Diana! - episode 16. Who's that on my bridge?

8 Tuesday 13 August – Waxing crescent

Who is that on my bridge?

They checked out the upper levels, trying to figure where the barking was coming from. Christine walked down the narrow concrete path. She was carrying a wrapped package, a gift for Bruno. She stopped, turned around. Jonathan had not moved.
    "The dog's at least two floors up."
    "Two floors up you reckon." The barking continued, high-pitched and hoarse, as Jonathan, looking left and right, followed Christine down-hill. She didn't like the sound either, but it was not the animal she was worried about, it was its owner.
    Bruno's place was in a block of flats above a marina, near the foot of Gladesville Bridge. Whenever Christine travelled over this bridge, it pleased her to think of Bruno underneath, below, like a troll in a kid's story - Hey baby! Who is that on My Bridge?
    The block was five stories high, but only two rose above the street, the rest filled the cavity cut through the steep slope down to harbour-level. Not so much high-rise as low-fall. The stairs were on the outside of the building. Each floor had its own walk-way, guarded by a blotched white gate and a railing. The angry dog appeared to be secure on a floor above them, so Christine, leading the way, opened a gate and proceeded down the stairs towards Bruno's. A cockroach scuttled across their path, and Jonathan did nothing. Christine wondered about this. A change for the better, she thought, but maded no remark. They ducked under some washing, descended another flight.
    Christine knocked on Bruno's door, and they waited for an answer. She peered through the door's glass pane and saw him sitting slouched in a chair, as if asleep. She knocked again, and Bruno lifted his head sharply and strode to the door.
    "Sorry to wake you."
    Bruno squinted in the light of the doorway, looking at Christine as if to decide whether he was going to be cranky. "I was not sleeping. I was thinking."
    "Thinking!" Christine exclaimed. "Sounds bad."
    Bruno grinned a yellow-toothed grin. "Yeah baby, and that ain't good!" His voice boomed as he welcomed them inside, sitting them together on the couch, before he disappeared into the kitchen.
He returned with a couple of beers, and set them down on the table by a glass of mineral water which had gone flat. He loaded a Charlie Parker CD into the player behind him.
    "How are you then?" Jonathan asked.
    "I am back at work. I am okay."
    "Did they find out what it was?"
    "Of course not. They are stupid. My guts went quiet, and they let me go."
    Christine smiled, "You mean, they didn't try to convince you to stay?"
    "What do you think?" He showed his yellow teeth. "I was sick of them and they were sick of me."
    There was a pause while they each sipped at their drinks. Christine felt the unequal pleasure they took from this act. It made her unhappy. Coiled around his glass, Bruno's fingers were stained, as always, yellow, but she noticed he had bitten his nails right back to the skin. Once long and jagged, then hospital-trimmed, they were now eroded hard to the quick where the skin was red and angry.
    "Are you back at work yet?"
    "Friday week. They want me at the taping for Thank God." She searched for his aura, but lacked the concentration to focus. Instead Christine looked down at the spotless ash-tray that sat on the table before her. Bruno set down his water next to it. As Diana said he would, Bruno had made a choice. Perhaps his breakdown, whatever it was, may have been a good thing after all. She remembered the present they had brought.
    Bruno unwrapped the gift and said, yellow teeth nowhere to be seen: "Chocolate. Thanks." And now Christine felt worse. A few months ago they would have bought him Scotch or cigars, or a good Hermitage. She sighed. What do you give a man who has to give up everything? She changed her mind about his illness and the decision it had forced upon him. Where was the good in choosing life if you could not choose what kind of life?
    "Anything big on?"
    "Erh?" Bruno's exclamation was part grunt, part sneer, and part enquiry. One side of his mouth curled away from his teeth, revealing the place where, only days before, a cigarette would have sat smoking. Thank God It's Friday was one of Ten's few big raters. It featured many rude jokes, dopey sound effects, and a segment where volunteers from the live studio audience threw mud at each other. Occasionally, though, it did have a decent band performing.
    "Anyone big on?"
    "Bit shit," he said. "Eye Candy." A bunch of pretty boys with day-glow teeth and strap-on key boards. Their second single, Candy Girls, was doing the business:

Candy girls want candy boxes 

but that's OK, 'cause I'm kind of candy too

    Serviceable, disposable pop but, for jazz-loving Bruno, not a whole lot to look forward to. Bruno sighed into the space in their conversation.
    Jonathan, his attention drawn back by the sound, looked up from his glass. "Diana says hi, hopes you're well."
    "Does she. I am very flattered."
    "Come on Bruno," Christine urged, "no need to be rude."
    "Jonathan," Bruno said, "what do you know about her?"
    "Diana?"
    "Her. What do you know?"
    "Not a lot I suppose. We met her at the Cross. She lives out on South Head." He grinned. "She's going to be rich."
    "Then you should be careful. Rich women, baby, do not need poor boys," and Bruno turned to Christine: "or poor girls."
    "She was poor when we met her," countered Jonathan. "So she's got some credentials."
    "Baby," he said to Jonathan. "I get a bad feeling in my guts when I think of her. I don't like her."
    "Keep out of her way then." Leaning back in her chair, Christine watched them. Jonathan leant forward.         "Look," he said, "if you don't like her, that's fine. I just passed on a message.
    "Forget it," he said. "Let's talk about something else."

