It was an owl, a big white Owl.

She was holding it in front of her, against her stomach like it was a baby. She was holding it pretty tightly. I could see feathers sticking out between her fingers. It didnt seem to mind. It was staring at me, or at least it seemed to be, occasionally doing one of those weird owl blinks, you know, how their eyelids come up from the bottom rather than down. Anyway as I said it looked quite calm, it didnt seem to be bothered about what was going on at all. I realised it was a wedding. We were about to get marriedshe looked beautiful. She was wearing a long white dress, no lace or any crap like that; it was very simple. elegant. For some reason she now had dark hair, it was blonde earlier on, well not blonde blonde, but strawberry blonde or dirty blonde or whatever you call it. I figured she must have dyed it for the wedding. There was just the two of us in this big hall. I didnt know what to think. I had no idea she wanted to marry me. She was walking towards me with this owl, and as she got closer she squeezed it even harder, its chest started to heave and I thought oh the poor thing. I was about to say hey ease up on the owl when it started to make this noise like a telephone, the phone was ringing, and it woke me up.
Who was it? Some guy looking for some guy called Jerry, wrong number. A Jerry used to live here, years ago. Yeah? Well the guy didnt mention that, he must have been after a different Jerry. You know I've never known a Jerry, now I know of two, Ha! The Jerry's in my life. I suppose Jerry as in Tom and Jerry doesnt really count does it? I mean everyone knows him and he's not even real, whereas these fellows are real and I don't know them. God what am I talking about? Want another coffee Tony?

Tony or Tones as he preferred to be called, sat in the kitchen watching the small black and white television beside the toaster with a cup of sugarless black coffee. Michelle buttered two pieces of toast and put two more slices in the toaster. She handed one to Tony and he reacted the same way he always did when she offered him a piece of toast. As though it was the last pig left in her village, fattened on the last bowl of grain moistened with her family's blood. Oh thanks Michelle, thank you, thanks heaps, thanks a lot, ta. She watched Tony devour the toast; he poured a sip of coffee into his mouth while still chewing. That's how he ate toast, bite, sip, bite, sip. He would swallow a slimy alliance of buttery dough and cold black coffee, it obviously agreed with him. He would never leave his mother's house Michelle thought. He was just too well looked after. Not only was it screamingly apparent in his clothing and his posturea strange tee pee of Jag and Pour Homme erected there on the old green sofa in the kitchenbut also in the way he wiped the butter-spit that dribbled out of the corner of his nonplussed mouth with the back of his hand, like an infant. But it was a mans hand; it contained within its veins and tendons a look of power she didnt know, didnt want to know. Tony no worries Thompson she thought. Only a year or so older than her: twenty-seven, twenty-eight maybe. Her Landlord and owner of Tools-to-U, a spanner and socket set home delivery business. Short neat dark hair, clean shaven, Jag Jeans, Jag T shirts, usually white or a bright green, Nike basketball boots and a mobile phone with a clear plastic cover over the buttons which he placed on the table when he walked in, often stepping back to retrieve when he left. I should put this thing on my belt, seeya Michelle! Thanks again for brekky. Tony Thompson. What sort of name is that? She didnt like it; it sounded meaningless to her. She imagined the irritating screech of it repeated by a tick-ridden galah sitting above a thick crust of its own speckled shit in a galvanised cage proclaiming Tony Thompson! Tony Thompson! Tony Thompson! to no one in particular. What was wrong with Anthony? She wondered. An-thon-ee. Was it so hard to say Anthony instead of Tony? She guessed that he would consider Tony more virile, that his time was too precious to waste on the extra syllable. Names. She didnt like Thompson either. Tom made her think of a cheery little character that would dwell within the shiny covers of one of those cheap fairytale storybooks that scatter the floors of houses with young children. Stiff newspaper sized pages with huge letters and drawings of cobblestones so round they were more like a bunch of grapes, and mushroom houses and idiotic looking elves with stupid beards or swollen rosy cheeks and pointy hats and pointy pipes and pointy felt shoes. Son, Thompson, the son of Tom. Names. She didnt like Tanya either. It sounded too much like onion, which she associated with ear infection. Sitting cross-legged in a darkened auditorium with her primary school classmates watching Parafield High cavort through the tale of Robin Hood. Some girl dipped her finger into her left ear, then shoved it under her nostrils. Michelle was repulsed by the oniony tang of the

rotten sticky mixture. Jerry, she didnt like that one either now that she came to think about it. It was an old name, like Monty or Toby, musty and faintly ridiculous like the Red Baron. All those "y" names, Jenny, Mary, all those y's huddled together in cellars as the cities were blitzed. Aprons and hats and scones wrapped in paper. The smell of rosewater and Californian poppy oil, heavy and cold. The seep of fear, the whiff of others fear floating around your own like drops of oil on a skin of water. That's how names struck her. Thompson, a happy elf, Tanya, oniony ear puss and Jerry equalled souls huddled in a cellar during World War Two. Names. They fascinated her. The shirt of a name she thought. Hello I'm such and such, an entire person represented by a couple of words that werent even normal words. Capital letters at the beginning whether at the beginning of a sentence or not. Embellished with hyphenslittle two word stories that sailed through letters and conversations separate to the rest of the language. Tips of icebergs, mountain peaks. Words that weren't words that could freeze or burn, laden with value or stripped bare to vanish in history. They are the spirits of language she thought. The translucent, slippery creatures of the communicative world. The shirt of a name she thought again. Shed and picked up, so and so the second, so and so the third, and so on and so on. Names and time: Michelle had trouble with them both. She was aware she would never understand, and what's more wasnt interested in trying. She wasnt interested in planting orchards in thin air or placing hunks of flesh on invisible bones. What she had come to savour was the growing chasm of incomprehensibility. The awareness of the canyon she sometimes stood at the edge of when she was doing the dishes, or vacuuming the hallway, or dusting the skirting boards. The safety of not understanding, her delicate feet firm on carpet and lino, small white feet, toenails varnished Revlon Fire Cherry, feet smooth and impregnated with almond oil. The soles as clean as the top, no dark stains, no grit, she made sure of that. She wrote about them in one of her letters, she described her feet as being as clean and white as a seashell, both of them! Michelle Virgo, twenty-five, and born under the sign of the virgin as it happens. Slightly built and fair skinned with unruly shoulder length near black hair and deep-set dark chocolate eyes. A Freckle on her left inside thigh she was quite proud of. Unemployed, last worked as a waitress at Viva Cianti, quit five days ago. She realised that with such a name she wasnt in a position to be critical. She had not only grown used to the sound of it but, as much as she would feign embarrassment at its past the use by date hippy connotations when asked, would privately enjoy what she considered to be its Mystic element. She would pull at her tangled hair when she said it, and laugh along with the response, while feeling her father's name nod towards misty lakes and other vague, lightly thrown together images of an Albion world. Johnni Pablo and the self-pity orchestra, horse teeth and squashed nose, what was her name? She placed the Holly Hobby mug on the table. Sharon? Siobhan? Shh sounds puckered in her head as her her lips drew tight, savouring the tea. Charmaine, sounds like Champagne, that's right. The toast popped and she searched for the Promite. The chipboard sang yellow days and the cockroaches, the small brown agile ones, abandoned their fandango to hide behind the bag of Black and Gold flour as her fingernails tapped their dance floor. Hello I'm..... Charmaine, yes, thats right, that red dress and that look in her eye. Lucy jumped from her lap and waited by the screen door to be let out. It was manners more than anything; the cat could have easily escaped by itself. The door didnt close right, it never had, and last summer had twisted it even more. A long gaping triangle now at the bottom between inside and the day. There was no clatter of warning, it made entrance invisible. People could be behind her without her even knowing it. Her eyes in a book, or dozing on the arm of the couch with eyes behind her, like cars pulling up with the headlights off. She didnt know a Tanya, she didnt know a Jerry, she didnt know that many people at all anymore. About Tony she felt peppered with irritation, soaked in anxiety and leaning towards distrust. He was popping by a few times a week now, for coffee and toast and small talk. It had become a sort of ritual he seemed to enjoy as much as she dreaded it. He talked about his spanner business in a way that suggested he honestly thought shed be interested. This amazed her, maybe that was the look he was misreading on her face she thought, the dumb smile that heralds the beginning of a synapse shut down. He joked about being single, and being busy, and

