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stuff.’
    â€˜That’s okay. Pub work is always easy to find.’
    He nodded. I nodded.
    We were agreed.
    It was all bullshit for both of us.
    â€˜You realise,’ he said, that you won’t be eligible for unemployment benefits if you’re only looking for part-time work.’
    â€˜Oh.’ That was a suprise. ‘But I don’t
need
a full-time job. I’m happy with part-time.’
    â€˜Sorry. To be eligible for unemployment benefits you have to declare that you are able and willing to look for full-time work.’ He gave me a look. Waited.
    Which was fair enough. The game was there to be played.
    â€˜Okay,’ I said, put down that I’m after full-time work.’
    He typed it in patiently.
    â€˜Now,’ he said, ‘I’ll give you some forms, and if you want to apply for benefits you fill them in and take them down to Social Security and they’ll take over from there. Okay?’
    â€˜Sure.’
    â€˜One more thing. Come and check the boards regularly. We don’t have the time to send any referrals out at the moment. Okay?’
    â€˜Okay.’
    He glanced through my forms again.
    â€˜Anything else?’
    â€˜No.’
    He led me back to the waiting area. Then he picked up another set of forms from the pile and called out a name.
    I took my Social Security forms back to the car and read through them. They seemed depressingly detailed. One section asked for bank account numbers and stated that anyone with an accessible fund of five hundred dollars or more would not be immediately eligible for benefits. I thought about that for a while, then got out of my car again, went to the bank and withdrew all my money.
    But Social Security could wait for a few more days. There were several things I needed to gather up anyway. Three forms of identification, for a start, which I wasn’t sure I had. And more importantly, I needed a separation certificate from the Capital, to prove I was no longer working there.
    Cynthia had warned me about this. She’d been unemployed for several years all told, here and there. She advised that if possible I should get my former boss to fill in the form in such a way that it said he’d sacked me. A sacked worker was elegible for benefits much sooner than one who’d quit.
    I didn’t know if my old manager would do this.
    He was an unpleasant person.
    Still, I had to go and see him anyway. I had discovered, in the act of emptying my bank account, that the money owing to me for my last half-week’s work had not been paid.
    But that could wait too.
    I was tired and hungover and more occupied with thoughts about Cynthia than I was with finances. I drove home, opened up the flat and went to bed.
    I woke in the dim evening and got up. I showered, made a sandwich, turned on the TV. There was a knock on the door. Vass came in. He was red-eyed and smelled of old wine, but he was sober. His lungs sounded as bad as they’d ever been. Death was close. I always watched Vass carefully when his emphysema was in ascendance. It was my own future, after all.
    â€˜That was a nice girl you had here last night,’ he said.
    â€˜Yes. She is.’
    â€˜I walked past last night in the hall and I could hear you going for it ...’
    â€˜The walls are very thin.’
    â€˜You met the new people yet?’
    â€˜I heard them this morning. They were screaming at each other. What’re they like?’
    â€˜They’re nice kids. They just got up here from Sydney. You wanna buy a car? They have to sell their car. It’s an HQ Holden stationwagon. They need the money.’
    My own car was an HZ Holden sedan, the last of the Kingswood series. I was very fond of it. There was something pure and humble about the lines, the wide-set wheels, the simple 3.3 litre engine. But there was no room in my heart for another one.
    I said, ‘No, one car is enough. How much do they want for it?’
    â€˜Eight