Merridy met Oliver during the summer of parties that revolved around Sam and Pat's.

A change of locale and personell sprinkled around the nuclear group of drunk idiot's cavorting on the big back lawn and patio of the Prospect house. Like Oliver she had the capacity to leave before thing's got messy. They where not part of the Police visit's and panic attack's and tear's that the four or five core member's where privy to, James being one of them. James had been caught embezzling money from his job, not red handed , but close enough to take his bosses advice to fuck off quick smart after signing a resignation written in angry haste on the back of an invoice his boss grabbed from the counter. As he'd technically resigned he also got a pay out, something he was'nt expecting and immediately started feeding into the party pool. Day's and night's began to blur as the boy's glistened in beergarden's and backyard drinkathon's, unencumbered by early start's and responsibilities to indulge in loud music, unlikely sexual odyesses and general social outrage. James had known Oliver from these times, a network of sister's and girlfriend's bringing him into the fold, and was in awe of the ferocious intelligence he displayed. A formidable arsenal of historical fact and oil tanker fuelled flight's of fancy melded and played with a jazzy virtuosity. He sometimes felt like a barrel bobbing on the edge of Oliver's Niagra when the two engaged in free form mind bending routine's, a sweat on the brow to keep the woven ball in the air. Oliver was also possessed on a physical energy that went in four directions at once, a one man beach volleyball team driven to distracted fury if not fed properly. They went camping, something the other's displayed a respect for vocally but where reluctant to commit to as the nerve shredding itinery of happy hour's and house warming's had become quite comfortable. They packed sleeping bag's and food and headed up to the Flinder's Ranges for a week end of dope tinged commune with the great outdoor's. There was alot of Oliver born of another time and place, a courtly European sense of manly endeavour, he was ,at the end of the day, a gentlemen.You could see it in the way he smoked a cigarette when drunk enough to forget that he did'nt smoke. He smoked with the slowburn indulgence and finesse that reminded you what cigarettes where designed for, a respectably decadent pleasure. While those around him smoked like it was breathing Oliver sat in a gilt chair in a garden in Verscaise, a plumed hat on the table and a hunting hound obediently at his side. He was also a man deeply unsure of himself, a private education seaped in trophies and tradition at odd's with his own freer sensibilities and the resulting queer mix at odd's with his surrounding's. He once sat with James in a bar sipping whiskey and breathing through gritted teeth, the swirl of himself against the easy going grain prickling his conversation with exasperated questions, and it was this unguided nerveous energy, this unwalled alarm that joined them. Different charm's thread on the same bracelet. Klee considered James on the drive from the airport, his head cocked with a spray of silk white hair fluttering around his unblinked study. Merridy reached over and handed him an apricot stick which he took without looking and began to eat with his gaze still affixed to the hulking stranger next to him. Back at the house he remained disembodied to the action's of alighting and moving him inside, lifted up in Merridy's arm to look over her back at the hulking stranger following them. James recognised the sofa and some of the book's but not the book case, a couple of the painting's he knew and a couple he had'nt seen before. Merridy took the boy into his room to change his nappy while Oliver helped James take his backpack into the guest room. Here object's he knew where tangled with the cumulus of an unknown quantity, a stroller, a babies bouncy chair, a bright green foot powered buggy or at least the box it came in, dominated a corner of the room while on the outskirt's sat Merridy's writing desk and computer and Oliver's carefully stood guitar's. James flopped his day pack onto the single bed and stood with his hand's on his hips and did the heaved sigh fullstop that follows movement. He stood with Oliver in the sapphire curtained light and smiled and was about to say something along the lines of thankyou when Klee waddled in and grabbed his dad's leg. Merridy called from the kitchen and the three

issued out. Oliver had originally come to Pt. Lincoln to help out Alistair, a school friend who was now a marine scientist, with a fish feeding program. It turned into a job and Merridy, Klee heavy inside her, joined him there. James had cynically refered to Lincoln as Olivertown in the early day's of their absence, partly to tease Oliver's enthusiasm for the place, but mostly because Merridy had left to be with him. This hurt drove deeper private barbs to the effect that Oliver was a freak who could only hack it in some obscure backwater and that he'd taken his best friend prisoner with his sperm. Her letter's and Oliver's sometimes offputtingly rigid personal vision re enforced these feelings. Basically James had resented Oliver for dragging Merridy into his life at what he saw was the detriment of her own. Her spirit grounded to be the manager of the Oliver hatchery, an unwitting accessory to his desperate need to prove himself to a family of weak men and cold women that found him lacking and bayed for an offspring and the whole white picket fence deal. It was this streak of fifties sensibility that Oliver seemed to be lauding that most bothered James, how much of it he invented to patch up his own feeling's of jealousy he did not know. The house was a mix of Merridy's previous houses, with an added spaciousness and calm air, it was like a theatre set of one of her houses before the audiance where admitted entry. James had'nt seen any of Oliver's previous dwelling's and could'nt really evoke anything one way or the other, he was alway's at Merridy's place, even when she shared with other lover's, even when she shared with Oliver around the corner from him in Mayland's, it was still her place. Merridy swathed Klee in soft wool and put him in the stroller for the walk to the service station to get some muffin's and a paper. James walked beside them, down the hill toward's the main road, the Ampol on the corner opposite fuel tank's, morning truck's nibbled by car's. The virile male manager flirted good naturedly with her, a safe wink to James to show no harm done. "One bloke not enough for yu' anymore?" he teased opening the glass, warm sultana smells marbling the faint petrol tang. James, flicking through a magazine, smiled while Merridy shot back, she saw this guy pretty well every day and enjoyed their on going hue and cry, the bawdiness of which had clicked up as time went by. Merridy supected he did this with all the female customer's, it was his touch, a signiture of life in the sterile surrounds. She'd see him out sometimes, the ruggedly handsome middle aged face buffed smooth, the pressed shirt and spicy cologne, and his wife beside him, the manicured friendly victim of his charms, a ghost of girlish sex in her tight nylon, and he' be at the bar with their friend's, winking and clinking ice in his scotch, a hearty laugh before turning to the bar, hand tapping to Daddy Cool, leaning close to give the girl his order, checking her name badge, complimenting some physical feature or her name,relishing her blush, guiding her through her embarassment, checking the order, " So that's three straight and three with Ice o.k love" She's got it, a wink and a smile. They sat on the porch and divided the paper and drank coffee.This is how James and Merridy spent most of their time together, sitting on couches on porches with a paper sprawled between them.They'd been doing this for a decade, the same thing, the same thing outside numerous houses, and they revelled in the sameness of it. Klee patrolled the garden, a nappy wearing bushman following everchanging trails, it seemed that a secret order was known to children, and he did his duty, replacing rocks and sticks and handfulls of dirt and grass where they where really supposed to be. He'd stop mid transport and crash off into the ferns, his attention alerted to a more urgent part of the plan. Oliver came home for lunch, his boots left in the work Land Rover and hopping over the wet gravel in his socks to eat with his lover and his friend. Avocado was smeared onto fresh bagettes, seasalt was sprinkled from the finger's onto roma tomatoes, spanish onion and goat's cheese, peppercorns where crushed in a pestle. It was oliver who put James onto having lime pickle with poached egg and James was loathe to have them any other way ever since, It was also Oliver who introduced James to Hannan chicken, a dish he now regulary craved. It was also Oliver who came around his house with a bag of freshly boiled swimmer crab's, covered his coffeetable in newspaper and cracked and sucked into the sweet

fishy stink. His prized possession was an old iron camp oven, a miracle pot for stews, gravy from the beast simmered within. He undertood the buttery beauty of gelatinous melt, the rich nuance of blood and herbs breaking down together. Merridy was a vegatarian, she appreciated his appreciation but practicalitly dictated that his fangsome fantasies resided largely in recollection while they satisfied themselves with the generous flavours looted from the vegatable kingdom. James had it in his mind to work on a Tuna boat. " First I do the desert, then I do the sea" He said, his hand's further mimicking his old landlord. The extremity of it appealed to him, the elemental purity, earth and sea, a talisman compulsion to compleat the cycle. He also wanted to make a shit load of money quickly. The money from the Roadhouse was running out, and poverty haunted him, no money ,no booze, that's what it amounted to. He talked to men in pub's and got the names of companies jotted down. The romance he let linger soured when he saw the men come in after the catch. The foreshore bars crowded with flushed firey faces, the dense drunkeness of men set free after months of confinement, money to burn and nerves burning to be exscillerated or becalmed, men slept next to eachother in rolling darkness flushed with a disorienting steady stillness and beating the fuck out of eachother as they reached for demon's, compressed and brooding in the deep, and now with leg's to run, and flying shrill up the motled wallpaper and over the Deep Purple to fill the roof and spill into the night. When the pubs closed you could hear the ones that did'nt make it back to their boat's. The sound of them echoing off the bay as they stumbled around the foreshore, angry, lonely men screaming uncornered agonies at the sea. Klee was trying to tell James something, he pointed beyond the dashboard and expoused in a mix of gurgles and muted slurs, all the while looking at him with calm patient eyes. To James it sounded like a dream language from another planet. Merridy got in and Klee looked at her and began again. "He want's to show you the fire engine", she said adjusting the straps on his seat, "What fire engine?" James asked, "I'm looking at your fence, that's where he's pointing!" Mother and child looked at each other, her smile mirroring his impish grin that dissolved into a laugh as he bit the back of his hand. " He's a silly man is'nt he chicken?" Merridy said, Klee hiss laughed harder. " Did you know that bookkeeper is the only word in the english langauge to have three double letter's in a row", James said looking for his cigarettes in the glove box. " I did! where did I hear that?" Merridy wondered out loud. " The Curiosity show?" James suggested." Yes!! that's it! That's where I heard it." Merridy and James where both Northern Suburb's raised television kid's, their conversation was laced with references to child hood viewing. When they got to the beach Klee toddled ahead while Merridy handed James the beach towels and hooked her arm through the nappy bag. They sat on a rock and Merridy fidgeted Klee's little beach suit on, tricking his arm's into position and kissing him when the deed was done. He ran down to the water's edge and immediately began re arranging the shells. She took off her straw hat and let the thin cotton dress fall to the rock, a turkoise bathing suit already in place. James handed her the sunscreen and she kneeled down to coat her pale skin. The last time James had seen her in Adelaide they went to Semaphore with Veronica. The boy now splashing with delight stretching the yellow fabric across her body as she walked toward's the water. Veronica and James stayed on the sand, huddled together against the breeze to light their cigarettes. This was his second vision of her, the summergirl on the porch, and now a pregnant woman in the sea. The breeze flicking ash in his eyes caressing her opened arm's and her belly against the blue as she walked deeper into the foamy tide. Merridy began to say thing's and then forgot the rest, or lost interest. The stones of a story layed but the mortar evaporating mid sentance. She said her mind just did'nt work anymore, not in the adult world anyway. She now found talking to adult's an exercise riddled with uncomfortable effort's. Her main companion had been her son, his bubbled lexicon the main spring of her human verbal contact. Day's alone with him in the house and the Bessa Brick flat before that,sometimes