being busy and single. He talked about the blockbusters he was keen to see in a way that left a drift net to snag any interest she registered and reel her in. The idea of his big fingers touching hers in a sweaty box of popcorn in a dark room was like raw meat. Thing is he was the Landlord. She found it perverse, the combination of those words and thisguy. She far preferred the grumpy old Greeks shed had before. She never saw them unless something was wrong, drastically wrong, like a broken oven or an exploded hot water service. And even then the hostile innuendo that she was a vandal was preferable to this clement campaign. He was like a student teacher who insisted his kids drop all that mister stuff. Hey just call me Tony. Pull up a pew and well shoot the breeze. She could just imagine it. Thing is he was the landlord. A fact that Tony siphoned onto the desert plain of his conversation. It was all pretty funny he reckoned, his Mother, the unseen giant with the pot of gold, wanted to give the house to his cousin as a wedding present. Not in its present condition of course, it was falling apart. Ive said to her a hundred times Ive said Mum its just not worth it. She was adamant, but so was he. I said mum just send em to Bali or something. He pointed to walls that would need knocking down, when dry rot gets in to this lot its just like a rotten tooth. There was nothing to worry about he assured her, as long as she didnt mind living in a shit heap she could stay as long as she liked. And she didnt mind living in a shit heap, all she wanted was for Tony to go so she could lie on the couch watch the shadows change on the peeling walls. She was glad her housemate wasnt around for these mid morning chitchats. Chances are Tony wouldnt be coming around if she was stomping about, and as irksome as he was shed take Tony over that bitch any day. As much as she detested her housemate, and a thorough non-redeemable dislike it was indeed, she loved the sound of her name. Evelyn Bauer, twenty-seven, originally from a town in New Zealand that translated from Maori to English is Nibble-Nibble. Fine straight shoulder length auburn dyed hair, a legal secretary presently temping at the Family Law Court. Aerobics practically every night of the working week and late morning on Saturdays, possessor of an overly sensitive nature and a resentful, blindly bitter disposition. "And I just said what! fuck you pal!" Her name rolled off her tongue like a hay bale off the back of the ute. It was a big open field of a name she thought. It was strawberry smells and buttered bread and easy winks and kisses. Damn her she thought, damn her for having the same feeling in her mouth as Erika, Erika Spears. Come to me my darling, her legs akimbo in the easy chair, the morning caught in her calf eyelashes. Eight amsitting on the medium strip twenty-four hours into her twenty first year, insensible and luscious on vodka and ecstasy. Dear Erika, Well how are things in your part of the world old stick? How's what's his name, is it Michael? Mitchell? It's been so long since I heard from you I cant remember his name! Hint hint, only joking. I imagine it's snowing over there now, god I wish it was here, it's boiling! I bought two little pots of basil at the market the other day and put them on the windowsill and the poor things fried before I even noticed. A bit pissed off actually because that's what the guy said they liked. Oh well, add greenthumbery to the list of things I aint a master of! Not much to tell you this end, things are pretty much same old same old, still hate Evelyn's guts of course. She keeps rabbiting on about going on some sort of pilgrimage of European pagan sites, god if only! Hey I'll give her your address, ha ha. She wont go though, she'd miss her bloody aerobics too much. Eri you should see her, she's the size of a house, her shoulders are bigger than a footballers and her legs! My god she could stand in for the incredible hulk! Havent found a job yet, got to be honest havent really been looking that hard, there was one going at Mento's that I rang up about but I didn't go to the interview, the guy on the phone sounded like he wouldn't be particularly pleasant to spend time with so I didnt bother. I dont want a repeat performance of Alex! I like having the place to myself during the day while muscles is at work, god knows what I do with myself but before I know it she's back in my face complaining about just about anything you'd care to think of. The other day it was the carpet in her office, its smell irritates her, oh and my favourite how the design printed on the paper cups she gets her milkshakes in from a particular deli is an insulting characture of traditional Polynesian art. Apparently the eyes are googly and stupid looking!

Maybe it was an E thing. Evelyn, Erika and Elana. The people that jabbed into her life had E names, E names with sharp bits, l, k ,l LKL. That could be a god or something somewhere she thought, a face carved in holy buildings surrounded by jungle or snow. She fell in love with Elana playing netball at school. A tanned dropped box of matches who smiled at her from her team mates circle. At the end of season barbecue she gave her a quartz wrapped in tissue paper. Elana smiled and said oh cool, thanks! and continued walking to the car with her sister, crickets buzzing in the dry grass paddocks around the courts. Ecstasy and electricity, she liked those toothe sound of the first and the feeling of the other. Her mothers sewing machine zapped her when she was little. Sitting there playing with the frayed cord while her mother was making a little fireman's suit for her brother's action man, and that other time, in the country. Her cousin dared her to touch the fence, do it do it do it she chanted. That look where Alisons whole body wanted to jump out of her eyes, and a promise she'd do the same afterwards. As she did Alison grabbed her hand and she jerked away, lifted off the ground. Alison ended up on her back in the grass behind her. They looked at each other and laughter too big for their bodies shook its way out. Michelle looked at the envelope. The handwriting: Dear Michelle. The beginning of something, it always was when other people wrote it. Her name on paper was potent. The meaning a mystery at first: Arriving and leaving, leaving and being left. Dear Michelle. Who is this Virgo person anyway? So familiar it sounded strange. Weird on paper, maybe because she didnt write it herself, she'd never written that before, dear Michelle, why would she? She signed her name but she didnt write it. She left with it. It was at the end of things.

Evelyn ranted into her day like a prickly freight train, she was furious of course; a new sprout of anger curled from an already fertile bed and curled its closed leaved head towards her. "Rent doesnt grow on trees you know," she said, running late and slamming the door. Michelles guts had been under siege since she got the invitation. It had found her in chrysalis mode. The idea of going anywhere beyond the corner deli at the moment was a documentary shed rather watch on TV. She could hear Evelyns car not starting, and her spit thick prayers to the god of obscenity urging the engine to engage. Even the stubble on Evelyn's legs looked angry, Michelle thoughtshe seemed stale and shiny at the same time in her cheap suits and musky perfume. She wondered where she had room in her brain for her typing speed with all these new outrages she found to assail her. For Christ's sake will somebody, anybody, lay her! That last guy wasnt around long, the one with the motorbike and the Save the Tree Frogs tank top. Theyd drink lemon in water in her room and listen to Phantom of the Opera. Evelyn had a Phantom of the Opera T shirt that she wore in bed. The mask glowed in the dark. Imagine that hovering towards you when the light went off! Michelle sipped her coffee and waited for it all to go away. Alison's weddingBad timing. She didnt have a lot of thread to sew into this celebration. Trust Ali to do it now. Air force man like her dad, breeder's her aunty had jested over the phone, her voice English and far away. Michelle was to be a bridesmaida bridesmaid. Don't worry, her aunty said, it will be your turn soon luv. No find it, wrap it, chuck it on a table, no quick hello and peck on the cheek and hasty exit. Oh noBridesmaidthis was a photo of Hitler at that house in the Alps with that guy in the white suit next to him: Documented participation. And buying the paper was hard enough at the moment, let alone being part of an historical tableau. She put a muffin in the toaster and looked at the garden, birds had been at the figs. The hound-eyed woman in the deli slid the cigarettes across the counter. Michelle liked the little shop, a slice of her felt like this is where she really lived, this warm nest smelling collection of tinned barlotti beans and Italian newspapers, and that the house was just where she waited until it was time to come back here. Garlands of dried chillies hung over the old cash register, horse dick sausages dangling along the wall. It was the getting there that was hard, safe cracking open the door to movement. Across the road the skinny guy with the dark stubble gave her a smile as he got out of his maroon Monaro in his Bakery Whites. She smiled back but kept up her

