Dear Katherine, Im on my way!

Funny really because Im sending you this post card from Katherine Gorge, surrounded by that new icon of the Aussie outback: The bronzed, blonde, European backpacker. The tourist centre here is like a health spa in Stockholm! Excellent to hear well be in town at the same time. Give me a ring at Brigittes new place if you need to cause thats where Ill be staying. [Dont ring for a few days after you get this though because she doesnt know it yet.] See you soon! Lots of love, Finley xxx

One
Adelaide had just won the grand final. Faces swathed in ribbon and war paint charged close and screamed, people were punching the air and hugging strangers. Singing staggering gangs were stopping cars, letting off fire hydrants, blasting horns. Jackson and I angled gingerly through the hysteria. People were dancing on the store tops all along Rundle Street, and the sidewalks were thick with similar abandon. I could feel the duress gathering quietly in Jacksons bulk, and it was as though I was leading a bull through a giant double-decker bus of idiocy. Its not normally like this, I muttered, angrily apologising for my hometown. Id wanted to take him to the Austral for a beer, but now you could barely see it through the sheer weight of flesh back slapping itself on the pavement outside. My stomach tightened as we passed the venerable drinking hole, thick sweet slabs of body heat slapping my anxiety stiffer as we pressed on through the wall of sweaty shirts and glazed faces. Blood gathered in a heated crowd at the borders of my body, ready for action, anything. God knows who could step out of this lot to surprise me.

The traffic outside Hungry Jacks had ground into a half-shuffled deck, and the drivers not jumping around on the road were bouncing on the bonnets. Its not normally like this, I said again. For once I actually wanted the city to be as quiet as I remembered it being, dappled sidewalks blown over by a spectral breeze. I was glad that I was meeting Brigitte at a little pub opposite the Central Market, away from the epicentre of this dunce frivolity. She looked up, and her eyes flickered just that little bit more open. I was bare foot and filthy, like Id been sleeping with a bear. We hugged and sat down and she told me not to let the barman see that I wasnt wearing any shoes. Jackson waited in the other bar, he said he'd stay there a bit, and if Brigitte wouldnt put me up for the night we could get a motel. Youve got to meet this guy Ive been on the road with, I commanded, practically dragging Brigitte off her stool and around to where Jackson was sitting. I introduced them and ordered a round of Jacksons. He talked me out of it though, reminding me that they tasted like shit, so I just got beer. Jackson was charming and polite and let me do most of the talking, which at first was just a molten river of words. One lung! I spluttered, Ive done one lung of the fucking country! Brigitte laughed and told me to calm down, her hand gently against me as I sprang up from my stool to illustrate some point, to throw it high and far into some imaginary hoop of understanding. Whats that? she said, looking closer at my shirt, is that vomit? Could be. Hey I gotta tell you about She looked sympathetically at Jackson and asked him how hed put up with me. He shrugged rolling a cigarette, and reckoned I wasnt that bad. I was getting more and more excited, trying to squeeze everything out at once through a too small funnel for Brigitte to see. I was tracing

something out on the bar towel, where we were parked in relation to the truck the night Jacksons plan went awry, when I caught a watery eyed old man in the other bar looking at me. Got a problem mate? Just calm down Fin, Brigitte said, youre yelling like a maniac. The old man let his gaze linger a few seconds longer, then locked back into the default position of single front bar regulars, leaning on his elbows with his head pressed into his neck, staring at the spirits lined on up the shelves in front of him, and his gaze leaving also took with it the momentarily berserk desire I had to go over and smash his soft maudlin face in. Hes off his head, Jackson said, meaning me. We didnt even stop there, meaning the roadhouse we most definitely did stop at. And thank God fate had stepped in and stopped me breaking Jacksons golden rule: Never tell people where youre going, and never tell them where youve been. At some point I must have asked Brigitte if I could stay at her place, and she must have said yes because Jackson got up to leave. Hes all yours, he chuckled, handing me over like a tame monkey no longer needed by a circus, but still needing to be looked after by someone. Take it easy Eddie, he said, pulling up his tracksuit bottoms as he waddled out. Jackson always called me Eddie. That, I said to Brigitte standing up again, is the most amazing person Ive ever met. Sit down, she laughed, her hand on my arm. Brigitte had beautiful hands. It was dark when we got outside. And walking back to her place I wanted to tell her that I was scared, that I was going mad and needed to see a mental health specialist. I wanted to tell her that I was in the grip of something that made me fear for my own safety, but instead suggested that we get a pizza and a bottle of red wine.

No need, she said, I got food and wine at home. Shed moved into a co-op, and we walked down the narrow communal garden from which fish-like wood and welded birds and other sculptured wild things sprang. Her unit was at the end on the left, and her door opened to the peppery calm smell of cooked lentils. I recognised the sofa and some of the books, but not the bookcase. And it was strange to see my things again, scattered here and there among new surrounds. My stereo was sitting on an unfamiliar box, big and oriental looking. I sold your suits, she said, searching for a corkscrew. They wouldnt fit me now anyway. She went out the back to collect the wine from the garden, thats where she kept it, cooling in the ferns. I watched her as she uncorked the homemade cabernet, hungry for the line of muscle running up her calf. So, she said, claiming the sofa as I relegated myself to the floor, Did you find what you were looking for? When I had said nothing for long enough she smiled. Anyway its good to see you. Its good to see you too, I said, cheers. I looked around her unit, at the jars of grain in the kitchen, at the bergamot and lemongrass growing against the living room glass. I went to that little caf, she said, after I left you at the bus station, and cried for about three hours. At the soft ochre rug slung over the sofa, at the paint tubes curled on newspaper around a stretched canvas leaning against a pile of books on the table. Cairns Street stank after you left, feet and cigarettes. I hated it. Oh wow youve got Garlands on CD!

I leant over and pulled it from the spill, held it close and at an angle that allowed me to read the tiny writing on the back without reflection getting in the way. I was working night shift and had to come to that place by myself, it seemed like forever. I gave you a year Fin. If youd come back within a yearyou still owe me four hundred dollars, you knew that didnt you? Yeahhey can I borrow this? I took a big slurp of the unusual red and stretched out on the floor while Brigitte got up to get something to she wanted to show me. I met him at that party I told you about, she said, handing me a photo, her with her arms around an outdoor sort, all curls and deep creases, her head leaning on his shoulder, he makes me laugh." Im not surprised, I said handing it back. Hes very kind to me Finley. She opened another bottle, and had enough by now to decide that we could smoke inside, laughing that Graeme would have a heart attack if he could see her now. Whose Graeme? She looked at me like Id forgotten her name. Oh right, the Viking. So where did you meet him? I asked lighting her cigarette. I just told you, at Jemmas party. Oh yeah, was it good? No but You know me and Jackson were in this pub and there was a crocodile asleep by the duke box! A fucking crocodile! We were sitting in a bar somewhere in the middle of the country. It's not on the map. Jackson liked places that arent on the map. Jackson had been off the beaten track long enough to Find tracks off of that. Besides the crocodile, and us, the only other living thing there was the young guy who ran the place.

The last owner had gone mad and taken to serving what few customers came by with a loaded rifle in his hand and demanding they name their favourite singer before giving them a beer. The young guy was working in the kitchen and had been left in charge until some one else arrived, but they didnt tell him when. He was smooth brown with a downy moustache and a greasy cowlick hanging over a forehead festoon with white heads. This is where I invented The Jackson: the yummy sounding but awful tasting concoction of Rum and pineapple juice. We drank them anyway to celebrate a new inauguration into the cocktail world. I told Jackson I was going to go to a fancy hotel when I got home and order a Jackson, and when the bar person said what's that? Id go: My god! You've never had a Jackson? Id dictate the mix and the bar person would go, Thanks mate that's fantastic. Id probably get it for free. The guy who ran the place now reckoned we should have got there last week because three female Swedes had been staying there. They got lost and decided to stay because he was such a nice fella and he fucked two of them Not at the same time, mind you they wouldnt have minded I don't reckon, and was getting pretty friendly with the third one but they had to move on. But I reckon it would have been good if you blokes were here 'cause you could have helped me out! The crocodile was lying up near the duke box, it looked dead but the guy assured me it wasnt, it was just resting. Go and give it a poke then you'll find out. I took some change from the bar and went over. Is some music going to bother it? I asked, and the guy didnt reckon so. And now a new dilemma: what music did I play in front of Jackson? It was an important and puzzling question. I suddenly felt very much out of my depth and acutely eager to please.

I scanned the selection, my own choices jumping out but the magical balm proving elusive. I programmed my own and then quickly told Jackson I'd left a couple of selections for him if he felt like it. Deborah Harrys voice surfed in on waves of guitars and drums tumbling over the sleepy crocodile. Union City Blue: It was one of Christina's favourites and I played it for the memory and the incongruent cinema of it. Jackson waddled over and tapped the machine. It wasnt and old song and it wasnt a new song, but it was surprising. It was tender and sad and Jackson softly whistled along. Eventually Christina started yawning and said goodnight, leaving me to hunker down in front of the stereo with the rest of the wine and listen to CDs. The volume creeping up until she called out for me to turn it down again. I slept wrapped up in the rug on the sofa, and was awake in time to hear someone singing and a key scratching at the door. Brigitte cantered down the stairs and greeted the man Id seen in the photograph with a kiss. Fin this is Graeme. Gday mate, he chimed, Youve been over in WA I hear. Yeah. Its beaut isnt it? Yeah its OK. I got a mate who works on a diamond mine over there, he said as he straddled a chair, and when I didnt reply, pretended that I had. Yeah he reckons its pretty good. Brigitte made coffee, and Graeme seemed content to just sit there and exude an obscene sense of ease. I knew his face far too well after only a minute or so as he refused not to be interested in me, and his sun loving creases and curls etched too quickly into the familiar while I mumbled around his relentless questions.