They talked about something else. Murdoch was out with the rest of the band doing publicity shots at Rookwood Cemetery. The parent company of their recording label had decided to give the Wets a push along. The image-makers had been brought in and the band was to go Gothic. The budget for the video had been doubled.
    "It's great news," said Christine as she finished her beer, "but now the pressure's on for a Hit. With all that money up front, the CD's got to sell about triple what it used to before the company hits the black: then the band gets paid." She put the drink on the table beside her: "The band could actually make more money selling less."
    "Which is the price of fame," Jonathan remarked.
    Bruno completed another pleasureless glass of water. "How much of this big money is for you?"
    "Not much," Christine replied. "Not from the album anyway. But if they choose our song for the single we'll get some royalties. Even then, it won't be much."
    "Still," said Jonathan, his eyes taking on a faraway look, "to get picked as the single: hey!" His eyes sparkled through his grin. "We'd be songwriters!"
    "Take it easy Jonathan. Nothing's happen, OK? We're not even on the album yet."
    "I suppose so," he sighed, bringing his gaze back down to Christine, back down to earth, "You're right. I shouldn't get my hopes up."
    "Jonathan. You can get your hopes up as high as you like, I don't care." Christine wagged her finger at him, teacher-like. "Just don't get my hopes up, got it?" Jonathan laughed, watching Bruno toss her an admiring yellow-toothed smile.
    "More baby?" Bruno reached for their empty glasses on the coffee table, not needing a reply. He picked up two in one hand, one in the other. As he turned to the kitchen, the glass in his right hand slipped from his grasp. In a stroke of luck, it landed on the carpet, missing the low table, and did not break. "Shit!" he said to no-one, as he retrieved it and continued down the hall, "I am getting clumsy."

Diana! - episode 15: the moon is a strange desire

Here, as in most hospitals, the ancient and run-down was awkwardly coupled with the newest technology, crisp and clean. An orderly walked past, pushing before him a large bin of smelly linen. Christine wondered about the tainted sheets, the contagious ones from sealed wards. They must be incinerated, she thought. And what of the body's busted parts? They must go up too. So how did they decide what to burn and what to keep for burial? What body parts or combination of parts constituted an object worthy of make-up and prayer, and what was simply disposable? There must be a smoke stack somewhere, it occurred to her as she emerged into the sunlight. Now in the car park she looked around, trying to spot a stream of smoke, and wondering what colour it would be.

The moon is a strange desire
There were no lights to be seen on the top storeys of Macquarie Villa. Neither Christine nor Jonathan had been this way after dark - not since the old lighthouse and Christison park had been re-developed. They craned their necks for an early glimpse through the bus windows.
    The glow of the new housing estate, of the lit roads and footpaths, reached feebly up the main tower, which was defined as a grey monolith against the blackening eastern sky.
    Tenants had been found easily enough for the surrounding town-houses of Christison Estate, but for the main structure, built on the site of Macquarie Lighthouse, business was practically dead. The locals called it Macquarie Darkhouse.
    "Thank you, driver," said Jonathan as they stepped down. Jonathan always thanked the driver. Christine wondered whose benefit it was really for - the driver's or hers. But such uncharitable thoughts were swamped by the sudden smell of salt, and the rumble of waves. The single high-rise and its nest of residences sat within a haze of sea-mist.
    Christine and Jonathan made their way into the narrow streets of the new estate, pocked with speed-humps and round-abouts. The paths were lined with banksias and wattle. A fruit-bat clambered from branch to branch among wattle blooms past their prime.
    A car in uniform cruised by, yellow lights circling on the roof, its badge securely planted on the door. It slowed to a stop, waited on the road up ahead. "You find a step," said Jonathan, "and I'll watch it." A German Shepherd stared out at them from the back seat. Christine and Jonathan waved hello as they drew level, and the security car screeched off. Sparks flew as the car's undercarriage hit a speed-hump, and there was a distant, canine yelp.
    Diana's new home obscured the ancient sky before them. Neither Jonathan nor Christine had lived in a building more than three storeys high. Christine had worked in an office block once, but Jonathan associated long rides in elevators with occasional but tedious dealings with insurance houses or government offices: the Rental Bond Board maybe. Diana chose to live in this place.
    Behind the building's hard outline, billows of sea mist drifted up from the breakers. The glow captured in the mist was a domestic yellow, mingled with the blue-white public light of the street.
    As they reached the glass doors, one or two moths were fluttering about the plastic shade. Several black shapes marked the hot surface, shadows of the dead ones inside. Jonathan tried the glass doors, but they would not open. Christine stood back, tasted the air, as Jonathan searched the rows of black buttons. She heard the drone or nearby waves, their never-ending complaint, and it was almost as if there were words in the sound: the peeling hiss, the rumbling undersong. It reminded her of Annabel's choked cry of distress just about a week ago.
    "It's us," Jonathan called into the intercom. They peered into a kind of open box with a circular disc at its centre, mounted on the wall. A light flashed. They blinked. A buzzer went off, and the glass door clicked open. Inside they found the elevator with its doors open, waiting. And soon it was drawing them through twenty-six floors of silence.
    Out in the hall-way, Jonathan felt the distance under his feet. Tall buildings sway in the wind: high up, and invisibly. He had read this in a newspaper. As they moved down the corridor, a diminishing row of numbered doorways, they saw a door up ahead of them, opening. Diana's blue eyes shone from her pale face, her moon-amulet glinting from just above the swell of her breasts. Her hand reached out to them: "Good evening."

