So we decide to go outside, Tiggy and I. Afternoon hours have backed up inside us both, and we need time breathing air that’s not house air. I tug on my trainers, and Tiggy wrestles on her favourite polka dot gumboots.
‘Come on, door! Open!’
Tiggy woops as the door swings and crabwalks her way down the stairs on our landing. Outside, Sydney’s turned slightly chill, and there’s a sharp breeze blowing across the construction site opposite our block.
‘It’s a cold day. It’s winter time!’
‘It sure is, sweetpea.
We make our way up the street. The excavator in the construction site is resting its prehistoric bucket, curled up in a dinosaur sleep.
‘The exkapator’s not working!’
‘No, it’s having a rest. The men who were using it today have gone home. Hey, Tiggy, where shall we go?’
‘To the Gamesmen, and see Link?’
Since Tiggy was a floppy-armed, beanied baby who used to accompany me around the streets of Mortdale in our Ergo sling, we’ve been in to visit the Gamesmen to buy anime and games. They’re a local video games place, part of a run of stores just up on the main road that led me to think, upon moving to the area, that at least we had the essentials covered: there’s a liquor store, a Domino’s pizza joint, and the Gamesmen. Hey, I was much younger then, and beer, pizza and Killzone was much more of a holy trifecta than it is now.
Inside the Gamesmen is a lifesize statue of the Nintendo character, Link. He’s got manga-boy blond bangs, a blue earring, is holding aloft a powerful-looking fantasy sword with a blue hilt, and bears up a shield as if to ward off a blow. He’s the proud centrepiece of the store, the heart of shelf upon shelf of cardboard and plastic game boxes, posters of Mario and tough-looking commandoes with automatic weapons.
If it were possible to speak of Tiggy having a crush, Link would be it.
So we make our way slowly up the street, pausing to uproot dandelions and daisies, replacing fallen gumnuts in trees, replanting sticks in the ground so that they can grow up to be big strong trees, and being good citizens with rubbish.
When we get near the traffic lights, Tiggy throws her arms up at me.
‘I CARRY you!’
I sweep her up to her safe vantage point; my hip.
The Gamesmen’s motion-activated doors slide open, and we greet the staff. When we reach Link, Tiggy wriggles down and she runs up to touch his base.
‘Standing on a green rock! And there’s a sword. And a shield. Look!’
Part of me is a little terrified that if a Nintendo Australia rep were standing there beside us, their heart would be beating faster in excitement. Link’s in the kid’s head. But then part of me doesn’t mind, either, because it’s also innocent enough, and she could easily have been describing a dinosaur statue if one existed round the corner from us and she’d seen it multiple times since she was little.
But it’s not a dinosaur. It’s Link, and she loves him.
