It's been raining all day. It makes being here agreeable.

I'm high above the Mall and can look out, unconcerned by the concerns below. Untouched by the puddles where the pavers arent even and the oily water rushing over the gutters. When I was a kid we used to go up North and I remember us driving through a swarm of locusts once. Thats what its like now, all this heavy rain, the thudding liquid explosions of thousands of frantic creatures trying to be where I am. And me here safe and sound. A little halo of steam from my coffee cup on the window. We've had no one today. I imagine it's this weather keeping them away. I can't imagine how some of them can afford to stay away for so long. I would have thought that in some cases a deluge of napalm and the pavers transformed into glowing coals would have proved a minor obstacle. Mary's been doing her nails. Her manicure set is open on her desk and emery boards of various gauges are scattered in front of the soft leather case. She's out on one of her wedding missions. Ive changed the radio from the crap she insists on to the station I like and turned it up. I'll see her before she gets back, and she's generally gone for ages any way, chatting away madly. And then shell appear from under ridge of shopfronts, bobbing among the crowd, weaving dramatically to maximise the short journey back, twisting a straight line into a halting tango around puddles and pedestrians, hunched up against the rain running down her neck clutching a cappuccino to her boyish breast. By the time she is half way up the stairs the radio will be restored to its former retarded state. God it's horrible out there! Mary says, carefully placing her Italian leather jacket over the back of her chair. She removes the lid from her coffee with her competition class fingernails and wipes the chocolate speckled foam off the bottom of the lid and vacuums it off her tiny finger with her immaculate, child like lips. Any calls? She pounces upon the answer before Ive given it. God he's a bastard! As is her habit her hand flicks at her hair around her right ear, only it isnt there anymore, because she had it cut off months ago. The action remains though, like a nervous tick. And one I have come to anticipate. It is a clear sign that she is stressed. Watching her deal with client's Ive seen that hand flick up with such vigour it was as if her hair was pouring down her side and all over her desk in long silky waves. The jacket, the manicure set, the car, earrings, perfume, shoes, and haircut are all the gifts from the bastard. For some reason I have become involved in the up coming nuptials with Dale or whatever the hell his name was for no other action that looking at her occasionally when she speaks. I am a mute minister in her desperate government. I was there, apparently, during the mother-in-law summit and the great soft furnishings debate. I was a strong force on the crockery tour, and a reassuring presence, albeit surreptitiously, when the seating arrangement council met. It seems I helped her regroup after the first catering campaign, a disaster, and that my never offered advice led later on to at least a minor victory. She polishes her nails and sips her coffee while I watch a man lose his umbrella to the wind. He is shaking his sodden trousers and cursing skywards when the phone rings. Knee jerk we both look at the clock and then at each other. Theres ten minutes to go until home time. Mary has been caught at the beginning of a diatribe concerning the disparity of toilet seat prices and is of a mind to ignore it, just as I am of a mind to answer it, if only to escape her inane rambling. The phone continues to ring. We debate with our eyebrows across the room. Like a hand shocked from sleep I reach out suddenly to silence the ring and swoop the receiver to my ear. Who ever it was had just hung up. We both sit back satisfied. Oh what if it was Dylan? Mary worries, and I knew she was going to say this. She shrugs and mutters some assurance to herself and again picks up the rhythm on her emery board and her sharp criticism of the bathroom hardware industry. I ease myself back into a comfortable position and Marys voice pops in the background like cinders in a fireplace and the locust heads crush against the window. I think about Jacob on the way home, something he said at our last meeting, that the rain makes his neck swell up, and that he must get an umbrella one of these days. I think I've seen him on the street sometimes, on my street, but I have been mistaken. Even now, placing the key in the door it is not impossible that as it opens and I go to step inside a hand will touch my shoulder and I'll turn around and he'll be standing there. I dont normally think about clients like this, I normally just dont think about them at all. They dont even occupy my head while theyre in the room. I just read off the computer, tap and read, thats all it is. But Jacob lingers, his calling card smell, that deep dark fruit cake smell of