pace so that he wouldnt talk to her. There was a time when she'd talk and laugh with anyone. The villageinspringtime ambience of these streets had delighted her with the life hanging all over. It was like walking through an opera. The old men talking in the yards, hands and voices flying in all directions. And cats leaping from the rosebushes to pounce on birds that got away, and sometimes didnt, and even then the sight of blood speckles on the grass was a sort of stolen chocolate she indulged in, but not now. This was the time of stealing toilet paper from the park, of stealing vegetables from the gardens, of stealing garlic and cheese and coffee from the supermarket, pens and staplers from the Centre Link office, or slipping a magazine into the newspaper at the BP. Not in her little shop though, where a dusty pack of batteries that didnt work still only cost ninety cents. I'm going to a wedding," Michelle announced brightly as she pocketed the cigarettes. The hound-eyed woman smiled but didnt say anything. It occurred to Michelle that she hadnt ever seen this woman below the height of the counter, as she walked away she entertained the vision of her made out of the same stuff as the shop from the waist down. *** Alison begged her brother to hire a tux, but he had insisted on throwing together some Op shop monstrosity, engulfed as he was in a Brideshead Revisited fever. "That bloody show," Ali had said on the phone, "I swear to god if he brings a fuckin teddy bear that's it!" Michelle laughed like it was a joke on Death Row. She was curled up on the carpet, watching an ant on her toenail. Ali was good, she knew Michelle didnt have any money, and still let her pick the dark emerald bridesmaid dresses. There'd be her, of course, and Alis friend Kate and her other friend Sally. Michelle had met them both, at a barbecue or something apparently, but she was hard pressed to pick a face. As Alison blitzed into their details a pair of blonde morphs appeared over the edge of her recollection. And his name wasnt Brett it was Steve, and he wasnt in the air force, that was Craig. God that was ages ago! Alison said, amazed. They were all the same to Michelle, stabbing blue eyes and sun burnt necks. Alison sensed her cousins dwindled energy and fenced around it, years of dealing with her and a mad brother had attuned her to soldiering on regardless whilst holding one on a string to stop him disappearing into the treetops and the other from drowning in a swamp. They laughed about Michelle's uncle panicking about the money,"It's like I've asked him to build me the Taj bloody Mahal!" Alison said. She worried faintly about her cousin, Michelle was like milk in the fridge when the use by date was obscured, these black dead ribbons that wound around her days sometimes. "Do you still eat chicken?" she asked, "Good, and they'll be heap's of champagne, we'll get shit faced!" The receiver stayed in Michelle's hand for some time after Alison had hung up, she tapped it on the bottom of the wall where the salt damp bubbled the plaster, little flakes fell to the carpet, she pressed her finger into them, waiting for the ant to leave her foot. Evelyn got home, undoing her hair as she walked in the door and kicking her shoes into her room. The upcoming nuptials gave them something normal and outside themselves to talk about. It was, for Evelyn, a chit chatty place, somewhere to rest in the middle of her own discord. She talked loudly and quickly as she gathered her leotard off the washing line. She still managed to place some of her angry totems in the square, her sister's marriage was fucked, as was the one before that, but she balanced this with open, hopeful, painted blue bird questions. This incarnation of Evelyn as walking Woman's Weekly made Michelle light headed, like she was being urged to the top of a ladder to jump into a glass of water. Evelyn said she could use her make up if she wanted, she even offered to drive her to the church. *** That weekend was squiffy now: Ethanol flambed visions. Evelyn sat at work on the Monday with her head feeling like wood, and the feeling of a terrible secret around the corner, a feeling that had squatted and grown heavier in her since. She wished no one knew about her going out with that guy. She wished she hadnt bragged about it. There were questions, insinuations, the badminton of smart arse comments bored workmates play after a weekend. She'd had to cut it, clip it, kill it quick. She looked up and saw Ralph polishing the window, good old RalphYou fucker. He'd been cleaning the windows in her office while Ralph was away. They got chatting. She liked him TerryHe was funny, he was into astrology, he had nice teeth. His mate was having a party up in the hills, would she like to come?

Driving up she wanted to reach over and squeeze Terrys arm, to pull the car over and feel the muscles in his back under her hands. When they got to the house she looked over at him and the sun picked up the fine blonde hair on his cheekbones above where he shaved, and she wanted to kiss him right there. It was a backyard thing, and it was a big backyard, a couple of acres at least. Terrys friends were sitting around a long wooden table drinking beers. Nice guys like him. The host saw them as he came out the back door, he went back inside and came out towards them with two beers, singing along to the stereo the whole time. Evelyn liked being around men. She prided herself on understanding the phenomena of gathered testosterone. She liked to joke and tease and smoke and swear, to jump in the middle of the tribe and ride the bullshit. "Fuck you pal," she'd say with a slack tough smile, slugging from a bottleneck. Plus Terry had touched the small of her back a few times, and this was good. She could smell the bitter white of cut vegetation mingling with the cigarette smell on her fingers. She smoked menthol cigarettes so people wouldnt scab them off of her. The host was older than the others. There was an earthy element etched into his laugh lines, and he spoke in a way that showed there could be space around words without losing vitality. Evelyn joked around with him looking through the music in the kitchen. She picked up a Crowded House CD, I love Crowded House! He put it on and they sat their voices somewhere around the harmonies. He'd travelled. Europe when he was younger and now mostly Asia. The other guy's called him Papa, as in Papa Smurf. There where photos of him on the fridge with the beard hed only recently removed. Terry came inside to get more beers. "Youre running low Papa," "Nah mate, we got plenty more in the shed fridge." Papa showed Evelyn some bones and stones and bits and pieces hed collected from here and there. He pulled up his shirt and showed her the Celtic circle tattooed on his shoulder blade. Evelyn showed him the Griffin on hers; their inks were practically the same. Evelyn wanted to believe in magic, and Papa wanted to believe her, handing her another beer, smiling and nodding. Evening crept up, and with it mosquitos and The Electric Light Orchestra. It seemed a ritual with these boys at a certain point of drunkennessto ooohh along to ELO. Evelyn was laughing, wiping crushed mozzies and streaks of blood off her arm. Terry didnt seem to be paying her particular attention, she thought, but he didnt seem to not be either. He was engrossed in conversation with Papa, and laughed hysterically every now and then, a shrill sound she didnt expectHe looked like a boomer. She caught them both looking at her, and was pleased they didnt seem embarrassed. She smiled back, happily pissed. I wiiill retuurn to Shangri-LaThe All-Boys Inebriate choir sang along Papa came out with a bottle of clear liquid. Curled up in the gritty sediment at the bottom, wooden and evil looking, was a mummified centipede. He brought out a handful of odd glasses and put them around the bottle. "What the fuck is that!" someone said. "It's a white spirit from Chang Rai," Papa smiled, "Give it a bash." Greg, or Gary, the guy sitting next to her, the one who liked golf and said her hair was nice, was leaning back, his temples shiny with the strain of hitting the high notes I wiiill retuurn to Shangri-La. Evelyn woke up in a bed to a smell of soap and sheets that she didnt know. On the desk there was a photo of Papa and some guy on a boat. This wasnt like the other times she'd woken up at in a strange bedroom with little recollection of the night before. Something else besides the usual twinge of regret accompanied her in the thick silence of the room. She looked around for her clothes, and when she couldnt locate them wrapped the sheet around herself and sat up on the bed. Papa came in a Singlet and shorts, minty fresh from the shower. He was drinking a cup of tea and smiled at her. "Well good morning" he said. Evelyn felt ill, the air was too fat and her breathing too fast. "It packs a wallop that stuff", Papa said, "It's a bit of a bloody rocket ship and the landing can be bumpy. Would you like a cup of tea?" "Where are my clothes?" This was important to her nowvery important, right now. "In the wash. We went to see Nelson, remember?" "Nelson?" Papa made a pig sound. Knives clicked inside her as he wandered back out to the kitchen sipping his tea. Hers came in a cup from some hotel in Malaysia, and he gave her a long shirt to wear. "Your stuff's in the dryer, it won't be long." Evelyn joined him at the table outside for a cigarette. "Yeah old Nelson's a bit frisky at the moment," Papa said, admiring the Rosellas on the lawn. She stared blank at the morning colours, bullets sparking off the walls inside her.