"So," Diana said over her plate cleaned of food, "Bruno is to become a new man. No smoking, and no drinking."
    "Yeah, baby!" said Christine, gritting her teeth as she put on a Bruno-voice: "No nothing!"
    Diana's apartment smelled at once stale and clean. Like a new car, Christine thought. Or like the hospitals of TV fiction - not the ones where real people, like Bruno, wait for health which could only be partial, or death that was complete. The walls and skirting boards were painted precisely in apricot and grey. An aluminium air-conditioning grid carried a dull shine. Christine sipped from her glass: here, she thought, is a place where being sick might not be a health hazard. She laughed under her breath. Diana and Jonathan looked at her across the dinner table, and she realised that she was getting drunk.
    With Champagne before dinner, and two bottles of good red during, they had toasted Diana's new home and wished their song success. Christine didn't exactly feel at home, but now at least her belly was full and warm.
    "Bruno will be fine, I think."
    Slurring a little, Jonathan chimed in: "She will be apple as a piece of cake."
    "We all have choices," Diana said. "He needs to make a decision."
    "And some decisions are better than others," Christine responded. "Really, Diana, I don't know how you can live in this place. It's not just The Gap, it's this whole stretch of cliffs - it's suicide city."
    "And not suicide only," said Diana, "fishermen. They scale down Jacob's Ladder - that is what they call it, is it not - such a beautiful name. They tie themselves to bolts driven into the living stone, but not even that saves them. Sometimes."
    "See what I mean?"
    "Not see, Christine. Perhaps I hear what you mean." The bubbles in Christine's glass came from nowhere, rising in spirals to the surface.
    "It's the height that gets me," and Christine lifted her glass to her lips as she watched Jonathan shift closer to Diana. "Can you feel the building sway up here?"
    Diana slipped a glance across at Christine before responding. "Can you?"
    He swayed back in his chair: "Hard to tell."
    "I do not mind being up so high, Jonathan. From here I see the moon rise sooner. It is beautiful. Sometimes, if she rises early, she is blood-red, or an orange equal of the sun. Tonight the moon will rise clothed in darkness. In an hour perhaps we shall see her, her sleeping face turned away from the light." She raised her glass to her lips, then fixed her eyes on the wine's dark and glistening surface. "But when the moon is strong, her light burns a path across the water. When she lies on the horizon, this path of light is like a bridge off the world. Then the moon lifts away, and the path is gone.
    "Sometimes, I believe I do feel this building's sway. But we are all moving, all of us, so fast." Diana watched the wine's surface remain level, as she tilted her glass left then right. She slowly shook her head. "The moon seems to rise, but it is not so. It is the earth that wheels steep and fast toward and away from her, and we fall with it, away and away." She looked up at them again, tossed her head as if trying to wake. Her smile rose and fell. "Sometimes this speed to me is intolerable. I feel it. Then my own movements seem so slow, and the distances I go, so small. What is the purpose?" She turned to Christine, reached across the table and took her hand. Christine felt Diana's strong grip as she opened the bud of Christine's curled fingers, so that the lines of her palm were revealed as pink detail. Diana's hand was white and warm. "The moon is a strange desire. She does not belong in the blue Earth's sky. Yet the Earth leans after her. All the oceans, heavy and earthbound, they will smash themselves to pieces when the tide is strong." Diana began to trace a circle on Christine's palm, as in a child's game. Through the alcohol numbness, Christine felt a sharp tingling on her skin, the orbit of Diana's fingers, the touch of her nails at once sharp and soft. "And what of us? What of our liquid yearnings in our night of dreams?" Diana let go, and Christine's arm remained outstretched, as if hovering, weightless.
    Diana sighed, and rose from her chair. She turned to Jonathan. "Come," she said, "let us watch."
    Last to leave the table, Christine's steps sank into the new, soft carpet. Its slow resistance gave her the illusion of a floating platform, or shifting sand. Between the hall and the lounge room there was a stack of teak shelves, empty, except for a crystal decanter and its clutch of glasses. Through these Christine could see Jonathan and Diana talking in the next room, but she could not hear what they were saying.
    As Christine entered, Diana crossed the floor in an easy, sliding motion, to reach the curtains on the far wall. Drawing on the cord, she unveiled what was almost an entire wall of glass. Jonathan and Christine, side by side, looked out to the see ocean, but they did not see it; they saw their own faces suspended in the black glass. When Diana turned off the lamp, there was only blackness, until the distant stars, the coast-lights shining on the ocean surface below, lured their sight outward. They shared a sensation of falling. And then the room was full of the light of the night sea.
    Diana faced out to the horizon. "The moon is a stranger in our sky," she whispered to her half-transparent face, now all the glass's reflection. "How old is she I wonder. How did she come to this lonely place? Travelling the stars, what radiance must she have seen, having none herself. What reverberations of bright catastrophes must lie inside her, caught and crystallised! That is why we love her - these whispers of silence that she holds and we cannot understand."
Now she turned to Jonathan and Christine, taking their eyes in turn, and she spoke as if confiding a secret. "When the moon drifted into our sky, that was the beginning of what we are, of what we want, and cannot have. The moon is a strange desire. She wants us to want her, but we cannot receive what she wants to give."
    Neither of them noticed her reach for the switch, but they each blinked suddenly, in the new, yellow light. "You see," Diana laughed, "it is a lonely place for our Wandering Queen, but it is she has made it so."