Who so you know there? What where you doing there? Why did you come back? Oh you know, I said, leaning out the backdoor to light a cigarette, Brigittes still got some of the videos we made. She handed me a coffee, raising her eyebrows. Graeme laughed like his head was about to fall off. Videos! Yeah! I got a mate who did that once. Is that your mate in WA? Or have you got more than the one? Dont start, Brigitte said under her breath. So you dont live here mate? I asked casually. Um, he looked to Brigitte to help remove the stupid grin that held his features to ransom. Graeme stays here two or three night a week, she said. Yeah, he said, reanimated, You should come to yoga with us sometime. Brigitte let out a single shrill note, and followed it by telling Graeme that I was, more or less, a chemical processing plant. If he did anything healthy it could kill him, she smirked. Hey whatever rattles your chain mate, Graeme added helpfully. Speaking of which I need just use your bathroom, I said, thankful to have a reason to exit. Yup you know where it is, Brigitte said, yelling have a shower if you want Fin! as I headed up the stairs. Graemes shaving foam sat on a glass shelf above Brigittes oils and facial scrub. I picked it up and read the label: Scent free for extra sensitive skin. I undid my fly and bend over the bowl a little, holding the can by the rim at the bottom. When the piss started I adjusted the angle to keep splashing to a minimum, and rotated the can so that it would be well and truly coated. Finley were just going to the market, Brigitte called from downstairs.

No worries. I called back, watching the jaundiced flow run down the aluminium and over the nozzle. It was the first piss of the day, and good strong stuff. Youre welcome to stay for breakfast when we get back. She called again. Thanks I reckon I will. OK mate see ya later! blared Graeme. Yup See ya! I said, replacing the can where Id found it, shiny clean and dripping. Downstairs there was a bit of coffee left so I spilled it into a cup and sat on the sofa and thought about Graeme going down on her from behind, listening to my CDs. It seemed important now to find the 1982 Moscow Olympics mug that I used to make her tea in, used to bring to her in bed, and make her spill when I made her laugh. I went through the cupboard but it was AWOL. Then I saw it, on the table, obscured by the books until I was looking from the other side, paint smeared with brushes poking out of it.

It had rained during the night. The sky looked broken up and dirty and seemed keen on preserving the torpid atmosphere it had helped create, dark ovals on the pavement that werent quite puddles anymore, and an almost hothouse air that brought out the dormant stink in my clothes. Clara leant back with her eyes closed during one of the fleeting bursts of sunshine that managed to break through. "God I love the sun," she drawled. She remained in solar rapture for a few moments and then leaned on the table, her face resting in her knuckles and staring at me through her sunglasses. "Can I ask you a question amigo," she smiled. Sure. "Do you find me sexually attractive?" I placed my beer on the table and leant back folding my arms while she

took her sunglasses off. Id already seen her without them, shed been taking them on and off since I sat down, and not only did I find this act of hers a little pathetic, but I could have answered the question the moment it was asked, and was annoyed at myself for leaning back and pretending to think about it in the first place. "No, not at all. She started laughing. "I think youre an interesting person, I was laughing as well now, "but I dont find you sexually attractive." She cackled and took a big swig of her cider. Hey thats sweet, you dont ask you dont get, am I right? Huh? Am I right? My satisfaction in having told the truth was slightly bruised however, as I didn't really find her that interesting either. Or at least not in the healthy meeting of minds way I had hoped to suggest, but more as a sociological freak. I felt like I was a scientist having a drink with an experiment. Id left Brigittes place before her and fuck-wit got back. Hungry as I was the idea of staying and seeing him eat was just too much for me to bear. I didnt want to run into them, so I avoided the market and headed down Grote Street in search of a bacon and egg sandwich. The weirdness I was now with was sitting by herself outside one of the early openers, a couple of empty ciders next to her full one. Hey you there! Shed called out, Do I know you? She was staying at the pub where Id met Brigitte. It was just behind the bus station and advertised Backpacker Rates. Oh yeah, she remembered, You were there with a chick and some fat old guy. Jackson, I said his names Jackson. Right, well pull up a chair amigo! Drinks on me. If Id ever bothered to chart my irritations, Im pretty sure that people

who say amigo who be somewhere near the top. In this case however the drinks on me part countered it. Besides, I had nothing better to do at quarter past nine in the morning. Clara was eighteen, she told me. I was born in Broken Hill see, but I lived in California from when I was six A South Australian country girl with the voice and manner of an American sitcom star, for which she apologised and indulged in a tidal rhythm throughout what looked like was going to turn into a boozy afternoon. Her father was a geologist she said, and the family had followed him around: Syria, Mozambique Man is that place a shit hole! and then Santa-Cruz. Shed been in Adelaide for a week after coming down from Darwin. OK this place, have you been there? Its in-fucking-sane OK! I said Id have to take her word for it, but we did compare notes on Alice Springs. So, what are you doing in the city of churches amigo? I swallowed the ire her way of putting things inspired in me with a mouthful of the beer she was paying for. I came back to save my marriage, I laughed. Wow! Im joking. I smiled. , what are you doing here? Ah Jeez she said, followed by much dramatic hair tossing you know what its like up there, its goddamn crazy! Places cant be crazy, I said, playing devils advocate out of boredom more than anything, only people. Whatevrr, she dismissed crossing her arms, and for that moment I hated her enough to want to upend the table. Hey whats your earliest memory amigo? She said suddenly, her sunglasses off and her manic machinations stilled long enough for me to notice for the first time the clear blue of her eyes.

Cmon, she whined, This is fun! Whats yours? Oh thats easy, she said, flying back against her chair, My dads dong! Really? Yeah, he was getting out the shower, looked like a Goddamn mule! My official, tagged and weighed, earliest memory is of seeing a rat. I was in nappies at the time, but I could still see that rat. Mum and dad were sobbing on the stairs and I was pushing past them with my teddy bear and there it was on the wall behind them. So whats yours? Falling out of my high chair, I lied. Clara kept bringing the beers out and the weather cleared. We sat back and watched the fascinating goings on at the tile shop across the road. Its an odd thing when youve been drinking with just one other person for a prolonged amount of time. Their faces change. Features begin to dance about like fire, and take on aspects that you yourself project onto them. And I found myself warming to this squat, Pug like girl called Clara. Her manner too had become endearing, the relentless waves of affectation now striking me as a sort of brave uncertainty. If you drank with Stalin long enough youd end up liking him. Say I could eat a horse! she said, what kinda food do you think they got at this dump? Liver and onions, I guessed, and just saying it made my stomach demand food. Gross! Then I had a brilliant, burning, and beautiful idea. Let me take you somewhere for lunch, I said.

We wavered on to Grenfell Street, heading towards the restaurant I had in mind on Wakefield, but stumbled down an embankment first to claw at each other in car park under the AMP building. Wed started kissing sloppily on the street. Her tongue was thicker and rougher than I would have thought, untrained and too eager, like some robust worm that emerges ravenous from the ground with the first sign of rain. She was breathing hard through her nose and her small hard fingers prodded my face and pulled at the elastic waist of my cargo pants. She backed against a car and jammed my hands between her legs, kind of slapped it there and held it in place, issuing a sort of deep animal noise as though I was actually doing something. I played along, and as I pulled up her shirt there was the pleasing smell at least of her doughy skin. I engulfed one of her sad puppy-like little breasts. She told me not to bite, and I was surprised how much I was shaking. Oi! A security guard quick stepped towards us, now splayed over the bonnet of the BMW. Fuck off! Clara yelled laughing as we ran, her blood perhaps like mine, spiked with the shame and fury of need. And then we were outside my last employment in Adelaide: The Oak Room. Say this place is kinda fancy amigo, said Clara, actually seeming a little nervous now. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Situated in what was should have been an office space at the bottom of a multi-story car park, The Oak Room was a confused, unstable atmosphere of denial and pretension. Mainly because of Roger: the manager. Besides wanting to pay my regards just for the sheer theatre of it, the food was very good, or at least it was when I worked there. Thinking about liver and onions at the pub earlier reminded me that we used to do a superb chicken liver dish, and I was glad to see it still on the menu in the window. The menu, like the eeriness, was static at The Oak Room.

Cmon, I said pushing Clara in, lets get some champagne. The Oak Rooms main business was business lunches and the menu reflected this. It was austere food, a good steak to match the leather briefcase, glistening with jus on a big white plate. The wine was expensive and the cellar expansive, and paid for with company cards. Trade was spaced and civilised, not the mad throng common to a more casual eatery. When Roger hired me he was running the place by himself, and there was something about him, some anomaly between his manicured visage and the things he said sometimes. It was just a vibration; nothing I could put a finger on, a tightly wound strangeness in him that sporadically quivered to life. Eventually he was joined by Joanne, his ex wife. And there they were, a compact, attractive couple, giving it another go. Joanne was more involved on the floor while Roger concentrated on things in the office. She was an excitable and vivacious woman whose lips moved when I spoke to her, and tripped over her own tongue trying to say three things at once. She hung round the kitchen nibbling bits of carrot playfully plucked from the chopping board. She showed an unusual interest in the staffs personal lives. A run-down of someones weekend was sound-tracked by her squeals of delight, and she would often finish the stories as she transplanted her own younger single days into the mix. Oh yes, shed say, as though shed been in the taxi and the bar and the bedroom with you. Joanne was so keen to be thought of as one of usmeaning the staffthat sometimes she just didnt know when to shut up. Like the time she told me about Ziggy. Roger and her used to run a small bed and breakfast in the Barossa Valley, working and living in a few old cottages with a herb garden and a fish pond. Ziggy was a small terrier, which Roger loved and she despised. Yappy little bastard pinched her nerves she reckoned, as did the sight of

its obscene little frankfurter dick shining in the sun as it sprawled panting in the rosemary. She watched with a disgusted fascination while Roger let it lick his pouting face, its little tongue jabbing in his mouth. It made her skin crawl she reckoned, it was like he was kissing a little person! One morning it was dead and stiff on the grass. Roger told her he'd bury it. A year or so later the new chef came ashen faced to the office, something you should have a look at, her told her. He'd been going through the freezer sorting out stock when he came across Ziggy cling wrapped and concealed behind a caterers sized box of chicken nuggets. Roger had always given me the creeps. Joanne and Roger took long lunches together, helping themselves to leftovers and half-finished bottles of wine at a table up the back after service. They spoke in deep hushed pockets of earnestness, looking into each others eyes from lowered chins, fingers occasionally tapping or tracing points on the tablecloth. Conversation ceased and smiles slipped into being whenever a staff member approached, carefully selected to compliment The Oak Rooms testosterone friendly regime. Young, pert, well-groomed student librarian types, whose hinds could be appreciated as an aperitif by out of shape executives as they walked back towards the kitchen with the orders. Roger nodded at the inquiry while Joanne added concerned colour, a hands-on pampering to prepare for his Imperial verdict. The radio was turned off during service, and I could hear the conversations at the bar, ties were loosened and men huddled in conspiracy against the man they had just eaten with, his character and acumen untied in schoolyard slurs. Sometimes Roger would join a group of refreshed customers when it was clear that business had finished, and they were now just the willing hostages of a fine wine or an ancient whisky.

