Page 2 of Keep Your Guard Up
“I hear you’re hanging up the pads for good, Al?”
The old man sighed and turned to face me. His grey eyes bore into mine, and the drop in his expression revealed how incredibly unenthused he was to have this discussion. He tossed aside a set of hand pads he had been cleaning; his favourite pair. The exact pair that had been featured in all of the photos on the walls in the office.
“Sure am, darlin’.” Gloom washed over his face as he flashed me a sad smile, scuffling his feet over the mats as he crossed the open space to where his shoes were waiting behind the timber edging.
For the first time, I looked at Al. I really looked at him. The wrinkles that I’d never really seen before. The droopiness in the skin around his jawline. For the first time ever, Al actually lookedold.
At the age of sixty-nine, I was surprised he had made it this far. But I guess that was what happened when you loved something the way he did. He’d rebuilt this place with my dad, watched it grow and flourish. He’d seen it become some peoples’ second home. Hell it had even been my first home. I’ve spent more time in this oversized shed than I had in any house, slept on the floor more times than I could count.
Kicking my thongs off at the edge of the mat, I quickly moved in to wrap my arms around him. The smell of cigars and meat pies filled my nose, the smell that was indisputablyAl.
My eyes turned misty at the sight of my inked hand wrapped around him to his far shoulder. The same little diamonds, triangles and circles that were on his hand—the ones my father had tattooed onto him and JJ onto me. A symbol, a permanent representation of what we were a part of, of what we’d built together.
“I’ll miss having you around here, Al,” I croaked.
“I could never fully leave this place, Mari. I’ll still be floating around here somewhere,” he replied with a chuckle.
I pulled away and playfully punched his arm. “You know what I mean. I’ll miss having you by my side to run this show.”
He put his arm around me and pulled me into his side. “I been in this industry for sixty years, and never in my time have I ever come across someone quite like you,” he stated. “You’re ambitious, courageous, smart … Everything that one needs to run a ship as big as this, you have. Part of the reason why I felt now was the right time to retire was because I knew you were ready to step up.”
“You say all of these things, but I don’t necessarily feel like I can agree with them,” I countered.
“You don’t need to when everyone around you already does. If you can’t believe the words, let your community do the believin’ for you.”
Chapter 2
Mari
Nan had deemed tonight—‘Al’s last night before freedom’—a worthy celebration and promptly dumped me on pizza duty. I’d called Lozza’s about an hour ago and been told it was ‘wickedbusy’ by the young guy with colour-varying dreads, affectionately nicknamed ‘Noodles’ after his lovely, knotted locks.
Only one of the locks on the doors of JJ’s ute clicked, the dingy old thing. Reggie, the old tradie-typical ute JJ’s dad had given him, was an extremely faded blue and cream white with over a dozen scratches and dents on it. I was responsible for probably about half of them—JJ the other half. Both of us had learned to drive in the ute, with JJ’s dad as our teacher and the otherlounging in the back seat as ‘moral support’. Really, it had just been to jumpscare each other every now and then, causing the driver to stall.
I tucked my keys into my shorts, along with my phone and the cash Nan had given me. The smell of pizzas cooking wafted through the air, and I swallowed the saliva that immediately filled my mouth.
The neon green sign hung above the wavy metal roof, flickering and humming. The poles holding up the little amount of shelter outside of Lozza’s were rusty, and little of the original white paint remained—the paint that did was faded and dirty. Several of the glass windows needed a clean, and the community board they’d stationed over one side still had advertisements from ten years ago pinned up. Two sets of cheap metal chair and table sets sat underneath the windows on either side of the bright red door. They were the kind of table and chair sets that screeched so loud when you moved them an inch, everyone within a block’s radius knew someone was sitting down for a feed.
Despite the roughed-up conditions of this place, it was still a thriving part of the Soggla community. Unlike a lot of other restaurants, Lozza’s was busy every night of the week.
Danny, Lozza’s second husband and father to their affair-driven lovechild, was the full-time manager of the restaurant. One thing you could never fault him for was his work ethic. What Danny did wasn’t ‘full time’, it was ‘all of the time’. He felt a passion for Lozza’s I don’t think even Lozza felt.
I looked up to see the man himself fixing something for Noodles on the register. Not only was his button-up, grease-stained black shirt done up with the buttons in the wrong order, it was also getting uncomfortably tight around his beer-belly region. Neveah, his chubby, pink-cheeked daughter, reached down from his arms to touch something on the screen. Dannygroaned and rolled his eyes before handing the little girl over to Noodles, though his lips tilted up into a soft smile for the briefest of moments. Her little orange ringlets bounced up and down as Noodles twirled her around, high and low, to keep her entertained.
“Your dreams of a career in childcare coming true?” I asked Noodles, leaning my elbows on the counter.
He wiggled his fingers on Nevaeh’s pudgy belly, and she giggled before latching onto one of his newly lime-green dreadlocks.
“Best part of hanging out with other people’s kids is getting to hand them back,” he joked, seemingly not noticing that he had a small child gnawing on one of his prized dreadlocks.
“Y’know she’s currently using your hair as a teething toy?” Danny grumbled, looking over his shoulder.
“She can chew on them as much as she likes. Bobby-Joe said the only way these bad-boys are coming out is with a pair of scissors.” Noodles grinned. Bobby-Joe’s barber shop had to be one of his favourite places on earth—he visited nearly every week.
“How much do I owe you, Danny?” I asked him, pulling out the small wad of coloured notes Nan had given me.
“On the house tonight,” he grumbled in reply, his wispy beard the same colour as his daughter’s hair fluttering about. “System’s down.”
“Pizza’s in the oven, Mari!” one of the boys out back called.