"Are you feeling a bit out of it?" She nodded. "Don't worry about it, Papa assured her, it's a weird hangover, a bit later it might seem like everything's going in slow motion, it's quite nice actually, and it only last's a few hours." "How come your OK?" she rasped "Are you fuckin kidding? I wouldnt drink that shit again if you paid me!" Papa laughed. One of the other guys came out, shoeless and couch crumpled. "Hey Papa," he said. "Hey," he nodded to Evelyn. He came back from the shed with two beers. "Not for me mate," Papa said. "Beauty, more for me," the guy smiled, sitting down. "I was just reminding Evelyn of our visit to Nelson last night." Papa smirked. "Old corkscrew dick!" the guy beamedand the two cracked up. "Jeez you got guts I'll give yu that," the guy said, opening the beer with his teeth. You just grabbed that millipede shit by the throat and powered into it! Centipede Greg, Papa corrected. What? Centipede, its a centipede. Oh right. Papa reached over and rubbed the back of her neck. "You'll be right love." Evelyn wanted Terry to come out the house. She wanted to see him walking towards her, similarly affected. She wanted him to sit next to her with his head in his hands; his easy-going humour tattered but intact. She wanted him to beg for a sip of her tea and then say lets go. EvelynShe spoke of the Earth Goddess and read about Avalon. She wrote poems about missing children. She dreamed of mist and rain. She burned scented candles before she slept and kept her precious things in a lacquered box. She wrote her mother long letters of lies and phoned her sister once a week. Other bedraggled members of the party emerged squinted in the sun. They lit up cigarettes and got stuck into the shed fridge. Papa talked about firing up the Barbie. Some dark, smaller birds joined the Rosellas, nibbling on the lawn. She watched them start when the music started up, and started her self from uneasy puzzlesthe feeling of a warm belly pressed against her. Where the fuck is Terry? Papa must have read her face. Oh Evelyn, Terry left with Wisey after umm After what? Hed sobered up a bit. Getting into her car the world had indeed seemed to slow down. Looking in the glove box for a tissue she saw a smear of dry grey mud on the wristband of her watch. She idled at the cross road, checking for traffic long enough to have to check the other side again, finally accelerating without knowing if anything was coming or not. A melt of moments blew back into her mind. The yellow glass around the outside lightand musicloud and thick. A night tramp through underbrush, she wasnt alone, someone was saying "This way." A maze of gates and fences; a water tank; sheds; old machinery; fence wire in her hands. How many were with her, Two? Three? A reflection of the moon, like a luminous lily floating in the corner of a trough. Its back felt like an un-cleaned paintbrush. They were whooping around its squelch and grunt. She must have taken her shoes off because she recalled a feeling like cold porridge between her toes. And the weight of the thing, it was like being hit by a full filing cabinet. The trees slow danced by the road, I touched it she thought with the certainty of a steel ruler, bending but unbreakable. She pulled into a service station next to the air and water, a hot wind off the main road whipping her weekend tie-dyes as she checked the tyre pressure. *** tyrant Evelyn is a. Bleeding and feeding each other she turned the words into a world on the corner of the newspaper, a swelling circular pattern of connecting tendrils idling into being while she waited for Frank to get to the phone. The soupy throb of a busy work place in her ear, familiar voices, a laugh trailing in the distance through a rainstorm of plates. She could hear him getting closer, his agitated voice over his shoulder as he reached for the receiver. He just said his name. It came out as a sort of pant, quick and with an inflexion of let's go I havent even really got time to be doing this.

She could see him. Sharp and clean, sweet smelling. She hung up. She immediately picked at the receiver like something too hot just dropped, but Frank was quicker and all she could hear was the cricket purr of a dead line. And this was bad. This was a shiny black beetle new type of bad that fascinated her even as it scuttled through her insides to feed on the waves of panic crashing around the messy kitchen. And then the panic compressed to create a sort of relief, even elation. She was giddy on a tightrope and the air was breathable up here on this new level. It always began with an inner vertigo. A feeling in her stomach like she was on a lookout and reached behind for the hand rail that was a extra hand's distance way, and that feeling, that second of grasping before the relief of the cool steel touching the palm, was frozen, tight and slight inside her. And then it began to grow. Inexplicitly, irresistibly gnawing with sharper claws into her guts. Her head and body went about their business barely speaking to each other, but both waiting with growing impatience for some action. What was it that chef who looked like the devil used to say? Hot for hot, cold for cold, in a thick Sicilian voice as he smeared butter on a burn. She quit jobs. No notice, no negotiation, just a phone call. She'd never just hung up like this though. Now she'd have to call Ursula, that blonde tanned bubble of good-natured cruelty. Beautiful fingers, bracelets from boyfriends, travel anecdotes. Understanding people was Ursula's hobby. There she was at the African bar, nodding slowly and brushing back her perfect tumble to better hear, some boy smoking at her side, a wink for a Bundy and coke. It seemed to her that she lived the way she died, every day. And now she'd have to ring her and she'd go "hey chook what's up? Then she'd come round with some wine and some smoke and they'd play CDs and she'd say, " Fuck 'em! Your better off not having to deal with their shit." And they'd laugh and dance around the table. Loves Theme by Barry White and the Love Unlimited Orchestra. Ursula's ballsy lips. I'll Be Around by the Detroit Spinners, funny funky chicken dancing. Thinking Of You by Sister Sledge, Open another bottle? Fuck yeah! Never Too Much by Luther Vandross. The sky would be dirty gold now above the neighbours roof, it's bloody brass centre winking through the fig tree. Ursula would explain it fine to Frank. She'd make something up; wrap some fantasy round a grain of truth. That was the trick she reckoned, to focus on the truth in a lie, even if it was just your name. It had got her out of some scrapes. She could see Frank's face but Ursula was good. She needed that last pay. "Leave it to me," Ursula would say, "I'm a professional." But that was restaurants ago. When there were more boats to leave the Island, when supplies werent so low. *** It was the school social, but it wasnt her school. It was Bradley's, her big boned cousin. Bradley of the quivering quilled love poems, and purple pimpled mountain range about the temples under Burgundy died fringe; he wanted to look like the bass player in Duran Duran. This was years ago. The darkened gym was in a candy sweat of stage smoke, the make shift disco pulsing like tram lights in the clouds. Her face was glossed and glittered, it felt tight and fresh like a just cut orange. Bradley was dancing. He danced like he was looking for change on the floor, trying to sweep it into view with his fringe. Michelle copied him, looking for her own change without the aide of a fringe, keeping her eyes just open enough not to bang into anyone else. Everyone talked about putting a disprin in coke but no one had actually done it, same thing in milk could kill cats, again, no one had ever tried it. The girl's liked Bradley and the boy's thought he was a poof and they liked Michelle and she hated them. They stank of football and cars, of halted murder, of profound boredom. She wore one of Bradley's black shirts tucked into a long tight black skirt. In front of his mirror with the TV on and the smell of cooking chip's she thought she looked like the night, and she said "Hey Brad's I look like the night!" and he laughed and agreed. They both did.

Bradley had sneaked his mother's compact for a quick wipe, a touch of dead face. He offered it to Michelle but she declined, she liked her dusky china glow, a little something to remember herself by, a signature in the sand. Bradley told her she looked way too healthy, Bradley who's own swaggering bulk he covered in flags to sway and whip, to look as light as he wasnt, a bowl of lilies on a brick shithouse. Alison was watching TV. She reckoned she wouldnt have gone tonight even if she hadnt been grounded. She'd been caught smoking one of Bradley's Escorts behind the shed. She came in from time to time to watch them dress up, offering advice, an expert tug on a shirt to get it just right. She thought her brother's efforts to turn himself into a sea anemone were hilarious, she smiled to Michelle as he swooshed around the stuffy little bedroom. What was that word he loved? She only used it when she was teasing him. "Oh yes Bradley you look very ethereal." He finished his twirl and stood with his hands on his hips, fixing her with a fencer's frown. "Why don't you go and have a ciggie Al?" She flounced off haughtily; collapsing back on the couch to watch In Search Of, Leonard Nimoy ambling up a hillside in his Safari Suit, dust swirling in the wind of the apocalypse as he rested his elbow on a ruin. Waiting for the bus Bradley lit a cigarette, the recess habit of keeping watch for a teacher carried on into the shelter, staccato glances around him flaking his conversation. Michelle hated talking to him when he smoked, the short-wave attention, and he wasnt as funny, he was too busy being all tough and nervous. The walls writhed with a still life of Adidas trainers and Levi Californians. A huddle of boyshorrid like a knot of caterpillarsbroken up and spread out, a coating of them, clogging, air stealing. Girls in tight smile jeans and plastic sandals amongst them. Sarah Fox grabbed Bradley's arm. She was talking quickly in his ear; her eye's wide when he replied. She smiled and waved to Michelle, beautiful eyes, deep set in a smudge of knowing, the dark lines of too many nights before there were. Michelle was like a story to most of them, half heard, glanced at sports day and plays. Bradley had this thing where he decided he was going to be a violinist for about ten minutes, he spent most of his practice time working out the bass lines to Wham songs, using the instrument like a tiny fretless. Michelle sat with her uncle and aunty and watched him perform, it sounded like dying, out of tune, out of time. She loitered in the doorway of the common room while his teacher's laughed with him. Sarah pulled her close, she was keen to finally meet this cousin of his. Michelle had already heard all about her, the wallpaper in her parent's corridor that looked like poodles doing it, the panting, the scratches, her straw smelling fluid. Bradley told her everything, and she pretended not to want to know. Sarah got all sisterly with her, in the way that girl's that don't have sister's get and Michelle found herself oddly touched by the other girl's saccharine warmth. She wouldnt dance with them though; her new guy wouldnt like it. Sarah's new boyfriend broke from the mud and came over to say hello. He ran his hand all over her behind like it was a crystal ball and firmly shook Brad's. They'd played footy together a few season's go before Brad went all weird. Homosexual: it sounds like a foreign car. If Craig knew that Sarah had Brad's member in her hand down on the beach last summer he'd go ape shit. Sand sticking to it while she kneeled beside him not sure if she wanted to suck it or not. But Bradley knew, so did Michelle of course, and it was steamed fish for his ego, and it made Craig's clumsy sarcasm merely a minor irritant until he soon got bored and went back to join his mates, with Sarah in tow. As she left she shot Michelle a smile that touched a skin inside her she'd forgotten about. "Is that really her sirname?" she asked her cousin. "Yeah, yeah it is." "Is she a good kisser?" Bradley looked at her crookedly. "She's an excellent kisser." Somewhere someone was carrying a big wobbly trifle, they dropped it, and Bradley and Michelle started laughing. She kept watch for him while he had a smoke. She didnt mind this time because she wanted to be outside. She looked over the car park and the gym and the oval while he puffed away somewhere behind her in the lemon gums. Night breeze on her folded arms, sea breeze? No, they were too far away. Could she hear the sea or was