He would join them and light their cigarettes and introduce his ex wifedropping the ex part though, bad for businesswho, depending on the company, would either be corporate or coquettish. She would listen to the assembled credentials with reverence or revelry, and whichever way, was sure to let the boy's get back to it. Her ex husband carefully let his hair down, always an eye on their droopy eyes to gauge how far to go. He had enough jokes to fill a phone book, hooker jokes, poofter jokes, abo jokes: the lot. He'd never step first, or at least not without the signs clearly marked to do so, he had a feel for it now, always had, he prided himself on being able to read people. Comments about his ex wife's anatomy and requests for staff phone numbers were deftly manoeuvred back into his terrain. He was happiest with the older ones, when he could sit with them in the hunting lodge ambiance the tan walls; dark timber and fireplace suggested when it was quiet. In Rogers mind I imagined, after a few drinks, they were country gents, a gaggle of non-descript aristocracy in a warm smoky den of blood and tweed. He beckoned me over from the Chesterfield. I looked at the slew of paperwork on the low table between us, usually used by the businessmen to nest their pre-lunch Bacardis. I knew what was coming; I was going to be fired. Roger began officially, summing up the heated conversations of the previous few weeks. He mimed moving boxes with his hands as he spoke, getting the problem, shifting its weight, picking it up and putting it down. Is there anything I would like to say at this juncture? I just smiled. Thankyou. Rogers boxes dissolved and he began pointing, You know what your trouble is? he snarled. I raised a hand. Let's not go over all this again. Joanne was sitting next to Roger now, her body comically stiff with occasion. I got up to head back to the kitchen and her hand darted out to

shake mine so quickly that her fingernails bounced on my hipbone. Good luck, she said. That night I went out drinking with Ben and Joe. Ben had also been fired; Joe the waiter was a bit confused as to why he hadnt been fired. Roger reckoned it was all about new blood, fresh ideas. He was a finger snapper-Cmon guys let's go let's go! Articles and recipes were cut out of weekend supplements and left in the kitchen, helpful suggestions; handy hints. Petit fours burned while the notion of respect had been discussed. Fingers pointed, throats were claggy with tension and dry coughing. Overtime disappeared into the ether, wage structure became a map of some lost Island. Salary and slavery are remarkably similar words. Ben was fond of saying, or his other favourite, You don't take your car to a mechanic and then tell him how to do his job. My erstwhile head chef was a stickler for detail, and spent the evening reciting who said what to whom, and when, before unfolding a fresh sheet and beginning again. Joe nodded rhythmically to confirm the facts. I was about as interested in this mantra as I was in my relationship to the stool I sat on in the Stag Hotel. All I knew was that Roger was insane and Ben was pig headed and Id been squeezed out the middle, and glad of it. Ben was younger than me and looked even younger than he was, but spoke as in a way that reminded me of an uncle that I didnt have, like he went straight from being fourteen to forty-four. As Ben got drunker this effect increased. He sat back and ruminated on wider matters triggered by this change of circumstance, his world was set and sure, as were his views on it. It was a conservative stew with liberal leanings, open to experiences, as long as they were kept at arms length. A homeless person would get the same meal as the Prime Minister in Bens restaurant, assuming they could pay for it. His work banter was peppered with graphic homosexual entendre, yet a crimson glow came to his cheeks whenever one of the girls flirted

with him. Ben had an opinion on most issues, and spent most nights watching videos on a big screen TV in his bedroom at his parents. Joe was on the orange juice because he was driving and Ben eventually decided it was time to go. He was starting work in his mates Spanish restaurant on Monday and told me to give him a ring in a week or so and he'd see what he could do. The Stag had shut and I stood swaying on the pavement outside The Oak Room, savouring its interior through the glass, so empty and quiet and familiar, a foul old relative I wouldnt have to visit again. It occurred to me to put a brick or something through the faade. I weighed the risk, not of being caught, but of being caught up with: Police at my door and the blank denial. I circled the building, pissing on the doorhandles and spitting on the windows. I wondered what we must have looked like: Clara and I. Fringe dwellers in town most definitely, but what else? A jackeroo and his kid sister maybe, hopefully, anything except that Id groaned over her tit in a car park. I was not quite the picture of destitution I was the previous day. Not only did I possess shoes, but was wearing them. It is no small thing to wear shoes again when you havent for a long time. It feels very strange. I looked around for my good old buddy Roger, and was disappointed to see that The Oak Room had changed management. Him and Joanne had obviously decided to give it another go somewhere else. Still we were here now, and hungry. An elk like, tall and brownly splendorous young woman glided over and showed us to a table. She joked around, so assured and down to earth that we didnt stick to her. And how I wish we could have just cut through all the mystery of who and why we are and have her say come home with me. We wanna bottle of good bubbly shit, Clara said, over compensating and slurring slightly. Looking to me to bless her micro rebellion.

Just a couple of beers thanks. I didnt feel like champagne now, or sitting there, or anything. The adventure had evaporated, and now I was just sleepy drunk, wasting time and money in a bad place with a fat little runaway. I used to come to places like this with my old man all the time, she said, both of us attacking the breadbasket like piranhas. Have you ever eaten snails amigo? Hello? Earth to gross! So you said your dad was a geologist? Id liked geology at school, there was something seductive about the awesome amounts of time and weight involved, these massive forces locking heads and slow dancing out the shape of the world. Yeah, she nodded, her hard little fingers tearing at a crust, the guy digs rocks, what can I say! But it worked well enough, to think of the savage majesty of the land Id seen and connect Clara too it by a thread, to imagine that what I had loved was also inside her. It would do for a while. The whisper and tinkle quiet of The Oak Room made her sheepish, and away from the side walk, where she could drink and bluster at the top of her lungs to her mad hearts content, I watched her fight then surrender to silence. And its funny, how when given the chance instead of taking it, that the loneliest people often have the least to say. The pub at Fitzroy Crossing is a few kilometres out of the actual town, and as wed driven closer and I saw the crowd I thought at first there must have been an outdoor festival happening. The ground was invisible under a carpet of crushed green beer cartons, over which a mass staggered and shrank amongst the famished looking trees. Jackson had to be wary of not crushing the heads of the unconscious as we pulled up. Faces swam around the windows and hands pulled at us as we got out. Jackson understood all this, but Id staggered spellbound behind him, stepping into a scene of defeat dumbed past bitterness, and indeed

past defeat itself, hung thick and sickly in a jittery sun setting over the river. On the bank young woman and children sat in huddles and the women fed their children from their bodies, and looked from the task to the crowd and back again with eyes that had ceased seeing. In the bar it was empty except for the manager and his wife. The manager leaned on the bar and his wife was drinking on the other side. They had the look people who work in Porno shops sometimes do, a second nature quick smile at the end of the day, surrounded by people being fucked up the arse. It's perfectly legal, those smiles say, it's just a business. Jackson shelled out the money and I carried the beer and the Whiskey back to the car, Jackson walking just that little bit ahead. As we left the crowd dwindled to groups and then single walkers by the side of the road heading towards the town. Some tried to hitch a lift and some just kept moving as best they could. I told you! Its crazy up there! Clara said, passing me the pipe. We were sitting on the grass in Whitmore Square, Bob or Rob or whatever his name was, the guy who had offered us the smoke, was sitting there giggling as well, thinking about, as he put it, all those fuckin boongs off their fuckin tits. I loved going past this magic zoo when I was young. Seeing tribal elders passing the time around a cask like clawless lions, or asleep in the sun with new initiates passed out around them, and a young tattooed Bacchant laid out there, hanging over the gutter with a dope pipe in his hand, his chest scarred as though he had regurgitated fire. The leaves of the Morton Bay Figs would turn gold upon the ground in summer, and a mans hair would be grey upon them, fluffy like a babys as the breeze fluttered through his practice death. All these wonders neatly contained in a rim of hostels and bottle shops and strip pubs and half way houses, a melting spot in the citys symmetrical heart, and all just a short walk from the Central market and restaurants of Gouger Street

Claras new friend was on top of her, high school style, and I was happy to be invisible again. I sat and watched the comedy of a man transformed into bird. He emerged from the Salvos, crane-like, clothed in cast offs, silver stubble down his long cheeks around a droopy moustache, his hair greased. He was walking like a crane with his hands behind his back, an exiled bird general in a grate coat and tracksuit pants. Jemma got home from work to find sleeping off the day me in her backyard. Jesus you scared the shit out of me! She said; then asked what the hell was I doing there. Just came to say hello. She shook her workday out of her short hair and sat on the old orange patio couch beside me. I thought you were off fighting crocodiles? I was. Do you want to get a pizza? She had a granny flat separate to the house; long like a railway carriage, and sparely decorated with Mod paraphernalia. She was a tough scooter girl now. It was the latest in a line of reincarnations: Gothic wastrel. Indie beer girl. Techno terror maiden. Our affair began, burned, and ended on the Indie/Techno cusp. I found one of my Cocteau Twins CDs she must have borrowed and put it on while she lit an oil burner. Oh God! she said, I never listen to that anymore! I thought you liked them? I do, but its too much now, its too you! We sat around the pizza on a rug. What are you doing Fin? She sighed, like I was cat too far up a tree. What do you mean? You look bad. You look great! Thanks.

