Christine disappeared left around a corner. Just beyond the intersection, a man broke away from his bunch of friends and stumbled off the curb, trying to hail a ride. It was late, taxis were getting choosy, and the driver took only one look. These boys were on the piss and off the prowl. They wanted out. Another taxi passed, so they turned for Kings Cross station, swaying and shouting, and kicking at walls.
Jonathan followed as Christine threaded her way through the narrow street lined by cars parked with two wheels up on the curb. Jonathan saw that her black T-shirt and blue denim jacket did not hide the slight hunch of her back beneath her right shoulder. Her path blocked by a wall of paint-splattered brick, she turned. Drawing now within a pace or two, Jonathan pulled a crushed Benson and Hedges packet from his shirt pocket took from inside a fat joint, its only contents, and stuck it in his mouth. Catching Christine's eyes, Jonathan smiled; seeing Jonathan forced to shove his bottom lip out to catch the joint from falling, she laughed.
The joint hung there unlit while Jonathan searched his pockets. "Fine host you are!" She had a lighter of her own in the top pocket of her jacket, but let Jonathan go on looking. He looked funny with the unlit joint drooping from his lips, his brow furrowed, his fingers searching, not finding. Finally he looked up with a grin, empty-handed. As he shrugged, his eyebrows rose with his shoulders, and his ears moved too, just a little. "My guess ... " She had to repeat herself to draw his attention, "My guess is someone at the pub is one lighter richer. It's OK though," she slipped a yellow disposable from her jacket pocket, "I came prepared." When Christine smiled, her gums showed. Jonathan had a sort of double smile: the first was a simple grin, squinty and broad, then from inside, from behind his eyes, came a second brightness, direct and personal. Christine wasn't big on bloke's smiles, but she liked Jonathan's. It was a smile, and she pondered this as she handed him her lighter, it was a smile that was somehow - grateful. "Thanks," he said, through the sparks that flew from the flint. He snapped back his head as a few strands of over-grown fringe caught and fizzed.
He pushed his hair precariously back, and this time the rising flame merely reflected in his eyes as the joint crackled. Christine received the joint between thumb and fore-finger but didn't toke on it immediately, waiting instead to watch Jonathan's eyes flutter against the sting of lagging smoke. Jonathan caught her watching him, and his laughter choked to a cough. "I'm..." Between gulps "so..." he managed "sophisticated."
At last Christine took her turn. "How was the show?" she asked with an intake of breath.
"Good crowd. The band did well. I think those guys could be good for us." A cockroach flew into the light, striking the wall then falling at Jonathan's feet. He stomped on it and dragged his shoe across the asphalt to wipe the splatter from his sole. It made no difference in the greater scheme of things but, by his reckoning, if you see a cockroach you should at least make an attempt to kill it. Christine on the other hand didn't mind sharing her city - even with creatures that had wings, six legs, and ate shit. Jonathan looked up from the scene of destruction. The joint he reached for had returned to Christine's mouth. She peered through the haze and the orange glow and took a long, slow toke.
"I didn't get much time to talk with Murdoch," Jonathan said as he watched the joint growing smaller, "but I gave their manager an earful during the breaks. Annie says he'll sing anything she gives him, so it's only her we need to impress."
"Well?"
"She's heard of you. Thanks ... She saw Across The Line and liked your sound-track. She wants a demo."
"The one we've got won't do. We'll need a new one. Ta ... "
"But she wants it next week."
"Shit! Why?"
"They're taking a break before summer to work up some new material. She's putting together a studio deal, maybe an album: that's what she says. If we want them to use our song, we'll have to be quick." He toked on the joint which she had again relinquished: "They're slow learners."
Wet Money had played that night at the Hopetoun and a friend of Christine arranged for Jonathan to meet them for a couple after the show. His shout. Jonathan was better than Christine at the promotional stuff. Christine tried not to be suspicious or jealous of his flair for these situations -- his ability to say things like 'You guys are Hot' and 'These songs are fresh and original' and 'Loads of grunt' whilst maintaining an earnest yet innocent facial expression. It was beyond her. She looked down at his brown, round-toed shoes, their thick black soles. All he needed now was some dress sense.
"Do you reckon we can get Bruno to operate?"
Jonathan passed her the joint. "If we supply the refreshment."
"Brandy maybe. What do you think?"
"Beautiful!" Jonathan watched the joint between the fingers of Christine's right hand light up her flesh as she inhaled. With her free hand she reached up to massage the top of her right shoulder, then high on her neck below her ear, worrying at the tight muscles.
"Thursday then. Want a go at this?"
Jonathan held out his hand to receive a small, soggy piece of paper. His eye-brows creased: "Seems like a dead one." Having held her lighter all this time, Jonathan went to pocket it, but looked up sheepishly as Christine cleared her throat.
She pushed his hand away: "Don't worry, you keep it." She had about half a dozen of his in her cutlery drawer alone.
Now they picked their way along Darlinghurst Road, making for their regular cafe. "Raphael's" was plastered in big, red letters across the plate window. The best table was directly under the letter 'p'. Tonight, although it was set for four, someone was sitting there alone. The woman made no use of the view across the footpath, sitting instead with her back to the street.
Christine and Jonathan found a table beneath a poster of James Dean. Their red-headed waiter was new on staff, but he wound past the tables with ease, with grace almost, calmly evading a thrown out elbow, a chair suddenly thrust back. Smiling, he took Christine and Jonathan's order for a cappuccino and a short black.
Past Jonathan's right ear, Christine could see the woman at the best table. As Jonathan began to speak, Christine's eyes shifted from his face to the woman behind him. "Wet Money have got this big, hard bass sound, like early Stranglers." The woman was stirring her coffee, around and around. Looking into it. She laid down her spoon. Leant back into her chair. "But it's a fretless, so its funkier than them, jazzier." A thin, gold chain rested on her tight burgundy jumper, occasionally catching the light. She was wearing a short black skirt. Her bare feet were pressed into high shoes. "And that should suit 'Suspicion' pretty well."
