Damian got up to get more beers. Sunday. Ash gathered in its corners.

James sucked on his cigarette until it burnt his lip, and an ember stayed on his finger when he butted it out, ash everywhere. Whats-his-heads bands playing at the crown later. James nodded. Whats-his-head. That stupid floppy hat he wore, his sheep tooth grin. Good bass player though. Yeah, thatd be good. What was his name? Rob? A fixture at every party you went to, his unwashed clothes smell mixed with ylang ylang. Always overly grateful when he bummed a cigarette. Harmless. Is that the right word? Song and dance man. Pigeon? Nah, that sort of harmlessness, but lanky with it. That stupid hat though. Props. Affectations. Why do some people clutter the air between themselves and the world? Idiot? Innocent? James found it hard to tell the difference. Damian drummed on the table, eyeing the bowl of wedges the next table were eating. James looked too. Something about a bowl of wedges in a pub on a Sunday afternoon, some strange sort of defeat attached to them. Magnified now, a sort of lament radiating from their greasy yellow uniforms, greasy old men in a wicker basket, old men in hallways, bent, atrophied hands gripping the railings, slippers skimming through the white light pouring ammonia like over a nursing home floor. Worse than the wedges themselves the stout white pots the sour cream and sweet chilli. All shlucked together and leaking over the sides, bullet holes at the centre of the day. Shot through: mediocrity always wins. The body of the day eviscerated of anything brave or beautiful and consumed by innocents? Idiots? James found it hard to tell the difference. Damian did a final percussive flourish, wondering aloud whether he wanted some wedges now as well. Yup, thats the thing to do, James thought. Get some of the golden fuckers right here in front of us. Like those Americans who cure being scared of spiders by sitting in a room full of them. Get them here and eat the fear away. Bags of wedges in freezers in kitchens in pubs all over, tonnes of them, all frosty and stuck together. James looked away. Hed seen too much of the ghost smothered under that collective mountain. Mediocrity always wins: Time is its weapon and silence is its prize. Eat the fear. Damian got up to get more beers, and some wedges. Yu seeing Kristan later? Kirsten. Yeah, her.

Amazing how quick shed been folded into thought, into conversation. A change of season accepted with not even a mop of the brow. Something maybe never burnt into the present tense. Ah yeah, later. Damian by his bullock, the fields were sizzling and not even a mop of the brow. Kirsten was just a word to him, even if he didnt get it right. Amazing, James thought, how one person can just walk away from a word and another has to walk within it. How a word can become a walled city. It is of no consequence. James could imagine him shrugging and saying it in a funny voice, if he did funny voices. His eyes said it anyway by not saying anything; the day was pouring over them, not into them, not loaded with bullet holes and hollows. The hollow at the top of her flexed leg. A dream burnt into the present. He could feel his dick tingling. The fields were on fire. Ash everywhere. Damian got up to get more beers. James felt a Vandal awaken inside his body: Bold. Impulsive. Excised of doubt and propriety. A dream man with no sense of place or history, only an animal readiness, increased oxygen intake, chemicals to cut hunger: A dream man who sent electricity through his stomach, felt tingles in his dick. He was working at The Astor when he first saw her: A little white dress sticking to her lithe brown body. A statue of what biology has told culture is desirable, and what culture has trained biology to recognise: a statue come to life. He watched her from the kitchen, unveiling her, peeling off the satiny material as she sauntering through the summer drinkers outside. Chemicals to cut hunger. Tingles in his dick. Kirsten reckons she came in a few times and that they had spoken. She knew the sound of his voice, but he couldnt remember speaking to her then. "I thought I recognised you." "The Astor!" "Shit! Thats right!" "God, well how are you." "Fucking fantastic, sorry, whats your name?" "Kirsten." "Hi Kirsten I'm James."