another mother visiting from down the street during the hour's of stretched daylight they inhabited, a strange and ghosty world of hovering exhaustion around the mouth and anus of the baby. Sally sat at her table with her own baby on her lap. Merridy was glad for the company but found the small talk a whiring siren in the distance, the word's heard and exchanged from a place outside of her, word's that belonged to someone else. They sipped tea and spoke of the sweet and sour world that stained their clothes, soft faded casual's hanging about their fatigue and engrained with spit and sick. Sally unfolded an enormous breast and poured it toward's her baby, the ariole a deep angry red and sending a shockwave of purply veins under the surface of the white skin. Merridy looked away, not out of anything except following her eye's. A few dishes draining on the sink and something on the corner of the tea towel, Nachos she thought, when she was taking it out of the oven. The bamboo handle on the tea pot was going to break soon, the collar was loose and sharp shard's where straining to be free of the ceramic. James had bought her this in Port Miranda. He found it in a cluttered shop owned by an old woman with her front teeth missing. Erin scoured the shelves of odd crockery and found a set of white cup's with silver rim's, both where happy with their discoveries.The smell of seaweed and crabshell heavy in the air as they walked along the shit streaked pier. An old man fishing with a boy, a bucket of bloody fish between them. He put his arm around her waist and kissed her on the rotting wood. They walked back to the car holding hand's, the old man and the boy waving them off, a warm brew of seafart kelp in tangled bundles along the shore. James had been sober for a month. One night after work he watched the cooper's he'd just placed down slide off the curved trendy bar and break near his feet, the sound and sight of it shattering bringing into focus a wish nagging for resolve, and this was it, this was the sign he'd been waiting for. He booked into a detox centre and stayed a week, emerging stunned but calm. They went camping and walking alot, James finding himself in a sort of half life with white tension shimmering at it's edges. They stripped and swam in remote places, kangaroo's nibbled around their tent, a happiness hacked into the beserk chemical's in his head. Erin drove her old black volkswagon along bumpy tracks, barefeet on the pedal's and an arm draped out the side. She came to pick him up from work one day and he was in the bar with the other chef, a pint in his hand. She joined them, laughing and carrying on, but James could not miss her wiping a tear away from the corner of her eye. Thing's got back to normal and the camping day's where squashed away in some backroom, obscure and undiscussed, but James often used to go in and look at her, barefeet on the pedal's and an arm draped outside, smiling in the warm churned dust. Merridy pulled into the drive and noticed the screen door was ajar. Oliver was in Adelaide and she hated the idea of missing out on a visitor. As she approached the house she heard the phone ring and scrambled to get the key in the door, balancing Klee on her leg and holding the rucksack in her teeth, it was Simone asking if she was going to Alistair's that night. She said yes and that she had a friend staying and he may come aswell, if he ever leaves the pub, yes Oliver was still away, Dunno, Tuesday, mabye Wednsday, no something to do with work, going for his deep sea liscence, I know , I know, say you did'nt call by here did you?, no...no it's alright it's just that someone's been here and I was wondering who it was, o.k, o.k yup, yup, o.k, yeah that sound's good, excellent! I'll see you tonight then thank's for ringing Simone, seeya. She picked up her child and blew a rasberry on his belly and noticed he had a piece of paper in his hand, she took it expecting to see some ephemria from the phone table and was jolted to recognise her brother's handwriting. It must have been slipped under the door. He'd signed the cryptic message Satan. Merridy had'nt seen him for what? Not since their sister Moira's wedding. He appeared unexpectedly, sitting at the back of the church in an old army gratecoat and long beard. Both clan's craning around throughout the ceremony to make sure he was real. The only boy in the family he left home after a series of furies with his father, after whom he was named, and was only seen sporatically thereafter. He appeared like this, from nowhere, and sending a spasm through the assembled clusters he shadowed, like blood on the fringe in public places. The sister's met him in Phalanx, a committee of safety to absorb any runoff from their enquiries into his well being. Their mother was not afraid of his exotica and lead him into the car park, a mother

talking to her son, an ancient and absolute language immovable by space and circumstance. He shook his brother in Law's hand and joked around with the couple, confetti in his beard, he picked it out and sprinkled it on his sister's silkflowered breast. His eyes where young and blue grey in the shiny grime of park's and bus shelter's, soup kitchen's, river bed's. He slept in building's with the life crept out of them through broken wall's and window's, sleeping soundly in the uneasy dreams that hover black and heavy in the disused part's of a town. The dog clawed and yapped at the back door. The old man rose from his chair and shuffled through the kitchen to let it in, spider's of cooch grass dry and spindly on the balding lawn, the tin sheet's of the fence turning away from the wood. The yapper cat's cradled his slipper's and shot inside, the sound of it's water bowl being nosed along the laundry floor. The old man closed the door and returned to his chair. He'd met Merridy's mother at a country dance, bouncing in on the back of a ute careful not to spill the whiskey on his good suit. "They'll be girl's there ", his mate leered, " Irish girl's". This was music to his ear's. He checked his reflection in the little mirror they passed around, and smoothed his ruffled hair and checked his teeth for any remnant's of the stringy lamb they ate at camp. Red kicked open the tray and the men sprang off it, whooping as they fell toward's the flattened grass, together again on terra firma they passed the bottle round for a big swig and headed towards the clapping and stamping inside the hall, an accordian woven into the din. He found her with her finger's tweezered into her shoe to remove a stone. He had a strong back and thought with his hand's, strain and sweat where his workaday companion's and work was his life. It was something he could see and measure, the weight of a sack ,the depth of a ditch, and it was the currency that him tethered to the world. As his family grew around him he celebrated more his ability to keep bread on the table. He lost himself in the labour, willingly gave himself to the transfer of time and gravity. This was his real life, a sun baked field, the thud of a hammer, fencing wire stardropped to the horizen, this was the world he lived in. At night he returned to the chaos of children, a scrambled mass of bodies in a hot room and more outside, every space teeming with noise and movement. He ate his dinner and willed sleep to come so that he could sooner return to the world he knew, the ordered rythum of men working in silence. He sat here now, the fan tick lulling him to sleep, in the care of the woman who divorced him long ago. She managed his money and washed his clothes and fed him and drove him to appointment's at the hospital. He had no living relatives besides the ones he'd helped create and they came and went from his recollection in a cloud drift. A photograph of the house he was born in was framed on the living room wall, the mother of his children had taken it when they went back together when such thing's where still possible, and she gave it to him and he treasured it, showing it to his children's lover's when they visited and proclaiming proudly that this is where he was born, and as the girl's journey's became enfolded in that of other's and the visit's grew less frequent he lived more and more in some place between the cooch grass and those green rain soaked hills. Merridy folded the note and put it in the drawer in the phone table. How did he know where she lived? It had suggested that he was just passing through and might try again next time, next time? She was scared, and she was aware that she was scared and it made her feel even worse, she could feel her heart and stomach trying to turn into one organ just as the feeling's of fear and guilt where. Where the fuck is James! What's the use in him being here if he's never here, but then again it was probably for the best, the last thing she wanted was those two meeting without warning. She wished Oliver was home, she wished the phone would ring and it would be him saying he was on his way home, that he was on a mobile and the plane was touching down now. The phone did ring and she jumped, she picked up the reciever and quickly said hello, nerves buzzed to punch into the mystery. It was Sally, she wanted to know if Merridy had seen how cheap capsicums where at the moment, she'd bought a kilo and did'nt even really like them, her husband did'nt mind them though, put's them on the barbi sometimes, when he can remember to fill the gas bottle that is, men, what's that saying?, can't live without them without living in them, something like that anyway, ooohh while I remember trackies are only ten buck's at the K mart, did'nt you say Klee needed some?, ha what don't they need. Merridy stood in the hallway looking

at the key's in the door, her child boggling up at her from the polished pine. Simone lived in a shack in bushland by the sea. A jetty jutting from the bottom of the garden into the quiet water's in which big fish plopped at night, she sat on the weathered wood and fosilised rusty metal eating dolmades, ray's gliding over the sandy bottom beneath her feet. She let rice drop into the water for the splashy pucker of smaller mouths and sea birds came to rest in her nook of the world as the sky pink pearled the water. James met her with Merridy at Alistair's place, a lounge room crawling with babies and domestic conversation. Besides himself, Simone was the only person in the room who had'nt procreated. He went out for a cigarette on the balcony and she joined him, barren and a fellow slave to Peter Stuyvesant. Their talk became intimate and inner looking immediately, reams of information where exchanged and a delight in the connections, both had mother's with the same name, and they where both born on the same day of the same year. It demanded a more hedonistic form of celebration than the cosy do they where at and within half an hour of meeting where in her car to go back to her amazing beach house, stopping first of course at the bottle shop. They did'nt know they where going to have sex until they did, and the break of day found them giggling and naked in the garden.It had been awhile since James had had an allnighter and the racy buzz of it was the jewel he lived for. Beer soaked with his penis in her mouth as the day began like a seventies album cover of moon and a single star in an airbrushed alien skyscape. Simone taught Indonesian at the local primary school. The term was nearing it's end and she had her class building a paper mache volcano. The project required minimal supervision, which was just as well as Simone rose with dark ringed eyes over bloodless cheek's to get ready for work leaving James snoring and dribbling in her bed, the previous night's dawn flirting activity throbbing in her head as she started the car. James awoke as his body saw fit and grabbed a beer from the fridge. He'd arrived and just not bothered leaving, and why would he? He spent the day drinking and listening to music, deep into it, lying on the floor staring at the painted tin roof, the soundtrack to the last temptation of christ over and over again, spinning on the floor to the wierd goat sex energies. When she got home from work he would undress her with his teeth and sink into her skin, savouring her lubrication on his lip's. The dinner he had prepared would be eaten on the jetty, the setting sun yawning orange and amythist into the bay. Then it was time to have some fun! Ice was broken into glass and vodka poured on top, and later, in her bedroom, the silver black water glittered about her nakedness as she lit the candles. sleep came over their sweat in a jasmine breeze. Oliver had said Simone was like Dracula's shadow, she moved weightlessly and silently, gliding up to you and before you knew it her blonde hair nearly in your eye. Her voice was a good red wine on a still grey day, a glint and shimmer of pleasure underscored by a deep calm. A phone sex voice for those that find authority appealing and infact James would delight in getting her to say filthy things, the perverse thrill of hearing I want to taste your cum in her cool clipped tones. It was this very quality that spooked some other women, an unconcious hand pulling partner's closer when she entered a room. She breathed they believed, the faint scent of a fallen woman who had'nt actually fell. A bad Bronte who lived in the wild's to whom their centrally heated men where suseptable. James idled behind her in the supermarket, giggling and pointing and reeking of booze, at the checkout was the mother of one of her student's. Simone chatted with good natured ease, preferring to wait until the woman left before putting the pack of condom's out with the pasta and broccolli. James came up behind her and slid his hand between her leg's and kissed the back of her neck. The other woman viewed this with eye's that expanded inside like the tardis. Simone's face did'nt change, she colleced his hand out of her crutch and held it and continued talking as though nothing had happened.The day she lost her cool, James suspected, would be the day the sky turned into fire. The loading wharf loomed over it's corner of the bay like a giant sun paled mantis. Amanda in it's