wine and cigarettes. I shake my coat off and hang it in the hallway. The erratic distribution of light indicates that Cathy isnt home. Bedroom light on, kitchen light off, bathroom light on, lounge room light off. A map of retreat sound-tracked by the stereo she has left on. I step into the bathroom with a weary croon and violins for company. Her wet toothbrush lies face up on the sink and the smell of mint bites with tiny teeth into a rich warm lather of body lotion and the sharp sweet wire of her perfume. I rectify the light in accordance to my needs and get a bottle of wine from the fridge and sit on the sofa and click on the TV. She is sitting with her foot up on the table painting her toenails. She is sitting on the sofa with her robe a sleepy cat below her black bra. She is wandering from one room to another. I see her more when she isnt here. I arrive at work and Mary bids me in at the door as though I had a choice, as though our single office on the third floor of an otherwise redundant building was a cell in a busy labyrinth and I was about to fly off to other business. She is on her knees and exhales with her hands on her hips as I enter, assuming the attitude of a person satisfied with a finally scrubbed floor. She indicates the mosaic of glossy pamphlets spread before her. "These are the colour samples," she says gravely. I hang my coat over my chair and nod with equal gravity. "Which one do you like?" It is a question on which the question mark hangs like a sickle. If I say the wrong thing now the rest of the day will prove even more trying than it is already going to be. I look over the squares with an eye also open for the sign. Bang, I get it. An apricot coloured square near her hand. Two things could be happening here. Either this is the one she likes, or the one she has a particular grievance with. The next thing to do is coax for more information. Does another square warrant an even stronger reaction? Negative, I am stuck with the one. This is either her or Barbara's choice, that's the bastard's mother. As minister in her cabinet I realise that damage control is paramount. If the wind was right it would be Marys but I could not under any circumstances pick the enemies. It is too close so I point at a green in the far right corner that could be a frog or mould or an old ship. She reacts as if all of these things are actually touching her skin and is disgusted, but I am allowed to get on with my day. Mary gathers up her samples and is at her desk on the phone to a paint company. She looks up and shakes her head. I smile in synthesised sympathythe idiots this sensible hardworking young woman has to deal with! I look out the window at and see umbrellas bobbing above a rapid river of footsteps. When I get home trumpets and clarinets are farting away like horses pulling a sad old song. In Cathys room her clothes had been thrown on the bed. I get a glass of wine and look again into her room. Her clothes seemed smaller off her body, inside out with the labels curled up like sleeping lambs on the quilt. Her shed skin soft and warm and innocent, a scent of baby breath cotton and powder. I turned the stereo down and check the answering machine. Jeremy is back in town. The last I'd heard from Jeremy was a post card from Singapore that read: Hours are long, pay is shit, and a jug of beer costs thirty bucks! Hed travelled and discovered a passion for construction sites and South African women. I was supposed to see him off at the airport and had a book I'd bought for him was in my jacket pocket when I woke up three hours after the plane had left in the bedroom of a skinny red headed girl I'd met at a party the previous night. Letters and phone calls landed on dead ground both ways as changes of address were not communicated and the distraction of day-to-day life obscured the trail. I sip my wine and think about seeing him again. . I am in bed when Cathy comes home. A strip of light appears at the bottom of my bedroom door and her footsteps are heavy in a way that suggests a less than satisfying evening. I hear the kitchen light go on and the beam under the door brightens, and then a clink of glass and the light changes as the kitchen light is turned off and the lamp in the lounge is turned on. She exhales loudly and then there is a shuffle of paper and the clunk of the ashtray being repositioned. She puts a CD on and the bleating brass is quickly turned down in consideration to me. And then the songThat stew of lonely words and brushed drums just beyond my door. My heart races, I roll over and burrow into the pillows and cover my head with the guilt, my breath hot in this moles cave. I wonder how to

do it. I could just be getting up for a piss, or a glass of water. I could grumble good-naturedly about being woken up and say what the hell! and help myself to a glass of wine. Or I could rush in with an empty bottle and a wild look ready to confront an intruder, and she would admire my valiant effort and we'd laugh at my mistake. I'd settle beside her shaking my head and she'd touch me with proud affection. I could just walk in now, the surprise element, naked and stiff as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The ideas tumble and the electricity of excitement is gripping my hands to the bed ready to spring up when the music stops and the strip of light goes out and her bedroom door closes. The scissor sound of a door being slowly closed that isnt supposed to be heard. Its