that the air-conditioner? Sarah stood beside her, imagined into place. Our Lady of the Sea: that was the name of Brad's fancy school. That's why he'd gone all weird her dad reckoned. No poofs at her school. Sarah standing there, her flesh on her mind. Fine golden hairs, not the stout black buggers Bradley had reported, maybe black but fine, and tasting like her self. She was close enough to get close enough to kiss, she was an excellent kisser, and the smudge of knowing under her bright burst pomegranate eyes.

She heard the bird ape before she saw it, and felt it before she heard it. Lifted by the guts into the air to look down at the head cracking concrete. Sarah gone, Bradley lost. Down on the ground again the air felt strange, all around her seemed now like porcelain as she tried to get her bearings in the rush of unbearable stillness. The sound of the four-wheel drive crept through gaps in the brittle bed of shadows now surrounding her. She could hear Bradley coming back through the pine bark behind her. Is that Maxwell?" Of course he knew it was, it was more a question of why. He didnt get out of the car, the lump of him there behind the wheel, his head craning around. He settled back, the seat going back slightly. People were coming outside now and more cars were arriving. "Look's like were getting a lift then," Bradley said and started heading towards the car before the distance between him and Michelle lagged him back. She was scanning the leavers, looking for Sarahs face. Maxwell smelt of Whiskey. He was laughing and carrying on with Bradley, salty humour looking in the rear vision mirror. Bradley said he'd ring her later, and thanks for the lift Maxwell. They didnt talk until they pulled up at the lights, he asked her how her night was and she said good. When they passed the cinema Michelle's eyes lingered on the poster. "We can see that if you like", Maxwell said. *** It was school holidays, which meant the holiday at the shack. A week by the sun pressed sea and the smell of rotting crabs. She was old enough to be conscious of the boys while she stood behind her dad as he payed for the petrol; she avoided further involvement with their sniggers in the aisle by concentrating on the selection of a chubba-chub. Her father always chatted to the person behind the counter, he did it everywhere, deaf to her rolling eyes and puffed cheek entreats to at least take a step back towards the car. He just stood there laughing his head off while she hung around behind him, giraffe slack in her too big sandals with her arms folded to shield the two little new potatoes under her lemon coloured boob tube from the bright shirted sharks lurking around the magazine rack. Her mother's head was cradled in the seat belt, she smiled from her doze as they blocked the sun, terry towelling straps dangling from her peeling skin. The sleepy main street gave way to the dunes and spilled ink inlet's. The shacks sat on a hard fist of sand. Chemical bleed of brown and purple in grain glistened swathes, water lapped. Michelle brushed the sand off her bum and went in. She closed her eyes as she entered, a trick her grandmother showed her to avoid being blinded by the new darkness. Maxwell and her father where sitting at the table, the rich sweet smell of Maxwell's pipe. What was it her mother said he had? Salty humour: A sailor's mouth. On the cover of the spare tyre on his new four-wheel drive was a picture of Yosemite Sam with his gun's drawn saying Back Off! She made herself a tomato sandwich. Maxwell put her on his knee and asked her what she'd been up to. "Nuthin" she said, soggy in her mouth, too much salt. Her father sat back with his arms folded on a teetering chair; that grin on his face. She suspected that if she could snap her fingers and put him on the moon this is how he'd look, he'd just wander across the Sea of Sorrow until a bus stop appeared, grinning like nothing had happened. Maxwell had had his beard trimmed and had a hair cut, he looked Edwardian. As she got up he kept his hand on the small of her back, a finger pressing on her tailbone. Fishing was afoot, sticky finger guts and bottled water, scales in the sink. There wasnt a T-shirt big

enough to make her comfortable about going out on Maxwell's boat again. Her father looked out over the water while Maxwell rubbed sunscreen on her legs. She told him she could do it herself but he reckoned she'd miss a bit. Skins made for drinkin he reckoned, squinting up at the burning sky. The shirt shivered off her shoulders when enough water had been splashed and then of course more sunscreen was needed. She looked at the back of her father's head while Maxwell worked the lather between her shoulder blades. Little curls of greying hair on the back of his neck, the top of his ears hot red as Maxwell's hand's slid up and squeezed her shoulder. Maxwell was making breakfast, a late holiday breakfast of eggs and bits of fruit. He slurped his tea and gave an appreciative "ah!" He was not quite yet the mallee stump that time and gravity would mould him into, and the hairs on his shoulders werent yet grey, but it was all coming. He was wrapped in a towel and brushing crumbs from his chest hair. He sniffed and looked outside, it was a fine blue morning, a pelican glide easy day. "Reckon I'll go round by the rocks and see what's biting" he said. It was so strange the way he talked to her sometimes, the casual earnestness adults usually only keep for between them selves. It felt like he'd snuck her into a play, she didnt alway's understand it, but it was an uneasy thrill to sit in the dark in the plush seats. To wrap up her legs as the audience coughed and hushed and the light's came up, the smell of Old Spice and cherry pipe smoke and the risk that at any second she'd be caught. He lit his pipe and made that sucky puffy sound. It reminded her of a duck for some reason, a duck sitting in the reeds. He shook the match and put it back in the box. She liked this habit of his, the patterned delicacy of it, a quaint pause in the action of the apes crashing through the forest on her hillside. Sweaty grunting brutes with hovering hands, tendons taught for silent slowness when they arrived. Matchboxes littered the table, the windowsill, the car, little Maxwell maracas. He wasnt interested in them but she shook them, stacked and toppled them. He never made her any food but was always telling her to eat. It was deliberate, the not making anything, some principle in force. He left food out for her to construct, "Your a big girl," he'd say, "besides, your not mu' missus." Out the back of the shack was a tin area that couldn't decide if it was a room or not. People must have sensed its reluctance to commit and it was a graveyard for forgotten debris, the things that fall off the edges of lives. Water wounded paper, stiff and crinkle scarred, paint tins, calcified fishing rods. The whole table rocked as she budged at the drawer, it succumbed with an angry jolt and the smell of white-bellied wood. A crystal slid forward. She held it up to the light, rubbed it on her cheek and put it in her pocket. ***

As it turned out Alison discreetly posted Michelle a cab charge so she ended up getting a taxi to the wedding, it was just as well as she was loathe to make Evelyn good on her offer. She'd been in a strange mood lately, and Evelyn quiet was almost worse than Evelyn yelling and banging things. She waved goodbye to her in the kitchen as she clip clopped out in her new shoes, she was at the table writing something in a little green book, she'd been doing that a lot lately. She arrived late enough to see one of her uncles having a ciggie by himself outside. "You look like that bird in that painting" he said by way of a compliment before giving her a kiss on the cheek. "Best get in there luv, Ali's having kittens." She walked into a mix of deodorant and fresh mints and clopped quickly to her place. Bradley gave her a wave, glorious in his threadbare resplendence. She had wondered if the bird ape was going to be there, she'd wondered that from the moment she realised what it was she'd been invited to. A quick scan of the assembly revealed negative, safe enough for now she thought, of course he could be running even later than her, he liked that, to luxuriate in the attention of a late arrival, what was it he said that

