LISCETTES NEW BOOTS

Liscette is leaning over to get at something on the table. She's lit a cigarette. She's smoking while I'm going down on her. I sort of like it, but I'm also sort of annoyed. Liscette thinks I'm English. She's got this idea in her head that I'm some sort of Byronic figure cast from the estate and gallivanting around on my father's fortune. Liscette puffs quietly while I lick away. Later she apologises when she brings the tea. I suppose this isn't what you're used to, being English, tea made by an Italian. She means the weakness of the brew, the honey instead of sugar. I tell her again that I'm not English; this is a mistake; the result of murmured late night threads that have been not properly tied together. We sit sipping in the half dark; she can't abide sitting in a room with the lights on. We're at Sergio's place. Liscette is house sitting for him while he's in New York. He's fallen for a Liverpool boy over there and doesn't know when he's going to be home. He sends scurrilous e-mails and reminds her to water the plants. I don't know what tram stop it is, I've not bothered to look. I just know to get off at St Michael's. I look out for the golden Mary holding Jesus atop its green dome. If I arrive at St Michael's on Tuesdays after my late class Mary and our Saviour shine in the dipping autumn day like new dollar coins in a crowded harbour of battle ship coloured clouds. Liscette won't bathe without wearing her black slip-on shoes; she's worried what this is going to do to the leather, but refuses to shower barefoot. She shows me where the straps are starting to split from the heel. She worries a lot. Her thin puckish features are tuned to frowning, her delicate mouth is often held in a red rose of concern. She likes documentaries about wild animals. Recently she put a copy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose on hold at her local library. Somehow she ended up with an audio version, and when I arrive she's wiping up around the kitchen, and an Italian actor's voice is telling the young Benedictine's story. There are twenty tapes; she's listened to seven so far. Water is boiling for pasta, and I come to her hungry. We make love in Sergio's bed. The sex is long and deep burning. She jokes that Sergio would like the smell of a man in his room. He's got a framed poster of Pasolini on his wall.

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As soon as we're done Liscette is wiping at our spills. She is very tidy. I go into the lounge to get my cigarettes. The reverse cycle heater is on constantly and I feel like the cover of an old book. The windows are misted and it's dark outside. It's nearly the end of semester and I'm worried I'm not going to get everything done in time. I worry about it a lot but don't actually do much. I leave a class early and go and see Liscette. She looks tired, I ask her if she'd rather I go and she says no, she'd enjoy the company. She's bought a new pair of boots. Red leather boot's made in Italy. She's worried that she's spent too much on them. I assure her she hasn't as I slide my hand under her skirt. She slides away and talks excitedly about the boots. She asks again if they were too much. My erection looks ridiculous in my pants, like a clown's prop. It bumps against the oven as I put a pan on. I figure now is a good time to get dinner started. Neither of us is particularly hungry, but both agree that eating is a good thing to do at some point. She's lit a cigarette and is talking about Vikings. My erection subsides out of harms way while I chop the garlic. She's talking about polar bears now. We kiss in front of the hot breath of the heater, and she says something to me in Swedish. Liscette's mouth is on me and I'm about to explode. She suddenly remembers something she has to show me and darts into another room. She comes back with a big book. She sits on the bed and starts to flick through it, a finger tracing down the glossy pages until she finds what she is after. It's a name. Some town in Italy, where her grandmother was born. Earlier she'd been talking about baked apples; there was a woman her grandmother knew whose mother baked apples in a big wood oven in her house. Her grandmother had told her she remembered sitting in the kitchen as a child, the hot apple smell making her stomach groan. Her hand idled onto my stomach, and then turned the page. We eat, smoke and drink tea. The Vikings are back in her thoughts, and the Romans with them this time. She supposes that as an Englishman I've had plenty to do with Roman ruins. The tea is weak and sweet, the windows are misted and I am undone with the fatigue of following her trail. "Yes," I say, "I suppose I have."

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Between dawn and the alarm she unstrings herself from sleep and moulds herself to me. Her grave light kisses land soft cushioned on my neck. Her hand finds the warmth between my legs, and gently coaxes the life tingling there. I pretend I am asleep.

Liscette is in a bottle shop. She has fifteen dollars and it's her birthday. Her brow furrows as she scans the racks of alcohol. The ryes and white spirits wouldn't interest her even if she could afford them. It's the liqueurs and fortified wines that catch her attention; remarkable coloured liquids in strangely shaped bottles; bottles with bark like textures or with fruit lurking inside; foreign, dark, fiery, liquids laced with cinnamon and aniseed. Her curiosity drags her further in, until she's at the back of the shop in the section that hasn't been renovated yet. It's still wood panelled and the bottles are dull with dust. She nears a crowd of Eastern bloc wines skulking in their cut price neglect and picks up a bottle off the floor; a white wine from the Carpathian Mountains. A curio seeped in history and imagination. She smiles. She has found her birthday companion for this year. Walking back to the apartment she feels the snow crunching underfoot, the forest thick either side of the pathway winding back to the castle. A silvery moon sits low and full, it's circle broken by the towering trees, and wolf howl is stirring some way off in the black glass night.

Royal Melbourne Institute... such a ring it has to it, like a cavalry unit galloping out of a sepia cloud. If I miss any more lectures I may as well just not bother turning up at all, my studies will be shot. This is not how it started. I arrived on enrolment day packed to the hilt with ambition, now I feel like I'm just hanging around until someone tells me I can go.