arms as she brought drinks to the table on her balcony, a towel around her waist . Douglas noodled on his guitar along with the c.d, speakers perched on the open window. A seabreeze cooed on the salt tight skin and stirred the contents of the ashtrays. Eley was inside looking for another guitar, his request for directions a drone Amanda navigated pulling tobacco from her tongue. James was talking to Mia, Amanda's daughter, she was laughing with the self conciousness of a fourteen year old girl, twisting her head so that any ugly animal delight was hidden in her thick tumble of burnished curls. Douglas got up and changed the c.d and rolled a joint.Terry was reading an artical in the local paper about an up coming blues festival. James had arrived the night before with Simone and been directed down to the rocks . He found Douglas and Eley splashing around in the water, naked and slippery like seals. They bid he join them so he stripped off and waded in, the stone smooth bottom giving way to inky weightlessnes in couple of steps, the loading dock and power station flickering on the rim between sea and sky. We should go to this, Terry said looking up from the paper at Douglas,a tally-ho on his lip as he broke up the dope with his finger's he had'nt seemed to have heard him. Terry looked around to snag anyone else's interest. Amanda nodded when his radar passed her way and then he looked back at the paper. Yeah, Douglas said, spliff now rolled, It'll be wild.Eley came out with a guitar, what have you got this thing tuned in? he said. Douglas scrunched his face in thought and said he could'nt remember, and why have you changed the c.d? I wanted to play you that bit I was telling you about? Well put it back on Douglas said. Imogen waved as she crossed the road from her friend's mother's car, a bag of beach stuff dragging on the lawn as she neared the house. Amanda and the other mother in the car spoke to eachother in a stretched neck debrief over the greetings between balcony dwellers and child, Mia making urgent enquiries about the whereabouts of her favorite hat. Their post midnight encounter in the ocean was the first time Douglas and James had seen eachother since university. Eleven year's now. Drama school drop out's both, James after a year, Douglas after two. Douglas had shaved his head, lived in Melbourne and then in Ireland where he had a child, bringing the mother and offspring back to Lincoln as a fractured family unit. He'd met Petra in Limerick, and now she was here, dark glowing eyes and friendly lilt staying at his parent's house until she got on her feet. He was playing in a band with Eley and another guy doing the pub's on the weekend, Johny Cash and Voilent Femme's covers and the odd original thrown in. James remembered Douglas's arkward but intense physical energy from acrobatic's classes back then, a stiff bundled ball thrown into maneuver's with child like abandon, on one occassion he went to do a standing sumersault and actually bounced on his head, James and his classmates marveled at the fact he had'nt broken his neck. In winter when he played guitar in a body warmed pub steam literally rose from his bald head, chord's flayed as he crashed around the confined space like a smoking candle. His propensity for breaking string's was the stuff of legend. Gig's had been known to finish simply because he'd exhausted his supply of spares. His take on things was one of the wonder's of the natural world, a quickfire cut and paste mind, pun's and wittisism's bubbling out of a transplanting and transfering brew of idea's, a natural actor, he constantly entertained. A peace maker through mirth and a sun heralding weather man to anyone in the grip of a sad mystery. Stubbled and smelling of cheap wine and cigarettes and possessed of a kind gentleness and brilliance. Simone was a friend of Douglas's independently of James association with him. Friend's from pre school, James had even forgotten that Douglas came from Pt.Lincoln until he saw him there again. The three enjoyed the cross road's happen chance of it all, Simone had only been back in her adopted home for a few months after teaching stint's in Indonesia and the Northern Territory, years barefoot in the tropic's, happy brown faces and home made instrument's. Douglas in O'Shakespeare's, making tea and sandwitches for the acid casualties on a cold Dublin evening, playing guitar for busfare and hanging out with the guy from My Bloody Valentine. James made

curries and Douglas made sure hot black coffee was ready to revisit the chilli bite. Perhap's it is no accident that the word adopted was just used. Both Douglas and Simone where .Babies loved and grown to wandering, feathers floating on an inner wind to far flung spaces. Settling and picked up again by some inner current, looking for a way to an earth they saw other's in. Repelled and attracted to the known while the unknown compelled and attracted to them. The unnatural mother's mentioned infused the mystery into their understanding, an infinite prism casting a secret language over all they saw and felt. Simone had recently met the woman who had given birth to her, the woman who shared her name with James' Mother. She had tracked her down and met her in North Adelaide in a little flat with an Abyssinian cat called Tu tu and the two got on famously.The similarities all the more precious for the distance between them, the two women split and shuttled apart and growing the same. Douglas grew up with the Town Chemist and his wife, a gentle man with well cut grey hair and a woman fiercely friendly, she carried herself as if always in the foyer of the Opera, lush dark dresses and voilet contact's, a hand on your arm to keep you close to her council outside the post office or in the butcher's. James had started work at the Hotel and came over to Amanda's on split's, a beer and a laugh in his cheque pant's and t-shirt. Amanda's balcony was a perpetual social gathering, an interbleeding session with the same swarm on a circular shift. After Terry left Amanda was determined to have the self indulgent summer she'd alway's wanted and made up for lost time by cramming practically every waking moment into her self appointed role as the hostess who never sleep's. She was in wonder at her own endurance, and her ability to be a teenager while looking after two aswell. She wore the same size as her eldest daughter, and got closer to her youth by sometimes wearing her clothes. The heavy old furniture was pushed aside to make way for the shanty town of blanket's and bean bags for the visitor's that did'nt leave.She was happy the watch the room break up, to feel the sea breeze in the cold dusty corner's through the alway's open door's and window's.To feel the ghost's of desparation in the room dissappear in laughter and music.Cloud's of dope to blow that old air out once and for all. The house ran on different time zones simutaneosly, the girl's, and the visitor's, and she bounced between the two with in a marathon daze. A thin gauze between her thought's and actions and a milimetre out of her skin. She fed them fish and platter's of split melon and mango's. Douglas had been living there about half a year. He'd comandeered Mia's old room and set up a little studio where he was working on a demo. The money from the pub gig's payed for beer and petrol and left his time free to tinker with his own song's. Amanda worked in a homeware shop in town, she had two tides, working week diligence,and weekend debaucher. Terry still came around alot, a fit young looking local feeling outside her new life and determined not to be compleatly excluded from her transformed vista. He lived in a flat with a mate and came by the house his craypot's had paid for to remind her with his presence that his cray pot's had paid for the house. He smoked dope and drank beer and looked at the young men strewn about his out door furniture with his ex wife and his children strewn about them, and underwent a crash course in d.i.y buddhism, a t.h.c zen honed over repeated session's from a couldren of confused paint blistering rage. When James was drunk he forgot the girl's were girl's and just talked to them like people, only their sometimes blank or revolted reaction's reminded him of who they were, and sometimes,where he was. Amanda found all this good, this exposure to mangled reason and outrageous behaviour, a rich bowl for her girls to drink from, a bullet train to the heart of experience rather than the bullock train she skulked behind in her own isolated upbringing. A skinny girl in the stringy bark day dreaming about jazz bar's and Arab's in the bug buzzed heat. She had married Terry when she got back from India, a year of herself in different smell's, and considered this time to be her real life, a Utopic sphere somewhere in the middle of her memory, she had somehow wandered from there to here and was looking for those mountain's again in the red rimmed eyes of her wild guest's.Douglas's friends from his travel's, musician's mostly, phone number's scrawled in the back of book's in backpack's. They smoked and drank and platted the girl's hair and played with the dog. Amanda felt alive in the company of these rollerskating

jester's, she sat in the spray of their cascade, but was aware that she was as close to as she could get to their experience without being part of it, the year's between casting her back to the train watching with wonder at the new land racing by. Petra was often there aswell. She dressed the child in fairy wing's and magic shoes, a girl with her eyes and Douglas' nose. Douglas had met her in the swirling circles of chalk she had around her on the pavement in the park, a blue stick in her hand filling in the spaces. The chemical's of pregnancy assailed her own already unbalanced matrix and she was cast into a black and airless abyss with violence run ragged through it. Douglas stuck by her,sex a fuzzy once upon a, and his name once in her blood on the wall when he came home from a gig to the room they shared, luckily he'd made enough money to be able to get a cab to the hospital. There had been other visit's since, observation's and day's in bed when she could feel the air pressure changing, when the wall's started to sound like they where playing the xylophone. She looked like a girl herself, her glossy black hair and dotty smock's and perfect skin catching the sun on the balcony, her mind in a medicated cruise over the chasm's in the air. Mia and Imogen took possession of the girl as soon as she arrived, a doll to drag down into the garden with kisses and motherly care. Petra drank but avoided any other stimulant's, and sat with Amanda, curling into her rib's and letting her head lay on her lap for Amanda to stroke her head. She often acompanied the older woman on her day's off around town, shopping and paying bill's and having coffee on the foreshore. If you saw Amanda in her car it was the opposite of unusal to see Petra sitting next to her. Douglas was her connection to the energy she slayed herself to be lashed to, and Petra was connected to Douglas and so she extended her motherly range to include the young woman who's welfare was a key in the whole thing running smoothly. She fed and watered her with love and compliment's, she'd started painting again and her sea scapes where for sale in Amanda's shop. Petra Blue they called the series. It was Amanda's idea. James first fucked her the night they went to see Douglas' band play. Drunk and stoned by the sea wall he bent her over and pulled her pant's aside, her brown linen dress gathered up around her waist. Afterward's they went back to watch the set finish. James now slept between Simone's, Amanda's, and Oliver and Merridy's places. His work clothes in his day pack for where ever he landed. Simone and Amanda's where a shuttle cock in the same game and Oliver and Merridy's a retreat when the merriment began to spill too darkly into his exhausted sober hour's. At work on an early shift he burst into tear's in the kitchen by himself, a release his mind and body vomited in reaction to the instinct feeding sleep eating chemical circus he was living in that left tumble weed's at his centre,the deep clawing irrational sadness of fatigue . An apprentice came in and asked what's up and he pretended he'd been cutting an onion. He'd started turning up for shift's drunk aswell, not spastic, but enough to feel the men in the front bar looking at him as he rounded the corner to get to the kitchen, enough to be aware of the effort he was making to walk normally. The manager of the Hotel almost ran into him coming through the door. James tried not to breathe and smiled from behind his sun glasses. The manager said g' day and then just stood looking at him, staring, smiling. James could feel the sweat threatening to pour down his face, why the fuck did'nt he say something? what was this all about? James said " Well, better get on with it" but the manager did'nt move, and then he did and James could feel him behind, the boyish face and Sportscraft shirt still stood where he left him as he pushed into the Restaraunt. The hotel had a restaraunt and a bistro and the team shifted between the two. The food was better in the restaraunt but the bistro was an easier shift. The restaraunt was fiddly chaos, missing ingrediant's, the cool room restacked differently every time you entered it. You where alway's running behind no matter how much prep you did, service and prep time melding into the same stress. Inventing a salad from left over's while waiting for a cray fish to finish it's death throes in the sink while making a cheese cake mix while roasting almond's while saucing a dessert while looking for wattle seeds to put in the damper. The bistro was just big bucket's of napolitian and bechamel to be dribbled over snitzels. Besides James there where three other chef's and four apprentices. The apprentices where huge grain fed Eyre Peninsular boy's,

constantly trying to out do each other with the car's they bought and the stereo's they fitted in them. They bought older brother's car's that already had heroic histories and upped the ante by cramming the motor's of even more legendary car's into them and adding muffler's and sub woofer's. You could hear them coming to work minutes before you saw them in the carpark, low slung and growling as they pulled up, Pantera or steroid pumped techno booming out over the bitumen. They spoke in a code of in jokes and nick names,the edropulator, ten times, Lassie boy, moose balls. They prepared food that they would'nt eat in a million year's even if you payed them and discovered an unexpected liking for the process of other's. Lassie boy telling ten times to go fuck himself and the horse he rode in on as he removed the flicked chicken skin from the brulee he stood before with a piping bag in his skun knuckle hand. James came out into the restaraunt during service to say hello to Amanda.She was having dinner with some work people and he said he'd join her for a drink after and she said that would be great. James ordered his scotch to precede his enterence and joined them out of uniform. They where busy that night and the product of their labour's was now lolling over cheese platter's and dessert's, the edropulator left back in the kitchen to finish the sweet's order's while the rest of them went to the bar for knock off's. The man to Amanda's left was heavy with wine, a wallnut toyed in his packed sausage finger's while a dark grape crunched in his mouth. The woman next to him was spritely and a bit older than Amanda and the woman next to her, also older, was tucking into one of Lassie boy's prized set coconut custard's. Amanda worked with the last woman who was married to the man who owned the shop. They complimented James on a lovely meal and they had a niece who wanted to be a chef, or was a chef, it was alway's one of the two. With James now around Amanda seemed offset with her company, like she'd only just sat down aswell. She kept flashing James an exasperated semaphore as the man told a story laced with lewd inuendo's, his cropped bull head often in her direction. In her car, later, she sat astride him on the back seat, her wetness seaping into his wallet, into the money in the wallet, so that he could smell her for day's. They where parked in bushes in front of the house, you could see the balcony from where they where and make out in the porch light Douglas and Simone and various member's of the band that where staying. In private Amanda complained about Douglas constantly. How tired she was. How much this must be costing her. What effect it must be having on the girl's. How she never had a minute to herself. How he took her for granted. The state the house was in. What the women in the town must think of her. If the woes where not directly linked to him he was alway's beaded on. And Petra! It's hard enough with Imi and Mia now I got to look after a crazy woman aswell. James hushed her with his hand and slid her breast into his mouth. It was something that played on her, what other women thought, the women she saw on the main street, the women she knew from her day's as a wife. The women that she was before young men where eating her out in the back of her car, shaved smooth with a seahorse on her taut stomach. She made herself guess that they where jealous, jealous of her tasting sweet young muscle while they had to make do with the tepid music in their tired husband's not bothered hand's. She also knew that these men would fuck her themselves if given half the chance, she saw the way they looked at her, the blood behind their eyes obvious in it's calculated absence and overly stuffed chit chat, sticcato quickfire to keep her in their presence. It was the women she thought about, the women she may need again one day like she did when she sat pregnant on the step watching Terry hose down the car.The fellowship of someone to push your pram next to that understood what it meant to be young and suddenly old at the same time, someone to share the shaded gratitude in being ogled by the work men as their young tanned legs passed by, a reminder of the good part of their sex away from the same part of itself that had stitches healing under their dresses. Amanda knew she would never be pregnant again and she knew that she was'nt that young anymore but she remembered the women and how desolate those day's would have been without them. The jeep skidded to a halt half hanging onto the road. She'd lost contol of it for a second and slammed the brakes sending the car into a juddering crescent that ended in a white cloud of dirt. She checked that Asia, her big black labrador, was still in the back, and caught the spume from

