Jeanette was standing on the grass, her face screwed into its usual greeting: a guilty smile flecked

with affection. The oval stretched around her, some soccer players steaming in the crisp morning air, a sound of whistles and yelling as Ingrid and James drew near. Bet you can't remember when you were up this early, she slurred as she kissed them, her nose a soft cold button briefly against their necks, her freckles still asleep. They watched the sportsmen, horses cut in half chasing after a runaway testicle, a toot and it all stopped. Ok, Jeanette said, let's go to the gym. She had a pipe cleaner was twisted around her thumb. She flicked the end of it between her thumbnail and her finger like an empty lighter as they walked. She laughed again about them all being up so early. The gym floor was covered with butchers paper; she pointed to the back left hand corner and said: I think well start there. They set to work. Jeanette and Ingrid threaded needles and picked at the squares of raw silk. A ball of knotted elastic, about the size of a turkey, lay near Jamess foot. He sat and began picking at it. With each strand he removed the tighter the guts of the lump became. It became harder to remove the matter from itself; with sufficient force the pre-tied knots undid themselves only to become entangled somewhere else. By coffee break ten separate strandslike the knotted bloodless throats of ten birdslay on the paper floor. Stepping over them Jeanettes long brown skirt made the butchers paper rise and sigh. She looped arms with them as they we headed towards the refectory. Christina and Louise should be here soon, She assured. They watched a duck shit and waddle off through the tall windows. Jeanette did her happy person eating a pickle smile as Ingrid gathered all the uneaten onto one plate to pass around. C'mon, she gestured laughing at her own actions, My mum's a Berliner, they starved you know! It was a game to see how many chickens young Ingrid could gnaw through at Schutzenfest. Her mother and uncles and aunties would revel in her greasy enterprise. Memories of shrunken stomachs and light-headedness defeated again with each crunch of bone in her strong young teeth. They smoked and played with their empty coffee cups and went back to work. One of the other students was playing Sonic Youth Ghetto blaster. She had purple dreadlocks and was painting circles on the wall. Ingrid and Jeanette continued to sew the edges of the silk squares. James rolled the elastic bundle onto its back and picked at its belly. Carefully placing the liberated giblets aside. The purpose of all this was Jeanettes final art school project: The egg house. Five hundred eggs, each in their own little silk harness, hanging in the shape of a house from the elastic. The whole thing was to be suspended from a wooden frame that her boyfriend Patrick was building at his place. The exhibition was in six days. Christina and Louise dropped their old bikes at the end of the footbridge onto the campus over the river. Christina looked up into the refectory windows to see if they were there. Louise, before her pink rusty two-wheeler crashed onto Christina's, removed from the wire basket a copy of Cities of the Red Night to lend to James and some flowers shed picked on the way. They made their way along the new footpath past the Student Union building towards the gym. The sportsmen were on their elbows looking at their knees as the coach walked around them yelling and shaking his fists.

I'm on your side. That was the saying if you wanted a beer and someone else was getting one. James was standing on the roof of the shed holding the rope when a can flew into the air. It tumbled like an Olympic diver between the sky and the orange tree sleeping it's weight across the tin, then landed with a fit of indecision before settling into a corrugated groove and sliding down to the gutter, it saluting erect for a second before falling over the edge and fizzing open on the concrete he couldnt see below. Sorry mate.

He heard Pat on the ladder and felt the weight move and then disappear. Can I get down now? James asked. Hang on a sec. There was a creak of wood and a grunt of effort. OK. James crabbed over the pinnacle to the orange tree side and stretched his foot out until his toe rasped against the top of the fence. Pat was sucking hard on a Windfield Blue and looking narrow eyed at the wood balanced between the ladders. I can't see how this is going to fucking work! It looked strangely impressive in the late afternoon rotting fruit stillness of the big backyard. Lacy swarms of insects over clumps of un-mowed grass, and in the orange green film cast by the high fences and oil stains and car parts stacked by the outside toilet and dripping air conditioner poking out the window the skeleton suspended in the carport, the inner lines obscured by the shadow of the time, the black corners embraced in late lit tin and concrete seemed to breathe a separation from time and place. Mystery in a sticky atmosphere: the ribs of a ship. I'm still on your side. James reminded him. Pat stared at the structure gathering shadows. His eyes patrolling the gold and silver residue of light caught on the bolts and screws. The can sat slit and bubbles slid from the lip like frogs reluctantly parachuting. Oh right! James followed him into the house and took a beer from the fridge as Pat changed the CD. Have you heard this yet? He yelled from the other room through the rumble and tear. I don't think so, James yelled back, looking at the photos and postcards stuck to the fridge. Jeanette contorted with laughter, Rick stoned, playing guitar with a cigarette the wrong way round in his mouth. G'days from Tim in Russia, Big Dave in Japan. Pat sat at the kitchen table flicking through a Trading Post. Two Valliants lay around his shed in various stages of assemblage and he was looking for a fourth. The third one he actually drove. The fourth was to fix the second one which was his favourite so then he could sell the first and third. This was the present plan. James suspected that if he ever ended up with the vehicle he wanted at the time he wanted it he'd wander the streets lost and naked. Look at this, Pat was pointing to a small black and white picture, a hieroglyph of stats printed below. Fuck, he said shaking his head, a catch slipping from his fingers, price on this occasion. But there were endless technical dead ends on others to ensure his horse was watered enough to kick it back onto the trail. He chewed the side of this thumb looking over the information like a scientist. A rustle of shopping bags landed on the table, a stick of celery falling loose and resting its leaves in the ashtray. Hey Guys! Ingrid pushed back her hair, a glossy Burgundy run through strong tanned fingers. The cool grass of her perfume released by the action. She shook out the weight of the shopping from her wrists and her hands landed on Pat's shoulders. Pat closed the door of his car-splicing lab to meet her lips as she bowed over him. Chicken was on special! Hurrah! James cried, Pat, not called Water Bird Legs for nothing, jumped up and did a Mr Bojangles knee wobble. Ingrid laughed and began chopping onions. Jeanette wandered in from the corridor unscrewing her dope tin. She squeezed Pat between the legs of his black jeans as he took two cans from the fridge, and gave James one with a playful kiss. Jeanette sat on the table packing a small brass bong nudging Ingrid's behind with her foot as Ingrid fluffed the rice, her cold beaded chardonnay aside for the moment as she held and dug. As the meal was measured out so was opinion on Christina's frisson with Damian. Ingrid sucked some sauce from her finger as she sat down, establishing also a base camp for those against.