Diana! - episode 14

One of Harry's blue eyes watered in sympathy
He squinted his blue eyes, and looked away. Turning from the heat and the electric white on the water, he faced the shadow of landfall, closed his eyes, and smelled the dilute tidal salt and the decaying foliage of mangroves. As his sight recovered, he saw the lines of stakes that protruded from the still water, marking off oyster-beds.
        Looking into the green water, he watched his quarry move about amongst the weeds. But seeing them, and getting them to bite, well, they were two different things. Leatherjacket are a greenish grey, and diamond-shaped. Without real teeth they still required careful handling, because of their long, venomed barb on the spine at the base of their skull. With the barb aloft as they swam through weed and water, they looked comical, resembling tiny, toy trams.
        Harry Minter had changed his name, adopting his wife's, a week after she died in fever. To many of his old mates this was an act of genuine madness. But now, along Birch Street at Pearl Beach, and at the jetties of the Hawkesbury, no-one knew about his little piece of lunacy. Which was just as well: they thought he was mad enough as it was, fishing only for leatherjacket. A rubbishy little fish really. But what could he say? He liked the way their mouths were puckered in a permanent kiss. And the threat of danger from their septic spine gave him a sense of excitement, without any real risk.
        Harry liked the place, this eddy in the suburban current - the open waters of Broken Bay to the east; to the west, a tangle of mangrove and estuary.
With the fishing line in one loop over his index finger, he worked at untangling some light gauge stuff from the bottom of his tackle box. He was lucky today, so did not get far into that chaos. The sharp line tightened over his finger. With his feet, Harry dragged a hessian sack closer to him. He would use this to fold away the fish's venomed spine.
        The fish flapped and twisted inside the hand-net, and Harry set his foot onto it to keep it still. It must have really attacked the bait. The hook had passed deep into its gullet, and the tip of the barb had popped out through one of its yellow eyes. One of Harry's blue eyes watered in sympathy as he twisted the hook and tugged it free.

Softer, lower, and worse
Recovering her poise, Annabel grabbed in her jaws her bundle of knotted twine, leaping through the open door and out into the little back yard.
The phone rang again. Christine snatched up the receiver, and was surprised to hear Diana's voice on the line. She was moving to a new place, she had phoned Jonathan, did he tell her? No? She thought he would forget. He didn't mention the dinner invitation either, she supposed. Wednesday. Macquarie Villa, Watsons Bay. Is Bruno all right? He should look after himself better, slow down. Jonathan? No, she said, no, he was fine when they said goodnight. Did he? Then perhaps he should look after himself better, too. Saturday night then.
        Christine returned to the kitchen to tidy the herb shelf. Next she walked next to the bathroom, staring without purpose into the mirror. The hump on her back raised her right shoulder and tended to push her neck a little to the left. She had to do exercises to stop her muscles from stiffening. She stretched left, and right, breathing in, and tried to settle herself. Gradually she identified a sound coming from outside, with the feeling that it had been going on for some time. The sound was not quite, but almost, human. Like a tom-cat's howl of hormonal anguish, there could almost have been words inside that sound: but this was softer, and lower, and worse.
        She followed the sound through the back door into the uneven light of her small backyard. The sound was low and general, hard to locate. Christine tried the sunny spot beneath the trellis, she looked in the shade behind the old dunny. She found the little ball of nylon that Annabel had been playing with lying on the damp bricks beneath the shirts and trousers that were dangling from the line. She followed the trail of one long thread. From between the vegetable pots that lined the grey back fence, she heard her cat's rasping breath and low growl. Annabel looked fine. She picked her up, and the cat hardly moved, pre-occupied with the effort simply to breathe. In Christine's arms, Annabel felt strangely heavy, like a drunkard, like a sleeping child. Her breathing was shallow and painful. Christine looked closer: no wound, nothing in her mouth or throat; she began to feel for a lump - a spider bite, or a tick. Then, hidden within the fur, she found that a length of the hard nylon line had tangled, coiled and tightened around her cat's neck. She inspected the line with her fingers and found the knots and tangles tight and hard. With Annabel in her arms she snatched up the ball of hard thread and ran inside for the scissors. They belonged in the cupboard above the fridge, but sometimes she got lazy and stashed them in the cutlery drawer or the drawer with the big knives. She found the scissors in the third place she looked. Careful not to cut the flesh, she snipped the thread and pulled it free, but the cat was still choking. Her little coughs were short and hoarse. Christine felt closely with her finger-tips, but there was nothing. She felt again, with her nails, and the cat fidgeted. There at last was the final thread, cutting tight and deep, and Christine could not help taking some hair and skin with it as the scissors cut through. Annabel twisted from her grasp, landing on her feet, and shot through the back door, leaping the fence.