the champagne bottle in her mouth before spitting it out again as she laughed at James stunned expression. Elana. Photographer, trainee druid, professional mad bitch. A tattoo of the sun on her solar plexus and a chewbacca figurine glued to the dashboard. They where on their way to Simone's place, Tulka beach, fifteen minutes out of town in the national park. Elana backed up to retrieve James' sunglasses ,changed the tape and took off again. A boy in a girl's body, or a girl in a boy's body depending on how the star's where that day, her own belief was that she was a boy and a girl in a body, an amalgamation of her and her brother that died in the womb while she was leaving. She grew up in the wheat country inland, playing netball and smoking behind the shed's . She thought nothing of driving enormous distances, day's at the wheel at the drop of a hat. A habit from her day's up in Queensland taking kiddie photo's in country town's and escaping and returning to rescue a drug fucked boyfriend. She'd come to Port Lincoln to manage a photo shop and lived in a delapidated house with her boyfriend she called the house of Elan. She met Sabian at the pub on her second day in town and tied him to her bed and poured a mix of wine and honey on him and started to lick. Sabian was friend's with a bunch of Prawnies he knew from school. Young guy's who work on the prawn trawler's for a season and surf the rest, or just go wandering.A good haul meant a trip to Indo. or Vietnam, Byron Bay, Lismore, the Himalaya's. James saw them come into the Bistro, the old station wagon's, the obscure surf brands, the tastefully unusual jewellery and tatoo'es. A clique of otherness in the staid atmosphere of the Grand Tasman at happy hour. Elana was at the bar, her lithe body in figure hugging splendour, the boy's pierced and immaculatly unkempt, a mix of jetty wind and strobe light in their look and energy. The difference between the Prawnies and the Tuna guy's was a large one, Prawn trip's where alot shorter and less dangerous, Prawnies where guy's like these, The Tuna guy's where uncaught murderer's.Elana's crew where the cool crew, every town has one. Young and shining in their confines, reluctant to step outside them. Exclusive, attractive, ellusive. James drank at the Pier, knock off's at the Tasman with his team but serious drinking was done at the Pier. He'd learned not to drink the way he wanted to around his employer's from embarrassing experience. It does'nt bode well for your employer to see you slayed every single night. He sat and drank and when the pub shut would head up to Amanda's place, takeaway's in his bag. He walked along the foreshore past the closed hotel where he worked and the Norflok pines and the grain silo's and through the empty loading dock to her house. Merridy was talking to the electrician beside her house, both of them arm's crossed and looking from each other to inside the fusebox by way of punctuation. Klee was pulling the head's off clover on the lawn and was presenting handfulls of them to the electrician who put them in his top pocket to be disposed of later and recrossed his arms, Merridy thanked him for playing along and the electrician told her how his son was fond of collecting dead bees. She recognised the sound of Simone's car and saw it come around the corner and stop under the wattle tree opposite the house. James climbed out in a green bath robe holding a wok and a bottle of Vodka. Simone waved to Merridy and then drove off, James staggering towards the driveway. He pissed beside the lavender and then went inside and passed out on the couch. Everyone played in bands. Douglas was in a band.Simone was in a band. Sabian played bass in Oliver's band. Alistair played in a band. Alistair, Oliver and Douglas played in a band. Douglas and Sabian played in a band. If you did'nt play in a band you knew someone who played in a band. If you where in a band you played with someone from someone else's band. Someone you knew was playing in a band at The Boston or the Pier or both. It was the way the weekend's where spent. A giddy skip between the venues in the still starred night to enter the hot beer air inside. An extended weekend tribe migrating between the two. Start at the Tasman happy hour and then off to the Boston or the Pier. Alcohol, ecstacy, acid, dope , and speed. Hug's on the grass, sick outside car's, a kiss in the alleyway, music through the walls, seawind cold in the sweaty hair running around the corner to catch someone. The Lincoln front bar, shark jaw's on the wall spilling christmas tinsel no one had bothered to put away, the duke box that only played

the Angel's and AC/DC. Big beards over the blue pool tables, the red headed old drunk from Belgium and his ongoing infatuation with the girl pulling beer, his quiet murmer's watched by the bouncer's at her request. Run out into the beergarden and still see the band from a space of blown over chair's, the sea rushing up to meet you out of nowhere when you turn your head, a huge black beast breathing around your star spangled eyes. Elana and James snorted in the back of Sabian's van and then headed back inside to watch the band.Sabian pulling porno out of the instrument, porno written by Oliver, that look on his face when he plays the drums like his son's, the bit lipped grin. James stood next to Merridy and her dress felt electric when he touched it. His hand dipping into the curve above her hip's to steady himself in the incandescent sandstorm coming in waves from the mirror ball above. One of the Irish dropped his cigarette and winced as he bent to pick it up. The bound arm hitting the table. Imogen scuttled under and got it for him, presenting it with a grimace like she was holding a dead frog. The van had swerved to miss a kangaroo just outside Port Augusta. Eley told the driver that's why it was better to just plough the fuckers. He was smitten with the cello player and putting on his best Aussie for her.The van had rolled three times he reckoned. She looked up from her book, an explosion of fine red hair interupted by a bandage. How did he know it was three she wondered, like the fuck anyone was counting! It was three the man said wincing now against the smoke in his eyes.Another Irish came out holding a beer in each hand and one in his teeth. Two member's where still in Hospital back in Port Augusta, nothing life threatening but meaning a scaled down repetiour for awhile. The van was rented and the paper work had been signed. The man with the beer in his teeth had met Douglas in a pub in Fitzroy and they worked out they'd both fucked the same girl in Cork. The band where in Australia on a working holiday made now an even more casual affair. Hans asked Amanda if he could make a sandwich, Hans from Geneva, their uillean pipe player. He'd heard the instrument in a record store with his mother christmas shopping and quietly devoted his life to it thereafter, moving to Dublin when he was seventeen and now a very well regarded player. Micheal was worried about his hand, under the bandage a deep cut from the metal around the windscreen that may or may not have damaged the tendons. Fuck it he reckoned sucking back on the bottle and basking in the sun. Douglas rolled the joint's imagining the crash from the perspective of a Mummy trapped in one of the guitar cases, no , better yet, the cello case. Amanda suggested that they eat kangaroo that night to even the scale, I'm sure James knows what to do with it. Wrap it in shit and blow it out your arse he retorted without really knowing why, then running around the back of the pause left in it's wake to say yeah actually he did know a good recipe, have you got any juniper berries? Simone sat with her mother on the couch looking at photographs while James rubbed garlic into the fishes skin. The two women chortled and shrieked, covering their eyes and looking through their fingers. James refilled his wine glass and lit a cigarette. Her mother was a handsome woman with ash coloured hair cut high to make the most of her cheek bones. He could'nt see a strong similarity but he could hear it in their voices, the mother's plum even rounder and softer than Simone's and still with that light undercurrent of playful glee. She had a week off work and the school holidays where nearly over so she came over to see her daughter before they both went back to work. It was not just the voice that they shared but also the thing's it suggested, a kind of mutual ground in the texture of things, a common emotional index. Simone had told James the whole story, they'd talked about such thing's for hours that would be solid day's by now but alot of it was piss fuzzed away, the woman was here, how and why he did'nt really remember. She smoked in a way that would give Oliver a run for his money. They where all hands together, an unconcious touch play shadowing their summery word's, fingers glancing on eachother's skin and fabric with skin beneath it, skin diviner's. She loved James ofcourse. Most mother's did, he knew the chord's to strike without meaning to, mother's loved him and dad's where'nt so sure, that's the way it went. He poured them another drink and got another bottle out the fridge. As the heavenly smirk would have it Simone's mother did actally work in the phone industry. Not

only that but she knew a guy James went to school with. He was singing in the shower once while Christina was on the phone ringing enquires, it was in a friend's tiny flat and the phone was near the bathroom. When the operator came on he asked if that was James he could hear in the background. He'd only seen him a few times since school, Heroin had got the best of him again by the time James saw him in the supermarket, they chatted briefly and when the guy asked James for his phone number he said it had just been disconnected and the guy smiled and said he understood. This was particularly awkward considering the last time he'd seen him was at his Birthday party, after running into him outside the Austral and inviting him along, be bought a bottle of whiskey and cigar's. James had a photo of them together drunk in the corner and sticking the cigar's up each other noses. The last time James saw him was in the beergarden at the Dover. He looked like he had'nt slept in day's and spoke in a husky whisper about the likelihood of a big comet hitting the earth. He'd been reading about it, some old priest in Spain in the fifteen hundred's. Simone's mother had worked in the console next to him. She liked him, they had ciggies together in the doorway. She was there the day he got escorted from the floor for making threatening phone calls. I just think he wanted someone to talk to was her verdict. The drinking continued after dinner, Simone was no slouch in the slosh department but did'nt seem to suffer for it the way James did. After her hangover she did'nt feel the ghostly terror the way he did, the feeling of being in a space within a space, the odd disorienting effect of the calm trees and sky and water around them, the way they stabbed with there untouchable distance. Simones mother was now dancing with her daughter, shoes off shirt untucked and clapping along to the music. Simone picked up her saxophone and rubbed her lips together. James was on the couch, he sprang forward into a hyiena balanced on the edge of the coffeetable. Can't you leave that fucking thing alone for five minutes! That band don't fucking need you, they probably did'nt even ask you to fucking join anyway did they? I bet you just invited yourself because... why?! Because you....He lost the thread and hung his head breathing heavily through his nostrils. Simones mother came over and put a hand on his cheek. He heard her watchband rustle and could smell the perfume on her wrist, a ginny grassy smell. Simone sat next to him on the other side. They both touched their heads to his and laughed when he started laughing. Later they all collapsed in Simone's bed, Simones mother was going to sleep on the couch but now she was with them in an exhausted drunk embrace in her nightdress. James held her neck and felt the line of her jaw with his thumb. He brought his face closer and slow wormed his tongue into her mouth. His hand was on her breast and he could feel her legs curl and ran the other hand over her hips. He looked over at Simone but could not see her face , hair and shadow concealing her reading of the situation. He began kissing her neck and she let out a little moan. The sound, the cracked purity of it, the closeness of it, the bell of it in the quiet stopped him dead. They lay with the embrace on pause. He let her go and rolled over and closed his eyes. He awoke before them, Simone on her stomach on the other side of th bed and her Mother curled into a blanket on the couch. James put Simones green bathrobe on and fetched the unfinished vodka and went and sat on the jetty. Fish kissed halo's gliding open on the still skin of the water. A thousand painting's of the same thing he thought, and every one of them different. He was thinking about this view, he tried to burn it into his brain, something to remember. After awhile he heard movement up in the shack. Simone came out with a cup of coffee and cigrette and stood in the garden looking at the inlet. He turned to see her, she had'nt looked like this before, her face was the same but it had some other quality to it that he did'nt recognise.The smoke left her in a way it did'nt normally,a force behind it he read as it was almost time to go. I'll give you a lift she said walking back inside. Her mother was still asleep or pretending to be when he closed the door behind him, Simone waiting in the car with the motor warming . They drove into town in silence, the wok they'd borrowed from Merridy in his lap. It was a sticky Sunday afternoon. The glass walls of the Pier where folded up to let in any breeze the sea might want to throw it's way. The bar was full which was unusual for a Sunday, unusual in as much as it was'nt the normal crowd there to watch the football on Skychannel but people you did'nt normally see in the pub scattered in with the less surprising. Thong's and sandal's and

