The day word from Mrs. Sullaman arrived I was out of bed before Eliza, who was normally moving around by dawn. I washed, caught the lift in my pyjamas and brought the brown A4 envelope back up to the dining room, where it lay unopened on the dining table while I made breakfast. There had been disappearances. All but the necessary silver had been put away and we had gone through the rest of the flat wherever we thought we could make a difference, so the morning light ran level over most things and the smell itself was less confused. Something similar missing. The curtains in the dining room were half drawn. I was sitting in it eating a bowl of cornflakes and watching a fly turn circles over the razed expanse of killed maple before me when Eliza came in a bit flushed, smiling. She said what’s that.
It’s from the valuer.
She ripped the top off. So we make progress. Inside were a few typed sheets held together by a bulldog clip and a handwritten note. Eliza lifted the sheets one by one. Blah blah blah, need of restoration, blah blah. Here. Estimated market value. She read off a series of preliminary numbers, her fingers twitching at the edge of the page, glissando to a computational flutter, then smacked the bundle down and sat motionless with her hands in her lap, her head inclined and her eyes fixed in utopian middle distance. We’ve done it she said at last, winking again. Pull out that pinky, we’re sitting on thousands. Still something in my.
The handwritten note contained a list of places. We couldn’t tell if it was in ascending or descending order so we went blindly from the top. Bob’s Second Hand and Fossicker’s were on south King Street, in Newtown. We started with Fossicker’s. Yes they were interested in some things, not the major things but they could do something with some of the furniture, the lamps, the heater, that sort of thing. They would send someone on the weekend. I wonder is this how Dodge used to do it. We pottered around the flat smoothing the pillows down. Tooth, got it. That won’t come back again. Eliza planted the list with gory asterisks and we discussed technique, settled on a terminus a quo, let the phone ring. She was standing in the middle of the living room pointing the television aerial in various directions when I answered the door to a grave young man, clearly somebody’s son. He arrived later than you might have expected, being anxiously observant of the other civilities and knowing, he said, the area. Apologies. The weather. Yes of course. You look cold, poor thing. His shirt was buttoned above the collar of a plastic rain poncho that he took off at my invitation and hung where it dripped onto the hallstand. Come in don’t just stand there. He put his hands in his pockets and followed me squelching into the living room, the freckles rising in his cheeks. He was as tall as Eliza and strongly built. In another place with his elbows free he might have been taken for athletic. I offered him a chair and Eliza went in to make some tea. She regretted having to leave the aerial. I heard something she said over her shoulder. I swear, just for a second I had it, something.
While she was in the kitchen our guest and I talked about his shop, antiques. He answered directly enough but his eyes nutated all over the place and by the time we ran out of small talk he was literally squirming. I wish I could put my finger on exactly what it was. It was a sombre day and the rainclouds banked in the windows had thrown the room into faint relief. The air rumbled. With the first price I happened to mention I thought I saw him blanch. He did jump. If that seems unbelievable, things certainly went downhill from there. We had already mentioned quite middling costs in the shop so it can’t have been the money that put him off. He must have been prepared for that, which in any case was his job, or at least. Something spooked him. When Eliza came in with the tea things he was gone. Just like that. Did he say anything. . He forgot his raincoat. She stood, stunned, a fillet of steam unwinding from the teapot into the rays of the oncoming storm. The television began to crackle.
Hold that!
I took the tray but the signal went dead at her approach. It’s just the weather I said. She said I guess next time we’ll have to be more careful. How. You left the front door open. We didn’t discuss it any further then. Three peals of thunder split over our heads. We’d forgotten our stuff on the clothesline so we dropped everything and ran for the fire escape. We spent the rest of the day grilling our refouled underpants on the heater and Monday morning we started out early. The streets were full of people going to work I imagine. Eliza walked where the storm had washed the last of the amber leaves, the bits of broken glass and plastic, turning over the flop of the weekend as we had the night before. She insisted the rupture might bare something but in my opinion there was no use hammering away at a lost cause. If we hadn’t made it out already we never would. Some people are crackpots. We still had our list and the blaze of day ahead of us. But in Bob’s Second Hand back on King Street we ran into all kinds of misunderstanding, so we turned around and flew up Cleveland Street to get to Darlinghurst and the Little Shop of Horrors, which was jumping the queue. Softly. At least Eliza was getting a real tour. Before we crossed Bourke Street in Burton she stopped and did a double take having never come at it from that angle before. She pointed down the hill. Here we are again. Pisgah run from the sea to the smokeless stack at Sydney Gate. That wasn’t in my vocubulary either. No, we’re higher up on it than we were. Do you think we might run into. Doesn’t matter anyway. The green man standing became the red man striding. Decisive at last we ran in front of a bus, tires hissing on the slick behind us, faces in blurred boxes. More than a scent of the blustering season but still pools not brooks, either above or below the surface. I expect that’s those sources run dry. Other young people were on the street, hands linked, in all kinds of jackets. What tenacious obsolescence, those shimmering constrictors; for the first time we must have almost fit. Down in. Echo the lot, la e lotio. No. Bends adorning. Een might come in. Dumb kids, playing old people. Where are the italics on this thing. Hardly feels like yesterday. And now this. This is retro. Me dehiscing, did I say that, down to rubble and I lose sight of you, weave away in the flicker of the crowns pressed together on the street, stars fading in my inky lids, litter of last light blinking off till all forgotten. It used to be called Semicircular Quay. That’s good, that’s in the books too. What frightfully innumerable summits I like to think I’ve been slipping over about my doubtful people. Look at me. I’ve lost them again. How’s that for the thorns of life. Fast pinnacles. My molten vessel. I said that before. Must be a different button. You don’t even need to write. What an unexpected boon for invention. So you return to where you started. Walk here no more, buoyed over deep space in a bassinet, your fingers looped in the cords of your bonnet, about the time you begin to take an interest in intercourse id est eyeball and semiloose sphere of the knee. They are buffing the mica flecked pavement in their haste to pass out. The rest has settled into an ashen cope. See. The other looms over you like Dad’s fob. Hands closing in. Hurry up that’s us they’re calling. No steam but a whistle. I make the air vibrate but in despair. To make a new beginning. Till we get there. The line comes alive, faster than. Where was I. Further on in the same direction. Yes, I mean, further on in the same direction we passed the north wind, facing wall of what used to be East Sydney Technical College, dappled against the still melancholy heavens, a repulsive, fangless dinosaur having bolted its prickly branches above the high tiles on the south side and, rid precipitously its bag of pistoles, piercing them naked into the otherwise limitless sky — the branches; I understand a flying fish or a vampire if I haven’t completely lost the ability to read would have been more suitable there, though no more excessively substantial, I would be glad to reaffirm that in the most formal environment. Like that well full of concrete. The drains were clogged to overflowing. I have nothing but my spontaneity. I will knout up hell if I have to. Eliza ran her fingers over the damp grey sandstone.