I get off a stop early so I can buy cigarettes at the Seven-Eleven. I just pull the bell in an empty chunk of time and space before Mary and Jesus loom as large as usual. Sergio's apartment is in a secure block, sometimes the gate works and sometimes it doesn't. Today it's working so I press

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the speaker button to the apartment and say it's me. We never get through this smoothly. In the movies people say "it's me" and the gate magically opens. When we do it I say It's me and she says who? and I say me, and then say my name and she sounds like she doesn't know who I am. Then she asks if I'm in yet and I say that if I were I wouldn't be talking to her now. So she says, hang on, and has another go at it. It's cumbersome and uncomfortable, and we neither sound nor act like ourselves if the face of this Catholic technology. When I do eventually get in I walk down the private footpath to the apartment. The grounds are well lit and the gravel is studded with stout healthy shrubs. I take my jacket and scarf off inside, the air-conditioned heat stings my eyes. Liscette's in the kitchen wiping down a laminated bench top, Eco's tale continues to unfold in dulcet tones from the little tape player near the sink. This place, I say, meaning all of it, the locked gate and the organised grounds, looks like a mental hospital. She looks at me with what I used to think was nervousness until I got used to it; it's just intense, unblinking, attention. A smile appears on her face like a miss thrown Frisbee landing on a lawn. No it doesn't. she says. I walk over to the fridge and open it, out of habit more than anything; I always look in other people's fridges. It sparkles like a showroom model save a couple of spreads, a ceramic bowl of tomatoes, and some bottled water. She is behind me; her finger is tracing up my backbone. I mumble that I'm sorry, meaning the mental hospital comment. How the hell would I know what a mental hospital looks like? That's ok, she says, and I feel the brush of warm rose petals on the back of my neck. The shower's broken so we have a bath. Liscette puts the toilet light on and half closes the door to soften the light, and I adjust myself around her when she enters the water so that her

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shoes don't stick into my sides. She doesn't care about these shoes so much now she's got her boots. Still she wonders if they're repairable; there was a shop she used to go past that looked as if it could do that sort of thing, she wondered if it was still there. I tell her I don't know. She supposes that as an Englishman I don't have much time for baths. I've had my head under the water and spend a long time pushing back my hair, feeling it thick and slightly greasy through my fingers, feeling my scalp tingle. Liscette is asking questions about platypuses, platypuses and the Byzantines. I'm tired, I'm tired and I'm hungry for something to say. Liscette is asking questions about Edward the Second. We lie crumpled in the silence after the alarm; it's a cold Friday morning, and I have to go. I make us tea, Englishman's tea, putting my pants and socks on between sips and absent kisses. Liscette walks me to the door and I tell her not to come out, it's freezing. She's talking about European languages. German is so guttural, it sounds like they're trying to dislodge gristle when they're speaking. The Swede's however the screen door has closed between us, I can see the outline of her head through the mesh have a much softer tongue, it sounds like they're cooing and blowing on each other to keep warm. The gate isn't working today so I push it open with my foot. From the tram I watch the corner of the window eventually eat Mary and Jesus. I have an appointment with the course coordinator this morning and I mean to keep it.

Liscette trudged through the snow in her new boots. She came across a Japanese looking tree in the forecourt of some square white buildings squatting in the milky mist. She frowned and pulled her coat closer. This was all very pretty; but where was the shop? It was supposed to be here, she was going to ask if they could mend her old shoes. She looked around; all was suffused in swirling and settled snow. She kicked a path toward one of the buildings before her; enjoying the sight of the crunchy mush sliding off the warm red leather. She made out the outline of a figure standing in a doorway; the person seemed to know her. He was calling to her. Nearing the man

LISCETTES NEW BOOTS she distinguished the details of his nurses uniform, the short white top with the buttons running up the shoulder to the neck. He was a short, solid man with cropped hair and a goatee, rubbing his hands against the cold. You should come in, he said, It's freezing out here! Look at my new boot's she said, kicking them one at a time in the air for him to see. They're great! he said appreciatively, Italian? Yes she said, and sighed, losing all enthusiasm somewhere in her study of the stitching by the zip. You should come in now Liscette, it's getting seriously cold, the male nurse urged when it became apparent she had nothing more to add. Yes she agreed, her gaze still on the boots.

Sergio answers the phone. He's drunk. I can hear music in the background, and the Liverpool boy is shouting that who ever is on the phone should come on over. I ask Sergio if I can speak to Liscette and he says you could if she was here, but she's not, but why don't I come over for a drink? Yeah maybe I will, I say, and we both know that this isn't going to happen. He hasn't seen her for ages, he was worried at first, but he's not anymore. He doesn't offer any more details, and I don't ask. C'mon, come over for a drink he says again.

A late winter sun throws a polished grape bruise over La Trobe Street, and I am walking, cold and hungry. My hair is longer then where she kissed me; more winters have come and gone than I care to count. I see two pigeons nestled in the corner of the library stairs. They're sleepy looking, and puffed up against the cold. Looking at the birds, her words sidle back from where they have always slept in the back of my mind, the ones about the Swede's cooing and blowing on each other for warmth. I pull my coat closer and keep walking.

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