Wednesday 7 August - Waning crescent

Little stalactites of clotted dust
Like a child's play-pen, the high bed was bordered by an aluminium rail. This safety feature could be raised to prevent the helpless from falling. It could be lowered to set them free. Christine let her hand rest on the cold metal as she leant forward: "How do you feel?"
        "Baby, I hate it here. I feel like shit. They won't let me smoke."
        Bruno was in for tests. Kidney stones maybe, or some kind of poisoning. He looked silly and pathetic, lying on the hard, high bed with his pyjamas on. No-one ever lay 'in' a hospital bed, Christine observed, you always lay 'on' it - something about the height and the hard sheets. Bruno's lower lip was protruding slightly. His aura was that same dirty yellow, against the mound of white pillows stacked behind him.
Hospitals are unhealthy places. Christine could feel the sickness in the air, a cocktail of bacillus and bacteria, feeding through channels in the ceilings and walls, and exhaled, heavy and cool, from air-conditioning grids. The grid on the wall, close to the ceiling, dripped little stalactites of clotted dust. A tiny moth landed on one, hanging upside down.
        Christine sat in a straight-backed chair pulled up close to the bed. In a vase on the bedside table stood her gift of flowers. With Bruno sitting up, the lower end of the bed was oblong and flat as a graveyard slab. The smell of the flowers reached her, strong and sweet. She leant back in her chair, away from their heavy perfume. Bruno's hand lying on the hard linen carried stains of nicotine-yellow. His nails were still long, but clean, and cut neatly into smooth crescents. "The Wets are recording our song in a couple of weeks. With any luck they'll use it on the album. They might even choose it for the single."
        "Yeah baby, great," he said, sulking.
        "Come on you big sook, it's your song too. We couldn't have done the demo tape without you."
Bruno shifted uncomfortably on the bed. His knees bumped the cross tray that carried the remains of his glass of water and his cold toast. He looked at it and muttered, "Bread and water."
        A nurse, dressed in white and blue, swept in to clear the trays. She leant over Bruno to take the jug from his bedside table. She asked him how he felt: he made no answer, and she did not wait for one. In this way, she cleared the other five beds in the ward.
        Bruno followed the nurse with his eyes, and his voice was right behind her as she left: "They say I cannot smoke, but they all smoke themselves, they all stink of cigarettes." He transfered his attention to Christine, grinning vindictively: "Menthol."
        She laughed, and touched his bony hand. "I've got to leave soon, so you'd better cheer-up, okay? I don't want you to make me miserable for the rest of the night." Leaning forward, she found herself again in the line of fire of the altered scent of the flowers. Now she regretted bringing them.
        "No smoke they say, no drink. They say I have got to stop everything. I tell them I am broken so, shit: fix me! They cannot. They are stupid."
        "You'll be out of here in a little while, you'll see."
        "Erh!" It was a kind of grunt.
        "Now Bruno. You get better. Who're we gonna bludge demos off if you don't get better, eh?" This raised a slow, reluctant smile.
        "Where you going?"
        "Diana's."
        His smile fell. "Her." And he said this with a growl, almost, of hatred. He may have spoken in this way just because he was upset and afraid, but Christine did not think so.
        "What's wrong with Diana?"
        "She is stuck up."
        "How can you tell? You've hardly said two words to her."
        "I can tell. She thinks she is better than us."
        "Come on, she's perfectly fine." Although, Christine thought, this was not quite the right description.
        "The only good thing about her, baby, is that she is not English."
        Christine rocked back in her chair, folding her arms. "She's invited Jonathan and me over for dinner, and I am going, and I intend to have a good time."         Bruno squirmed and tugged at the pillows behind him. There was a pause, then he pulled himself towards Christine, clutching at the side of his mattress, then reaching to her hand by the bed. He squeezed her, just at the wrist, but his grip was weak. Christine saw this register in his face. Bruno did not say what he intended to say.
        "You want to fuck with her, baby?"
        "Yeah," she replied, "I reckon I could be convinced."
        "And Jonathan?"
        "He's not my type," she joked, but continued: "I don't know what he has in mind for her. But then I don't know what she has in mind for him, either. We're friends. We're having dinner together. Forget it."
        "Forget it," Bruno countered. He was in a rotten mood; he was hungry and sick and depressed; he hung on to this, tightly.

Christine heaved a door open with her shoulder; the next opened by itself.