small children on the dark hardwood floor. James had wandered down for a shandy on his split, shandies where a safer bet he reckoned, it stopped the shakes without getting him too pissed. Mia skipped up to him and said hello, when are we going to see you again? Imogen was there aswell ,and Amanda, and Simone and Eley. He felt a hand squeeze his bum, hey yu' big spunk! it was Petra. A couple of crates where in the cleared space, a cello and a guitar leaning on them. Douglas was over by the mixing desk, he saw James and waved. Amanda came over and said hello, what yu' been up to? Merridy and Oliver arrived and left Klee on the floor with the other toddlers, their corale tended by a group of older kid's with rasberry rings around their mouths concentrating on holding their softdrinks with two hands and controlling any errant ground crawler with their feet. Alistair sheparded his offspring and pregnant wife through the crowd, material shawled around her like a Massai. Micheal came out of the crowd and took up the guitar, he was unshaved and giggly hung over, he pushed his hair out of his eyes and sat on the crate. The cellist was already sitting, fine boned feet with blue toenails lightly gripped into position around her instrument and laughing at Micheals inability to do anything. He apologised to the crowd and promised he'd get it together in a minute.Blame the hand! he said waving the healing thing around Blame the hand! Hans was ready to go, he sat in a chair dragged from the dining room looking impassively around like a stoned seagull , the pipes in his lap like some kind of alien octapoid skeleton. The singer in the group had joined them the day before, her arm still in a sling. She stood talking to Douglas's parent's and stepped into the space with the beer someone bought her in her good hand. Douglas whizzed up and adjusted her microphone for her. They all looked at eachother and Micheal counted them in. The wounded woman's voice chimed out towards the sea, it sweetly stirred an ancient abstract yearning that slept in the collective heart, the pipes unearthly in their sadness, a dark river in the mists of Jupiter. The crowd where bound in their silent wonder, transfixed and sky still, The childen mesmerised by their parents spell . James had to go back to work, he stepped through the frozen crowd and kept walking. Douglas and Simone where looking at photo's Imogen had taken last week, flashlit moment's of balcony madness, the same thing a thousand times and every one different. Favorites where added to the growing assemblege on the hallway wall, Imogen's pet project. Celtic bodies stirred under the blanket's in the living room. Amanda was still in bed, someone was in the shower. Douglas saw someone in the photo's that reminded him of someone else and pointed her out to Simone. He looked up at James," You'll like her James ",he said. It was becoming like her sirname." Niamh, oh you'll like her James." James shrugged, it was just a name, another gypsy who may or may not join the camp. " Oh she'll come", Douglas was sure of it, " Soon, soonish". The boat puttered out of the Marina toward's the deep shark famous water's. They passed a Lebanese cargo ship moored at the Silo's, rust running from the hawer down it's hull like a Catholic painting.[ get technical name for anchor holes, maybe rust running down its hull form the anchor holes like christ weeping blood in a catholic painting?] A man in a beanie was perched in amounst the lattice of ladder's and platform's having a smoke in the sun. Oliver busied him self under the bow and reached behind for the rope James was holding. The feed was in numbered blue container's, wet sawdust looking stuff that smelt awful with hard brown pellet's mixed in. A straggle of shawn sheep looked up as they passed Boston Island, a miniture version of the land around the town itself which they saw as the rocky beach of the island was behind them. Low hilled grazing land around the granite fringed bay, the Silo's and fuel tank's like giant ant eggs and the white fleck of building's along the foreshore behind the blacky barked Norfolk Pines. Ahead of them was the first of the feeding pen's. The brown pellet's in the container's where the reason Oliver was here, Alistair and other scientist's had been sweating over them for year's, people got up early and caught planes and tapped laptop's because of these pellet's. The pelllet's went in the fish that went overseas in planes on ice. Amount's of money so vast that they only had shape on paper where tied into the protein strands compressed into these little brown pellet's. Houses ,car's, families ,and career's floated in the chemical reaction between the pellet's and the fish. The port bumped against the rubber side of the pen. Oliver hooked a rope over a purpose placed pole and pulled to secure the moor, The young yellowfin could be seen racing

around the inside of the circular pen, diamond shaped blurs in the blue green water. Oliver and James threw handfuls of feed into the pen, the race around the bottom turned on an axis towards the surface and the floating feed was punctured as though shot with a nail gun as the tuna went for the slowly sinking pellets. Oliver wiped his hands on a towel hanging from his belt and reached for a clip board with a pen hanging from it to record the feed. They did this at each pen, pulling in any dead tuna with a pike that had been attacked by a seal that sometimes got in, the smell was extraordinary. Oliver could see the cigarette butt's where he had been speaking with his father, white and shoe squashed into the dirt beside the shed. They struck him as amazing, he felt an urge to collect them, to pick and shake them and put them in his pocket.The shotgun had been his father's favorite, Oliver had looked forward to having it one day himself. He'd seen his father shoot rabbit's with it and eaten them with him around a fire. Merridy came home to find the skin's on the drum kit covered with writing, the fridge, the mirror's in the bedroom and the bathroom all covered with the same blue texta'd cypher. List's, affirmative reminders, a spiritual matron drawing back the curtain's and clapping her hand's in the morning. He spoke in term's of forging, absolutes, hot steel glowing in the darkness. He did not trust his mind or the flesh it controlled, he had faith in it's possibilities, it's potential, but a plan was needed, now more than ever. Dream's from dream's burn into nothing, reality and the activity there in was where he saw the key. The past had slammed down onto the present and left a simple object to open the cage door. He walked not into a misty landscape of fabled beast's lapping at some willowed water's edge but onto a cool clean sheet to start charting where to find fresh water. He sailed with the woman he loved and their child around the island's, cheese and bread and apples and the sunshine on them, he ate with them in a warm clean house, he worked to make their lives better and not lose eachother in the effort. He felt in his hand the weight of love and it was a good weight. They puttered back into the marina, the feed container's upturned to drain after having been washed out in the sea. They stacked them in the shed and Oliver took the clipboard to the office. They got in the Landrover and drove to his home, a bucket of garfish caught with a hand line during the feed for dinner. He'd seen less and less of Merridy and Oliver as time went by. When he did see them it was like an errant child caught coming home by his stoic Uncle and Aunty. Oliver and Merridy where not part of what he was doing and had no wish to be. At first Merridy enjoyed the report's James issued from the maelstrom of late night's and misadventures but they where beginning to tire her with there idiot frequency. James seemed to bring out a side in the people she knew that had a use by date that bittered with flogging. She did'nt like seeing what James was doing to himself either. His innate attraction to trouble, his finger's alway's picking at thread's in the fabric of thing's. She thought of him as a nice person desperately trying to be a bastard, and she saw a pain in his eyes that peaked through the tales of degradation he metered out with flourished gestures, a would be dark angel showing off his second rate wares. She'd told him earlier that she did'nt want to see him anymore when he was drunk.That he was boring, it had'nt alway's been that way but it was now. He was like an old man, slurring and repeating himself, a knackered show pony with no interest in anything except the babble coming out of his own mouth. Elana and James stood on the top of the dune. Asia was running down towards Sabian who was climbing back up with the sandboard. The idea had popped into his mind and set there a day or so ago. An anxious vibration eminated from it through his dope jellied mind, it was a statue all other thought's circled and the anticipation of it's realisation was heart quickening. " I want to move into your shed" he said when they where all together. Sabian smiled, a cautious why does this person want me to come out to their car and look at a bag of grapefruit sort of smile. " Why?" he asked. " Because it was written!" James said glittereyed, his arm's in religious entreat, " I must live at the house of Elan!". Sabian and Elana looked at eachother and shrugged.

"Sure," Sabian said. " It's a shithole though, there's heaps of crap in there,you'll have to clean it out." James grabbed them both in a clumsy hug, pulling Elana's earring out in the process. The couple shimmied down the sand while James poked about for the silver scarab. Niamh awoke in Tamworth, the Tokyo dream still vivid as her eyes focused on the soft beagles around her. Long limbed with parrot red hair on a neon street while the vehicles drove through the night. She slept in the snoopy doll's that you could win with a well placed ball, the ones she'd flattened swelled back to shape after a bit of time with the door open. She stepped out the caravan into the bright glare of morning, steam against the blue sky and silvery grass. She wondered if Agnes, her boss, was up yet and then heard her answer, the screech coming from somewhere between the coke van and the hotdog stand. " What do I pay you cunt's for!, to clean mu' snatch!? Fuckn' get those fuckn' pegs in the fuckn' groun'!, fuuck mee you cunts stood around scratchin' yu' arse! " Agnes's use of profanity was a thing of wonder, an obscene mobile that dangled above day and got worse at night. Niamh headed towards the coffee urn and saw Agnes come around the corner, her clenched fist's telling her to batten down against an oncoming tirade. James borrowed the air compressor from work and set about cleaning his new abode. A corragated tin shed in the garden of the house of Elan. He'd removed years of sleeping wood and spiderwebs and stood in a never ending cloud of grey dust that swirled denser with each pass of the nozzle. He took the compressor back and got the water cannon the yardie used to clean oil off the carpark and attacked the tin walls and cement floor with that. Now the inside of the shed was encrust with a papery skin of drying mud. He took to it with a broom, grime seemed to seap from the tin, like it sweated dirt with the effort of it being removed. After a week of cleaning James gave up, this was as clean as it was going to get. It was that element thing again, tin and cement, pure and clean. But a ghost of grime remained, a fine film that dully screamed at certain times of the day and dissappeared at others. During the clean James slept on a couch outside and drank beer from an eski. At work he told his collegues he was moving into a shed and it fit into their picture of him, a freak. He relished the effect it had, the suprise giving way to a slow nod, ofcourse you are. He borrowed a queen sized bed and bought new bedding, purple sheet's and pillowcases and a green cover for the new doona. He borrowed a stereo and set it on a ladder in the corner, he jammed a broom handle into the other corner and hung his clothes from it. He lined the wooden frame with candles even though a single bulb hung from the roof. The house had an outside toilet and bathroom and he could eat at work. In the forgotten unused space he had hacked a place to live and put a bucket in the corner to piss in for when he could'nt be bothered going outside. Niamh leaned closer for a better look, it was an Eagle with a scroll in it's talon's. " Who's Evonne?" she asked looking at the copper plated name, the man shook his head as he rolled his shirt down and she held up her hand for two more beer's. She did'nt pull stories out of people, she knew if you sat long enough that they will unroll them themselves, that they'd be bursting to tell you everything after tasting the first trickle themselves. They'd revisit dusty field's with intricate trail's with growing entusiasm and detail looking at her leaning heavy lidded on her hand, a calm concentrated interest urging then to go on. She'd met Douglas this way, they knew eachother's faces from around town but had'nt actually spoken until she sidled up next to him in the pub and said that her friend reckoned that he made a very nice toasted cheese and asparagus sandwich. They talked for eigth hours straight but actually it was Douglas that did most of the talking, she knew how to make sure the other person did most of the talking without them realising it. The house of Elan had red walls and a dark wood floor. The garden was overgrown and spacious and the whole property was situated in such a way as to be practically invisable.A quirk afforded by land contour and the lumber yard that surrounded the back. Taxi driver's that had worked and lived in the town for years had no idea it was there until you guided them up the track that swung around into the gravelled yard. It belonged to Sabian's old boss and some sort of agreement

