the second window said as she passed the food parcel to him. ‘I always thought you were a dead-shit. Now you got the car to go with it.’
‘Piss off, Alison!’ Tone shot back at the grinning face behind the now tightly shut window. ‘Piss off. What would you know?’
Alison had her middle finger up. But she was smiling.
‘Bet you wish you could cop a ride in this, Alison Walker,’ Tone said. Then to Primo, ‘See that? She’s got a bad attitude. Can’t have bad attitude in the Stiff Master, even from an ex-classmate. Isn’t that right, Ali-son Wal-ker?’
‘Yeah, right, Tone. You might need to work on your people skills, paesan,’ Primo said effusively. ‘Aren’t funeral directors supposed to be good with people? And pizza makers need to be sociable too, Tone. Like your old man.’
‘Yeah, well up yours too,’ Tone spat back.
The anger seeped out of him when Primo added, ‘It’s a cool car, Tone. Seriously cool. And I’m dead serious about that too, mate. Really.’
A few moments later, when the burgers arrived at the now open window, Tone leaned across and grabbed Alison’s hands in his as she passed the package across. ‘How about some fries with that, and I’ll give you a ride in the Stiff Master when you get off.’
Alison pulled a face of mock horror, shook her hands free of Tone’s grip and said, ‘You missed your chance with me last year, Tone Gargano. I ain’t on the takeaway menu.’ She slid the window shut with some force then smiled and wiggled her eyebrows.
Primo laughed. ‘Bam, you’ve been served notice, Tone.’
‘She’ll come round, Prims,’ Tone said, and, passing the burgers to Primo, accelerated out of the drive-thru.
As they ate, Tone drove slow laps of their neighbourhood, Fitzroy, navigating through narrow streets, down bluestone laneways behind corrugated iron fences with overhanging fig trees and untended vines, and over roads rutted with tram tracks along which only the ghosts of trams past now rattled.
‘So, you going to let me drive this thing or what?’ Primo asked.
‘Sure, why not?’ Tone replied. ‘Just not right now, you know. This little wagon needs to be eased into its stride.’
Primo laughed. ‘And you figure I couldn’t do that, Tone? You know, ease it into its stride?’
Behind the steering wheel Tone smirked. ‘I just got her, Prims. Let me see what she can do first, eh. You’ll get the chance to drive the Stiff Master. Don’t fret.’
Primo grinned and sat back. The hearse was Tone’s new toy, and he wanted first dibs at breaking it in.
Tone ran the palms of his hands along the circumference of the steering wheel and sneered. ‘Won’t the little old ladies get a fright when I rock up with their pizzas and garlic bread in this baby? They’ll think I’ve come to collect them, eh. Get it?’
They were pulling up outside his house so Primo merely nodded. He had the door open even before the hearse had come to a stop, stepping out without a word and shutting the door almost reverentially. He was already at the gate when Tone called him back.
‘Prims, listen, now you got your licence, you want Alfie to keep an eye out for a set of wheels for you or what?’
‘I’ve got Bambino when I need wheels, Tone,’ Primo said.
Tone snapped his fingers. ‘Yeah, Bambino! Good one. I forgot that little detail there, Prims. Your old man is going to let you drive his pride and joy around all of a sudden, right?’
Primo’s lips became a tight line. ‘My old man doesn’t need to know every shit I take, Tone.’
‘All good then, eh,’ Tone said with a wink and gunned the hearse. A long plaintive peal from its horn shadowed Primo all the way to the back door.
The house was busy in its silence when Primo walked in. He knew his mother would still be at the community house. Like at the nursing home, Tuesday was bingo. His home-again brother, Adrian, had probably gone to beg his wife Stella’s forgiveness. And grovel to her family, especially her brothers, who’d never warmed to Adrian anyway.
As expected, there was food in the oven waiting to be reheated. Vegetable casserole; left over from Sunday lunch when his father should have come home for the day but hadn’t.
‘There’s been a bit of an episode,’ the nurse had explained. Code for ‘He has no idea where he is or what’s going on’.
Primo took the casserole from the oven, grabbed a fork and pulled up a chair at the kitchen table. As he ate the cold casserole, he stared at the photos pasted to the refrigerator with various magnets from sundry places his eldest brother, Santo, had visited while working as a sales rep. There were lots of stiffly posed shots of family members at weddings and christenings, picnics and backyard barbecues. There was even a restored sepia montage of his mother’s paternal grandparents.
Primo picked up a squashed pea from the plate and fired it at a family snap. He hit his late maternal grandfather in the chest.
‘Target down,’ he muttered under his breath.
The photo under that of his grandparents drew Primo’s attention. There they were, his parents, at some community do, on a dance floor. His mum, young then, was looking right at the camera, smiling through a grimace. His dad was looking past the camera at something, brow knotted, eyes narrowed and lips pursed. They held each other in a loose embrace that seemed to Primo, every time he looked at that particular photo, to be neither endearing nor outright hostile.
His parents seemed to be locked into a kind of indifferent familiarity.
Primo finished off the rest of the casserole and left the kitchen, the plate rattling in the sink where his mother would find it later. He took out his mobile as he walked and pressed ‘Favourites’. When Maddie answered a few moments later, he muttered, ‘Mum said I can take Bambino out for a short spin, as a celebration for getting my licence.’
On the other end there was a slow intake of breath, then, ‘The Fiat? You sure?’
Primo fluttered his eyes. ‘I’ll come get you soon as I’ve been to see my old man. Promised the old lady I’d do that, yeah. Okay?’ he said. He hung up before Maddie could reply, then switched off the phone so she couldn’t call back.
Primo fondled the keys he’d taken from his parents’ dresser, then pulled the dust cover off the Fiat 500D Bambino. An original, complete with rear opening suicide doors and half-cabin canvas roof. He walked a slow lap, the fingers of his right hand gently brushing the paintwork, caressing the chrome bumpers in imitation of his father on those countless Sunday afternoons when the Bambino had been his total joy and focus.
‘This is a car for the love,’ his father would say. ‘This is a car which make people stop to look and have the envy. They wish they be drive it.’
But only one person ever drove it, Primo reminded himself. Only one person ever had that pleasure. Not even his mum had ever taken the steering wheel. She’d probably never even been in the driver’s seat.
And now here it sat, a thin patina of dust like a coat of sugar on its red paintwork. His father wanted the car to be always at the ready, tyres pumped, fuel tank full, oil levels precise.
It was a car to jump into when getting away was everything. The Bambino 500D was his father’s escape machine.
Primo opened the driver’s door and bent himself into the tiny cabin, his head brushing the canvas roof, his legs awkward under the simple dashboard with its single-faced gauge below the even simpler two-pronged white steering wheel.
He’d sat there many times before, but never alone, his mother always by the open door, watching as he primed the engine and let the car idle for a few minutes to stop the motor from seizing.
Because of course one day his father would leave the nursing home he’d gone to after the hospital and want to gun the 500cc rear-mounted engine to its full 95kph limit.
‘He’s not coming back for you.’ Primo scowled. ‘You’d better get used to the idea. He’s a dead man walking.’
Primo knuckled the steering wheel and turned the ignition. The engine turned over immediately, and the tiny car murmured under him, the chassis expectant, the floor under his feet gently urging him to engage a gear.
Even as he reversed, the suicide door slapping shut with a whine of protest, Primo swallowed back the sense that this was not what his father would have expected his youngest son’s first drive in his treasured classic car to be like.
‘We take our chances, Dad,’ Primo whispered and eased the tiny machine down the driveway.