Got that whole ah Quadrophenia thing happening. Get fucked. Jemmas personal insult radar was sensitive to the degree that it would have picked up someone whispering about her in China, even if they werent. What? Im not having a go, seriously, you look great. Shed said once that talking to me was like walking through a field of land mines. Over a field, Id corrected. Anyway what are you doing back here? Jesus why does every one keep asking me that! Because Adelaides a hole and you hate it. I dont hate it! What did you call it in that letter you sent me? Oh yeah a cowshed with a cappuccino machine. This was great. Three pages in my address book were a modernist masterpiece of scribbled out postal destinations and phone numbers following her jaunts around Europe. She was practically addicted to departure lounges. Well, youre here, I offered weakly. Ha! Youre hilarious! What? And Brigitte, and Sally, she said drawing it out, wanted to make it sound like a list. I didnt sleep with Sally. She was stunned. You-made-her-give-you-a-head-job-in-a-mental-hospital, she spelled out, pointing just about each word. Clinic, I corrected, and I didnt make her I just Shed had a breakdown Fin! I thought it might cheer her up.

She picked up the pizza box and marched it out to the bin shaking her head. And I suppose you want to stay here tonight, she said coming back in I wouldnt mind. She shook her head some more, I dont know Fin. We can go get a video or some beers or something, I said hedging my bets. OK, but I dont want a super late night. Bingo. Me neither, I said, not sure if that was true or not. The idea of curling up with Jemma to watch a movie was enticing only because of her cat like inability to not respond to affection, and her hugs were beautiful to lie in, like a warm bath. But the pizza taken the edge off my hangover and I wanted to sit up and tell her about my trip with Jackson. Alright then, she said, lets go for a walk, theres a bottle shop at the end of the street. Bingo. Jackson whittled away at the near distance with cool grey eyes. He was a big silver bristled Walrus of a man. A VB T shirt peppered with holes stretched comfortably across his belly, his grey track suit pants were a mottled canvas of oil stains, black thongs hung slack on his walrus skinned feet and tufts of brown hair now grey but with flicks of its former sat about his ears and the back of his walrus neck under a Dunlop cap. I never saw him wearing anything else, and encountered him enough in the front bar of the Roebuck Inn to have a nodding acquaintance. This progressed to our elbows almost touching while I waited for a beer, and a few words being exchanged between us. Jackson came to Broome on R and R from maintaining the refrigeration system and generator at a roadhouse in the Hamersley Ranges. He started calling me Eddie, because I reminded him of some Argentinean soccer player.

He had his mates four-wheel drive he reckoned. His mate had pranged it and bent the chassis, and the plan was for Jackson to drive it to Perth while his mate claimed the stolen Vehicle on insurance. When the replacement arrived hed send for the stolen one and then use it for spare parts. Simple. Thing is, he said, I reckon it's a safer bet to go via Adelaide. I was leaning across the bar playing with his lighter, looking up at the TV. The Commonwealth games were on and someone had won a medal for the two hundred metres, their face smiled from the podium, flashes popcorned through the crowd. Jackson knew Id still be in Broome, and he knew I would be at the pub. He knew I didnt have a job and he knew I was lost and he knew I wanted to go home. I'm leaving in a few days, Jackson said. I felt the breeze as someone left, a quick cool razzle on my skin as they opened the door. I went to buy us another drink but Jackson was getting up. I'll see you around. There was practically nothing on this earth that Jackson had not seen or felt or smelt or done at one time or another. Experience sat about his bulk in a begrimed kaleidoscope. Name a country; he'd been there. Name a city; he'd been there too. If it had an engine in it, Jackson had worked on it. If you'd read about it, Jackson had seen it. If you'd wanted to do it, or wondered about it, Jackson had. He gave the impression that he had lived four seconds in anyone else's two. He'd made better love to more women, and they were smarter and better looking. He'd had more money than you could even imagine, he'd worn better clothes and drank better wine. This was the legend of himself that he bellowed. He was a dragon, and I felt safe under his scaly, world-coloured wings.

And there he was, I could just imagine it, down on the dock drinking with the Serbian boys in his sharp suit and coal black teddy boy hair. He could stay in a fancy hotel, but he likes it here, the dockside pubs and working clubs, the old sailor's hostel. A nip of home made spirit and a laugh with the men covered in grease and fish guts before going to the hop, stand by the wall near the bar and tap his foot to Chuck Berry. Bring a girl back here maybe, a well built Serbian girl, show her around, they love it, the creaks and the clanks. Her platinum blonde hair up in a beehive and her eyes made up Cleopatra. She's got three brothers who would break his neck for looking at her, and here's Jackson, a handsome devil when the lighthouse catches him, with his hand on her leg. He's got a room at the pub, he could stay in a fancy hotel but he likes it here. Jackson hated cops. His reaction to any sort of authority was like battery acid in milk. His business was his own affair, and this was an absol4WD state. There wouldnt be too many places in Australia where Jackson didnt know people, but there'd be fewer where people knew him. He played his cards close, and always stood down wind. He remembered everything, every face and name was filed way because you never know. His domain was truck stops and working camps and fishing boats. He ate steaks bathed directly in flame with men who had oil-stained hands and worked in diesel fumes and hot noise. He'd whiled away decades with whiskered faces around fires. Jackson understood the language of the sticks. The gruff sound shared with little silence and even less revealed, the rope of yarns that joined all those nights together. The sound of work and nature hacking into each other and the tired calm in the spaces left. Sticks cracked and placed on a dying fire by an expert hand, and in the company of people you didnt know, but you knew their stories, and you had a story about that man as well, and so did the next man, and this is how the nights went.

White men working in the bush and in the sheds and the cattle yards and the engine rooms. Jackson wanted to steal diesel. He had two forty four-gallon drums in the tray for this purpose. He wanted to because it was there to be stolen. The caper was to get from Broome to Adelaide without paying for diesel. Mining companies and the Army left it by the side of the road sometimes for their own drivers. And then there were the radio towers and the weather huts, the outstations and the homesteads: An ocean of free diesel if you knew where to look. Jackson knew about these things. We slept in a truck bay. I could feel the spiny tuffets through the sleeping bag as I looked up at the stars. Jackson was in the 4WD, his cap over his eyes, and his head resting on his beefy hands jammed into the back corner of the cabin. A truck came prowling from the darkness, the sidelights a low flying UFO thundering past my nest. My body breathing again, hypnotised still and heavy. Morning Eddie! He was walking out into the scrub with a roll of toilet paper, and came back whistling and threw his wrapped bundle in the bin He made a twig fire and threw in some sausages wrapped in alfoil. In Derby I staggered around the Boab prison tree. Jackson stayed in the 4WD, he'd seen all of this before but wanted me to see it, he wanted to show me the graveyard songs of the land. The inside of the tree looked like a lung. I read the plaque. Jackson understood the language of the dead. He knew the windswept spaces over them were to be pissed on and danced on and laughed on. If whiskey was spilt onto the soil it was no matter because this is what the dead would've done, and he was no different. Jackson didnt talk to the dead because, as he said, They can't fucking hear you. He lived in the dust under the stars like they did, that was all.

We were sitting in the cabin pulled into a truck stop for the night but it wasn't dark yet. A creamy nail polish light glinted with heavy rain, hammering into a sea of dirty blonde grass around us. Jackson was talking about the apocalypse, 2012 as predicted by the Aztec calendar. He was drunk and spitting, the back of one hand was slapping against the other as he peeled off the facts. I poured myself a big whiskey and didnt worry about the water. Jackson was relentless, the rote of oblivion. The maths! Do the maths! His student could shrink no further away, and looked at the on coming rain-furied night with wide and hapless eyes. Will it hurt? The Kimberley's emerged from the horizon like some Martian Cathedral. In the shadow of the sculpted stone Jackson tapped a drum with his foot. Empty. I wondered off for a wee and a look. An ear shaped hole in the rock demanded I enter and I walked along the course passage to where it opened up into an amphitheatre simmered in silent heat. That feeling again of being no longer for these surrounds, a panic before the calm faced gums gathered around the water scar. The feeling of the uninvited at a ceremony in another language, the tick of time in these rocks over which my own quicksilver shadows scattered and regrouped in an uneasy cower under the silent gaze of the grey leaved priests. Whenever we spotted a hump by the road we pulled over to check it out, oil drums, empty oil drums, oh well, next time. The whale was further on: a roadhouse in the Northern Territory. Jackson had done some work there years ago. Something happened, and Jackson reckoned they owed him. He knew where the pump was and how to get into the stores. When we got there they wouldnt be paying for whiskey either, because he knew where that was kept as well.

I stood in the tray and kept a look out along the road while Jackson scanned the perimeter for a hole in the fence, when he didnt find one he made his own with the wire cutters he squeezed like castanets to accompany his whistled waddle away from the 4WD. He came back, it didnt matter, there was that place further on. Jackson understood the language of driving in the outback. The laws spun into the legend of time and distance. I was supposed to be on kangaroo lookout and Jackson pointed out all the ones I missed. And this was not done in the manner of a head-shaking smile at a puppy entwined in toilet paper, it was a stern call to post that had me snapping to try and focus through my whiskey haze. We slowed as we passed a homestead and Jackson checked the yard. They used to have a whole tank of diesel sitting right there but they must have moved it round the back, doesnt matter, there's plenty up ahead. We pulled into Hall's Creek and wandered into the bar. It was empty save three or four men at the other end. It was one of those vast waiting places, air condition hummed with a television above the bar. Jackson ordered us a drink and got some peanuts, which he ate singly and slowly. He scanned the room without it showing; then settled into his neck to watch the Commonwealth Games. There was a law to drinking with Jackson, a rhythm to the movement and stillness of it, the silence and sound of it that could only be understood by drinking with him. You felt good to be drinking with him, but you didnt talk, or if you did you must first had to understand the unspoken map of drinking with Jackson. He understood the family tree of movement, and remembered the woman behind the bar from somewhere else. She was chatting away when he thumb tacked the name of a roadhouse into the conversation that had her reeling back to her own notice board.