time? "Make em wait because yu great," something like that. They gathered for photos outside. Bradley had decided that his sister's day of betrothal was going to be his public smoking debut. He strutted around puffing away with one hand in the deep pocket of his satin seamed trousers, a silver zippo in the pocket of his waistcoat. "Look at him", Alison said to her cousin," Lord bloody knob head." He was talking to one of their mothers friends, she was pointing and saying something nice about his outfit, he threw his head back laughing. "Your Highness", Alison called out, "I hate to take you away from your people, but could you please do me the honour of being in this photo....now!" The bird ape was in her roomno, no, she would have been in his. A bright day outside making the curtains look black, he was looking at something on the shelf, touching it, talking about it. A recent haircut made the back of his neck look cleaner and younger than the rest of him, like a boy had smuggled into a bit of him when he wasnt looking. She looked at the small patch of soft pink skin while he waffled on about the wedding present. It was a wooden elephant. "Big fuckers" he said, "you only get one shot if they're coming at yu" She was a good woman was Stella. Old before her time alas, still good for a joke and a smoke and a poke though, deaf in her left ear. They hunched together like penguins on a melting block of ice, a crisp whisper of jostling elbows and apologies. The photographer stepped over, he was a hands-on sort of guy, prizing them apart and pushing them together like he was arranging flowers. He wanted Michelle to move back a bit, he put his hand on her stomach and gently pushed. She screamed. *** Evelyn was on the phone to her mum. Michelle knew it was her mum because she was talking differently to the way she spoke to her sister, and she never rang anyone else. As she spoke and listened she coloured in the eyes of the girl on the cover of the TV guide. Michelle put the kettle on and went back to her room, trying to be quick so she wouldnt hear anything, she didnt want to hear anything. The phone bill and the gas bill were stuck on the fridge behind a magnet that looked like a piece of cheese. Evelyn hadnt seemed that worried about the bills lately, she hadnt circled and highlighted them, nor had she left a little forest of exclamation marks next to the date the were due, which was last week. She moved about the house like a low murmuring cloud, a quiet drift from the kitchen to her room. The aerobics had stopped. Michelle rarely knew if she was home or not, it was a small street and the sound of a car could have been anyones. Sometimes she'd be watching TV and look up and Evelyn would be standing in the doorway in the dark, the TV making bright little windows on her glasses. She'd watch for a while and then go back to her room. Michelle curled up on the old brown couch and concentrated on the screen, sitcoms and ads for muffler repairs, curled up in the brown, not knowing if Evelyn was still there or not. She'd been speaking on the phone to her mother about coming home, maybe. She wasnt sure about the idea and neither was her mum. They used her room as a study now; her dad had put in shelves. And what the fuck would these two stupid old pricks study? Evelyn wondered. It was a room full of useless crap they where too mean to throw away, no thats not right, too medieval, like the earth would end if they threw away a broken sandwich maker. And she'd sold her bed, her mother reminded her. Like you only get allotted x amount of beds in your lifetime and once that runs out you are doomed to wander a sleepless netherworld. Evelyn knew exactly what this was about. They had a huge argument the day she sold her bed, the small blisters between them since breakfast reaching a boiling point of ugly twisted faces. The man who bought the bed could hear them as her dad helped him load it into the trailer behind his car. The selling of the bed as the line in the sand; "Well now you've really done it," her mum screeched, adding with unconscious irony "You've made your bed now, and you can bloody well lie in it!" Of course she could always stay with her sister, but Christ on a bike that was the last thing she wanted.

She almost felt like she'd tasted Duncan her sister had told her so much, graphic pungent details, it would be too weird. And why do you want to come home anyway? Her mother asked suspiciously, I thought things where going so well. Oh thats right Evelyn remembered: A good job, nice boys, motorbike rides, folk music festivals she winced to think about it. She folded her bottom lip over her teeth and bounced her top teeth on the rubber of it, tears where in her eyes and she stood at the cross road between sobbing and fury, both rushing into a well inside her she didnt know she had and she quickly told her mum that her housemate was waiting to use the phone and hung up. Michelle was in the lounge; Sale of the Century was about to start. She was on the old brown couch with her cigarettes on the chipped black coffee-table on the biscuit coloured carpet and she could hear Evelyn thumping the wall and then heard the back screen slam. The Sale of the century music started and Evelyn was bent over in the back yard biting her hand, snot flying out as she tried to stifle the sound of herself going insane with a sadness that if armed wouldnt have left a person standing. She could maybe get her job back at the fruit-canning factory, if Todd was still there. She missed Todd, she missed all of them, even the ones whose names she'd forgotten. She remembered smiles; they seemed to linger around forever, bobbing up between the waves. Having a smoke and a laugh with Todd and chuck a couple of the others in there as well. Give him shit about his car, if he still had it, if not give him shit about the new one. She supposed shed have to cut down on the drinking and smoking. She supposed she should really give them both up all together. She'd give it a go; heaps of other stuff to do anyway. She could go for long walks at nightshe liked that, just her and the moon out wandering together. Get back into the magic; get a heap of books. She could start learning the guitar again, and the recorder, heaps to do. She wouldnt show for a while, she could work right up to time. Yeah, I want to go home, I'll give mum a ring. *** Michelle was sick with nerves. She knew that her boss wasnt going to be happy about this arrangement at all. "I want you to pay for me to go to Perth." She couldnt believe that she'd even asked. She tried to make it sound casual, a routine request. Her boss immediately laughed, head back and hearty, and returned her smiling eyes to that of her nervously grinning employee. "You can't be serious." That was the joke now: that she wasnt joking. "I need to fly to Perth and I want you to pay." It sounded so stupid coming out of her Michelle thought. Other people, other types of people do this sort of thing all the time, she'd met them. Her boss looked at her in amazement. "You've only been here two weeks!" "This is very important to me"Michelle listened to herself, it was like it was someone else talking "I need to go to Perth and I want to work here, surely we can come to some arrangement." Truth is she wanted to work there as much as anywhere else, which wasnt much, that's not what all this was about anyway. The request itself, was, in itself a lift off a mountainA rescue call to some part long buried in a snowdrift of half hatched desires. Amazingly her boss agreed. She walked away still shaking her head, "Talk to Marlene in the Office." She knocked on the door, it was open a slit and she knocked gently so as not to open it anymore. "Yeah?" She heard Marlene say in a long bored voice from inside. The office smelt of musk and hairspray, Marlene looked up briefly and then returned to her calculator and pile of crumpled invoices, a fingernail clicked on the table near an envelope. Michelle composed herself for a moment for ginger precision and then picked it up, she tried to keep as

much of herself out of the older woman's vision as possible, to be match smoke wafted by her own hand. The envelope was shiny and hard and elegantly long, the flying kangaroo emblem in her hand squeezed sugar into her tension. An old radio alarm sat on the windowsill and from it the tinny sound of Neil Sedaka crooned thin boats through the air. "My Mum's got this record," she said. She didnt know if this was true or not, she'd heard it before, somewhere; it could have been at her mum's. She said it because she wanted to leave something in the glass she felt pushing her out, a little funny human muscle left on the shell when the rest had been ripped away, something to come back to. The older woman hadnt seemed to hear her. She stood for as long as it should have taken and then walked out, closing the door to the same slit she had approached.

She packed and repacked her bag, adding, subtracting, craving the right weight, a balance of style and utility, it was so new this attitude and action, she invented what she thought other's would think it should be. The way people pack in the movies; that's what she wanted, the casual drape and throw. She got herself in knots and started again, she wanted slung grace, sunglasses, wiping back her hair on a windswept tarmac. The first socks she touched didnt match and she threw them against the wall and shook with indignation. So cruel she thought for the natural flow of things not to let her in. She pulled open all the drawers, and there she was, unfolded and misplaced. She pulled everything out and kicked at the piles, tears in her eyes now, and a violence pressing at the ugliness of it all, this open wound of cloth tangling on her feet. Three fancy knickers eventually lay at the nerve centre of her packing. A space cleared for them on her bed around which the other clothes churned in mayhem. An uncouth gang of the rest of her clothing milled around these three hand pressed jewels, metallic threads and flowers, serene and softly glistening in the knowledge of their needed preciousness. She lit another cigarette and sat in the corner, light headed dips into the task followed by long periods of rest, of savoured stillness. She packed the way Pollock painted, one layer inspiring the next, like some furious and important gamble. Jewels and feathers, that's what she really wanted, to float with her through the lustred night in jewels and feathers. She looked to the knickers for guidance, a coat of arms for this mad spark. Sleep had come. A tight packet of it she flicked from to see the hand sweeping on her bedside clock an hour before it was to go off, which was an hour before the taxi would arrive. It was a big bright stupid clock, nail red and chipped near the bell from clattering between the drawers and the wall. It smiled at her like brain damage. A wide eyed pause gave way to a deep breath as her back sank back down into the mattress, she had woken from a dream in which the taxi had just left, a big black London Taxi, she'd come out just in time to see it's horse shine rear merge with the rosebushes with quickening puffs of blue smoke. She lay looking into the yellow walled void, same coloured tears from the hastily painted cornice. The town hall loomed through the thin curtains, a hooded figure with black face with the sun not yet on it, by noon it was a pearly moon in sandstone, and she wouldnt be here. In the dream the taxi had arrived at her old house, she lay slack and looked at her nails and then at the packed bag. She concentrated on its bulky newness in the familiar lines and flat light, waiting now for two ghosts to pass, the one she'd conjured, and the one in which she was contained. His name was William, the taxi driver; he was wearing a name badge. There were dark rings of sweat in his tan shirt first thing in the morning. Must have been a big night she thought. He had a Moustache and sunglasses and was chewing a chewie. William, Willy, she thought, God does it never stop! He took her bag from her and put it in the back of the car. The taxi smelt like coconut. "I know," he said flicking the scent tree dangling from the rear vision mirror, "it's supposed to be Vanilla." She felt alert and chatty and he seemed like a nice man, even though he breathed loudly when he chewed, like you need more air to do it properly. She didnt mind this morning though, even the little popping sounds. He had a new looking wedding ring on a slim hairy finger. "Been with her for years, did the righty oohh eight months ago For the olds more than anything." They had two kids, Benjamin and Brittany.

