Book Ten: Black Juice

Black Juice* (2004)
Margo Lanagan

Rating: 3.75/5

I started reading this on the plane** on the way home to get my wisdom teeth out. Mistake. There should be a warning on the first story: this may make you cry in public. It would be a community service.

Anyway, I usually don’t like short stories; I get too attached to the characters and feel ripped off that I don’t get to learn more about them. But somehow the stories in this collection avoid this by creating snapshots of different worlds that would actually be less perfect if they were longer.

I got to wondering while reading this book how much an author (or their editor, I guess) thinks about sequencing. Is a collection of stories, kind of like the idea of a concept album? Or is it like a really good mixed tape, where each song flows into the next?

I guess if this were a concept album, I would have to say that the common theme amongst all the stories was that they were all disturbing in their own way.

Although I liked some stories in the collection more than others – my favourites were the first two Singing My Sister Down and My Lord’s Man – I think they are all fascinating due to the way Lanagan manages to create whole worlds within a fifteen page story. It’s amazing. Some authors can’t manage that in a 100k book.

I would be very interested to read her other collections – White Time and Red Spikes – as well as her full length novels – The Best Thing and Touching the Earth Lightly – I have a feeling they will also be fascinating. She just has a wonderful writing style.

And that’s all I can think about to write. For some reason although I had my wisdom teeth removed my shoulders, neck and back are all bruised and achy too. They should be more gentle.

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* I actually finished reading this on the 17/3.

** I somehow managed to miss my flight. Typical that this would be the only time I have ever actually had a specific time I needed to be home by.

I rang for a taxi forty-five minutes before check-in closed, figuring I could make the twenty minute journey to the airport with plenty of time to spare and hopefully avoid sitting around the airport for hours waiting. (My flight home at Christmas was delayed by four hours, so I was a bit over the whole Sitting Around the Airport thing).

Ha! I should have been so lucky as to wait there for hours.

Usually when I call a taxi, by the time I lug my suitcase down four flights of stairs, it is either waiting there for me, or pulls up thirty seconds later.

After standing on the street waiting for fifteen minutes, I started to get worried. I now only had half an hour to get to the airport before they closed check-in.

I was worried if I wondered off in search of an alternative taxi, it would arrive as soon as I left. So, instead I tried to call the company to check on the booking. Eventually, after getting an engaged signal, then being on hold for ages, I got through.

Apparently they had called my home phone, and as no one had answered, they hadn’t responded to the job.

Umm, gee, thanks.

That has never happened before. I felt like kicking myself, or preferably someone from the taxi company. I just couldn’t help thinking that if I’d called from my stupid mobile none of this would have happened.

Anyway, the guy promised to send another one. Right away.

Yeah. I waited for a little while longer. I now only had twenty minutes before check in closed. Great.

“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “maybe I should walk up to the main road and see if I can flag down a taxi that way. Don’t want to be late.”

Ha! Again!

Every person in Sydney seemed to have a taxi but me. And I was still worried that maybe my taxi I had booked would turn up. By this stage I was more than a little stressed. And that’s putting it mildly. Actually, I had been pretty dammed stressed all week. It was just one of those times where you want to stomp your foot and complain loudly that this was the absolutely last thing in the world you needed.

Actually, I think I might have done that. Twice.

At the same time check-in on my flight closed, I was standing in front of my building, on the phone with my poor mother trying not to cry. I will not reveal whether or not I was successful.

Just for fun, I tried calling the taxi company again. Just as I go through to an operator, a taxi pulled into my street. With its light on. About freaking time. I hailed it down, told the woman on the phone not to worry.

My poor mum called back to ask what was going on. The taxi driver overheard me tell her I’d finally gotten in a taxi, even though I’m not sure if it’s the one I booked and that I’ll probably miss my flight. He asked me what company I booked with and was all confused when I say his. Apparently no bookings have come up in my area in the last half hour.

