OFF THE GREAT: Perth
Where is my car, "La Ruler?
The calm
At this time, the springs are already piercing my spine. There is no position to escape. Made a "stick", with my legs extended and my arms firm at my sides, I am cornered between the iron of the bed and the wall. The left arm that I put under me starts to tingle. Also, the yoga teacher in the bunk above snores like a bear; it moves like a rubber raft in the open sea.
The Brazilian in the opposite bed walks half asleep on her toes towards the light. That's it. That was the ultimate signal: I had to start my day. The journey from the bed to the room's door, shared with six other women, is an obstacle course. I walk past a bunned-up T-shirt that smells of tobacco, dodge the bottle of not-so-iced-tea and jump a black bag dynamited in the middle of the hall. In the kitchen, the boys are already washing the breakfast dishes.
“Ciao Mila”, “Good morning, my friend”, “Good morning, neni”. Leo, Lean and Angela: Italy, Argentina and Spain.
I am left alone with my scrambled eggs and toast sitting on my plate, while the mocha begins to do its work in my brain. Considering that December already sweats at 8 am, the morning is chilly. The sunny day pours in through the skylight in the high wooden ceiling and the semi-fresh air from outside enters through the open door. From my chair I can see our beautiful Ruler, the red Hyundai i30 that we bought two days ago and is still parked across the street. Between the three owners we take turns moving it, fines in Fremantle are a serious thing.
We have lived in this fishing village located 18 kilometers southwest of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, for more than a month and a half. The English architecture has endured over the years, the village air of its weekly markets, its vintage clothing stores and its second-hand bookstores make a large traveling community lower their backpacks from their shoulders for a while in this new house._cc781905-5cde -3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_
Fremantle. Photo: MW
I get in the car bathed and perfumed. I put everything on top just in case: rather dead than simple, they said. The fanny pack, hat, glasses, bottle of water and thekindle.You could spend the day at any nearby park or beach.But which?In the meantime, I keep going around with the car: I get to the tracks of the port, I turn to the right; the park's Ferris wheel has just begun its first turns. the boys ofLittle Creatures,the local brewery, they take the tables out to the veranda soggy from last night. With the bachata “San Bá” by Vicente García playing at a bowling volume, all the scenes are cinematographic. I missed getting around by car. Drive with the morning sun and the window down, so that as much air and sea salt as possible enters. Sing my repertoire of Latin rhythms with each of my vocal chords, enjoy the ride. It's decided: I'm going to keep walking for a while. I have something pending to do that I could take advantage of the trip.
Fremantle. Photo: MW
Foregoing
Just as my relationship with Fremantle is magnetic and secure, one of those that brings a smile to your face every day and surely more than one tear in a few years, with Perth the opposite happens to me. It's a relative who lives far away, a tribute band, a Tuesday outing, a work trip. It stays half way. For this reason, beyond paperwork and some other necessary city fee, I rarely visit it.
"Fuckin' madreeeee," I yell over the sickly monotonous voice of the woman fromgoogle maps. As focused as I am always on this part, I never take the right exit. And look, I put effort into it, but the access to the city has more turns than a trackHot Wheels. Following those overwhelming signs and taking a chance on a roller is never an option. Instead, the 21st century millennial chooses to rely on the nameless, faceless voice and its treacherous application at times like these.
After deviating twenty minutes for an exit, the second round begins for theCBD (central business district), the center of the city, with a single objective: to find somewhere to park fairly cheaply. The signs on the sidewalk have the letter P with different numbers, corresponding to the hours allowed to park. My point of reference becomes theApple Store:Today is the day that I would finally invest part of my savings in the computer that I love so much. I buy themac, I take a few more laps and return with Felipe to watch the sunset on the beach. Feli is one of the owners of the Ruler and he took the opportunity to come to the city on a skate, do some things and return with me by car. I keep looking at the map, green light. I cross a street, two. To my right a path: 2P. I'm not convinced, I keep looking. I lower the volume of the radio. I turn right, 1P. The very modern white bridge and the water in the background: I reached the river.Aghhhhh.Deep breath. Again I deviate ten minutes to turn around the only roundabout and return to the anthill of people.