existed that equalled no rent and compleat privacy. Elana's photographs hung from the wall's, naked bodies and trees entwined, three bodies fighting to get out of the same body, bodies on rocks, bodies in the sea. The kitchen table was littered with bottles and dope tins, good porno in the video and dance music on the stereo. James drenched himself in it. The casually debauched atmosphere, Elana's lanky energy, a gollywog grin bouncing off the wall's with a head back ha! and Sabian's sagely core. Nugget's of wisdom offered while he sawed wood in the yard, a calmess and sense of self that balanced Elana's manic sugar shuffle. James relished the freedom to get up in the moning and have a beer while they had breakfast without a second glance. His day's off just turned into chemical wildlife parks. The house to himself while Elana and Sabian where at work and beginning with a beer and dope all you can eat smorgasbord that stayed open all day interlaced with lines of speed, a porno festival soundtracked by Ghoa trance. Sweaty wire wound, synapse butchering satisfaction that ate of itself and demanded more until unconciousness prevailed. The Tuna Fest was coming and it was heralded by the piping of mid to late seventies adult oriented rock along the foreshore. The Little River Band at the height of their power's in a tinny flange as you jogged along, or a bit of Supertramp as you came out of the Building Society, or a nice waft of vintage Foriegner to aid a shell shocked delicate trot to start the early shift at the Grand Tasman hotel. The event put Lincoln on the map along with the right of it's resident's to kill Galah's on sight because of the damage they reaped on the Norfolk Pines in their rampant quest for food. At the heart of the Tuna Fest was the Tuna Toss, a hammer like sport in which Tuna, weighing up to sixty kilograms, where hurled through the air and the distance measured from where they crashed to the grass with a force that could easily kill a small to mid size child, and if one of those fin's got you across the back of the leg it was a trip to the doctor for you mate, no worries about that. Any objection metered, and it would be from outsider's anyway who did'nt understand, was countered with the hearty cry of " Fuckem' Chuckem' ! " It was good bloody fun and if you did'nt reckon so, well then there was something wrong with you and you better start having a good bloody look at yourself. James sat under the Morton Bay's outside the Lincoln and looked around the bay. It was a flat grey morning, slate sky stacked on a slate sea. It was familiar to him now, familiar enough to notice that it never changed. It was like he'd spent months in the same day, the cloud's parted a bit and the sun hit the water, an oceanic luminescence ragged at the edges, the gray weight slowly closing back in. He looked around at the Lincoln and saw someone inside shoulder near the window, he tried to work out if it was the guy opening or if it was still one of the cleaners. It was Saturday night and Douglas' band where in particularly fine form, Douglas had'nt broken a string for atleast five number's and he was rocking over his new pedal board, he'd stuck a balance of expected and accidental sound that weaved a silvery extra thread of excitement, how long could he ride it? He was wondering the same thing himself, it was new territory for everyone even if you did'nt know it, Eley pumped the bass and urged him on in loving tones, c'mon, c'mon, keep it coming, c'mon. Douglas had his eyes closed and let his finger's do the thinking, sweat pouring off of him, you could see it running off of his elbow onto the floor. It was a hungry night, the crowd where loud and agitated, outside the police had already been busy on the pavement, fight's on the fringe of those inside and those wanting to get in, ripped shirt's and bloody faces coming back for a second go. An animal logic on night's like this, bodies sliding against eachother getting to the bar, faces close together, a hum of big cat gland's with a thick muscled ribbon tied around the air. He saw Amanda coming in and jostled through the crowd toward's her, she double took when she saw him, a suprised hello about to come when he was pushing her back outside. Petra, who had followed Amanda in, followed them out and got in the back of the car. Back at the house James turned to her in the back seat, " You might want to stay in the car" he said. They climbed the stairs and the front door was open and the stereo was on, they went down the corrider into Mia's old room, Douglas' wet towel on the single bed her daughter used to sleep in. His hand was unbuttoning the fly on her jeans. She pulled the towel aside and sat undoing his

trousers, a yellowy light from the reading lamp bulb in the main socket, empty tobacco packet's and on the bedside table, mug's half full of cold coffee, plectrums, Cadbury's wrappers, beercans, scrunched socks and underpants, shirt's, jeans, chip packets, plastic carry bags with other carry bag's and screwed up paper and cigarette butts inside, the floor littered with Douglas debree. Lights winking on the multi-track with a plastic lobster stuck to it, a guitar against the chair, a chord sheet with scribbled alterations, lyrics curving slighty uphill. He entered her from behind, his moist hands chinese burned onto her back. Petra had moved to the balcony and saw them coming, their long shadows on the streelit road between the trees. Imogen and Mia sloping along with their father, his arm's on their shoulders. James was leaning back folded at the knees, sweat pouring off of his body as if he had a fever. A cold sweat waxy on his forehead and running down his sides to pitter pat onto the coffeestained sheets. Amanda bobbed infront of him, his hand on the back of her neck. They heard voices. Amanda stopped for a second and then continued. Mia padded up the hall, Petra's voice behind her and Terry's voice behind that. The sound of the girl retreating as James released in her mother's mouth. Amanda did up her bra and said she'd go out first. Petra, Terry and Amanda where sitting around the table when James came out, Amanda thumbing open a cask of Red. The girl's where sulky tired and arguing about which of their grandmother's biscuit's where the best. Imogen looked up at James, a bear at the edge of her forrest of understanding bothering her. " What where you doing in there?" she asked, Mia's eyes glanced up at this, she played with her hair to ensure she did'nt seem too interested. " Listening to Douglas's stuff", he said. " could'nt her it with the door open." " Why did'nt you just turn the stereo down?", Mia asked, a quietness in the enquiry that unnerved him more than he already was, " Because ummm, I'm stupid!" he then took a clowny toke on the joint Terry had passed him. Imogen smiled, " That's right, you are". she said, her arm's and brow folded in mock sterness. Amanda was looking out over the water, Terry at some place between the roof and the edge of the stairs. The girl's where supposed to stay with his mother for the weekend but she was'nt feeling well and he did'nt have room at his place so he'd brought them home. Amanda turned the music down when the girl's went to bed. James walked home. Over the train track by the sleeping ship stacked with cargo containers, the mound of rotting fishing net, the fuel tanks and the silo's fenced off and spotlights running gold up the white to make them look like a Doric temple from the distance. Past the white gravelled roundabout and the flourescent utalitarian nothing of a main road past midnight,past the oval the Croatain boy's played soccer on in angular black clad grace, past the primary school and the lawn mover shop and the place that offered free ear test's, past the sport's fishing club to the anonymous track beside the house.Inside the shed he put the stereo on and got a beer out of the eski. He sat on the bed with the light's off, light from the lumbryard twinkled through the nail holes in the tin like stars. The piss bucket was full. An amonia kick in the face if you got too close, the old piss had deepened in colour and had started to eat into the plastic. Dead flies floated in it. Some of the vehicles parked on the street outside the Tasman while other's, the heavier ones laden with clown head's and insect armed rides rolled onto the grass of the foreshore. Niamh leaned against a Norfolk rolling a cigarette. She went into the front bar to look for a phone to give Douglas a ring. James was in the kitchen. He sucked slowly on his cigarette and watched the smoke swirl into itself as he exhaled into the morning light. The sink and the space around it looked like a little city. Glass citadel's and curved cultural centres, an Asian metropolis glinting in the smog. The beer was warm in his hand, it felt like nothing when he took a swig, like he was'nt even drinking liquid. Fibrous bit's of the bud's he'd taken from the bowl and chewed came to the tip of his tongue and he spat them on the floor. The screen door clacked, it was Elana,she'd given herself the rest of the day off. She sat at the table and rolled a joint. " What is this shit your listening to?"she asked, the point more important than the answer. James had some of his c.d's sent over from Adelaide. Melancholic music that used to mean something to him once, a soundtrack to another time that now just droned in the background, the same c.d repeating itself because he could'nt be bothered

getting up and changing it. They sat in silence for awhile and then Elana got up and went into her room. She sat next to him with a syringe in her hand. James offered up his arm and she set to work. He'd never used intravenious before and did'nt think he ever would but now he was and he was glad that it was with her. It felt like nothing. Elana went back into her room and then James heard the sound of the screen door and her car leaving again. He was aware of his arm at work the next day, a cold ache as he pushed on the meat slicer. He met Niamh at the Pier with Douglas. She was wearing a man's blue body shirt over an expensive black bra and kharki combat pant's. Her hair was deep henna and the ringlet's cut in such a way that when wet she looked like a bordello worker in the nineteen twenties. This Man Ray quality was furthered by the cool expression she wore. A quiver of appraisal about her, her sleepy eyes and her bottom lip plumped with detatchment. Douglas introduced them with due ceremony, it was Dartangnone meeting Boidacea according to Douglas's good natured hyperbole. James order a round of Cooper's Dark Ale's. Actually it did'nt happen that way at all. He first met her at Amanda's and said hello and then got on with the job of getting wrecked. She was around, another person who was around. It was the guy who worked in the front bar's last day, the one with the moustache.Dale or Kyle or something, one of those L names, James could'nt remember. It was free piss for a few hour's and alot of off duty staff where there. Hilary and Trudy where at a table with Samantha, a girl James worked with in the restaraunt. Hilary was new in town and drunk, slapping the air into shape around the thing's she was describing. Trudy,her husband, shook his head as she retold some mischief, yes, it is an unusual name for a man. He was a pilot and that was why they where there.Hilary had started working at the hotel basically out of boredom. James warmed to them instantly, the shared side mirror's of outsider's working and living in a small town. They had a unit owned by the company Trudy worked for. They stayed on and payed after the freebies stopped, Fuck! James said. He'd put his uniform's in the laundry across the street and it had closed, he had to borrow one of Moose Ball's the next day. James told the taxi driver to look out for the orange painted rock. A piece of the night wobbled towards him from the bushes as he walked up to the shack, it was Asia. James rubbed her fatty neck and tried to stop her putting her paw's on his trouser's, after he'd dusted them off she poddled beside him. Simone opened the door, dope and music spilling out from behind her. She put her arm's around his shoulder's and gave him a kiss, apologising for burning his neck with her cigarette. Inside the shack was packed, practically every one he knew in two room's. It was Simone's day, not the day she was born but the one she elected to celebrate stepping from the untied shoes to feel her toes tingle in the mud. The albrebra around it brewing for year's, a vague plan, a vision, a feeling. She'd let her contract run out at the school without making effort's to renew it, she was free now to concentrate on the thing's that she loved, which was loving thing's. She shone, unfettered by constaint and with a faith in the universe to provide for it's higher servant's, and enough vodka and dope to kill a mule. Douglas came up to James and continued the conversation that they were'nt having three day's ago, James quickly aclimatised and fed the colour's bursting from the shiny smiling young man. Amanda and Micheal where talking with a casual closeness that indicated that he had moved from the living room into her bedroom. The band had moved on without him . A sherry sticky smirk to he smile and a choclate glitter in her eyes. They where a good looking couple, her in shimmery black and he in cotton of the same colour, like they where going to parent teacher night at Satyr high. Elana and Oliver where wrestling over what c.d to put on next, their lanky frames rolling around like a torn bag of coat hanger's and vein's bulging as they clung to their champion's. James stepped outside, an Astronaught now because of the dope, slow step's that seemed to stop of their own accord rather than the ground. Movement and stillness reversed and turned inside out. He made his way over toward the jetty, paddling manifest jellied obstacles out the way,