Which means that the operator who told me so kindly that he’d send someone right away is a liar and a fraud. The taxi driver was all like, “don’t worry, you’ll make the 4.05.” I ended up wanting to smack him in the back of the head despite his niceness. Mostly because my flight was leaving at 3.55, and I was sure I’d already missed it.

Turned out I was right.

I arrived at the check-in counter. Attempted to calmly present my ID and mumble my destination.

“You must be on flight later tonight?” the assistant asked, confused. It did not help matters any that the assistant reminded me of my old boss. Things just kept on getting better.

“No, the 3.55,” I mumbled again, taking back my drivers licence, and holding it tight enough for the sharp edges to cut into my fingers, as though that would make any difference.

“You can’t be,” she replied, looking over the list of passengers or whatever it is they have on those pieces of paper that look like they were printed by the old IBM Compatible computer we used to have. “We had 34 booked and 34 checked in.” Now she gives me an almost accusing look, as if I’m trying to insinuate myself onto a flight I don’t have a ticket for. “Do you have your booking confirmation?”

You mean that piece of paper I used to print out religiously, but gave up on because no one had ever asked me for it? Was this like the fact that it was compulsory to answer that taxi’s Call on Arrival, even if you lived in an apartment building, and even though you’d never had to before?

“No,” I said instead. I really didn’t feel like arguing over when my flight was supposed to leave.

More paper shuffling. More nervous clutching of my driver’s licence by me. “Oh,” she said, relieved. “I see what’s happened. There was somebody on standby and because you didn’t turn up, they were given your seat.”

Gee, that’s a relief. I know I feel better now. “Oh,” I repeat back to her instead. “I waited fifty minutes for a taxi to show up.” I don’t know why I felt the need to explain, but I didn’t like the implication that I am some kind of hopeless person who can’t be bothered to show up for a flight on time. Even though, obviously, I am.

“Oh, bugger. I’ll just see if there are any seats left on the flight tonight.” Lots of typing. She gives me a sympathetic look. “Oh, I have some bad news. Unfortunately we don’t have any seats left. I can put you on standby, or perhaps you’d prefer a flight tomorrow morning?”

Couldn’t she just have coughed and said Computer Says No?

At this stage, I give up any pretence that I wasn’t trying not to cry and do the foot stamping thing again. Instead, like the three year old I am, I mumble, “I’m going to go call my mum.”

“Ok,” she says after I apologise again. “Just come back to me when you decide what you want to do.”

I call my mum, who being a mum has a solution. So I go back over the counter, wait while she finishes with the next person, and ask if there are any seats on the 4.30 flight to the next town over.

After a call to reservations in which I am told that my Internet purchased ticket has been forfeited by my failure to check in, I have to purchase another ticket from scratch, but thankfully get a seat on the flight.

The assistant suggests that I should try and get the taxi company to pay for the new ticket seeing as they didn’t show up. I can’t really see that happened as I couldn’t even get them to come take me to the airport.

Before I walk away, she adds “oh, I should warn you the plane is rather small. Only one row of seats on each side.” Okay. Fun.

To add insult to injury, the plane is held up waiting for someone (I presume an already checked in passenger, aren’t they special) to get on the bus. When they do arrive they are clutching a McFlurry. I hope they were embarrassed.

Turns out the flight was the funniest I have ever been on. There was no air hostess, and the First Officer asked us on the bus if we needed a taxi when we got there, then distributed the snacks before take off. The highlight of the flight was definitely when the poor guy had to do the safety demonstration. He was about six foot two, and could barely even stand up straight.

Anyway, all in all the most stressful airport getting-to experience ever. The thing that pissed me off most about the whole thing are the hours I have wasted in the past waiting for the airline to be ready to take off. One memorable hour because they couldn’t find the air hostess. How the hell do you lose a person? It’s not like their a hammer or something. Not that you should have hammers near planes.

Whatever.

At least I got here. And in the future I will worry less about thinking I’ve forgotten to pack something and more about whether or not my taxi’s going to show.

I will also remember that whole taxi change over thing.

Damn stupid if you ask me.