Over an hour later, I pull into the first 3P I see. I go back to the app: 17 minute walk to the Apple Store.Well, it's not that bad. The day is for that and the music accompanies me.
I walk out with my new computer under my arm feeling like Paris Hilton. I could have stayed an hour longer in there: going from the Siberian winter, created by the air conditioning of the premises, to the sauna sun at half past one in the afternoon in one breath is harmful to health. I check it with my cell phone, 13:34. I have an hour and a half more of parking. I make a brief stop atSushi Hubbefore my visit to the localpiercingin the same street,There is Street.Salmon, tuna, kanikama, prawn and chicken rolls (yes, chicken “sushi”) are displayed on the glass counter overlooking the street. The Asian girl in the orange and fluorescent green shirt attends me at full speed: she opens the disposable box of the same color as her shirt, selects the three rolls with gloves, adds the soy sauces in the shape of little fish,“anything else?” ("anything else?"), I ask for five more sauces as always, he adds them reluctantly as always and I pay. There is no time you come to town and skip this fast food Japanese version so popular in the cities of Australia. They are a cheap option ($3.5 aroll), rich and easy to eat, since unlike traditional sushi, they are eaten whole, without cutting, and for a fan for years who never learned to use sticks, it is wonderful._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_
I end my day in Perth. There's still half an hour to go before the 3P's of parking are met, but the anxiety of wanting to be on the beach with everyone texting the group is beyond me. That's why I quicken my pace in the direction of the Ruler. The cars go as if nobody has to get anywhere; passers-by do not pounce on the red light of the pedestrian path, nor do they obstruct the passage of cyclists enraptured by their music; the bricklayers of the building under construction have a bar talk from one scaffolding to the other. Nothing and nobody seems to alter the day of all these people, not even a mummified asshole in the middle of the block. Because only after ten minutes of walking completely disoriented through the tangled concrete, I realized that I had lost it.
The kettle on my chest begins to heat up: the steam from my body rises.I had no fucking idea where my car was.Miracles remember, by God. The newly pierced ear is the first sign, it has a life of its own. Boom. Boom. Boom.Our car, the one I share with two other friends, for less than a week. Blood shoots throughout my body. Philip's message. I boil and scream, much louder than the kettle.
The Ruler. Illustration @fabian.rdrgz / @cofreilustrado
Storm
“Nonononononononono”. I open the map application for the fifth time today. My palms are sweating: the labyrinth of names, white lines, yellow curves, green squares, and drawings of stars, photo cameras, covered beds, trains, and cars make me more dizzy than I already am. They are all except the red pin, the one with which I usually mark the location of things on the map, the one that never fails, the one that is not there today.
How do they not know? They are the city parking lot!I hang up the phone and whine some more. 16:23. The car has been overstayed for over an hour and no one, not even those who work there, knows where it is. They tell me that they do not have any fine with that patent and that the references are imprecise to help me. "I know, I know," I mutter to myself as I reject Felipe's call for the third time.I still don't want, I can't face it. In this upside down world in which I live, a fine could end my ordeal.
I squeeze my eyes shut as if the lucidity of my memories depended on it. Around me I see green, it is not a square but neither is it a simple square of grass. A construction to the side.What color is? Green is not around me, it is also on one side. But of what? Brown, brownish. The building is that color. The green one is to my left, near the street with little traffic left by the car.Nothing more. With these two data and the "17 minute walk from theApple Store"I answer the phone to Felipe.
Seeing him come on a skateboard with his little brown hair blowing in the wind and his hair matching his shoes made me want to cry even more. He checks that nobody runs over him from the sides and continues walking to the rhythm of the techno that he surely has been listening to in his headphones. I see his smile from afar. Me so tearful, a rag, overheated and with that headache that only goes away with 1g of paracetamol or an hour of nap and he so fresh, so sporty, as Felipe as always.
While we walk around the circuit "17 minutes" I update him: that I left theApple StoreThe most pancha, that from one moment to another I realized that I had not paid enough attention or noted anything and that I do not know the city as I thought. Also that I spoke withPerth Parking(Perth parking) and there was no case, three very well-disposed policemen helped me, after ten minutes of questioning, to decode a possible street with 3P that did not end up being, which practically the entire center of Perth had seen or heard insult in another language to the crazy woman with the bagManzanaand that before taking care of it I sent a message to Leandro, the other owner of the car, and that it was he who gave me the idea of making a circle around theApple Storeand walk here.