Sunday afternoon and were at the Wellington hotel. The trees in the park hang half-mast under a drape of rain. Cars hiss through the puddle the road has become as they brace the corner. Doorways are closed and grey and the pavement alien to anything other than the water colliding with it. We divide the change and stagger off towards the duke-box and cigarette machines. "You should ring that Sharon girl," Cathy says. "Yeah, I will." She searches herself for the packet of cigarettes in front of her. "No seriously! you should." "No seriously, I will." And then the music fills the air. A roll of barbed wire smoke un-knotting itself as it climbs the wooden pillars and the barman's polishing glasses and the dead sigh of the pool table and the cold grey wet world outside are all gathered up and hover over that perfect dip between her mouth and nose. And then the music fills the air, and she stretches the skin and scratches at an itch and everything flies away. "How can you listen to this shit?" She asks me. Tired and mucky we end up at a Steak place we both like. Ive got a hankering for a gypsy steak and devilled chicken livers. The manageress makes Margaritas. Her manufactured blonde locks falling about her brow like a horsetail while she abuses the very waiters she wants to fuck. By the window in the candle light and the smoky din it is easy to consider the rain outside as nothing more than a pretty dream. We watch people splish splash dance as they cross the street. I tell Cath a joke I've been hanging on to and her eyes and teeth sparkled for a few brilliant seconds. We talk of school and secrets that seem funny now. After the last sheet of what can be laughed at has been torn away we sit quiet and heavy before ourselves in the glass. The music has stopped and the manageress is at the till and lights are turned on. The fumbled mechanics of placing a key in a lock provide a wafer of levity and we are both all at once in the hallway hanging our saturated coats. . Ring that Sharon girl. She says again from her doorway. Yeah I will. She says goodnight and the hallway grows dark behind her, I stand for a moment before feeling my way along the wall. Jeremy has not changed. He still looks like Sean Lennon and still hates it when I say so. And he still hugs with a gusto that causes trauma to my lower back. I hand him the book Id meant to give him and he hands me a pint. He is with Alistair and Rebecca and Robert, some of his old uni friends, and Bazza, the guy he is installing roof batts with. Jeremy and Bazza are hooting with laughter, the days labour still shiny on their foreheads. They'd met on a building site in the Philippines. During a homesick bout a plan was incubated. A one-stop We'll Fix Anything truck that travelled the outback. Theyd call in on sheep stations and farmhouses, ready to attend to any structural, electrical or plumbing maladies. But they needed money to set up this operation, so for now they were out in the suburbs stuffing batts. Alistair shakes my hand in his polite attentive way. He has rounded teeth and a large frame, and his country doctor manner belies his fantasy to have anal sex with a prostitute while she did the same with her tongue to another professional sex worker. He had unfortunately let this information leak into the public domain in a moment of welllubricated candour. It was never mentioned again, not to his face anyway, and Alistair only drinks light beer these days. Rebecca and Robert are nice smelling mysteries. Earnest types, Rebecca particularly. In a moment of boozed inspiration Jeremy announced that they were going to be like Avon ladies with an Engineering degree. Yeah! Bazza nodded with enthusiasm, well be like the Flying Doctor's that bricks would call if they had a voice! which no one could really disagree with, except for the flying bit of course. That and the fact they were not going to be called but just arrive anyway, more like a circus than a service. Then it was discussed that a circus was a service anyway. After all, says Rebecca, Just because someone doesnt ask doesnt mean they dont need help. Which

dulled us all back to silent sipping for a while. Not long after Robert and Rebecca left, and then Barry slapped our backs and went for a piss and didnt come back. The call of the TAB in the other bar proving irresistible. And so Jeremy and I sit here alone. Scouting through the backwaters he gets in first. So, how have you been? Yeah, not bad, not bad. I reply, sucking hard on my cigarette. Look I'm really sorry I didnt come and see you off but Don't worry about it. I went to go on, but he put his hand up at each effort and we laughed at the sound of it. He tapped the book. I've read it, thanks anyway. I am suddenly aware of our surroundings. The neon signs ghostly glow on the bar, the people around us, the music, the girl behind the bars eyelashes, her lips, the hair on her arms. Where's Alistair? Don't worry, says Jeremy without looking up, he goes home pretty early these day's. It was too easy, a fat ripe tomato. Yeah, I say, and then Jeremy picks up the scent. Well he has to doesnt he? Why's that? I am a moon-faced tourist asking directions. Well you need your sleep if your going to fuck hooker's up the arse!