Pat, standing slightly and leaning over to ladle some more, creased his brow and disagreed, and resting back in his seat had established another camp on the other side of the laminate field in favour. Were all friends, what the fuck does it matter?

Exhibition on the St. Martin's wing, University of Adelaide: Heads sinking with the sun. Champagne a gripped buoy on the table as they spoke underneath in the company of each others knees. Funny when Simon landed on the spikes surrounding the garden, the point varnished in the lamplight sticking through the top of his boot. The same cheeky monkeys spilling out onto the pavement spilling wine outside Sym Choons. Hush like entering a church to slide up the staircase around Louises halogen lit stick insect mural. Wave up and down to each other jammed around its still cascade. Louise drew two flowers from her bag and placed them in Damians eyebrow rings. He snuffled into her breast like a baby bullock. The runway of the main drag and the low grey sky broken just by trees at the end and private firestorms distracted by the din inside. Firewood crackling as the weather changed, ankles gluey, bones clicking like needles stuck on a record. The swoop and stop thud of a band in a beer garden. Jeanette, to hide her earrings, dropped them in her pint. Christina found and downed the amber safe, jiggling the chains in her teeth. Louise set on her coat with a crayon, and Damian, not to be outdone, thrust his donkey into the glass. Christ thats horrible! Louise shrieked, It looks like something in a medical museum! NOTES FROM THE FRONTBAR, AUSTRAL HOTEL, 3.00AM, 28/4/95. Kicked into the shadows. It is interesting how reverb occurs in a mighty hall and also a toilet cubicle. Voices bounce back onto themselves and the reverence is the same. Relief occurs with the resonance. This town is full of babies. Their faces are quite beautiful. Less than ten years on they are as perplexingly alien. New painted belly parade. This is Rundle street now. The Austral is a machine of haircuts and shirts. The Exceter is a bastion for old dark hearts. The patrons invade each other. Dragged in and out of the sea by a laugh or the crash of a drum machine. Pia was leaning back with her eyes closed, her face up towards the sun."God I love the sun", she drawled. She remained in solar rapture for a few moments and then leant back on the table, her face resting in her knuckles and staring at Damian. Damian stared back into her sunglasses. "Can I ask you a question," she smiled. "Of course you can." "Do you find me sexually attractive?" Damian placed his beer on the table and leant back folding his arms. He looked at her as one would a painting or a sculpture. She took her sunglasses off and folded her arms on the table. Damian had seen her without her sunglasses on when he sat at the table three hours earlier, shed only put them on a few minutes previously and he found her little act a little pathetic, besides, he could have answered the question the moment it was asked and was annoyed at himself for leaning back in the first place, pretending to think about it. "No, not at all, I mean, not not at all, but no, as in uumm..." Pia started laughing. "Oh shit, no I dont, I think youre an interesting person. Damian was laughing as well now, ".but I dont find you sexually attractive." Pia cackled up at the sun and took a big swig of Strongbow White. Damian's satisfaction in having told the truth was slightly bruised, as he didn't really find her that interesting either. Or at least not in the healthy meeting of minds way as he hoped he had suggested. She interested him more as a sociological freak. He felt like he was having a drink with an experiment. She was eighteen, born in Broken hill and had lived in California from the ages of six to sixteen, A south Australian country girl with the voice and manner of an American sitcom star for which she apologised and indulged in with a tidal rhythm throughout the boozy afternoon. Her father was a geologist and the family had followed him around: Syria, MozambiqueMan is that place a shit hole! [She was four]and then California.