when ever he was stoned the space around him alway's became some bike cluttered corridor. He felt the breeze on his skin and vibrated inside it, he felt like he was in a star freckled cylinder cored in time and that the space it puzzled through was too small whilst being connected to the ghost of something too large, circuit's inside getting solder spitting hot, his thought's bullet fast and toffee matted. Simone was standing next to him, she put a cool hand on his cheek. James admired her, he knew she knew something of the mystery and was in awe of the way she walked beside it rather than let it live in her. She appreciated the poisonous flower's in her garden but did not covet them, her hand's where open and she let her shadow's pass. As he followed her to go back inside he was drawn left, stumbling through the garden on seeing his new lover alone on the bench. The moon aurate and the light's and music from inside tinkled a waterfall from afar through the trees dipped in the warm blood of Simone's night. He found her , her expression not particularly happy or surprised or dismayed. A cub he thought, her skin peach glow in the steam, softnosed. Her eyes bigger than usual in her nakedness, long leg's breaking the foam in the caramel coloured bath. I only do this in other people's homes she said. The luxury of tourism, seek and enjoy.They lingered around a kiss and then he went into the kitchen to start cleaning the prawn's. Hilary and Trudy where in England and had asked James to house sit. Other people in other people's homes. You become a dream when you do this, the curtain shadow come to life and moving around the shapes and colours of another's experience, the coral formation of their time together. A feather trace to be tracked and signal's desiphered from the chess move touches, a newly angled picture frame, shifted paper's, the sticking drawer in the cupboard, or under the bed. A wonder at the stirred air and the pockets left untouched. The dreamer's leave a space to dream in, and the dream's dream of the dreamer's. He felt her hand on his cock and turned from the sizzle, a hand turning down the gas. She sat on the edge of the table as he kissed her stomach, his chin on her warm wet hair, Hilary's flavour's racked on the wall, tarragon vinegar, preserved lemon's. A spicy French bay for boat's built on Mars. Niamh skidaddled the caravan she shared with the snoopy doll's after she spoke to Douglas on the phone, her fairground day's behind her. She sat around the balcony smoking dope and drinking, Mia painted her toe nails blue. Alot of the balcony dweller's had blue toenail's, Mia daubing them as a sort of initiation ceremony. Terry laughed and watched on darkly, a whiff of cult about it that he did'nt like.This extended family of mutant layabout's that mushroomed in the space he was kicked out of. He was constantly kicking himself to new level's of tolerence, just as he settled at what he thought was the top of the ferris wheel and began to enjoy the view with everyone else something would happen and he would swoop down, his gravity outraged as a hand or a look or a comment dragged some part of his secret city further out into the wilderness, the furniture, handed down and mother loved pushed out of sight like an ugly useless gift, their ghost's in him ,and bleeding in a dustbowl, and these sundrunk monkey's shitting in the temple.Micheal's big hairy foot in his daughter's hand's. The thought of their hand's on her body was not as bad as he sight of the sofa pushed up against the wall in the corner with the cushion's all over the place. Douglas, Micheal ,and James where drinking at The Pier. They sat in the Sport's bar because they where sick of the front bar and because they could share a round table together by the open wall and look out onto the street. People they knew walking by would join them and then get back to whatever they where doing, go where ever they where going. Micheal had a bet on the races. They where trying to decide if Jug's or pint's where a better way to spend the rest of the day. Niamh and James where at the Pier watching Douglas's band, it was a quiet night. Niamh said James new shirt made him look like an American tourist. Amanda and Micheal came in and they got a table together. Micheal got up and did a few song's with the band and James brought them all drinks. During the set break they went down to the seawall for a smoke, a pelican landed near them and Micheal tried to catch it.

They started on the couch and ended up on the carpet knocking the champagne bottles over, dregs dripping onto the Sheepdog shag. She was on top on him, her eyes closed like she was listening to classical music, she was, Elgar pouring over them, blood skinned deep sea waves heaving, a gathering weight aching for a shore on which to crash. They called each other beautiful. Some night's, wasted beyond speech by social chemical exchange, they collapsed into bed and spoke with their leg's and arm's, a vocabulary of caresses saying what they had seen in eachother that day.Moment's across the river of a room when they would smile at each other. And when she said Goodnight my sweetheart, the tenderness of it, the soft unguarded husk of it new and innocently unrehearsed on her cynical lip's, it was to James as though a snow leopard had left a bowl of Eden's fruit to carry him onto the dream world and the golden day beyond. He loved being close to her face, to be inside the umbrella she held up as she faced the world. He sat in the calm music of her gaze and caught glimpses of the orchestra inside, little door's she allowed him to look in with hand's used to heavy key's. Naked before her, and without a word, he took the tiger's eye from around his neck and then the stone sat between her breast's. He had found her. They sat in the back bar at the Lincoln, a gauche cave of poker machines with nut's on the smoky vinyl bar. They drank and laughed at themselves and their surrounding's, Las Vegas desperado's in kitsch town, quirk radar's on alert, the offkilter, the odd juxt's in the way every day thing's can land together and generate a shape of something else, a strange gaudy fluid running from the collision.They saw the town through each other's eyes, outsider's united in their wonder of it, small and teeming with a surreal crackle, they walked through the empty rain silvered carpark and felt the thread's around the edges dissappearing into the night. She was leaving soon, soonish. She'd planned to leave alot earlier but had stayed to be with him, a trip to Sydney and New zealand on the way home cancelled to be with him. James loved this of course, he'd beaten a country! A small one but an entire nation nevertheless. It was written now as far as he was concerned, a cosmic force to simply yield to, the detail's middle manager stuff to be worked out later. This sort of thing does happen, he thought, Hen and Trude's, a chance meeting, a wild romance, a life together. Well fuck if I'm not going to get mine. It made sense, these thing's do happen, you read about it all the time. It had a grandeur about it he considered his birthright, the trophy of peace for not being afraid to treat life as an adventureous battle, to strip the skin off of it and look for the base, to try and touch god's bones. Put yourself on the line and you'll be rewarded, he'd alway's thought so, some gut feeling just beyond his conscious understanding. Stick to your gun's, that was his motto, dirt streaked and stinking and half insane in a flat somewhere with everything around a mystery, but stick to your gun's. Niamh was scared. She did'nt want to go back but knew that she had to. The message in her blood. Her grandmother's little dark house hung with Christ like a mediaeval torture chamber, cold rain running between the cobble stones. She left and travelled and now it was time to go back. She was worried about what she was going to do for money, she was worried about where she was going to live, she was worried about what she was going to do with the next portion of her existence. The person James met and fell in love with was not her she pleaded, this was her on holiday, back home thing's where very different, he would'nt recognise her, she was sure of it. This was a holiday romance, you read about them all the time. Glass bead's in the swirl of time, otherness to be looked back on as perfect, a time of motion unsullied by the machanic's of movement. James listened and nodded and understood but was'nt buying any of it. He'd found somewhere to park and was paniced to stay. He cast net's into the future and looked at the life he dragged back from the ether, living with her in Dublin, every thing seemed to be in order, it all felt right. She had not bored him, not for one moment, and he imagined them not being bored together for a long time. He got back to the unit and collapsed into the couch, the lamp still on from the previous night. She'd cleaned up a bit before she left. No trace of her beside's, not a smell or a sound as

evidence of her being. An exquisite depression took hold and mixed with a light headed shock. He took the bottle of Cuervo Gold from his bag and went into the kitchen to cut the lemon and then collapsed back on the couch. He lit a cigarette and cued up the Elgar on the stereo. He meant to wallow inside the feeling, to gather it's clouds until he reached the tear's gathered at it's centre. While he was waiting he started writing her a letter, Dear Niamh, I,ve just got home on the day you left and Elgar misses you terribly. He's crying in the corner now and I've told him to snap out of it, you know what these artisitic types are like! I have to concur with him however, the house feel's very strange with you not here. The pen idled in his hand when the phone rang. It was her, drunk and softly speaking in Erin's kitchen, the rest of the house asleep. James had set it up for her to stay with Erin for the night before she flew out of Adelaide the next morning. They met in the bar James introduced Erin to and he loved the idea of the two women together, the James women. Nick answered the door and ushered him through to the back garden, she rose from the mock Victorian outdoor table under the lemon tree to greet him as he walked through the French door's. He had'nt seen her since she dropped him off for work the day she was leaving, traffic hassled and a teary kiss that ended too quickly in curses at the tooting behind her. Her hair was shorter and she looked taller, the sass in her attitude now built of a mellower wood, with an added winky sneer grown in Europe. They'd written regularly to eachother for awhile until both their address changes started to bank up and they lost contact. James recieved a post card just addressed to a town that said James, where the fuck are you you tart! He also alway's got her and Christina's birthday's confused and they would recieve air freighted bottles of wine out of the blue. Nick was her new house mate, an easy going geologist who brought them out beer's. She was addicted to planes now she reckoned, and addicted to people who where addicted to planes. Niamh's voice was hoarse from the day's raucous drinking with Erin. She said that she missed him and that she loved him even though she had'nt wanted to and she wanted to be with him and that she wanted him to come to Ireland and live with her. James was awash in the crash of the dreamed into the real. Before they hung up she gave him the number of the hostel she'd be staying in in New York. Henrietta and Trudy came back and James moved back to the house of Elan. The phone had been cut off and on the appointed day he was to ring Niamh he was drinking afterwork wit some of the staff and asked one of the girl's if he could come back to her place and make a call. He lay on her bed and waited for the guy to get Niamh. She sounded a bit shocked to hear his voice and spoke with a weariness that confused him, expecting as he was the galloping horses to continue from the previous call. He hung up feeling a twist in his stomach and went out to where the girl was watching T.V and poured him self another Tequila.He had sex with the girl , a Japanese tattoo on her stomach an unexpected pleasantry, and slept in her bed getting up still drunk for work the next morning and grabbing a beer from the fridge for the walk. He was'nt familiar with this part of the town and just headed for the direction of the bay, the quiet grey morning bruised pink over the deli's and weather board houses. On the phone in the background he'd heard New York street sound's, he'd said to the girl it was just like on the Telly. The phone at the house of Elan was back on and he rang again. Booze focused on the forensic patchwork to get the number, he spoke to two of her sister's in New York and a brother in Ireland before a kind old Irish voice answered in a tiny rain soaked town. James pulled the door to against the music and prowled the hallway. When she came on she was out right mortified. What the fuck are you doing? she said aghast. Ringing my family in the middle of the night, I don't like this James, I don't like the way this makes me feel, please don't make me scared of you, please James, please don't do that. He hovered around himself somewhere in the deep red walls, the backlit stream of swirling dust under the door, the sound's coming from the kitchen and the living room, tired laughter and back rythum. He had a million thing's to say all quasi formed and spiling over each other and could'nt annunciate one of them, he stood there a mute imploding mass. She