It said thirty-eight on the news and it felt like it walking down Phyllis Street. It was early December and he had just had lunch at the Maylands and was walking towards the Norwood Parade to put a cheque from the housing trust into his key card account. Hed had lunch by himself in the beer garden, under the ceiling fans. It was twelve on the dot when hed arrived. He was the first person to order lunch, and the only patron in the beer garden. James had sat in the corner near the garden entrance and put his feet up on the other chair. The chairs in the beer garden are all metal and quite uncomfortable, so he always put his feet up on another chair to relieve the pressure. It was December. Dean Martin was crooning Christmas carols over the pubs PA. His housemate had arrived back earlier than expected, well, not earlier because he had no Idea when she was coming back, but her sudden unexpected presenceand every thing that he was experiencing at the moment was unexpectedintruded the dreamy jelly in which he was immersed. The sound of her key scratching for the deadlock heralded a sensible world he wasnt ready for. He was hungry when Kirsten left. Half asleep was his stomach gurgling, her menstruation on his sheets, on his chest, in his hair, metallic in his mouth. He rolled over and sunk his head into the pillow in a drowsy effort to smell where her head had been. We were built to fuck each other. James said this the second time, their faces close. Kirsten smiled and arched back her head. The fan was sitting on a kitchen chair at the foot of the bed, and as Kirsten eased her mothers car out of neutral in front of the house he enjoyed the cool air against his body for a few moments, then fell back to sleep. He awoke later, maybe ten thirty, with stinging eyelids, drenched in erotic memory, tacky with sweat, blood, and champagne. The pause button on the CD player was still blinking, a few streets away a car alarm was alerting everyone to the fact that it didn't like the heat. She must of left around sunrise because when she turned the lamp off the light in the room didnt change that much. He was thinking about getting up when the phone rang. Hed ordered linguini. The menu only had it listed as main course but he asked for an entree because he was feeling sick. He didnt really want it but knew that he had to

eat something eventually. Hed looked over the other empty tables and chairs in the garden, it was strange to be there when it was so empty, appropriate though, everything was quite strange at this point in time. With some effort he got through his first beer for the day and ordered another. He was feeling sick because it had been Ingrid on the phone. It was the first time he had spoken to her since Friday night. She was coming around to his place at six o clock that evening to drop off some of his things. James put his head on the table. The walk down Phyllis St was something he wished to avoid, but he needed more beer money. Walking across the car park hed felt the alcohol and lack of sleep of the past few days drag at his heels, ache in the back of the legs. Hed worked Thursday night, until midnight, and then after drinking with Bruce, who he happened to run into at the Exeter, didnt get to Ingrids until four. They were both up at seven, and at Merridys by eight, for her birthday breakfast. By ten James was well on the way to being drunk again. Ingrid had to leave a little after eleven; her parents were coming over to her place for a barbeque. At around twelve Merridy and James and Monique smoked some dope. By five it had more or less worn off and he left to walk home, determined to get some much needed rest, which he would surely have done, had Damian not been walking up Queen St at the same time. "James!" His eyes were boiled dry and he didnt immediately recognise him. "Hey Damian." He was the last person James wanted to see at the moment, feeling so dilapidated. "You look like shit." "Ive been at Merridys, it was her birthday." Oh fuck man I thought that was tonight! Damian smelt all fresh and clean. "What'ya doin'?" "Im going to meet Tom and Pat at the Exeteryou should come along." "No fucking way, I mean Id love to, but Im fucked." Damian stood back with his arms open, "Jaaames! Come on." "No I've got to get some fucking sleep."

"JamesJamesJamesJamesJames," he said, shaking his head. "Dont Damian, James delivered in a self-mocking whine, "Look at me, I'm not going anywhere." Damian looked at him, nodding. "The only place I'm going is fucking"now James was laughing as well "dreamland." He already knew that hed end up going drinking with Damian, that it was really the only proper course of action Damian got the first round in. James leaned on one of the small black metal tables in the Norwood Hotel, watching him wait for two imperial sized pints of draught because there was nothing else around that he particularly wanted to look at. It was around five thirty. Curls of cigarette smoke hung in the air around the tables. He had agreed to have a couple with Damian and then, if he was up to it, go into town with him later, maybe. He figured if he was going to be tired he might as well be really fucked. He felt like death warmed up, and the vision of his bed had not been completely erased from his mind at this stage, but a miraculous second wind came over James while they talked, and this combined with the fact that for some reason beer made him hyper as opposed to drowsy meant that when the bar closed at eight he was eager to continue the conversation at the Exeter. They walked into the Exeter and Pat and Tom were sitting at the table by the glass doors in the far right corner. Kirsten was sitting at the next table. James didnt even notice her when they sat down. He walked past her a few times to go to the bar. If Damian hadnt turned his chair around to start speaking to her when he was getting bored James doubted if hed have even realised that she was there. Pat was sitting opposite him at the table and very drunk, he was crapping on about god knows what to a guy called Rob who looked to be in a similar state. Tom sat to his right as quiet and unfathomable as ever, and Damian's bum was pointed towards him as he leant on the next table talking to two girls. Damian swung his chair around to the next table and James resented being left with the others, after all it was him who dragged him down here, and now he'd abandoned him to strike up a conversation with two strangers. James would have rather hed thought to do it himself. After about half an hour he also pulled his chair