Comrades again through sex lies we stumble out the pub. Rebeccas demure nature is denuded by our rough rasps and she bounces like a shuttle cock in our drunk erotic whimsy. A rain veiled moon dances through the branches as we cross the park towards my place. The stereo is on and a sickly sweet aroma is released when he enters the house. A woody smell his jacket gives off as he hangs it up mixing with the remnant spice of her exit. Jeremy sits next to me on the sofa and stares at the lights on the stereo for a while before saying, I didnt know you liked Ol' Blue Eyes. I don't, I say going to the fridge for beer, it's Caths. Whos Cath? My housemate. Is she home? I giggle and tell him to hold on. I turn her light on and lean in the doorway long enough for him to come over and have a look as well. Her flock of clothes had woken, spread further a field, and then resettled. We stare at them spread over the quilt. He nods long enough not to seem rude and then leads me back into the lounge room to talk about speakers. I started reading the book I bought for Jeremy at work today, but soon abandoned it as Mary had a narrative of her own that demanded my attention. We set off in the staff car for the location of the house. It was a long journey into unfamiliar terrain and we eventually stopped on a hill overlooking the reserve that flooded over the land the river had before it had been diverted. It was a flat green space, peppered with small dogs and their owners. A bright yellow playground sat next to a new toilet block and a white concrete bike track slithered across the spongy grass. We stepped over lengths of plastic pipe and loose bricks and torn bags of concrete mix into the house through the still bare doorway. Once inside my attention was directed towards the numerous examples of gross incompetence on the part of the builders. Of one particular example it was reasoned that Marys blind Aunty could do a better job. The evidence stacked up as we went from room to room, new outrages not detected on previous inspections were pointed out. I told Mary I'd go and have a look outside. I step carefully through the debris and sat on the bonnet of the car and light a cigarette. The house next door is of a similar design and state of completion as this one, as are others on the opposite rise. A vast colony of empty shells that sit in space like a tense angular dream, and the still quiet air tiptoes around them. Tonight there is a something new. There are two dinner plates on the coffee table and a half finished bottle of Red wine. I drink from the glass I know to be hers. I place the waxy lipstick smudge against my lip. I stare at the scars of the forks

against the plates. Reddy coagulated claw marks and bits of rice like bloody cotton balls. And that song, that fucking song! Low to medium volume, easy to talk over but loud enough to seep and spread itself like a net. A message left in a milk bottle, a card slipped under the door. Oh God they're at it right now! I think. Who leaves unfinished wine for anything less pressing? But her door is open and, what's more, the bed is just a bed. Tucked in and smooth with nothing on it. Without meaning to I can remember Sharons phone number. I couldnt tell you the birth date of any of my relatives but phone numbers store themselves automatically in my head. I punch the number and the phone chirps seven times before she answers. Well this is a surprise, she says. Well not really, I say, I've been busy and besides I thought I'd lost your number. She asks me how I've been and say pretty good, how about you? She says about the same I guess and then we both agree that that's not too bad. So what you been up to? Not much. The rain falls in silver spears and shoots coins off the puddles and parked cars. I wish I'd bought my umbrella now. But the idea of arriving at her place and shaking it out at the door smacked of something dusty and sour, of sticky lolly wrappers and cheap gifts. There is something castle like about the single light on in the upper level of an otherwise lifeless or sleeping block of flats that sharpens the curiosity that has seeded in my stomach. It has grown sharper still as I approach that orange square of light. Sharon greets me at the door with cautious affection. She helps me off with my coat and carries it