raig was the full-time trucker and I worked weekends with the other girls in the store. The day that I came to work in hardware was the day that Craig became a kind of luminary in the timber yard. He shredded an order sheet in his customer’s face, screamed, ‘Don’t you treat me like this shitty job is the only thing that makes my life worthwhile, you smug prick,’ and then destroyed $600 worth of cement-board sheeting under the wheels of the delivery truck as he drove away with his middle finger out the driver’s window of the cab. The ill fit of his leather working glove augmented the length of his finger by a withered inch where the glove sat thick and high on his hand.

This small detail, coupled with the fine Marxist flavour of his short speech, transformed the incident into an iconic protest, a movement on behalf of all the dirty timber boys who worked hard hours for a poor wage. He swiftly turned his celebrity to his advantage. He came to work blind drunk and slept through whole afternoons in the shade of the cab. He shaved each pallet-load of whatever he thought easiest to steal. He clocked false hours on his time card and often left inexplicably in the middle of the day, vaulting the fence and stuffing his red uniform into the scrubby tussock behind the gate. I think he only stayed on as a trucker to steal the diesel. Every morning he drove the truck home to his garage to siphon it into his own van, and when the van was full he filled whatever vessel was closest until the truck’s tank ran close to dry. Every possible container in his garage was brimful of stolen diesel. There were drums and cans and barrels and buckets and jam jars lined up along his worktop bench. I even saw a sardine can – tiny, holding less than quarter of a cup.

After a while I asked about his wife.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘I lucked out with Jen. You wouldn’t know to look at me but my wife is a very attractive woman. You wouldn’t pick her from a line-up. You’d guess too low, I’d make a bet on that. She’s a very attractive woman. I’ve had four affairs. Four affairs in thirty years. Christ, Francie, I’m a shit of a man.’

I asked about the women and he sucked on his lager and gazed up at the mounted row of trophy hoofs behind the bar, crooked downwards like tub faucets. He said, ‘You would have liked the first one. Pat. She had a hell of a laugh. But I’ll always remember: one night near the end I climbed up to her balcony to look in her bedroom window. She was there, with her husband, on her hands and knees. He was at her from behind and I’ll never forget it, he had a blue magazine, a porno, open on her back. He was turning the pages. I remember it. As if she wasn’t even there. God, she wasn’t a beauty or anything. But turning the pages. And she just knelt there, rocking, hands and knees. Course I just crept away. But the image stayed. She got a job in Sydney after that.’

At our Christmas party the store manager cocked his head at me and said, ‘You and Craig are friends, I guess.’

I said, ‘It’s someone to share a drink with.’

He said, ‘You’re too young to be a cynic, Francie,’ and handed me a beer. He must have kept watching from across the bar though, while I laughed at Craig’s five-second pint, no hands (he dipped his nose into the glass and gripped the rim between his teeth, then lifted the glass with his jaw and threw his head back, and the pint disappeared in three open-throated slugs), because after a while he came back to me and said, ‘What I mean to say is this. This is only a phase for you. This shitty job. Working weekends to earn a few bucks for a beer. But Craig is full-time. And he’s a father. His kids—’

‘His kids are grown up and they both live in Australia.’

‘You got to understand. This isn’t your life. Being a student is your life. Working here is just a phase for you. You don’t—’

‘It’s a phase for him too.’

‘Don’t be a tourist. That’s all I’m saying. It’s not fair on him.’

I got to be mad at that, which was pleasant in its own way.

n that New Year’s night above the bright lights of the city I asked him, ‘Have you ever thought you might leave your wife?’ I didn’t mean for me. My bottle was beaded with moisture, and cold. We could no longer see the small white streak of the yacht below.

Craig said, ‘My wife – my wife doesn’t want an adventure. She draws a blank. Me, I’m restless. I’d rather quit a job and start again. I’d rather give the finger. And I can strike up anywhere. And – God. She’s an attractive woman. You wouldn’t think, to look at me. You wouldn’t pick her for my wife.’

He fell silent. A bird called in the dark. Craig said, ‘I don’t know, Francie. How can I answer that? I left her before I even married her. There’s nothing there to leave.’

‘What’s she doing now probably?’ I said. ‘Tonight, for New Year’s Eve.’

‘Waiting,’ Craig said, and then he didn’t speak again for a long time.