Diana! Vampire of Sydney. Episode 12a

"And what have you been up to this morning?" she responded.
        "Not making real estate deals, that's for sure."
        "Have you been busy?"
        "Yeah," Jonathan's guitar and a pile of note-paper lay on the carpet at his feet. "I've been busy."

Mr Travers has his elbows on the table. Diana sets the phone back onto its cradle, sliding it across the desk of polished granite, as Mr Travers leans forward with his finger-tips pressed together, moving them in a vertical version of what children call a spider doing push-ups on a mirror.
        "So," his eyes vibrating above his manicured nails, "we've all been busy. Idle hands do the devil's work. And to be honest, I'd rather do my own. You have been busy I trust?"
        "I've given you two."
        "Only two?" He leans forward with his elbows on his desk. His hands pressed together, he curls down all but his two index fingers, and taps them gently, rhythmically against each other. Here is the church. And here is the steeple.
        Diana looks at his hands, not at his eyes. "Two moons, that is all I have had."
        "My darling, of course you have. I'm not forgetting. One life in each of four quarters, that is all I ask. You've done well, my dear. Yes, so far, very well. And if you don't mind me saying," now the lawyer separates his hands to lay one palm flush on the blue lease document that lies on his desk. "If you don't mind me saying, you are doing very well for yourself also."
        Diana tries to look into those fidgeting eyes, tries to hold them still, but she can't. There are no clues for her here. "I can remember a man named Ryan, and I can remember the water. Dark water. Oily."
        "You see?" He slides the papers off the desk and places them onto the tray at his right. "You're getting better all the time."
        She looks down into her empty hands.
        "You have strength when you need it, isn't that true?"
        "Yes."
        He leans back in his chair. "There you are! You should be satisfied." His smile is wide. "What is it The Phantom said - the one in the opera, not the jungle you understand - 'When you sing, you will sing only for me'. You're not thinking of moonlighting I hope. Only those in the cycle, only those who have been touched for death, you understand?"
        Diana's gaze slides from her creamy palm, across the polished surface of Mr Travers' desk, up his neck, and is parried by his quivering eyes. "It is not that. It is not what I want to do, it is what I want to know. It is not enough."
        "It doesn't have to be. Patience. For you my dear, the sky is truly the limit." He places a pink hand on the document tray. "Others in your position would consider themselves lucky." Again he leans forward, elbows on granite, finger-tips together, his eyes looking across the sharp crescents of his shiny nails. "Now," he says, "how's about a little kiss."

Still sitting by the phone, Jonathan took up his guitar and ran through the first verse:

        River mist in the reeds, white moon in the sky
        Black time flowing by
        Your brand new car, making tracks
        I feel that monkey gripping onto my back
        You got a new ambition, got a new superstition I know
        You got a letter in your hand, a ring down upon your toe
        You're gonna come back to town carrying buckets of cash
        You've made a big deal, you're gonna make a splash

He leant his guitar against a stack of shelves that he had built himself out of a couple of discarded crates and a pine pallet. It was a source of wonder to him that you could measure out a length on one piece of board, and then on another, and although they were on different pieces of wood altogether, the distances would be the same, and the joins would stick. It was a sign that the world made sense, that things which should happen, could happen. And that's why he liked making songs to rhyme - these words sung by different people in bathrooms, bars or studios, would still fit into place.
        He ran the words through his head, and they seemed solid and firm. For the first time in almost a year Jonathan had completed a song all of his own. And it came easily. Still, he would give it a burl with Christine, just to be sure, before letting Diana in on the good news.

The washing had taken hours to complete, Christine pouring buckets of water into her broken-down machine. Hanging out her clothes in the warm sun had given her no pleasure. Her shirts, pegged out with their arms dangling, looked human somehow, and horrible.
        She was expecting Bruno's call, but when the phone rang, all she could think of was Jonathan. But why would he call? She did not want to hear from him. Not now. Inside her head there were two voices. On the line there seemed to be two voices also, all mixed up. It took her a while to latch on to what Jonathan was telling her.
        "What?" She heard too much. He spoke too quickly.
        "Don't be dense, Christine. Voodoo!"
        "I what?"
        "Christine! You haven't been listening."
        "Sorry. I haven't. I got a call from Bruno. He's sick."
        "Well, can I come around and play it to you?"
        "Play what?"
        "My new song ..." Christine tried to listen as he explained that he'd written something new: words, the music, everything, just like he used to do, only this time it was great, he said, great. Christine, worried about Bruno, did not want to hear this. Trying to deflect him, she asked about last night's dinner. What happened after she left?
        "Nothing. We went home." He told her he would come by this afternoon to play the song for her. "See you soon." Christine hung up, swallowed hard on a sour taste. Not one question about Bruno.
        Jonathan was at the door, and still there had been no word from Bruno. With a greeting of scarcely more than a grunt, her friend pushed past her into her lounge room, taking her guitar from its stand without asking. And he sat, smiling and healthy inside his blue aura. The guitar was cradled in his lap as he picked out a slow blues.

        The big print gives, the small takes away
        Business works that way
        I can still see the blood upon your dress
        Still get that sweet, sweet taste of your success

As usual, Jonathan's face flushed as he played - no wonder he didn't perform songs himself. But Christine saw that the redness on his cheek was more than a blush.

