Korkal

Korkal, Korkal, Korkal. I'm going to have to engage in some serious reparation and seduction of our Korkal. I have found her at last. I flick direct to the last pages of the Sunday Age magazine and read everything there is about horoscopes. When she attends my table, still with flagrant indifference, I feign interest in the zodiac and tell her that I'm here for a conference called 'Clairvoyance: harnessing your inner power'. Finally, I have her attention. Yet it vanishes as quickly as it came because of a grunt from the next table - the Finish equivalent of a wave of the hand for a waiter. And she is gone to the side of the backpacker, responding to the words he released from his mouth as though they were as beautiful and magical as doves released from a black top hat.

I attempt to harness what the poster on the wall says I have - 'Inner Psychic Strength' - and wish the Black Plague connect itself to the vital organs of this Viking, grunting, pushy backpacker. How humiliating it will be to miss out on the Nobel prize because of this Neanderthal. It is my hypothesis that the missing Cross of Odin not only contains the Black Plague that has the potential to destroy half the Australian population, but that it also contains a bacteria (and I speak in laymen's terms for poor Marté's future reference, for it is not exactly a bacteria, but something near it) essential to the treatment, and possibly even the cure, for cancers of the blood.

Korkal is absolutely absorbed by the man at the next table. I resign again to listening in. I overhear that she has been involved, only last night, in some kind of witches ceremony. A plate smashes. Everyone stares at the offender and Korkal skips off to get the dust pan and brush. I stare intently at the backpacker. No charm left over for me. He shoots me a stern glance and sips his COFFEE OUT OF A POLYSTYRENE CUP!!

Our hypocritical little prostitute returns to the table and tells the brat-backpacker-Viking that she has seen the Odin Cross. I shift in my seat to get nearer to them lest she begin to whisper. As anticipated she discreetly says 'It's hidden in the Op shop in this town'. Before she has time to explain what the term Op Shop means to the Neanderthal, I toss a ten dollar on the table and jog out the door, direct to the Op-Shop that I had passed at Dawn this morning. I rather recklessly knock Ti-Tree in the elbow as I pass her on the footpath in my pursuit of the cross, the prevention, the cure, the prize. I hear her bellow something about Yuppie scum and Castlemaine not being Albert Park Lake.

I'm surprised that the Viking hasnt yet picked up his helmet and oars and rowed his way directly down here. What a backpacker would want with the cross Ive no idea. Everything indicated that he was of mediocre intelligence so he's probably read everything she told him as cryptic and gone off in an entirely other direction thinking himself to be the Finish equivalent of James Bond, cleverly deciphering some kind of code. Poor silly billy Neanderthal. It won't be long before I have that cross of Odin safely in the incubator of my yuppie scum Landcruiser.