My god, yeah I was there, but that was, what? Ten? Eleven years ago? Time meant nothing to Jackson. Faces and names were the sun he revolved around. He remembered the woman and that bloke she used to knock about with, the bloke with the big nose and the funny laugh. Jackson noted details and stored them in stone. Hed be watching you from a corner and you wouldnt even know he was there. And then he'd see you again and tell you where you were and who you were with and what you were doing. On the TV a woman stood taut on a platform and then catapulted backwards. Her legs swinging up as she fell towards the water. Jackson tapped my arm. "Imagine the tail on her in the morning," he said. "Tail?" "Her morning log." Id found a paper on the bar. "Imagine it wagglin' like a tail, just hangin' out o' there, knu' whu' I mean?" I kept reading. "Then she'll drop it, knu' whu' I mean? Hit with the fat end on the floor, Pppp like a rivet, Knu' whu' I mean?" "Umm," I said, turning the page. "It'll be sitting up though, like a spike, knu' whu' I mean? pointy." I folded the paper to read reviews of movies I wasnt going to see. "Jackson, youre a sick fuck." "Then she'll get a toothbrush and scoop the top and" He wanted to go on, but he was laughing too much. That night we slept in a park. Me in the sleeping bag on the bench, and Jackson, as always, in the 4WD. In Kununurra we ate pies by the lake, then Jackson went to buy more whiskey while I went looking for crocodiles. Whiskey and water was the

drink for the drive, a slosh of both in a plastic cup, the water present to stave dehydration. It was my job to pour the drinks, and sometimes hold the wheel while Jackson rummaged about for his tobacco. Snifter sir? Jackson would purse his lips. Why thank you my good man I believe I will! After the first sip he'd always do the same thing, swill it in his mouth for a sec. Loovely! hed exclaim in a plummy voice, the little cup poised delicately in his humpback whale hand. We drove on through an ever-changing variation on the theme of sky and rock. Stark configuration's framed by the windscreen, volcanic angles and wind skun curves. Monolithic single coloured shapes and singular slabs of rich twisted tones all against a torched cellophane blue. I only realised that wed entered the Northern Territory when I noticed that the signs were tan instead of green. The road had been recently resurfaced and glistened top lip smooth as it twisted through the red frozen time, blurred by wild flowers. We came across a beat up old Holden and a Hertz campervan parked in a lookout bay. The European and a man from the Holden were talking, while the European's girlfriend hung back with her arms crossed looking from her flip-flops to the conference in front of her. The Holden man had a white beard and swooped his body as he spoke, a sort of ecstasy in his efforts, his ill fitting shirt and pants looked longingly at the ground and he would occasionally remind them with a quick grab that their job was to remain on his body. Jackson waddled over to see what was going on, I staggered behind him. The Holden had run out of petrol and he was asking the applecheeked man if he could have some of his. I looked over at crumpled pale gold car, bony limbs and sullen faces inside. The Holden man's face was

ancient and mangled and blacker than the road, and his features squirmed like larvae. A woman fell out of the car vomiting and holding a rag to her face. The bearded man stood back to let the urgency of his quest demonstrate itself. The European was in wonder of all of this and didnt actually know what it was the bearded man was asking for. He was rooted to the spot wondering when this episode was going to end, but knowing that it would. Jackson sorted it out. He stood chatting with the European as he inserted a hose into the van with a canister from the Holden for the petrol to run into. I wondered over and talked to the perfect-toothed girlfriend, they were from Holland. And where are you two from? Oh you know, I shrugged, remembering Jacksons teachings, over there. I said it the way Jackson said it, casual, but closing the book to further enquiries. Storm clouds sat in a gathered crown above Katherine Gorge, the grand waterway had crowned itself with its own weather. Jackson understood the language of tourists. Jackson waited in the 4WD while I took a helicopter flight through the gorge, waiting in the airport opulence of the information centre with the other tourists, retired money belt wearing adventurer adventure seekers and land drinkers, and about half of Scandinavia. I came beaming back to the 4WD. I pretended I'd flown over the gorge but I hadnt because at the last minute I felt uncomfortable with the closeness and the potpourri scent of the waiting and went and read a magazine, regretting my decision as soon as I heard the chopper warming up. Jackson was eating a chunk of meat in bread and started the 4WD. We were on a long dead stretch and it appeared as though we were dreaming. It was weird as well because we'd just been talking about the

army. A Leopard tank had rolled out of the bush and was heading directly for us, desert camouflage draped about it like a reed-covered hippo. It got bigger and then it turned right and disappeared into the bush again. Further on was a road block, I quickly cleared the front bar debris from the dashboard, hiding all the empties under in blanket in the back, the bottle on the go resealed and stashed under his seat. A military policeman asked them if they'd seen anyone in a Yellowy uniform down the road. This would have been a Miranian, the fictional enemy in the war games that wed driven into. We hadnt and said so, and the officer gave us a card with a number on it to phone if we saw one. In the shops and pubs were posters, an artist's impression of a Miranian glaring at you from behind the counter, and a phone number to ring. We stank. We couldnt smell it but reckoned we had to by now. The shirt I was wearing would never be white again. We stopped at the springs and went to the bar. Soldiers were sleeping on the deck of their tank under a tree like a family of fawny cats. A young soldier sat at a table by himself sipping a Fanta through a straw. Jackson nodded hello and asked him about the rifle sitting across his lap. The young bloke didnt know that much about it, it wasnt loaded: he knew that. Jackson laughed. What are you going to do if you see a Miranian, tickle him to death! We're s'posed to capture 'em, not kill em. Jackson rubbed his bristle and looked around a bit more, It had been repainted and the bar had been moved and the pool table was gone and that whole section had been closed in and that other bit had been opened up, change meant nothing to Jackson. I made my way to the spring along the fern lined track through the palms. I was constantly hung over with a dull drunk underneath, heavy and light at the same time. White noise radio knives emanated from the

spiky green walls. Black leather boots with fatigues piled on them were gathered around the waters edge. The soldiers marinaded together up one end, bare beside their dog tags. I jumped in the liquid crystal and stroked a few times near the bottom to the other side and rested against the bank. The water was the temperature of human blood while its still inside the body. Rain beat down around us. The ground was fresh enamel when caught in a flash from the storm. We sat in the car park and waited. Jackson understood the language of waiting, and he understood the language of revenge. And now we were at the mother lode, the roadhouse Jackson had told me about. The diesel was in a shed that was close enough to run to in a few seconds. Jackson still had the keys. I smoked and sighed. Jackson stared silently ahead like a water buffalo. He was looking at the people inside, yup, he recognised that one and that one, but he hadnt seen that one before, or that one. An eighteen-wheeler was parked in front of the shed. Trucks werent supposed to park here. The driver had been caught in the rain and pulled up and hadnt come out to move his rig yet. Jackson was looking for him, he wanted to see if he was having a beer or a coffee, if he was staying for the night or moving on. After what felt like a year he said to I that he'd have to go in and Find out what the driver was doing, and Find out who the manager was now as well. We were going to take the diesel anyway, but if it was the same manager Jackson would do a little something extra. I skated on the slippery mud towards the door and looked back at the 4WD but could see nothing except a faint outline between the trees. I gave the guy a wink and ordered a beer. The place was full of soldiers, I wasnt expecting this, I hadnt seen any army vehicles. They were watching the commonwealth games. I looked around for a truckie but couldnt see one. Bit wet out there mate?

I smiled and looked around again, maybe he was in the loo. Say does so and so still work here? Nah mate they left years ago, me and the wife been here, what? Six years. There was a mighty whoop from the khaki corner as someone won gold. Two soldiers stood next to me with handfuls of empty jugs. Same again fellas? Where the fuck is this truck driver? I ordered another beer. Big truck out there mate. The manager did a weighing face. Yeah seen bigger though. Yeah me too. The manager followed his tea towel along the bar and settled down to watch the games over the soldiers shoulders. Back in the 4WD I said it wasnt the same manager and I couldnt see the driver. He must already be asleep in the cabin. He's not supposed to be fuckin parked there! Jackson spat, The fuckin trucks go round the fuckin back, what's this cunt playing at! We sat in silence in our own cabin. Blue smoke curling against windscreen from our cigarettes, a fire curling inside Jackson at his thwarted scheme. The noise of starting the pump would wake the driver up. Lightening painted the windmill and the roof of the roadhouse. Jackson had said that wed do this thing, but now it couldnt be done. His voice took on an uncharacteristic shrill as he repeated why it was not possible to get the diesel. It was as if I were telling him it was, but I wasnt saying anything. I filled our cups with watered whiskey and lit a cigarette. I knew he thought that I thought that he had let me down. That he was not what he said he was, and that this is what I was thinking. But I wasnt thinking that at all. I thought he was extraordinary.

In the morning, I woke up before Jemmas alarm went off, and indulged in the peaceful treasure of her sleeping face. If a person could be caught in a time rather than a place, then I would catch her now, when her long soft lashes were closed, and she radiated such a soft and gentle innocence. Because this is what she was, despite all her waking effort to appear invincible. Jemmas heart was made to break, and the only thing she feared more than knowing this herself, was that someone else might know it too. Im not going to look after to you, she said, getting ready for work. Whos asking? I let my exasperation fall back into her pillow, I just need somewhere to crash for a few days! She was kneeling in front of a mirror doing her hair. Why dont you go to Brigittes? I have I grinned, Shes with that fucking wanker though. Im sure you could still stay there. I dont want to stay there! Well youre not staying here! She leant forward to put on her eyeliner, its too much Fin, she muttered, its too much. I sighed and fished through my pockets. Can I smoke in here? I saw her shoulders heave, Yeah, whatever. And then they kept heaving. You shouldnt try to put eye liner on while your crying, I said flicking ash into a glass. I know, she laughed wiping her eyes. I sat in the Crown and Sceptre, transfixed by the curdled gleam of morning on the bar. The barman was leaning on his elbows reading the paper. Wheres the phone here mate?

Stairwell mate. I took my beer and went to call my brother. Hello youve called Crawley Byrd. I cant get to the phone at the moment but if Id put a dollar in and didnt get any change. I tapped out a Morse code plea for fairness on the button. Hey! Easy on the phone mate! The barman called when I started kicking it. It just charged me a dollar for a local call! Yeah well, bashing its not going to do anything. He was doing the crossword when I sat down again. Same again mate. I asked him how the bistro was going. Yeah alright. Should I ask about a job? I was still deciding when a couple of guys came in, young, expensively grubby, inner city types with a Puma bag full of second hand records. One of them racked up the pool table while the other perused the duke box. And then this oddity in a thick grey overcoat, deerstalker cap, sunglasses and ski glove combo appeared. Two fingers of brandy, he said to the barman in a voice made of phlegm, and spirited himself into the empty dining room. The lunchtime law crowd started arriving in crisp wool trios. I stashed my backpack behind the bar and wandered out to the beer garden. Fat raindrops were starting to burst on the concrete paving and plastic tables. "Well how do!" Katherine looked like a cross between a sheriff and a forties starlet, swaggering forwards in a full-length leather coat with her fine light hair held up over light fine features. She sat opposite me, throwing the coat open to cross her legs. Raindrops landed around her. Well how do to you," I said.