        White moon, grey light
        Something here just is not right
        I can see the rising sun
        But I just don't know where the night has gone

        So long girl, guess I'll be seeing you soon
        Till then it's just back to my books and my room
        Sure look forward to when I see you again
        And you can introduce me to all your flash new friends

        "Well?" he said. "What do you reckon?"
        "It's..."
        "It needs tom-toms and a key-board wash." Christine looked at him. The mark on his face was definitely some kind of wound or graze. Jonathan rested the guitar against the side of his chair. "Maybe a slide guitar. And no high-hat or snare - you know, like Daniel Lanois did for the Neville Brothers on Yellow Moon."
        Most people with a mark on their face will touch it now and then, or move their hand as if to touch it, but refrain. Jonathan did none of these things. It was not serious, not in the least, but still, under some circumstances, Christine might have suggested a dressing of comfrey.
        "Bruno still hasn't called."
        "He's probably fine then."
        "What would you know?"
        "You still haven't told me what you think of the song."
        "Where did you get that bruise?"
        "What bruise?" Jonathan raised his hand to his face, his finger-tips wandering across the surface before locating the swollen, tender flesh. He touched it, pressed it, and for the first time felt the pain. He told her he couldn't remember how he came by it.
        "Maybe," Christine suggested, "Diana was a little rough with you." And right now she wouldn't mind being a little rough with him herself.
        Jonathan did not stay long: there were some other people he'd like to play his song to. Moving from room to room, Christine had to make a conscious effort not to glance at the phone. Jonathan had not seemed at all anxious for Bruno. It was Jonathan who had introduced them, He was more Jonathan's friend than hers, but Jonathan had not mentioned him at all, not asked after him at all. Christine could not think why he would show so little concern for his friend.

When you were waiting for a job to come through, or for that new woman to ring; when you were waiting to hear from your sick friend - that was when the phone ran hot with everything but the call you wanted. Jonathan was only the first. Pia wanted her equipment back. Margaret had some tour dates. Some bloke asked her if she wanted to participate in a market survey into cat-food. She told him she preferred dog-food, and hung up. Christine would be pacing through her little house. She would click her tongue in annoyance, exasperation, and then the phone would ring. Vetting the calls with the answering machine did no good. The thirty seconds it took for the message to spout was a good twenty seconds longer than she would give the caller anyway - and she already knew who was on the line.
        Things were getting altogether too weird. Almost every time the phone rang these past few days, she knew who would be at the other end. Sometimes when she picked up the receiver she would launch half-way into the conversation she knew she was about to have. Auras. And now this.
        Auras had appeared to her first during the muscular and breathing exercises at her Ninjutsu class. That was five years ago. The colours just seemed to come into focus, like a bud that blooms over night.         Christine closed her eyes. She sees too much, and now she was hearing too much. What had done it this time, she wondered, what had triggered this latest change? Diana maybe: something to do with her.
        From the front step came the unmistakable slap of a newspaper, the Wentworth Courier. Perfect, thought Christine, it would keep her mind off reality. She opened the door, reaching down at her feet, as a twisted shape hurtled past her. She turned in time to see lamp on the coffee table, knocked off its axis, pirouette briefly at an angle before plunging to the floor. Annabel the cat leapt away, as if under attack, spun, spied the length of twine that she had dragged in with her, still caught on her back paw, pursuing it dervish-like. It flew free and she pounced, rolling head-first on the hall carpet, batting and pummelling the length of twine until it formed into a knotted bundle. Closing the door behind her, Christine looked down and laughed. Annabel heard the laughter and returned Christine's stare with bright, brown, disapproving cat-eyes. Annabel was a boy. Christine had given it a girl's name for fun. Some people, people she knew quite well, had found this disturbing. One or two had even expressed a concern for the poor cat's self-image.
        Christine took the paper with her through to the kitchen table where she sat, leafing through it. One thing about this neck of the city - no shortage of crime stories. And it was not only crime committed locally, though there was plenty of that, it was people caught up the Cross, apprehended as they say, after dirty deeds done elsewhere. On page three, a rail worker, described as "known to police" had been found dead on Forbes. "Robbery," it said, "appears to have beed ruled out. The man was carrying a sum of money as well as a quantity of the illicit substance benzedrine. According to sources, the injured man found with him, and thought to be his associate, was unable to help the police in their inquiries."
        She thumbed towards the back. Two paragraphs on page eight told of a suicide from The Gap, one of Sydney's most popular destinations. Not even the murder of Macquarie Lighthouse had ruined its appeal. The classifieds were dominated by sex ads for Asian Princesses, Young Hot & Latin, and the personals which were always good for a laugh. She heard a clatter from down the hall, and she smiled, as Annabel, at the edge of the kitchen, leapt over her ball of string, twisted, lost her back feet on the kitchen tiles, and crashed face-first onto her unsuspecting prey. Girl or boy, Annabel seemed a pretty well adjusted cat to her. Just think of the hard cash that humans will fork out in order to be ambiguous.
        In a staccato stare, Annabel's eyes darted up at her and away. She was off again. Christine preferred her cat's brown eyes to the blue of Diana's. It was certainly Jonathan that Diana was interested in. She could not quite figure it, Diana's attitude towards her. Some women, teases, held out against her advances with an air of seducibility, but it was often a sham, vanity on their part; when push came to heave it turned out they were just straights after all, scared of a little kiss and cuddle. Perhaps this was Diana, talking up to her at dinner, then pissing off with Jonathan. Although, she thought, it was hardly Diana's fault that Bruno had taken sick. She enjoyed being with Diana at dinner. She enjoyed it when their hands lay close together. And her eyes, clear as a cat's, but blue, not like Annabel's - like her father's.