up to the table, because whatever was happening there was more interesting than what was happening at his. He looked up and there was Kirsten. "I thought I recognised you." "The Astor!" "Shit! Thats right!" "God, well how are you." "Fucking fantastic, sorry, whats your name?" "Kirsten." "Hi Kirsten I'm James." So much has gone through his mind since that night. Hes living on a foreign island now, watching the waves crash up on each other; the foam is complex. His character is being paraded like one of those big flags that flutter under helicopters advertising something. He looks up at the thing hanging in the air taking the liberty here to pause the helicopter in mid flight for a moment so that he can try to explain that from below the billowing mass of silk, or rayon, or whatever it isbut it's fucking hugelooks so weightless, that as he watches it float through the air above, so effortlessly so far above the ground, he finds it hard to believe that he made the banner hes looking at: His life ripping in the wind before his own eyes. A picture of a smile in the snow, of himself living in another city where I didnt know anything or anyone save the person he had followed there. Memory flashes like firecrackers. Slender fingers gently held his chin, kisses on his half dreaming lips. Afternoons when the world pulsed outside, a box of blue sky always in the window it seemed. The smell of powdered faces, cold hands on his back. Then her. The sunflowers in her sisters garden, her sun kissed skin kissing. He used to pay the telephone and electricity bills on time back then. His time with Ingrid scrambled for the sky like a spooked flock of birds. Damian got up to get more beers. Come February they would have been together for eight years. He was nineteen when he met her, for a month each year theyre the same age. For the benefit of those that believe in such things James is a Virgo and Ingrid is a Libran. He wanted her from the moment I saw her, Ingrid he means. He would watch her, the way she moved her hands, the way she spoke to people. He observed her leaning on the counter in profile and plotted a map of her nakedness using the curves

evident. Know that it was a nurses uniform, know too that he was aware of, and enjoyed, the clich. They sat at the table by the corner door in the Caledonian and Ingrid asked him where he went to school and what music he liked as she systematically removed the labels from her beer bottles and scrunched them into little red balls. After the Caledonian they went to the Oxford, then walked into town holding hands. We ended up getting chased by some guys down by the river. We ran past the back of the Festival Theatre and through the train station, eventually stopping in an alleyway off Hindley Street. When we got our breath back we went around the corner to the Mars Bar. Thats when they kissed, by the dance floor. Thats when they kissed, by the dance floor. It would have been two or three in the morning. The Exeter had closed and Kirsten had driven James and Damian to the Mars Bar. It was the only place they thought might still be open. Kirsten is a very open person, and a very, very tactile person. When she talks to you she rubs your arm and holds your hand and leans forward and looks straight in your eyes. It's just the way she is. She manhandles waiters, shopkeepers, traffic inspectors, friends, strangers, anyone. She doesnt like peopleshe adores them, all of them. "Have you ever had anal sex?" it was open question, directed at Damian as well as himself. "It bloody hurts let me tell you!" Damian was at another table talking to someone, and for some reason Kirsten was also at another table, no, she was sitting on the block that holds up the mirrored pillar by the dance floor, or maybe that was earlier, maybe she was sitting at a table after all. Whatever the case they were practically on the dance floor kissing, sitting on something. He went over specifically to kiss her, and his hand was up her top when Damian ran back from the toilets. Ingrids here, he whispered in James ear. James ran to the stairs and she was just past the cigarette machine. Im here with someone else. She looked at him perplexed. What do you mean? I mean Im here with someone else.

Damian got up to get more beers. Ash everywhere. Im here with someone else. Quick thinking, on his feet, only felt like three steps and there she was. Last time hed see her eyes without a protective glaze. Im here with someone else. He lit a cigarette. Damage control. Ash everywhere. Fire inside the city walls, a statue come to life. Who was it that told him? That little Sicilian chef who looked like Mephistopheles. Better to cut yourself with a sharp knife than a blunt one, heals quicker. Damage control. In word world blunt is sharp. Im here with someone else. Have you talked to Ingrid? Yeah, she rang yesterday. Dropped some of my stuff off. I wasnt home. Ash everywhere. Damian got up to get more beers. Kirsten what? Lang Sorry? Lang. Kirsten Lang. Fantasies dont have names, real names, things that connect them to the earth. In that one Chinese sounding word the world changed. So she was real, this Kirsten Lang, the scenarios in which she had starred that spidered into his consciousness since he had first seen her did not have a name. Kirsten Lang. Now she was checkable. Measurable. Traceable. A veil was ripped away. The world changed. Lang. It pulled her closer and pushed her further away, a benign growth like anyone else has attached to their name, it added an askew innocence that shifted away from the untouchable realm. Kirsten Lang. The world changed. It felt calmed and disappointed and safe and dangerous and excited. Even if she left now, with nothing more was exchanged, James had it. Kirsten Lang. Checkable. Traceable. Calming, dangerous, and exciting. It was hard to accept, James did not believe that you were supposed to meet fantasies, he did not believe that veils were supposed to be ripped away and that fantasies join the living throng and tell you their names.