There wasn't anything but reclamation, the streets quiet now; the day gone under flourescent tubes, whsipered conversations. Just stay out of their way, goes the motto. Your life will be better if your paths do not cross. Redfern, too, is quieter, if not stripped of conflict then absent many of the difficult bits of chaos that used to characterise the place, people passed out on the streets, arguments outside the front door. Some of it lingers, in a black humour way. The other day there were three aboriginal women, drunk as skunks, standing at the top of Eveleigh Street, mouthing off at the cops in front of the station opposite. Then Doris, the middle one, just passes out completely. They slap her around, shout in her face, nothing works. Finally they drag her across the street, dump her in front of the cops and shout: "You look after her you white cunts".
But mostly it's quiet now, a stream of clean cut, earnest, sometimes handsome university students stream past the door, ten thousand a day; and people wait to pick up friends in cars. But they're not waiting for what the cars used to wait for. Sophie Delezio got out of hospital today. Yesterday it was two young men who died on the Whistler ski fields in Canada. Tomorrow it could be anything, anything at all. Dead people.
Two years ago I wrote the story which began: "Two fifties, how much is that, 200?" "Four fifties, 200? No it's not." They're about 13. They're dealing heroin but they can't count. They should be in school. But that whole Redfern seems to have washed away now, along with other parts of the city. The kids are going up to Moree tomorrow with their mother and will be back on Monday. Everythinng seems vague and out of phase. One more day and the week is over.
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