Shed been in Adelaide for a week after coming down from Darwin. OK this place, have you been there? Its in-fucking-sane OK! Damian smiled, where are the boys? He heard them before he saw them, Jamess laugh, like an amplified crow, somewhere in the summer heads heading down from Al Frescos. They came into view and Pat was illustrating some story about his own person, his cupped hands bouncing wildly over his thin frame as though he were impersonating a many titted beast. They saw Damian and laughed even harder, James shooting a Whos that? glance into the revelry. Damian just shrugged. Ive got a great idea! Pat leant forward conspiringly after Pia returned with the round she had been coaxed into getting. We get some bloke and tattoo I fuck kids to his top lip. So he has to grow a moustache to cover it up. So now youve got a bloke who doesnt normally have a moustache and now he suddenly has! I dont get it, like, what gives? Pia drawled. Eye play between the three men made it very clear to all parties concerned that Damian was going to pay a hefty fine in jibes at his expense for having the misfortune to be innocently sitting next to someone who uttered such outrageous remarks. What gives, Ill just say that again, what gives yu see. continued Pat, smirking, Is the effect of this upon the bloke. He just rocks up at work with this big fuckin mo out of the blue, theyre all going hey Bob, nice mo, and its horrible! But hes just sorta gotta go yeah thanks. Imagine what his girlfriends gonna say! Umm yes yes, James offered with academic calm. I see your point Patrick, and its superb I dont mind saying. This is right up there with your suggestion that we just call each other by our middle names for a year. See you just didnt give that a chance! Pat shrieked. You guys are crazy, Pia laughed, Damian shook his head. Well I might as well start paying now, he smiled as he stood up, Who wants a drink? Im on your side, James and Pat said in unison. Pia headed to the bar with him to give him a hand. Another psycho, said Pat, when theyd left. I know! grinned James, Hes a fucking freak magnet! Pat and James sat in the thick creamy arms of the balcony, fifties style house, pink dust, a discarded pineapple top now a swaying elephants neck fanning them. A plane glided through the cobalt distance and bristling fronds. Fuck man, Pat said gazing up that's a good name for a band, Palm trees and Aeroplanes! I'm on your side. Louise stuck the needle in a bit of orange peel for safe keeping while she got up to stretch. Walking behind Jeanette she pretended to strangle her. Why didnt you just do that painting you were thinking about! she playfully remonstrated. I know I know, Jeanette said, smiling up tiredly at her and holding her hand, but were nearly there, Inge how many do you reckon weve done? Ingrid poked her head inside, holding back her cigarette, Dont know, three hundred? Oh gawd! Louise groaned, and fell back down next to her needle and picked up a square of silk. James, Pat, and Damian brought the frame over in Pats dads van. They reassembled in on the lawn and discovered, bewilderingly, that in between taking it apart and putting it together again that it had lost a foot and a half in width. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck, Pat muttered as he bit the measuring tape. He looked up at his two accomplices, Just dont say anything, she might not notice. Suspended from the roof in the exhibition space the folded wooden frame reminded James of a flying dinosaur skeleton. Jeanette looked up at it for about three seconds and turned to Pat, Its too small, what have you done with it? Oh you know, only spent three fucking weeks making it! Replied her lover, doing a feasible impression of being shocked and insulted.

Anyway itll have to do, Ill just have to trim some of the elastics. Jeanette stepped away into a fog of concentration, then snapped back and kissed the carpenter. Thanks baby. Placing the eggs was a nerve-wracking affair, besides not having many spare they were so old nowshe bought them cheap out of datethat they were also fragile bombs of stink. Christina broke the first, she didnt even drop itit cracked in her hand. A smell like shit and grey fluid running through her fingers. By the end everyone had shitty smelling hands, but all agreed that there was something oddly magnificent about what Jeanette had done. It rose from the centre of the room like a giant ghostly doll house, the bottom row of eggs a foot off the floor. A simple V roof and walls with a door way and window. A simple and beautiful mystery. Ingrid had bought a camera and they took turns being photographed inside. Two weeks later Jeanettes Mother died.

Damian, James, and Louises brother, Oliver, sat in Botanic Park drinking stubbies. The funeral had brought a lot of the extended gang together and on their best behaviour, even though Louise commented on James stinking of wine from the night before. A hushing usher entered those who entered the chapel and guided their decorum, a restraint button pushed inside the glass breakers and gate crashers: a grace intuitively gelling. It was during the service that James first looked at Christina in a wholly carnal light. Hed always suspected that she had a good body under the welding apprentice layers she usually wore, and the flashes he saw in summer he didnt connect to a person, as her manic social gymnastics obscured any such path. Christina had an arm around Louise and James kept stealing looks at the curve play of her bicep and shoulder through the sheer black material. Mourning stilled her, and allowed a sensuality to be unconsciously present amongst the bereaved like a dancer waiting in the wings. The sky was hung over, grumpy broken clouds sat low around the Morton bay figs and a fluctuating thermometer wind kicked at the grounded leaves. A small dog tore towards a bird in the distance. It's owner some way off in a tapering scarf and a beanie. The men finished their beers headed off to join the others at a little Italian place called Lucias.