Sucked In Read Online Free PDF

transport for much longer. Or me, for that matter. Come the end of this final year of school, the bird would fly the coop, hurtling towards the new millennium in the car I’d helped him buy, leaving me in an empty nest.
    But that was months away. I parked at the kerb and Red hauled his books and laptop inside and retreated to his room on the pretext of homework. Doubtless this would entail much tele-conferencing and net-surfing.
    I exchanged my suit for jeans and a sloppy joe, poured myself a short snort, stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the back deck and fired up the gas barbecue. In the dying light, the sky was the colour of ancient rust and I stood for a moment, drinking it in.
    â€˜At the going down of the sun,’ I said to myself, ‘we will remember them.’
    I went back into the all-purpose eating-living area and pointed the remote-control at the television for the ABC news headlines. The Prime Minister was refusing to say sorry for something. Bill Clinton’s penis was facing impeachment. Peace talks, astonishingly, had collapsed in the Middle East. I gave some rocket a spin, ran the sniff test on a block of feta, sliced a cucumber and nuked a couple of kipflers. By then, the hotplate was ready. I seared two slabs of rump and hit the mute.
    â€˜Grub’s up.’
    Red materialised at the refrigerator door and scouted the interior, his broad shoulders filling the open gap. Physically, he was nearly a man, the stuff of gladiator sports and conscript armies, bulletproof and bound for glory. But as he crouched there, contemplating the cling-wrapped leftovers, tousle-haired in an oversize sweatshirt and bare feet, he was once again a little boy.
    â€˜Beer or wine?’ he said.
    It was five years since he’d opted to join me in Melbourne rather than remain with his mother and stepfather in Sydney, and it felt like five minutes.
    Five years, three houses, two schools, one major freak-out and a fair smattering of the ups-and-downs that come with having a politician for a father. A loser politician, at that.
    â€˜Don’t forget to call your mother,’ I said, watching him set the table. ‘It’s her birthday tomorrow, you know.’
    â€˜It was yesterday,’ he said. ‘I already rang.’
    I dished up and we ate in companionable silence. Two honest toilers, home from their workbenches, tucking into a manly repast of meat and potatoes accompanied by a tossed mesclun salad lightly drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and served with crusty ciabatta and fresh-broached Stella Artois.
    The television was burbling in the background, volume low. Half-way through the news, the reporter caught my attention. A big-eyed, round-faced blonde named Kelly Cusack. It wasn’t often that she made the prime-time bulletin. Her usual gig was anchoring ‘On the Floor’, a weekly round-the-nation digest of state political affairs that went to air after the religion show on Sunday nights. Question Time kerfuffles in Hobart, redistribution brouhaha for the Nationals in Queensland, men in suits go yakkity-yak.
    It was a program strictly for the hard-core politics junkies. But for Kelly Cusack it was a foot in the door of current affairs, a step up from her previous gig as host of a gee-whiz techno-buff show.
    â€˜Hello?’ Red was leaning sideways to block my view of the set.
    â€˜Say again?’
    He tapped the side of his head. Wake up. ‘Driving lesson? Saturday?’
    â€˜Haven’t you got a rehearsal? Bunking off won’t get you into NIDA, you know.’
    â€˜It’s just a run-through,’ he said. ‘We’ll be finished by one o’clock.’
    Red’s ambition was pointed in the direction of drama school. Theatre Studies was his top subject and a lot of his off-hours went into a youth theatre based in an old knitwear sweatshop in South Melbourne. It was a semi-professional operation with a resident grant-funded dramaturg; more