The Ruler. Illustration @fabian.rdrgz / @cofreilustrado
"Whore, this Ruler culiá is naughty," Felipe tells me in his Chilean slang. The sun, already tired of the day, slips behind its seat on the train in which, resigned, we return to Fremantle. The skateboard is still trapped under his amusing feet that, even after five hours, drag it from one side to the other successively. Long a defenseless and dejected laugh but a laugh anyway. After so much tension and hours of walking in vain, the fact that Felipe has impersonated our lost car is one of the best things that happened to me that day. The fact that it's his car too and he fucks about it too. I think about how differently my friends on the beach must be experiencing this sunset.At least I have my computer, right?I add “fun”. But I don't say it out loud, I can't. I don't even have the strength left to complain, once again, about how hung up I am.
We negotiated a few minutes at the entrance of the hostel and put together the team: Luci and I as forwards, Leandro and Flor covering the flanks, he with the management strategy and she sipping mate, and Lara as center, highlighting her best skills: breaking the ice with their ironies and musicalize the moment. My role as co-pilot is to observe and suggest possible paths, as long as my memory soaked in the fryer of what the day was allows me. Luci at the wheel monopolizes the orders and executes them. “I put the water in for the mate, this paints for a long time,” I hear Flor say from the kitchen. Suddenly the iron table of my bed, the light on and the doors slamming in the eighth tenement were my best plan. Dodging my smoking friends and their afternoon session of the day at the table outside had also been one before I arrived. But evidently my hoarse voice with a burial tone gave me away. See me walking probably too. “I don't remember where I parked the car and I lost it,” I spat with a poker face. There were no more questions.
And the wind that erases it later
If by day it was a lost battle, Perth by night humiliates me in the rematch. Absolutely all the streets seem the same to me: lit with candlelight, with two or three cars parked on the sidewalks (many red to my surprise), stacked with houses with bars and less traffic than a cemetery. My references to "green on the side, street with little traffic and brown building" become more and more distant; It is as if the events of the day saturated the little memory that was left in the cloud in my head and they were half downloaded: they are, but very blurry.
"Miss, continue down Murray Street and make a right on Havelock," says Leandro.
"Havelock already did it, it's the one in the kiosk on the corner," Luci answers.
—Of one. and emerald?
"That doesn't ring a bell."
—Okay, left on Emerald to Ord Street.
This sip of boiling mate is the immersion bath I haven't had in two years: the water tilts my anxious chest and fills it like a children's bathtub, nothing like the midday kettle. It gradually follows its route towards my stomach and my arms; I think of bubbles, dim light, classical music in the background. I think about the pampering that I will give myself to compensate for the self-harm of all this day. But Las Pastillas del Abuelo come back to me from the trance. Each one remains engrossed in their task: the 10 at the wheel, the 5 with a firm barrier, the 3 with their key exits and the 6 in support, always with laughter and songs and joking around. My team and my fans together, the pampering I need the most.
I turn up the volume and look at the time: 00:43. My car has been parked on a parked sidewalk in the city for twelve hours. If they didn't take it by now, there's time until early morning: more than six hours between myself and the hauling of hundreds of dollars. But the thermos is running out and so are the ideas. Passing by the Blue Boat House, a blue wooden house built on an old pier and one of the main tourist attractions in the city, and repeating the route from zero was the last one left.
The deadlock at this minute is the most decisive. On the one hand,TO THE CITY,to the right, large, striking, green with white lettering. For the other,FREEWAY SOUTH, for the south to Fremantle. We decided driven by the little battery that my head has left and its crushed instinct.
Automatically, a wide, two-way street, tall trees, with more cars than in all the streets. But without a traffic light, with grass on our left and a 3P sign that takes on a three-dimensional shape as meters go by.
The letters GOZ confirm it, the minute hand marks the end of the game and everyone, absolutely everyone, hugs each other between wild screams. I raise my key victoriously without a spare or keychain between exaggerated tears. It sounds in the background: "And so you will die once and for all, my dear Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes will triumph, putting misfortune where Papillon kept money".