"And another on the way! Jeez." He gave a little graveyard on a sunny day laugh that she garnished it with her own. "Perth", he nodded when she told him, " My missus sister's ex lives in Perth, I never been but mu missus reckons it's alright. He's a prick though, that bloke." *** Drawing close she smelt of melon and mangoes. In the taxi they kissed again as the city breathed closer. Faerie glow tracing the sleek steel towers. "I've so much to tell you." Elana smiled, and she felt it like a tingling potion inside her. The high way rose and sighed them in, the night beasts all seemed to breathe out at once to let them deeper and folded around them its sequinned swelter. The humming of this place, a body of sound that slowly turned some distance from her own voice, the black bodies of whales turning in the ripples between icebergs in some far off midnight bay. The black fire of passing shadows in the blood fused neon spray. On the pavement they lolled in the blue fluorescence where the taxi dropped them, a sign for the place that bathed the air with the smell of flamed lamb, they idled from each others hips into a still held sway towards the Brass Monkey. By the chemist she touched the leather around her neck. "Oh my god! Youre wearing it." Elana turned the crystal in her fingers, Of course!" In the night zoo reptile shine they found a table and Elana went to the bar. "So how are they treating you there?" " Pretty good. They paid for my ticket." Elana nodded approvingly, "As they would, your a treasure." Michelle's face automatically began to sour. Elana sheep dogged a stop to it with a wide-eyed freeze. "Don't make me make you say it." Michelle smiled and they both laughed, a fruity fullness to their sound that drew the head's of a few people around them. A boy with blonde spikes lingered longer in his appreciation than was necessary, Michelle caught him as she flicked her hair, his eyes following the blur of her hand to return to the person he was talking to with renewed vigour. "I know," Elana said, " I reckon we must look like a right couple of spunks!" They both lit cigarettes and Elana mimicked Michelle's wonder at the unfolding hot grey cloud around them. They both laughed again, an I can't believe it! laugh. Michelle put her hands on the table and wiped at the ringed surface, like she was clearing it of history to make room for a new collection of thoughts. "Where are you staying?" Elana knew but she wanted to make it easier for her. "The Princess something something, a motel." "Fuck that. Come and stay at my friend's place." Michelle's eyes spied a puppy in the window and her brow remembered a gas bill, Elana froze her again. "Don't make me make you say it." "Thanks, that would be great." " Fuck Yeah!" Elana said as she stood up and reached for her purse, Michelle shot for her own. "I'll get these."

They did float. A private little cove of ale laced want melting her body to the weight of the wind. Winds else where as these streets were warm and still. And the flood inside her pleasantly pushed out and swept other life away. The boy trailed them until the corner, his mind changed by hers as they took the first step towards the art gallery, a soft cushion of will he must have touched and back pedalled, a smile even on his lips as his feet avoided skulk to rejoin his bemused friend back in the bar playing with his lighter. Their hands found the skirt of the statue of the shouting man in the courtyard, and they walked around him in a lazy maypole, motion was nectar, slow and steady. The tree bloomed behind him, a crushed velvet scream for others to keep away from their play around the dimpled stone and gurgling fountain. Their steps followed each other, four feet on a centipede being guided by the notion that it was guided by something elses restlessness.

They trusted its ineptitude and simply went along. They'd ended up back in Northbridge, wandering the rain ready heat. There were less people around now, twos and threes she could block out with a thumb, walking and laughing on the edge of their Rubicon. Elana's arm felt strong in hers, a sleeping cougar she nestled. The smell of her sweat was like seeing her naked. It was like seeing her naked and her not knowing that she was being watched. Singing along in the bathroom drying her hair, the muscles along her leg set as she poised on one foot, scruffing with a big white towel, not too big though, she could still see her back and shoulders, and her neck, that long golden neck; a trickle of water running from behind her ear. They stopped and looked at the buns in the window of a teashop; little sabre slashes of Chinese writing on a red card next to them. It was hard to tell if it was still open. Elana tried the door, a bell tinkled as they entered. A small old woman with a face like dried fruit showed them to a table. The place was empty but they sat at the back, surrounded by a still cool cauldron of magma like carpet and a flock of gold and black dragons migrating across the walls. They ordered green tea and the old woman gave them thumb mottled cardboard menus. As soon as the old woman had toddled out of earshot Elana said "Come to the loo for a sec." They passed the kitchen to the ladies and once inside Elana produced a pipe from her purse. They smoked the dope being sure to blow out the little cantilever window above the sink, the A.M.P building and the corner of the building that looks like a Toblerone staring impassively at their giggles through the cracks. They accordianed out and clomped in the wrong direction, and ended up standing next to two Chinese guys in the delivery yard behind the tea house. They were sitting on milk crates in their aprons and white shirts smoking. Michelle and Elana giggled and asked for directions back inside. The young men said something to each other and laughed, one of them pointed in the right direction and they made their way back to the table. The old woman pointed to the menus. "Fuck sorry, I mean sorry." Elana picked up hers grimacing apologetically, Michelle held hers on her lap and crunched her abdomen towards it, trying to hold in the paint bomb of laughter that was threatening with each second to erupt. " Michelle"she heard it again" Michelle". She looked up, first fixing in her mind the image of a dying old man in a hospital to keep her face steady, Elana looked at her cooly. "Your Menu's upside down." The Old man sprang from his bed and started doing that thing where you pretend your swapping kneecaps behind your hands. She bit her lip and thrust her chin into the notch in her collarbone and made a sound like she was having her insides removed through her nose. "You must excuse my friend," she heard Elana saying, " I told her a funny story in the bathroom and she hasnt quite gotten over it." Michelle breathed into the tightness, when she looked up again wiping tears away she saw another couple had come in. They were sitting near the window. They waved to one another, a friendly gesture of the ridiculous distance between them, and the relief that it was so. Suddenly she remembered the old woman. "Oh god sorry!" she said," Ummm, I'll just have those chicken things, thanks." Elana poured them fresh tea. "I wonder what they talk about?" Elana slid a half bothered glance over the top of her cup. "I don't know, the size of his dick," she sniffed. "Um, I don't think they've talked about that for quite awhile", Michelle ventured. " Look at the way he stoops when he eat's." " Yeah," Elana said, like the answer to one and one," That's cause of his huge fuckin dick!" Michelle laughed and returned her gaze to Elana, and caught a graze of something. Movement at the back of a tigers cage. Was she making this up? Was it a delayed reflection of her own dark flashes? An unexpected ember now her mind was straw calm with tea and chat. "I have to say it again. I can't believe your wearing that crystal." The cloud over the continent of Elana's face shifted into a pattern that was hard to fathom. "Well if you can't believe it then maybe I'm not." Where had this come form? What did it mean? She wasnt sure she had the attire for this new strange weather, but she trod on, regardless.