She didnt study me, not obviously anyway, she smiled and talked the way she always did when she was back in the city, charged with humour and relief. She savoured the first big sip of her pint. Beer goes flat in this sort of weather the moment you put it down, she observed, and looking around added Its like were inside a big soggy balloon. I know; I can smell the soil in the pot plants. I very much doubt that Finley, she laughed, I doubt you can smell anything. We got some crisps and she gave me an update on the continuing family saga. That's why she was in town, someone in her big Irish family requiring her assistance. She was the youngest and most organised of a fairly shambled line. I knew some of them by face, and some by name, and always got them confused, Katherines metamorphic siblings. Her longhaired, wild-eyed brother was still wandering the country; and Genevieve, the one who was allergic to peanuts. Well, shes shacked up in Italy with a town planner. I strained to keep up. Then gave up. I think hes epileptic. Your brother? I asked, stifling a yawn. The town planner. Wheres the phone here? In the stairwell, watch it though it eats goldies. I just want to give mum a quick ring, Klees a bit crook, she said, asking me if I wanted another beer as she got up. Oliver was back home, the new home in Port Lincoln. Klee had torn free in a hospital in a town that was maybe later, or maybe never, but was now the home shed landed in when a family, her new family, landed on her. Hes fine, she said on returning, sleeping like aohI nearly said baby. She decided she didnt want her beer now. I drank mine and then started on hers. She asked me Id seen Brigitte.

Saw her? I fucked her! And shes seeing someone else! Not bad ey! Youre a bad man Finley, she spelled out slow, but breaking into a smile. A bad, bad man. Weell, you know, I shrugged, looking for something to look at, settling on a vine creeping over the top of the wall. And whats all this ey business? She admonished, stiff like a school maam, some colloquial quirk caught and carried like a cold from the west? Its what we do there, I informed her, its quite ubiquitous, it can be a question, like: lets go to the shops ey? Or a statement: lets go to the shops, ey! It depends on the inflexion. Katherine smiled, Seriously, have you seen Brigitte? Yeah, I stayed there. The oddity poked his head into the beer garden. Check out this fruit loop? I whispered. Katherine turned round. It must be getting too busy for him to lurk, I said, The dining rooms filling up with lawyers. Remember that guy you were telling me about who used to hang around the library dressed as Zorro? Fuck yeah! He really used to freak me out, I said, I mean if it was just a guy literally dressed like Zorro that would be OK. It was the blur that was disturbing. He was Zorroish, you know? He had this thin moustache and this shiny black shirt and hed just sort ofdance around the magazine section. Dance? Yeah. Oh come on youve never told me that bit before! Its true! What do you mean? Like Like sort of, you know, tango between the shelves.

God Adelaides full of weirdos, she said, Im sitting with one right now! I smiled and lit a cigarette. So what are your plans? Well, I said, leaning with authority on the table, first Im going to get pissed, then Im going to get shit-faced. Fin! She tutted, Cmon seriously. Thats the second time youve said seriously. Anyway, you didnt say what it was like seeing Brigitte. You didnt ask me what it was like, you just asked me if I had, and I told you, I stayed there. So, what was it like? I felt trapped in a cage of vague annoyance, and sucked hard on my cigarette. I mean come on you lived together for four years Five, I corrected. Five years! Then you leave her, then ring up pissed from the other side of the country and ask her to marry you Im thinking Hang on let me finish! She says no, so you smash up someone elses house It was just a chair! And now you tell me youve just slept at her Im thinking of catching a train up to North Queensland. I interjected, having had enough of this tedious line. Katherine shook her head, you wouldnt last five min4WDs up there, she said with a thoughtful quietude. No, I was talking to someone about it in Broome and they reckoned it was all right. Well I think you should come back with me, she stated matter-offactly, chill out for a bit. Seriously?

Yeah. Im flying back tomorrow. Port Lincoln? Dont say it like its a dirty word! I said I'd think about it and borrowed a pen from the bar to write her mum's phone number. We kissed and she left me in the beer garden. Alone again the air gathered and I leant against it, cannon balling cigarette smoke at the pink flowers on the nearest pot plant. Three suits, two men and a woman, came out and sat at the table nearest me. There were other tables to choose from, but thats the one they chose. Hes very kind to me Finley. Brigitte had made a point of that, held it and dropped it into just enough silence for the small word to reverberate. The woman crossed her legs, but not like Katherine, more like a Spanish horse. One of the men wore frameless glasses, and the other seemed to luxuriate in the fact that he was going grey, and they all smelled really nice. The thing about James is that he just doesnt know when to shut up, the frameless one was saying. I know! Hes a shocker! the woman hooted. Hes very kind to me Finley. The grey one looked at the menu board through the dining room window, Whos eating? Um, I had the prawns here the other day and they were great. The woman took a slim gold pack of cigarettes out of her bag, how much longer do you think Andrea will put up with him? The frameless one shrugged as he poured the wine. I headed into the stairwell, and tried ringing my brother again. Hello youve called I put the receiver in its cradle and walked back out to the bar. It was full of suits now.

I moved on, and availed myself of the convivial surrounds of the Austral. I sat at a table outside and wondered where to stash my bag, and where I was going to sleep. I figured to just sit there until Id worked it out. As evening drew on I saw her. Adelaide is pretty small and the chances of sitting on Rundle Street for hours without seeing someone you know are remote. We recognised each other enough to say hello but not put any more effort into it, she smiled and went inside. She was the first conversational fish Id had a chance of catching for a while so after a few moments I went in as well. She was sitting at a table with some friends so I joined them. It seemed an OK thing to do at first, a polite enquiry to a vexing question. Where do I know you from? I asked. Id seen her around for years and had always been taken by her dark haired green-eyed elegance. She was one of the phantoms that wafted about the sensual orchid in the back of my mind, and I wanted to make her real. [ chance for back story here! Broome scene maye owboy and sar fae girl?] wild feral to ontrast with city?] We figured maybe University, or a party, or maybe wed just been Rundle Street regulars when we were younger. Our chitchat soon ran out of steam so I went to the bar to buy a round of drinks for her and her friends. I snuggled in and continued where Id left off, some abstracted gut of an idea without sides to cling to. And them I noticed the way she was looking at me. Her face and body wore a strained politeness born of weary fear. She was looking at me the way people look when trapped in the company of mad people. I signed into a dorm at the YMCA, and chucked my bag on the bed and leant out the widow for a smoke. There was another man in the room, grey and youngish. He was sitting on his bed, arranging his toiletries on a small chest of drawers. He took his T-shirt off to reveal a sunken chest and vertebrae threatening to burst out of his smooth curved back, and

something about the sight of him like this, all private and forgotten looking, made me curse the fact that I hadnt stayed with Jackson. He was heading up to the Gulf of Carpentaria to work on a cray boat he reckoned, after hed gotten rid of the stolen 4WD. I imagined sitting in a little bar where palm trees made up a good part of the roof, swooning in the salacious tropical heat. Hed even said that if I stayed in Adelaide then I was a fucking idiot. I had no argument with that. It had seemed like a good idea to come home, its what people do isnt it? Return. Why? I suppose its just another direction to enable movement, and I cant deny that there was a sort of compulsion to follow the curve of a question mark back to its base. Thing is, now I was here, I couldnt remember the question. The guy on the bed wrapped a towel around him self and headed for the shower block, and I headed for the phone to try and ring my brother again. Crawley answered this time, but sounded groggy. Oh sorry mate are you on night shift? Yeah. Shit. Sorry mate. Thats OK I needed to get up anyway. Where are ya? Here. Adelaide. Oh yeah. Yeah. Got in a couple of days ago. Oh right. Yeah, say mate Look Fin he said through a yawn if youre going to ask to stay hereI mean I dont mind, but dad, you know Oh yeah fair enough, I mean no, thats not why Im ringing. Oh right. Im on my way to Port Lincoln. Oh OK. Yeah. I got a job over there.

He yawned again. Sorry Fin, right so youre going to Port Lincoln. Yeah, Im got some work on a cray boat. Oh right. Good one. Do you want to catch up? Cant mate, my plane leaves in the morning. Oh right. Yeah, so can you pass on my love to mum and Winnie? Sure, well, have fun over there and um, might see you next time youre in town I guess. Yeah. Cheers mate. Bring us back some crayfish for Christmas. Yeah, I laughed, no worries.