Jonathan was interrupted as the coffee arrived. Prizing her attention from the lonely woman, Christine glanced about the cafe, conjuring the sound of a fretless bass for their song "Suspicion". Two black-haired men wearing black leather jackets were smoking and arguing - or at least, using loud Italian. A woman and a man leant toward each other across their table, their legs symmetrically pushed back under their chairs. Past a table of six, and through into the next room, Christine could make out a couple of sex workers wearing long, dark coats over their bright street clothes. Christine recognised one of them from a party about a month back. She had a sense of humour, Christine recalled: her real name was Yvette, but for work she called herself 'Pam'.
Christine looked at Jonathan's face and the blue outline of his body. Around his head and around his hands she saw his blue aura flutter. The aura of one of the Italians was also blue; the other's, orange. The waiter's aura was the colour of his hair, orange rusting into red. She didn't know his name, but she could pick him easily in a crowd because his aura contained dark spots, like on the face of the sun. Christine liked this about him. The woman at the table had her back to the busy street and the blue and red neons of the bars on the far side. The lights made her aura hard to make sense of. Some days auras shone better than others, even for people with good sight, like Christine.
Jonathan's blue aura turned green. He was drinking from his cup and looked a little cross-eyed as he stared into it. He didn't know that his aura had changed colour; and he didn't know that it was now becoming, in places, a yellow roughly the shade of the disposable lighter. Christine made for him a little hat of aura-light, and put a blue feather in it.
"What are you laughing at?" Jonathan had heard that laugh before.
"Nothing." And the denial.
"What are you doing?"
"I've made you a hat, that's all."
"Well I hope it suits me." He pretended to adjust the rim - but he had in his mind a hunting cap, the kind with ear-flaps, whereas, since Christine's distraction, it now resembled an ill-used Akubra, and the feather was no more. Looking up at Jonathan, Christine's smile was teeth and gums. She laughed again, and he enjoyed the sound. The lights of his aura swirled and flashed with one last flourish. Sitting at the best table, the woman with the gold chain around her neck lifted her head slightly and looked up at Jonathan through long lashes. Christine's focus shifted again. Watching the woman's eyes engage, she could see only their whites, like two crescent moons. Christine got a feeling she didn't like and shook it off.
"And how about you?" He had to ask again. "How was the play?"
"Fucking lousy."
"Did you get the moon up in time?"
"Of course I did. And it wasn't my fault last time. That rotten queen left out about a page of dialogue before the moon speech. How was I to know? At least it got a laugh, which was a small mercy."
"I was thinking of seeing it next week."
"You do, and I'll arrange an electrical accident."
By the time they had finished their second coffee, Christine had been through their preparations again: Thursday; Bruno; mics, tapes and a four-track reel-to-reel. She was pulling things together, marshalling their resources, glad, even light-headed, that at last their project was gathering momentum. She was glad, simply, to have company. The clientele had turned over in the last hour or so. Except for the woman, still sitting under the letter 'p', which was a 'q' from their side of the window.
They pushed back their chairs, headed for the counter. Waiting by the register, Christine saw the woman, half obscured by Jonathan, rising from her seat. The woman's ankles gave, just a little, as she walked across the tiled floor. Her hair was flattened with sweat against her temples, and her skin was grey and dull.
'Smacked-out,' Christine thought, but, as the she drew closer, Christine saw briefly the colour of her eyes. The woman's eyes were blue and clear, not the smoky, pin-pupiled black of a user. Her eyes were bright, but not as some are, reflections of the brightness around them. Their brightness seemed to come from elsewhere. Christine recognised that interested, evasive, isolated stare, and stepped back to allow her to reach the cash register ahead of them. The woman repeated the cashier's tally: "Two dollars," and Christine noticed how she pronounced both 'l's, cutting the word in two.
The red-headed waiter took her money with an open smile. The woman watched her own slim fingers as she slipped her change into a tiny purse, snapped it shut, then placed it into her black leather handbag. She turned, looking past Christine to Jonathan.
"Excuse me. Do you have a light please?"
Jonathan's eyes darkened before he remembered Christine's disposable in his pocket. "Yeah, sure." He felt Christine's gaze upon him, knowing that she would not approve of what he was about to do. Boys lighting cigarettes for girls - not the kind of cultural message she went for. His composure suffered a further blow when the lighter refused to catch. Without a word, the woman took it from his hand. The sound of the flint was like the snapping of a branch. Soon the yellow flame was lost in the clear eyes of her tired face. Her high cheek-bones warmed to the light, but the warmth drained as the flame was extinguished.
She withdrew the smoking cigarette from between her lips. "Thank you," she said. As she handed back the lighter her heel slipped again on the tiles and Jonathan caught her by the arm.
"You right?"
"Yes." She looked up at him. "Thank you." She pronounced each syllable separately, as if the words were unfamiliar. "I am just tired. I am only tired." And she sounded it. She steadied herself, without speaking again, turned and left Raphael's. It was Christine and Jonathan's turn to pay.
"Jonathan!" He had to wrench his attention away from the empty doorway.
"What?"
"She nicked off with my lighter."
He knew she was right, but his hands automatically went for his pockets. "Not your lighter." He looked up. "You gave it to me, remember?"
"Then you should be more careful. Now you'll have to cope with the remorse of losing the gift of a valued friend."
"Oh well," he engaged his squinty grin: "No great loss." Christine left ahead of him.
The Coca-Cola sign was four storeys high. Above it, concealed within the light and the city haze, hung the waxing crescent moon slowly opening like an eye.
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