into bathroom to hang on the shower while I squeeze and scrub with the fluffy pink towel shes handed me. My earlobes are red and numb, in the mirror above the phone I have the towel around my shoulders and the fresh faced glow of an apple farmer. I like that Sharon hasnt bothered to change. Her black and white work clothes are comfortably untucked. She's taken her shoes off and her little toenails are question marks of evolution theyre that little, but painted a deep shade of plum like the others. In the kitchen she holds up a packet of chicken noodle soup and a bottle of vodka. Have you eaten? She asks. No, but I'm not that hungry thanks. The heater ticks when she changes it from three bars to one and we stand at the window looking outside. We stare out onto the silver film of street lit darkness, a silence raging in our ears. We see a flash over the hills. Was that lightening? I ask stupidly. I hope so. We adjourn to the couch and she tells me about some funny thing that happened in the change rooms at the department store she works at, something about helping some old lady try on a silk look leisure suit. I laugh and ask if its Ok to smoke inside. The vodka is warm, even with the ice, and squeezed lemons sit on the bench in the kitchen and the smell of them is on her fingers. She undoes the clip in her hair and says that feels better and asks me if Im warm enough: Because if not Ive got a jumper you can burrow. No really, thanks, I'm fine. I apologise again for not having rang earlier and say how happy I was when I found the bit of paper in my jeans because I could have swore I put it in my wallet. She says well better late than never and I say yes I suppose that's true. She says thank god I'm not her brother because he only does his washing about twice a year, and I say well thank god I'm not your brother even if I did it every second day and we both laugh and she says yes I suppose you've got a point there. We sip our drinks and she asks if I wouldnt mind if she put a CD on and I say not at all. As she gets up I ask her if she has any Frank Sinatra. The hallway light is on and she approaches in silhouette, unfastening her bra in the doorway. I fall back on the bed and open my eyes to darkness as if I had not opened them at all. Sharon undoes my belt and I knit a blind mans shape, a vessel of impossible proximity from all the scraps I have. I concentrate on my constructA vision of Cathy on the old black and white of my imagination. Flickers of clarity that keep bursting into static snow.

Jacob came in today. Within seconds of our discussion a red wave broke around his ears and nostrils and settled into a beetroot simmer in the hollow of his cheeks. I pulled up his file; every box that could be was filled in black. I see you finally got round to getting an umbrella. He looked up at me sharply and I smiled towards the folded fruit bat wings without a handle leaning against his leg. What? Oh, this isnt mine. He said, and quickly resumed his agitation. I clicked the mouse, reconfirm, reconfirm. Sorry my mistake, I smiled. I exited and started again. A box appeared saying this file is now cancelled and then the screen went blank. Harris Scarfes are having a sale at the moment you know. I reckon you could pick one up for about five buck's, I breezed through a twinge of nausea. It's my sister's, Jacob stated a matter-of-factly. Ah right. I booted up the system again and watched the Microsoft logo twirl into infinity. Well that was very descent of her to lend it t She's dead. Ok then! I clapped my hands and attacked the keyboard, tapping out gibberish for the show of it, and that's when it twigged. He'd been singing, or humming rather for some time. Id been clicking my teeth to the tune without realising it. I was about to employ my mouth to more practical purposes when he started bellowing: OH MARY MY LOVE ILL BE BACK SOON TO BUY YOU THE STARS AND BUY YOU THE MOON OH MARY MARY DO NOT FEAR FOR SOON MY LOVE I WILL BE NEAR ID CROSS THE SEA AND WALK THE GLADES FOR YOU ALONE MY HEART OBEYS WITH BAGS OF SILVER AND BAGS OF GOLD ILL WARM YOUR HEART AGAINST THE COLD. Sitting at her desk across the room, the subject of this passion regarded Jacob with a look of amazed horror. Jacob was shaking his head like a rabid dog, spit spilling out with the words. Mary