Aussie

“Yeah, can I get a bowl of yer Brunswick stew?”

Mick recognized that accent. He didn’t hear it often, no. In fact, he’d never heard one in person, but being chronically online pays off sometimes, doesn’t it?

See, the patron at the register was from a faraway land, one Mick only dreamed he could visit someday. She looks like a real Australian thought Mick… and then he realized what that meant.

Mick looked up at the woman, who stood about six foot two and wore a black Tammy’s Tintin hoodie—a literal photo of their storefront, its hot pink paint simmering on a sunny day. The Aussie continued her order and Mick’s fingers fluttered to record it. He finished the order and felt a surge run through his veins so he pondered a question and blurted out a quip.

“I’m gonna ask a variation on a question that I’m sure you get all the time…”

The Aussie’s eyebrows raised.

“But I’ll go out on a limb and say you’re from Perth… Western Australia.”

The woman’s eyes widened and her head turned as she looked at Mick, asking “How’d you know?”

Mick replied. “There’s a musician I listen to and he’s from Perth.”

The musician, of course, couldn’t be Kevin Parker, no, because that would be too on the nose. But the reality is that it was, and Mick had long admired his creative energy—in fact, when Mick’s hair was long and freeflowing like a parrot, he aspired to style his hair like Kevin Parker: brown natural roots and a gradient to blonde tips, but the kicker is that Mick never had the confidence, and he sold out, violently chopping his hair off in a nervous breakdown after his breakup.

Mick continued. “I also had an Xbox friend from New South Wales, and I could tell there was a variation in those accents.”
“Yeah,” replied the Aussie. “We tend to talk a lot faster than they do on the other side.”

Mick smiled… here was he, a man searching for identity in a homeless hometown, speaking to a woman who didn’t belong but belonged as much as anyone. Mick asked the Aussie how she ended up in Shawnee, and the Aussie smiled.

“I married a Kentucky girl.”