[lizzie, the dream] Two

A spray of silk white hair fluttered around Klees unblinking eyes as he studied me on the drive from the airport. I looked past him to the long leaved gum trees and paddocks and sheds, passing and giving way to the blonde weatherboard fringe of country town suburbia. Katherine reached over and handed the boy an apricot stick, which he took without looking, and began to eat with his gaze still affixed to the hulking stranger next to him. Arriving at the house he remained disembodied to the actions of alighting and moving him inside, lifted up in Katherine's arm he looked over her back at the hulking stranger following him. She took the boy into his room to change his nappy while Oliver helped me lug my backpack into the guest room. Objects I knew were tangled with the cumulus of an unknown quantity: a stroller, a babies bouncy chair, a bright green foot powered buggyor at least the box it came indominated one corner of the room,

while Katherine's writing desk and comp4WDr and Oliver's carefully stood guitars squeezed into another. I flopped on the single bed, arms open, staring up at criss-cross pattern on the ceiling. Klee waddled in and grabbed his dad's leg. Its good to see you here Fin, Oliver said, picking up his son. Whos this? he said pointing at the bed, and in a voice to make Klee laugh, Whos this? The boy kept his eyes on me, even as he giggled his fathers nose away from his neck. The house, at the top of Erin street; was one of those thick walled older places, with a big dusty patio. Inside the floorboards had been polished, and the hallway had been painted a smiling yellow. There was the club lounge Katherine had found at that garage sale shed written to me about, and the coffee table Olivers father had made them as a house-warming gift. She still had the big old fridge from the Evandale house, the famously grumpy relic had been relegated to the laundry, where it continued to shudder and fill with solid blocks of ice next to an equally cantankerous looking old washing machine. A neat stack of chain sawed wood, ready for the fireplace, lined the back entrance. The back yard was still a riot of brittle brown weeds. Oliver had begun digging a path through to the original shed, planning to use the small wooden privacy for a practice room one day. He stood beside me laying out the yard, pointing out where the lawn was going to be, and the barbeque area, and the pergola. Katherine had said in one of her letters that you could see the water from their place, and there it was, a cold blue curve cutting into the mangroves and brown dunes hugging the edge of the circular bay that dominated the distance. Bits and pieces of rural industry poked out of the bush around it, futuristic looking fertilizer tanks and other oddities in bright shapes, giant ball bearing and pyramid like. Oliver was drawn into the carport, and I followed him across the oil

stained concrete to look at the out board motor sitting across a workbench. Got this for nothing at work, he said. The top was off and he poked at some part of the simple looking innards of the thing. Im pretty sure its just a fuel feed problem, Im going to get Tezza to have a look at it. He meant Terence. His friend from boarding school was now considered one of the foremost authorities on fish fertility in the Southern Hemisphere. Hed got Oliver a summer job on a Tuna feeding program that had turned into a fledgling career. So Katherine came over, and now I was here, standing next to him looking at a gutted outboard. Tezza can take these things apart in his sleep, Oliver muttered as he became engrossed in following a wire to its source in the black and tacky heart of the thing. I went back up to the house and sat with Katherine while she started preparing lunch, she didnt want any help, except to divert Klees attention. Her child goggled up at me from the polished pine in the hallway. I cant believe youre here! She said. I know, neither can I. Hes fiddling around with that outboard isnt he? she asked, wiping her hands and looking out the window. Ah yeah I think so. Do you want a coffee? she asked hopefully. Now youre talking! Ill make it. Thanks Fin, its in that cupboard there. We were bound to the excuses we gave each other. When I was around Katherine drank coffee the way she wanted to, not the way she thought she should. Since giving up smoking dope it was one of the only adult pleasures she had left. I was pleased to see that the teapot Id bought her for her birthday was still in active service, sitting on the sink now with the stewed swollen remains of its last brew, and the glass cheese plate Id bought her, up there in decorative pride of place on the shelf. Katherine was one of the

few people I hadnt slept with who I bought gifts for. For my birthday once, when we she was really poor, she had given me a carefully cut branch studded with almond blossoms. Id put it in water immediately, and it sat beside my bed and lived for ages Look Fin, she said, chopping an onion, am I doing it right? Keep your fingers curled back, I instructed, and keep your thumb out of the way. Like this? She loved it when I showed her kitchen stuff, how to correctly use a knife, how to fry off the pepper a little before adding the oil. Infuse became her favourite word when we were in the kitchen, shed say it self consciously, to tease me, to congratulate me. Umm thats going to infuse isnt it Fin? Oliver came in and was told in no uncertain terms not to touch her, the kid, or anything until hed washed his hands. I went outside to grab some parsley that grew feral around the water tank. Are you having another coffee baby? Oliver remarked while I was chopping. Is that bad? Katherine said. Not if it means I can have one! Oliver sat smiling at the table with Klee on his lap. Jeez Fin you just set foot here and were already crack whores! It was strange, having that little person there, eating with us. Sitting in a high chair with little food in a little bowl in front of him, sucking attention his way as he smeared boiled carrots over his cheeks. Adult matters are put on hold when children eat, and children eat all the time. Our conversation felt like a stick drawing of its previous quality, getting no deeper than a disruption every few seconds could afford. Oh Ive kept all your letters, Katherine managed at some point, I mean obviously Ive kept them, but I mean you might want to read them yourself now youre here. To be honest I cant remember writing a lot of them, I laughed,

helping myself to more pasta. Precisely, Katherine said out of the corner of her mouth, as the rest of it was busy, bird like, feeding Klee a carrot. Fin, Oliver began, but then just shook his head, and seemed to have picked up his partners knack of smiling and frowning at the same time, meaning hed obviously read them as well. Wed eaten early. Always do these days, Katherine said, because of the boy. Oliver decided to practice guitar while Katherine took Klee and I down to the beach. Klee was trying to tell me something in the car before we left. He pointed beyond the dashboard and espoused in a mix of gurgles and m4WDd slurs, all the while looking at me with calm patient eyes. It sounded like a dream language from another planet. Katherine got in and the boy 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?" I 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 isnt he chicken?" Katherine said, and Klee laughed harder. We drove down Erin street, past a small cemetery overseen by a monumentally seventies house of worship. Id noticed it on the way there, a great creme brick triangle filled with stained glass, the late sun bursting in opaline colours and shapes through the side of the glass. I think youre going to like it here Fin, Katherine said, waiting to turn onto the main road. I looked around at the dust and the dead grass and the stout wire fences, No doubt, I said, then noticed a sign outside a house next to a lawn mover shop. Did that just say Free Hearing Tests?

Yeah, how about that hey? Tooted Katherine, hilariously impressed. When we got to the beach Klee toddled ahead while Katherine handed me the beach towels and hooked her arm through the nappy bag. We sat on a rock and she fidgeted Klee's little beach suit on, tricking his arms into position and kissing him when the deed was done. He ran down to the water's edge and immediately began rearranging the shells. Katherine took off her straw hat and let her thin cotton dress fall to the rock, a turquoise bathing suit already in place. I handed her the sunscreen and she kneeled down to coat her pale skin. The last time Id had seen her in Adelaide, besides at the pub, wed gone to Semaphore with a friend of ours. The boy now splashing away had stretched the yellow fabric of another bathing suit across her body as shed walked towards the water. Veronica and I stayed on the sand, huddling together against the breeze to light our smokes. The breeze flicked ash in my eyes as they caressed her, a pregnant woman in the sea, opened arms and her belly against the blue, walking deeper into the soft peaked waves. Now Katherine began to say things and then forgot the rest, or lost interest. The stones of a story were laid, but the mortar evaporated midsentence. She said her mind just didnt work anymore, not in the adult world anyway. She now found talking to adults an exercise riddled with uncomfortable effort. Her main companion had been Klee, days alone in the house with him, and his bubbled lexicon the main spring of her human verbal contact. Sometimes another mother visited from down the street during the hours of stretched daylight they inhabited, a ghostly world of hovering exhaustion around the mouth and anus of the baby. Sally had sat at her table with her own baby on her lap. Katherine was glad for the company she said, but found the small talk a whirring siren in the distance, the words heard and exchanged from a place outside of her, words that belonged to someone else. They sipped tea and spoke of the sweet and sour world that stained their clothes, soft faded casuals

hanging about their fatigue and engrained with spit and sick. Sally would unfold an enormous breast and pour it towards her baby, the areole a deep angry red and sending a shockwave of purple veins under the surface of the white skin. Katherine looked away, not out of anything except following her eyes. 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. Sorry Fin, what were you saying? Nothing. Doesnt matter. But it did matter: everything mattered. There was so much I wanted to discuss with her, so much that would have to wait until Klee! Oh God look at him! Hold this for a sec Fin. The boy ruled time I thought, and time was all I had. This precious blonde angel had robbed for himself the great tracts of time I needed in which to unravel, the hours, days perhaps, that I needed to speak. I needed beer and whiskey and her undivided attention in a smoky dim lit room to tell her of the uneasy blue grey dreams that slept in my head, of parks and bus shelters, soup kitchens, river beds, of buildings with the life crept out of them through broken walls and windows in the black and heavy disused parts of a town. . Walking back to the car I asked Katherine what had happened to her yellow bathing suit, and she said God knows. When we got back Oliver was watching the cricket on TV, and curling out saccharine chords from the jazz guitar on his lap. I hated jazz more than I hated death, but Oliver persisted in attempting to educate me. Thankfully Katherine commanded that he bathe Klee, thus for now at least halting my lesson. Katherine curled up to watch the cricket, something I hated about as much as I hated jazz. Help yourself if youre still hungry Fin, she said, immediately transfixed by the televised field of men doing, from what I could see, fuck all. I wasnt hungry, but was uncomfortably aware that it was only 7.30,

that I didnt know my way past Erin Street, let alone where the pubs were, and that I had absol4WDly no idea what to do with myself. Think I might go read for a bit, I said during an ad break. Oh you an read to Klee! Katherine sparked, Oliver, Fins going to read to Klee. Oh good one mate, came the reply from down the hall, hell love that. And then the boy was ushered in, an angel wrapped in a towel. Uncle Fins going to read to you tonight, how about that hey? Oliver said with his hands on his sons shoulders. The boy bit his lip and buried his face in Olivers leg. I sat on his bed, his eyes jewels of wonder looking up at me, and flicked open an A4 sized monstrosity of colour and cardboard called Chubby Wubby Ice Cream Man. Do the voices! Katherine called out, he wont listen unless you do the voices. Chubby Wubby lovely lovely sat down by the brook all bubbly bubbly. God you sound like a wolf! Oliver laughed. Yeah Im doing my Tom Waits, I joked, my cheeks prickling at both the imposition and my ineptitude. Just, you know, less growling, Katherine called back. How long do I do this for? Hell be asleep soon, its been a big day. Back into the lounge Katherine and Oliver were tangled up on the coach, both of them stupefied by the test match. Did I ask you to help yourself if youre hungry? Katherine yawned. Yeah, thanks. I might go and read actually. Yeah no worries. Um, can I have those? The letters? Sure. Oliver can you get Fins letters for him? Why do I have to get up? he moaned. You know where they are.