buried her face in her bridal magazine. Jacob! I said, not yelling but trying to be firm. OH MARY MARY MY ONLY LOVE YOUR EYES ARE LIKE THE STARS ABOVE YOUR BREAST IS PURE AS SNOW MY DEAR AND FEAR NOT AS ILL SOON BE NEAR Mary looked as though she was about to be sick. Her eyes fixed on me and there was a speck of accusation in her fear. OH MARY MARY MY ONLY ONE YOUR SMILE IS LIKE THE RISING SUN AND SOON ILL COME AND TAKE YOUR HAND AND YOU WILL WEAR MY WEDDING BAND Make him stop! She called, the accusation hard and sharp now like a piece of glass, Make him stop! Jacob! OH MARY MARY FUCKIN FUCKIN MARY FUCKIN MARY FUCKIN Jacob please! I don't want to have to get the police! On the sound of this last word he stopped and let out a puff. The room was silent, he stared straight at me and I noticed for the first time the colour of his eyes. Within the still old storms were retinas of a clear smoky blue, a boyish clarity that was surprising in its surrounds. Mary gulped and a bone in her neck clicked with the effort. Jacob stroked his face, his thumb and fingers went down his beard and the ulcerated sausage of his inner lip was pulled into view. A tobacco plantation rustled in his throat. I was too gob-smacked to say anything for the moment, and his laugh un-nerved me. Mary swallowed a snotty sob and bravely concentrated on a page of tiaras. Jacob, I said eventually, I think it would be better if we continued this discussion some other time. He snorted and his face sprang back into place. He slapped his knees and headed for the door. I went back to my desk quickly to avoid hearing his clump on the stairs. I watched him cross the mall below, far away now, wavering through the crowd with his dead sisters broken umbrella. He stopped and stared at a young girl by Beehive corner, swaying slightly, pretending to look at the chocolates in the shop window behind her, and then he crossed King William Street. Dragging his feet while others overtook him to get out of the rain. I get home and these events are an unsettling sideshow in my head. Between the tents I discover Cathy. She is sitting in the cool wet space behind the flapping canvas, the sound of a hurdy-gurdy and the smell of roasted nuts around us.

Actually she is putting on her lipstick and looks surprised when I enter her room. Howdy. How was your day? Oh you know, alright. I grab a bottle of wine and sit back on her bed. Frank is playing of course, running down the walls. The phone rings, its Jeremy. Ill met by moonlight my good fellow, I say. Well how now brown cow, he laughs. I've had a cunt of a day I tell him, and could do with a drink. Hes had a great day he reckons but could do with one as well. Do you wanna go to the Dukes Arms? He says thats an excellent idea. Hey see if your house mate wants to come. Cath do you want to come down the Dukes Arms with me and Jezza? No thanks, she says, Im already going out. Did you hear that? I say back into the phone. So have you read that book yet? Jeremy and I are sitting at the bar and Im counting change for cigarettes. No. I've started it, but it's been tricky, finding the time at the moment. Ah right. Well give it a go. I think you'll like it. I do and I am! Like I said, I'm just a bit busy right now to really get into it. I'll finish it though. Jeremy had read it in Johannesburg over three days lolling in his girlfriends flat while she was at work. He rose naked into the mid morning sun and found it on her bookshelf. She was a computer graphic designer he met on a train in Zurich. There was an ad on the TV over there for a clothing chain and at the end of it the name of the company appeared like a chrome brand on the snarling models teeth: She did that. He asks me if Im still writing music and a great bird flies over the water. It glides through an air of murder above a mirrored lake. Laser skinned fish dart about at the bottom. A stone drops from its beak and the skin of the lake churns furiously. The great-feathered thing lets out a cry and hurries its journey to the jagged mountains on the horizon, rising further with each fan of its wings from the aquatic riot below. No, I say. Not right now. He said that's too bad because a girl he was going out with in Vienna was going to be in town soon. Shes a violinist. Maybe, you know, she could have a look at some of