"I found it in this old shack", she started, and these words unnerved her in their nakedness, " When I was a kid. I mean way before I gave it to you." She hadnt expected to hear this her self, she worried as the words came that they might have ugly knees and pimply backs. " I found it in a drawer, I don't know who put it there. I didnt steal it because no one lived there anymore, but I really liked it, I don't know why. I think I thought it looked like an alien's tooth or something." Elana was listening, a calm about her that lulled her to continue. " I kept it in a matchbox, Redheads. Remember how pretty the redhead girl was? Is it still the same one now? I doubt it, anyway that's where I kept it. I reckon it would have been my uncle's, he was always leaving matchboxes lying around. He used to light them and then put them back in the box, it drove my dad insane. I used to jiggle it and look at it all the time, and I was scared to get water on it for some reason, I guess I must have thought it would dissolve or something." She gave a little snort, a little steam train noise pulling in at the last station, this was as far as this story was going to go. Elana took her hand. " Let's go and have another smoke." The Chinese boys watched them leave. Weaving back into the night. Light headed blood wrapped sweetness gliding again over the sidewalk. The cities open arms of shut offices and dwindled activity. People slouched on walls waiting for their food to be wrapped, the amusement arcade a clowns mouth breathing cold air conditioned breath against their skin as they passed. Elana wanted to go to a club. One with deep vinyl booths and a lollipop stage. She had a borrowed memory of where it was that she might have given back. It was either this way or that way, or maybe it was this way? Michelle luxuriated in this time without fences, their feet tricking each other, guided simply now by a pressing thirst for further desire. The taxis would wait. Landmarks jumped on to the hook of her recognition as they turned a corner and then slithered off again. Between the main roads they delved into the side streets and alleys. Inside an old building gutted for its new life as a car park the walls made Michelle think of a manger. A few cars slept forgotten by their owners before the chains went up. Elana had taken off her dress. It lay on the bonnet of a BMW, the clasp on her red raffia purse pin glinted with light leaking in from somewhere where it was needed. The atrophied roller door draped a black scarf of shadow across her face and left shoulder. A noise outside, scraping, and then again, but loader, unmistakable. Michelle stepped into the lane and saw it amongst the skips and sulo bins. It moved like a comic dream, this bird ape. Aware of its own incongruousness and flaunting it. It feigned surprise and self-consciousness with a vile degree of confidence, a dumb show of banging metal, like it was looking for the button to turn itself off. Eventually it dribbled to the back of her brain as it retreated into the shadows, the rasp of its back along the stone soon lost in the sound of boys yelling from a car. In the club they bought illusions and the florescent green containers stood around their booth like bowling trophies. Elana passed the pipe to one of the boys who had joined them. A friend of the boy's they met at the pub who had driven them all here. The one with the spiky hair introduced another friend of his who happened to be there as well, and their legs squeezed tighter to all fit in. They couldnt talk over the music but they tried anyway, innocuous questions they couldnt hear the answers to but nodded earnestly nevertheless. Patient frozen gazes at the dance floor punctuated by cigarettes and sips of bourbon. Illusion's continued to come back with them from the bar, a boy now sucking the spill form Elana's arm. She left with him, his arm around her waist. Michelle waved and then leaned forward to better hear the boy who had been talking to her the most. He was saying something about aircraft engines. In her purse the room key had a plastic tag, it must have broken and been fixed because it was wrapped in cello tape and the number was handwritten on a torn piece of lined paper. ***

She awoke to the dead daisy colour with the bell going off like a fire station in Lilliput. The floor was still wet from the cleaners when she got to work, the friendly blinking green eye on the expresso machine a relief as more often than not they forgot to turn it on. The cleaner smiled as she came out of the kitchen with a fresh spray and wipe. One of the apprentices was stoking the pizza oven. It was the new guy with the pimples visible beneath his sparse goatee, his uniform clean and spectacularly wrinkled. How could someone so young be so out of shape she thought looking at the doughy band of skin revealed by the apron pulling up his tunic. Her hand meandered to the small of her own back as she waited for her cup to finish filling, it was tight as a drum under the cheap satiny shirt. She'd bought three of them on sale and they'd lasted years. A stack of frozen cling wrapped t-bones sat on a pizza box to be rapidly thawed in the wood oven to be ready for service. The last guy to do this left the plastic on. She asked the guy with his head in the oven if he wanted a coffee even though she could see that he a glass of coke on the gelati counter, it was just something to ask to say something. No thanks I've got a coke. She thought he must have been a big night. "Have a big night? " "Nah, I hate coffee." She wished he hadnt said that like that. It wasnt a personal attack, but it uneasily caressed the feeling she had that some people will turn their heads while you are attacked. The sudden shiver of this made this place feel bigger and stranger than ever. Her boss appeared out of nowhere laughing into a mobile phone. She smiled good morning as she walked past into the kitchen. Michelle was expecting to see her today but not this early. Bosses first thing are like detectives, alert and hungry for error to pounce on. She walked back out the kitchen still on the phone and motioned to Michelle that she wanted a coffee and to bring it over to that table over there. As she put it down the woman was still on the phone looking at some papers but smiled thanks and then as Michelle was leaving she remembered something and beckoned for her to come back. " How are you this morning?" " Good, good." " Good. Someone was telling me you wanted to ask me about going to Perth or something, its a joke right?" " What? Oh um" " See because if its not you can" " Yeah, no, I mean there was something but" " But it's been sorted out has it?" " Yeah." " Good, well I hope you have a good day." " Thanks." Michelle walked behind the bar and started polishing the teaspoons. *** Evelyn gathered the document shed just typed, tapping it straight on the desk. You off then? PrickThe word just popped up automatically when she saw Ralph now. He was standing there holding a rag, smiling like an idiot. And she had a new light for detecting defects in him, dandruff on his shoulders, and his trousers too were short. Yup Friday. He made some good-natured noise and she imagined his teeth caving under her elbow. Sorry to see you go love. Get fucked you parasitic old man. Oh Im sure youll cope. Youre pathetic, a failure. He made some quip and creaked off. I hope you die alone, in agony. .

A couple of the girls wanted to go out drinking with her on the last day, and the thought of it, and how to get out of it, was tapping her nerves. If this had happened earlier she would have thanked the goddess for new friends. Now she just felt awful whenever one of them breezed byGail and Trish, about eight million lucky breaks and not a care between them. Theyre all the same she thought, they only want to be your friend when they know youre pissing off. Just to put a dot at the end of this thought Gail appeared, winking as she passed by, and shooting Evelyn with an invisible party gun. Frriday! She said in a lusty growl. Evelyn smiled and nodded right back at her. Gail I dont want to go out, Im having a pig baby. I cant drink anymore. I think things are going to be complicated enough without Foetal Alcohol Syndrome thrown in; Im having a pig baby. She craved mussels, the way her mum used to do them. Steamed open with a splash of wine and a handful of parsley. She could sit at the table looking out at the rain, dipping bread into the broth. She could wear her big old jumper and let sleep take her on the couch. She could see Todds big friendly grin, feel his welcoming hug. I told yuz yud come back. So true so true but the other thing? Mia Farrow with her short hair looking in the cot in Rosemarys Baby. Of all the things she wished she hadnt seen. And she remembered seeing it as a girl. The feeling in her guts when the music slid down and Mias eyes opened; and the wishthe wish to see what she saw. Perhaps it wouldnt live long, if at all, perhaps. Away from prying eyes, out in the woods, like shed always wanted. Walking with the goddess, all would be taken care of, thats what the. A piglet in a bonnet in a pram, but something else in her mind as well, something rounded and whimpering in the dark, something. All would be taken care of.

She was folding her things when she smelt something burning, the rice she guessed. She ran down the corridor but Michelle was already on it. Itll be alright, Evelyn said, just dont scrape the bottom. They hadnt eaten together for a long time, long enough for it to be difficult for Michelle to suggest and still sound casual. A last supper, she had joked, and Evelyn had smiled with a sadness flashing in her eyes that had seized her with tenderness for a second. Still she was leaving, and Michelle was glad to know less about her now more than ever. Evelyn reappeared with a crushed velvet dress limp on a knitted hanger. Do you want this? Of course she didnt, but there was something so slapped about inside Evelyn lately. It could hang, hidden and gathering dust on the fringes of her meagre wardrobe, it could be a never visited monument. It could probably just disappear of its own accord. Yeah thanks. Evelyn put on her harp music CD and talked about going home. She had some friend whose uncle had a house in the mountains or something. The details were scatty but Michelle didnt really care and just nodded alongall that stuff about white witches and earth magic was just tedious. Have you ever seen Rosemarys Baby? Uh yeah years ago. What did you think? I thought it was cool, that bit at the end when Mia Farrow Yeah its good isnt it. Evelyn agreed, deciding to help herself from the cask on the table after alland fuck it: Shell can I have one of your smokes? Yeah help yourself. They like you when youre leaving Evelyn smiled to herself, Life lesson number one hey? Whats that? Michelle asked looking blissful after a couple of glasses, and thinking she might even be interested. Evelyn prayed to the goddess, offering all she saw and felt, she asked for the succour of the universe, for guidance and love. She considered mercy the most beautiful word in the world and sort to undo her terrible psychic investments. She prayed for poor old Ralph, and for Papa. For Terry and her Mother and Michelle. All would be taken care of.

It doesnt matter. Oh come on! Michelle goaded, youve got me all curious. No seriously cmon Ill help you with these dishes. ***