carefully dipped into the silence he left, her tone stepping foot out of the stick wall he found it fortified in, it was now more the distantly concerned timbre employed while reporting a mud slide in a far off country. Your an Alcoholic James, and I just...I just don't know how I feel about that. For this she briefly joined him on the foggy marsh, the warmth of her finger's about his face with one foot on the magic carpet to sweep her back to safety in an instant. James hung up the phone and picked it up and listened and then hung it up again. A strange feeling of liberation tearing through the air compressing around him, or mabye it was feeling the disbelief of death sewing sheet's of liberation together. He went into the kitchen, Elana and Sabian where at the table with a few of their friend's. How'd it go? someone asked, I'm Fucked, James said happily as he reached for the pipe, I - Am - Fucked. He sat on the pile of wood outside the shed and opened the letter, the thiness of it inducing a flutter of sorrow as he took it from the letterbox. James, no dear. What was he expecting? A miraculous change of heart? The lenght assured this was not the case. He read it and re read it every day for a month, it became a nightly ritual to read the letter. He studied the word's for a meaning within them, each single word precious holy scripture, the mystery hidden in their flow what he was after, a code to the nature of the light he lived in, a document in another language about the secret of making blood.He looked at each letter and imagined her hand shaping it, where was she sitting? Was she outside? Was it daylight? Gradually he came to understand it, it anchored around the word's I don't love you anymore, and then looped into I'd by lying by omission if I did'nt say that I did love you. He was suspended in the force between these poles and shuttled out to forrage through the outskirt's, The time we had together was perfect, Now I'm really depressed about the whole thing, this is the hardest letter I've ever had to write, don't ruin the memory, goodbye. The rendered metal bubbled in his frypan head until one night without knowing why but knowing not to question he brought the letter and his lighter together and slept in the shed skin ashes. Elana was driving and Sabian was sitting in the middle as they drove back through the rolling farm land. It had seemed like a good idea the day before when Elana suggested it at the petrol station before they roared off up to Tulka, James enjoying the post card freedom of drinking champer's from the bottle as they passed through the town crawling about it's dreary daily business. The difference was that Elana had slept and eaten and when they piled into Sabian's van for the drive out to the farm James just assumed it was a continuation of yesterday, the same spirit in a slightly frayed vessel. It was the equinox, or the solstice, one or the other, and Elana had been invited to partake in the celebration's and ritual's connected to it by a woman James had seen around who was, in the druid game, quite a big cheese. Elana had ambition's herself in this arena and this was an important day for her. When they arrived they made their way up to the house, a rambling wooden affair imbued with a rustic grace, a welcome stop for the weary traveller. Tressles of food where layed out on the back veranda that snuggled openly with the re vegatated bush land around it. A collection of people James had not seen before stood and sat about eating and drinking and chatting with a calm warmth amougnst themselves. They where greeted in kind and Elana touched and talked to some of them with an embered reverence. Sabian was known to them also and chatted amiably as he played with the various dog's also at the gathering .James had the bottle by the throat and took warm sip's, the cheap champagne now flat and aluminium tasting. When it was time the procession weaved it's way toward's the stone circle through the paddocks beyond the bush. A man led the walk banging a drum, he was a large man. James turned to Sabian and mused loudly on the anomaly as he percieved it, Look at that fat cunt, he said, how fuckin' in tune with the earth spirit's is he!? How can you be " in touch", he did the quote unquote's with a throw away flick, and still be the size of a fuckin' house! Sabian shook his head and told him to keep his voice down. When they got to the circle they took their places in and around the blue grey slate. The woman James had seen around handed ot photo copied sheet's of paper to those closest to the stone. James remained outside all of this, the woman invited him into the circle but he said no thank's I'd rather watch and shunkered down into a collapsed lotus on the grass, the bottle sticking out of his lap like a spent erection. During the

ceremony James felt his body beginning to mutiny, the fatigue hot and humming behind his eyes and ears, his stomach cirdled and his very self hanging like a sack on a fence somewhere, a sort of inner lightness with a vague panic tossing through it like a rubbish bag in the wind. His eyes had been scoured and registered the white glow dissolved into the grey black belly of the cloud's as a pulsing menace that pressed down, he felt nailed to the spot and stranded. Photo copies he thought, yeah, really spiritual. Back at the house he sat on a log leaning against the wall talking to Elana and the woman. The plan had been to discuss the upcoming feast and James's part in it, to cost the food and organise the catering for the week long rites. He liked the idea of it at the petrol station, anything would have sounded good then because then was good and everything else was later. Now he was'nt so sure and Elana and the woman even less so. The cynicism and abstract aggression he bristled where as obvious as if he where wearing a coat of flourescent ekidna skin. They threw pebbles into the stagnant pond of the idea out of politness and James was relieved when she said Well we'll get back to you and walked off. James numbed arse slipped off the log and he dropped to the shelf of the ground spiling the home made wine down his shirt.When they got back to the house Elana slammed the door to the van as she got out and went inside. She did'nt talk to him for a week. I believe experience speak's louder than word's, or , as in this case, references. I've not held a " head " chef's position previously basically because I have'nt wanted to. But I now feel excited and prepared for the prospect and look forward to the opportunity for us both to reap the reward's. I enjoy my work and desire to work with those who feel likewise. I look forward to hearing from you, Look good, feel good, taste good, Cheer's ! James sat on the bench next to the silo's. It was a favoured sitting spot, a dark safe groove in the track overhung by an olive tree tumbling out of the back of the caravan park. He liked spot's like this, ghosty respites snuggled in the darkness, invisable places surrounded by loose wire and distant light's. A floating canyon of a grain ship to his right, red and gold light slip dancing on the harbour. He had that feeling again, to stare at the recently familiar and drink it in, to absorb it into him through his eyes, to feel he had been there. To register the place and the feeling of being in it into the dishevelled catalogue. Crystal snatches all crushed together and sprayed into the space between the star's. He put the Tequila bottle to his lip's and his jaw tightened as he swallowed the hot ashy liquid, he talked to Niamh,the open ended meaningless sound of his own voice spinning gold in the air. He imagined her on his bed when he came home from work, the prodical scene, the sweet agony of forgiveness. They sat and drank and looked at the light's on the harbour. He felt unusually chipper that morning. He rose and glided out of his hangover into the light summer shirt of the day. Springy confidence in his feet on the way to work, trees rustling happily in a good feeling breeze. When he got to work he just turned into a joke factory, one liner's and throw back's plucked from a fruit heavy vine, Moose Ball's in smiling sword play the whole way. Service was easy and the clean up nothing and he left the kitchen with a song on his lip's, seeya' tonight! Back at the house he went inside and sat at the kitchen table. No one else was home and it felt still and quiet. A sunday paper was open and an iced coffee container beside it. James got up and grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat back down and cracked it open and looked at the paper, it was open to an ad. for a furniture sale. He looked out the window. A weathered stone wall with a rain pipe hanging down from the roof, the tendril of a vine curled around it. It could have been a painting, a simple glowing thing. It felt like the energy of a traincrash ebbing from an egg inside him, the thunderous groan of rolling stock splitting and twisting, he started shaking in the chair, it felt like he was falling through the air. He stood up and waves of panic, thick and heart smothering, pressed against his ribcage from within, his body pressing to escape itself. The kitchen floated around him in throbbing air. He picked up the phone, Moose Ball's answered. He told him he would'nt be coming into work that night. He thought his voice sounded normal enough, Moose Ball's said no worries, take it easy. He woke up in the public toilet's on the foreshore, he knew where he was when he recognised the

urinal. Light grey light visable through the slat between the wall and the roof. Had he been talking to Dave at the Pier or did he just dream it? He went over to the pub and Dave was there, polishing glasses and watching the footy on T.V. When he saw James He smiled and shook his head and pointed to the door. James went to say something and the word's slid around his mouth in an incomprehensible oil. Dave said he did'nt want to hear it mate, he reckoned he should go home. He got a taxi and went through the bottlo. and got a bottle of scotch and went home. There was already a bottle of scotch three quarter's empty in the shed he did'nt recall and the crisp letterheaded letter on the spew splashed floor. Merridy was waiting at the cafe with Klee, convincing him that seagull's don't like coffee when James ambled around the corner. Look at you, she said kissing him, shaved and freshly sunglassed. He ordered a tuna sandwich and a milk shake. Merridy was going to drive him to the airport stopping off at Elana and Sabian's on the way to pick up his stuff. Oh before I forget she said reaching into her bag, this is for you. He opened the tissue paper and looked at the little silver penguin. It's from Mia and Imogen she said.He smiled and showed it to Klee, the boy took from his hand's, considered it's weight and shape and then offered it to the seagull's. Bianca offered him a tissue. A kasmir top and a string of pearl's and Dior scented. They where sitting at one of the tables in the bistro near the window, car's and bird's and swaying trees and sea and sky seen from the air conditioned Kenny G. He'd had to come in to get his his last pay and get his knives. She was attractive in a prim sort of way and looked at him with owlish wonder as he walked through the door's up to reception. He was'nt expecting to see her, she stepped from behind the desk and grabbed his wrist and whisked him to where they where now sitting. Sharon asked if they wanted anything and Bianca asked for a diet coke and James ordred a beer with a vodka spike in it. James what's going on? She was breathily curious. She'd heard about the phone call, and the one after that. He'd rang reception a few day's later to tell them that he would'nt be back for awhile and his head chef happened to be nearby and took the phone and asked him what the hell was going on and he burst into tear's and said he fucking hated it here and he had to leave. Bianca was genuinely concerned for his welfare, The Lincoln have'nt offered you a job have they she half joked. James was'nt prepared for her gentleness, he felt a mutant nostalgia start to well, this strange fucker little fishing town he'd tried to fit into, Niamh swooping in to share the colour's with him, standing ragged with her at the crossroad's, lost in the purple dawn, laughing with a bottle between them, goat's in a yard and the sound of rolling stock in the distance as they dirfted where ever home was that day. And the clown backed truck at the intersection after the carnival, a giant ugly head with a missing tooth sitting slugged at the light's waiting to turn on a steel grey morning,ha! he thought looking at it from the bar, the Icon I was looking for, this is what she left me with. Easter thursday at the table,speed trickling down the back of the throat and an idea of a thought about the idea of distance, an inner geography, of land's divided by a chasm of something more than time,buzzing up the wall's aflame and spinning around the feeling of someone suspended and dying, out into the garden, feet kicking the gravel and looking up at the star's and wondering if it was the same breeze, and in wonder of the distance, in wonder of the ability to even try and concieve of it, sticking a flag in the ground, polar exploration, I am in the opposite cup of the scale, I am as far away as it is possible to be. He stumbled back into the house and took a polaroid and mailed it to Erin. Greeting's from as far away as it is possible to be. And now the cottony cloud's and the sappy pine and Bianca's motherly gaze, smooth rock's in the river on which to rest. He did'nt want to tell her he'd just applied for another job and got it, mainly because it was'nt that simple. That was the pin prick that released the shit storm, the torch light that stirred the bug's. He leant back and took off his sunglasses to rub his eye's, as soon as he started to speak the constiction's began. I've got to go home, he said, I've got to go home and sort some stuff out. James put the in flight magazine in his day pack, a spicy limey duck thing in it he'd put on the new menu. He'd pretend it was his creation, they'd never know. Erin did'nt have a car anymore so he'd ordered a taxi the night before. She got home from work with her key's in her hand as she came

around the corner and swore with fright when she saw him sitting on his backpack in the backyard drinking a beer. They ordered a pizza and got some red wine and Erin put on the cocteau Twin's tape he'd made her for Europe. She could'nt listen to it for a long time when she got back, she reckoned she could smell him in the room, but now that he actually was it was o.k. She liked Niamh, or thought she might anyway, she could'nt really remember alot of that night to be honest. What did we talk about? None of your fucking business! but yes I believe you where mentioned if that's what your wondering, which I know you are, and that's all your likely to be interested in more's the point, sooo, she relished the sip, sorry, can't help you much I'm afraid. What are you doing James? the glass swaying in her hand, What are you doing? Their sex smelt of sweat and cigarette's . The cabin pressure increased as the plane began it's descent, through the porthole James could see silver squares dotted on flat red earth as he was slowly spiralled down toward the gold fields. They arrived at the airport not late but not with enough time to hang around. James got his backpack out of the back of the car and kissed Merridy, at the cafe she had thanked him for letting her hear herself talk like an adult again, for showing her a part of herself she'd forgotten how to use. Her kind word's made him feel failed and misshapen, but he took what he could with the best part he had left. She asked him to look after himself and he said he'd try and opened the backdoor to kiss Klee. Walking away from the car Merridy called him back, Quickly James, Klee want's to say something. He walked back and Merridy had opened the backdoor and the boy had carefully climbed out and was standing in it's shadow. James stood before him and the boy looked up at him with a stern concentration. Goodbye he said and then let his mother help him back into the car.