your compositions. There are no compositions. There are a few dozen bars of melody in a drawer that a child given a recorder would find on the back of the box. There is a vocation brewed drunk in a backyard as faraway now as the moon is from lighting my cigarette, and he has pushed a crowbar into my heart. I cough and sniff and the subject is changed. We make small talk on a thin bridge, a mass of dead fish floating beneath. We are sitting at the front bar in the Dukes Arms and the pokies trill merry tunes. Theres Surf N Turf on the specials board. We are young men pretending that were old men. Hey your housemates a bit of alright isnt she? Cath? Yeah. A prodigal son to nicotine Jeremy is sucking on one of my cigarettes. Hey guess what! What? Alistair's getting married! Really! It had to be done, like blowing out candles on a cake, or as in this case, holding the knife cutting into it. So shes a nice Greek girl then. We occupied ourselves scripting their wedding night, the scenarios growing ambitiously grotesque. Alistair and his mysterious bride are just lumps in our swamp, they soften out of view as we pour more obscenity into the mud. We are growing tired of each other but we still have beer in front of us. The stories are losing their majesty. The pub-crawls through places that no longer exist, we are confused historians pinpointing on a bar towel map the place

and time things happened. We are young men and we are old men.

I get home from work with a bag of mandarins. Jacob insisted I have them. Have em! he chuckled, Whatd I want with fruit! They travelled home on the bus with me without meaning too. I thought to throw them out but just didnt get round to it. I only really became aware of them when a few rolled bumpily over the breakfast bar when I put the bag down. I imagine some sort of makeshift market down by the river. Jacob and his derelict buddies swapping stolen produce. God knows what he could have done to them. I recall some of my own devilish experiments as a bored boy. An unbridled mind has a genius for secret foulness. I grab a mandarin threatening to roll off the edge and throw it to Cathy. She is curled up like a cat in front of the news. She catches it and puts it next to the miniature Eiffel tower of her nail polish on the arm of the sofa. Have a good night with your friend? She asks; the creak of Gestapo leathers the only thing missing from her cigarette propped enquiry. Yeah it was really good! I lie. Hes quite good looking isnt he? She says, reaching over her head for the mandarin. Who? Your friend. Who? Jezza? Yeah. I watch her peel it. I watch her enjoy the sweetness. There is an open bottle of wine on the table and I sit here watching her. They caught that guy, she says nodding at the TV. What guy? The guy who did that thing. Ah, good. I have no idea what she was talking about. I pour a big glass of wine and I watch Cathy eat Jacobs fruit. I open another bottle and hold the moist end in my mouth like an in-lit cigar. Cathy stretches and yawns goodnight, spiriting herself toward her bed room, her ankles crack down the hallway. Im sitting at the bar in the Dukes Arms rolling an ashy peanut in my fingers and Im imagining Jacob and one of his homeless brethren getting it on. Two old men moaning and rolling around on a Onkaparinga blanket next to a sack of cans. I wonder what theyd do if I came across them in the early hours plucking ducks from the river. I wonder if they would burn me alive and gnaw the stringy meat from my bones. I wonder if they would ask me to join them by their fire. Sit down lad, not too close mind. Would I snack on the air of their brittle fancies or find myself with my face held under the water? Jacob is at my desk before I am. Mary is alert behind her bridal magazine, the nice thick heavy one, rolled up it could rip skin if she hit him with it, and shes been practicing. A white flare of rage around her tiny nostrils as shes bashed her computer every now and then. On Jacobs lap is an old blue school bag. The handles have broken and been knotted back together. He reaches in and pulls out a dead cat. The cat has been skinned and painted. It has been gutted and a rim of fur is stapled around the slit. Marys screaming and I am somewhere warm and green. I rub my eyes hard and electricity jumps all over them.