So do you! No you moved them. Yeah, theyre in the Oliver! I muttered some disclaimer, it didnt matter, no worries, maybe later, anything to break up that uniquely cringe worthy experience being the catalyst of argument in an environment you cant escape from, but Oliver huffed past me, and returned passing me a pile of opened envelopes. Well, good night then, I said, making my way past them into the guest room. Good night, they came back in chorus. I shut the door, only it didnt, it clicked softly open and sat in an imitation of being shut. The cricket commentators voice droned into the room, followed by an ad for sheep dip. I sat on the bed, dropping the envelopes next to me. Katherine had made it up with sheets that were exactly the same powdery green as those mint leave lollies I used to avoid like the plague at school. I sat and thought about how Id trapped myself in politeness, about the protocol of being a guest, part of which, written in the great behaviour book somewhere, deems that you cant say good night and then just appear again to announce that youve changed your mind, that you feel like a night on the town after all, and that youre going to call a taxi to take you to whatever nightspot the driver reckons will be a goer. I cursed myself for not saying something earlier, but had got lost in arriving. It didnt seem right though, being in a new town and not out in the bars. It didnt seem fair. I heard the TV turn off and them creak out of the couch. Now it was definitely too late, and an anxiousness, a panic even, pressed its fibrous fingers up the back of my neck. I lay down and stared at the criss-crossed roof, then fumbled out a cigarette. I opened the window and climbed carefully over Katherines desk so that I could poke my head out for a smoke.

I looked at what I could see of the house across the road in the

porch light, cream weatherboard with concrete steps up to the veranda, a tricycle parked next to a mound of sand, other kids bikes lay where theyd dropped, and a huge new looking black 4WD squatting in the shadows, and became increasingly convinced that just over the hill, down there in the lights around the bay Id seen beginning to burn as we drove back from the beach, there was a waterside tavern full of sweat and noise and whores and freaksadventurejust waiting for me to arrive. I carefully stubbed out the cigarette on the outside wall and put the butt in my shoe, then lay on the bed and opened one of the envelopes, and thought how like fruit when plucked from the vine paper removed from the pad is, it dries out, and it seemed odd to think that I could have written on these delicate sheets once. Dear Katherine, Thanks for your last letter. It was like a light rain at the
end of a balmy day, much anticipated and very refreshing!

I was in no mood to read these after all, but tucked them neatly into my backpack for when I was. I perused the bookshelf and took hold of Poes Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, then put that aside after a short while and started looking at the pictures in The Faraway Rabbit, one of Klees books that I found on the floor. In the morning, after Oliver had headed off to work with a piece of toast still crunching in his mouth, Katherine swathed Klee in clean wool and put him in the stroller for a walk to the service station to get some muffins and a paper. I walked beside them, down the hill towards to the Ampol on the corner opposite the fuel tanks. One bloke not enough for yu' anymore?" Warren, the manager, said with a wink to show no harm done as he opened the glass cabinet, letting out a warm sultana smell that marbled into the faint petrol tang. Well, not when its not you Warren, Katherine shot back. She saw this guy pretty well every day she said as we walked back to the house, and suspected he did this with all his female customers, it was his touch

she said, his signature of life in the sterile surrounds. . She saw him out sometimes as well. His ruggedly handsome middle-aged face buffed smooth in a 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. He'd be at the Grand Bay Hotel with their friends she said, winking and clinking ice, a hearty laugh before turning to the bar, his hand tapping along 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 embarrassment, checking the order, "So that's three straight and three with ice OK love?" She'd got it. Hes one of those wink and smile types, Katherine said, Lincolns full of them. Yeah, because theyre full of it. I left room in my laugh for hers to join me, but it just died by itself. You dont know them Finley, she said, pulling at Klees covering, perhaps to protect herself from the arctic clip in her own voice, and we walked for a second or so either side of a cleft that seemed to have opened in the pavement between us. I was only joking. Yeah well youre always only joking arent you? Kath? Forget it, she said in her shooing way, lets just get the coffee on. The muffins smell good, I offered thinly. Dont they! Im starving. We sat on the porch and divided the paper. This was how wed spent most of our time together, sitting on couches on porches with a paper sprawled between us. Wed been doing this on and off for nearly a decade, the same thing outside numerous addresses, and it was one of the few activities where the sameness was something I revelled in. She was sitting on a veranda reading the paper when Id first met her. I was going out with Brigitte at the time, Katherines friend from high school. It was a late spring morning, and her bare legs sat in a loose

coil under a blue flowered white dress on a couch dappled under almond blossom. Shed looked up, languid and sun drinking, as the gate had groaned over the unmown grass when we visited, and gave us a lazy smile, her dope and coffee close at hand. Katherine didnt work Brigitte reckoned, she just floated and landed. The big boned American boyfriend shed met in Queensland came out scratching his sleep-matted mane. He lit a joint and went back inside to put the kettle on. Katherine was summer as far as I was concerned. We ended up living in the neighbourhood at one stage, so Id drop round. Then the American was gone and Oliver was in. More often than not Id visit without Brigitte, and my litany of infidelities became common knowledge to Katherine, my confessions on her veranda leaving me light. When Brigitte found out that Katherine knew, and hadnt told her, their relationship rapidly dwindled, while ours grew, mainly because I just kept coming around. Erin Street was a combination of Katherine's previous houses, and besides the guest room, had an added spaciousness and calm air, like the theatre set of one of her houses before the audience were admitted entry. I hadnt seen any of Oliver's previous dwellings, and couldnt really evoke anything one-way or the other. Id always been at Katherine's place, even when she shared with others, even when she shared with Oliver, it was still her place. Except now of course Klee patrolled the garden, a nappy wearing bushman following ever changing trails, it seemed that a secret order was known to children, and he did his duty, replacing rocks and sticks and hand fulls of dirt and grass where they where really supposed to be. He'd stop mid transport and crash off into the foliage, his attention alerted to a more urgent part of the plan. Shed written to me of the pioneering days of getting pregnant and

moving to Lincoln in the language of a person born of glass. She had written of shrinking and translucence, of seeing the material she sat on through her legs, of opaque bones, of her spine being cling wrapped by her belly. She had written of an incredible fatigue and tangled layers of thought. Id read these letters sitting at tables outside hostels, beetles bombarding the porch light, red earth sticking to my feet. I wrote back drunk and frantic affirmations. I feared for her invisibility in my own, and wanted more than anything sometimes to just be doing what we were doing now. Sitting on the veranda together reading the paper. Except now Klee was here of course. Did you know that bookkeeper is the only word in the English language to contain three double letters in a row? I did! Where did I hear that? Katherine wondered out loud. The Curiosity Show? Yes! Thats it! Thats where I heard it. We were both TV kids from the Northern Suburbs, and we spent a lot of time with words in our hands talking about the shows we used to watch. Katherine got up to answer the phone, asking me to watch that Klee didnt wander onto the road. She came back out shaking her head, and Id heard that shed been talking to her mum. How is he? I asked. Still mad, she laughed without humour. Id metwellseen her dad once, when the American was still around. The dog had clawed and yapped at the back door, which Katherine had tried knocking on after having no luck at the front. Frankie! The American had yelled with enough firepower to finally rouse him. I saw him shuffling through the kitchen to let us in, and he looked so old, and drained, that it seemed anomalous when Katherine said Hello dad.

The dog jumped excitedly over his slippers and shot back inside. I could hear it nosing its water bowl along the laundry floor as the old man returned to his chair. According to Frankie, when his thoughts still maintained some semblance of order Katherine said, he'd met her mother at a countrydance. "They'll be girls there", his mate had leered apparently, "Irish girls," and this was music to his ears. Theyd bounced along in the back of a 4WD. Frankie being careful not to spill whiskey on his good suit. Hed checked his reflection in the little mirror theyd passed around, smoothing his ruffled hair and checking his teeth for any remnants of the stringy lamb theyd eaten at camp. His mate Red had kicked open the tray and the men sprang from it, whooping as they fell towards the ground. Theyd passed the bottle round for a final big swig and headed towards the clapping and stamping inside the hall, an accordion woven into the din. Katherines mother was, according to Frankie, sittin there pretty as a Saint, she got her fingers in her shoe like this see? Tryin to get a stone out. Frankie had a strong back and thought with his hands, strain and sweat where his workaday companions. 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 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 star dropped to the horizon. 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 rhythm of men working in silence. The American put the kettle on, but Katherine said not to bother,

we werent staying that long. Frankie sat there now, a fan lulling him to sleep, in the care of the woman who had divorced him long ago. Katherines mother managed his money and washed his clothes and fed him and drove him to appointments 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, in county Cork, was framed on the living room wall. Katherines mother had taken it when theyd gone back for a visit together, when such things were still possible. Frankie again roused himself when he remembered that the American and I were there to take it down and thump his finger into the glass. Dis is where I were born, he proclaimed proudly, almost fiercely, as though he were expecting us to challenge him. I know, the American smiled, thats great Frankie. Katherine agreed, and suggested that he maybe didnt thump the glass so hard. Youre going to break it dad. As Katherine and her sisters visits grew less frequent, Frankie retreated more and more from the aridity of his own back yard, from the spiders of cooch grass creeping over the balding lawn, to the green rain soaked hills of his youth, caught on photograph paper, and hung before him. Klee marched up towards us proffering a stick. When he got to the step he stopped and considered it as though it were a prize bull he was thinking about purchasing, he touched it with cautious hands, as though listening to them, his mouth curling at the price, but he decided to take it, and so threw his weight against the concrete,

Oliver came home for lunch. He left his boots in the work Land Rover and hopped over the wet gravel in his socks. So whats the plan Fin? he asked, smearing avocado onto a baguette. There is no plan, Katherine prickled, hes just going to take it easy for a bit. But I did have something in mind. " First I do the desert, now I do the sea, I joked, arms in a dramatic show of expanse. They looked at me blankly. Im going to work on a tuna boat. The extremity of it appealed to me; the elemental purity, earth and ocean, a talisman compulsion to complete the cycle. I also wanted to make a shit load of money quickly. My money was running out. Oliver and Katherine looked at each other, and the laughter I didnt hear felt hot under my skin. Whats so funny? I can work on a fucking boat! Its pretty full on Fin. Katherine said. Oliver you wouldnt do it would you? she added, breaking a baguette up for her son. Oliver grimaced and shook his head. Why dont you try and get a job in one of the hotels? Theyd love to have a chef from Adelaide. I dont want to cook anymore. Im sick of it. Anyway theres no rush, Katherine said. Shall I put some more coffee on?