Diana! Episode 12

16 "It would be illegal."

Diana opens her eyes. The moon has set. The sun remains hidden in the east. Perhaps, she thinks, nobody is watching. Not on this street anyway. She turns up the stairs into the Court House Hotel, through to the Judgement Bar. Her heels press into the damp carpet. Finding a seat at the counter, she orders a Bloody Mary. At a table behind her, Diana hears three men talking. She looks down at her hand, how strong it is around the fragile glass. Then she feels its coldness on her skin, feels the coldness stretch up along her arm like a lengthening shadow. And she shudders. Weakness. Strength.

A dog will track a stain on the air. A night bird is bound to a trail of distant stars. What Diana had followed tonight was a series of rumours, precise and misleading as canyon echoes.

Tonight, Diana had asked questions at the doors of all-night strip shows, at hot-dog stalls and Yeeros stands, at soup kitchens, at the Wayside Chapel. She had struck up conversations in front of the smudged mirrors above hair-clogged sinks, and people had spilled their guts. It made her sick - having to ask.

She looks into the mirrors that line the back of the bar. At the table behind, in front of her through the mirror, a man drops half a schooner down his throat, slips something into his pocket, says cheers, and heads for the street. Her ears are buzzing. Tom Jones, seemingly immortal, sings from The Lead And How To Swing It. Next to her at the bar a couple of men discuss their next venue. "The Taxi Club," says one. "No," says the other, "too sleazy. How about my place?" Diana hears the smile in the voice that replies: "Didn't we decide against sleazy?" In the far corner a large group of twenty-somethings speak in tumbling, conflicting sentences, contesting tales of conquest on the tables of the pool and techno bar Q. The women gleam throats and cleavages, the men's baggy shirts still hang heavy with sweat. One sporting a crooked goatee, with a last bravado grin, leaves the group for the table of the two men.

Diana watches over her shoulder as their greeting progresses from silence, to gestures, to words, then she turns to the bar-mirror in time to see a man in marbled denims coming her way. He begins to settle into the stool next to her. At her first glance, his leaning body leans away. At her second, he leaves the stool empty. There is another woman seated at the corner.

The two men offer the third a seat. As rituals tend to do, this one repeats itself. The third man soon finishes his drink, says thanks, pockets something, before returning to his friends, who are pleased to see him. The two men reach for their glasses.

"What did I tell ya," says the one most directly facing Diana, flashing a gap-toothed grin, "you gotta spend some money to make some money."

A scuffle attracts Diana's attention. A great big guy in a dinner suit, with wide rolling eyes, yells, "Out! That's it. You've gotta treat this place with respect. Respect!" A woman sits at the circular table looking up through her fingers. Her short, dark hair is brushed flat with a single lock curling forward to encircle each ear. A stud shines from her nose. Two fresh drinks stand on the table before her. Her partner does not scratch his designer stubble, instead fingering his Che Guevara tie as he argues: "We've just bought a drink. I hear what you're saying."

The big man's voice slips into a higher register: "No sitting on the table. No sitting on the table! You're out. Get it?" he pokes him two-fingered in the chest. "Piss." Poke. "Off!" So they leave. Diana watches her two men watch them. She sees them check out the room as people return to their conversations, their drinks, the indeterminate air they stare into. She watches the two of them shift, settling at a new table, wrapping their fingers around the abandoned glasses.

Across Oxford, on Taylor Square, a grey-haired man in a brown great-coat snips through the hard pink tape which binds his newspaper bundles. He thinks it over for the millionth time: 'pink or light blue: why is that?'

The traffic island, Gilligan's Island, with its grass and palm trees, is littered with brown-paper bottles and the usual cast of cast-aways. The lights change with a shriek. Looking up from his bundles, the grey-haired man pays no attention to the two men who jaunt towards Bourke Street in the direction of Darlinghurst. He looks past them though to the regular pace of Diana's smooth legs. Craning his neck to follow her with his eyes, checking out the shape of her backside through her black skirt, he shakes his head and mutters: "At my age!" as she disappears around the corner.

The men laugh and stumble, occasionally pushing each other, shoving, punching one another with affectionate, school-ground viciousness. Gap-tooth heaves his partner against a wall in a mock tackle. "Did you see him?"

"See him!"

"And the smell!"

"What had he been eating?"

Beneath the greying sky Bourke Street carries the tiniest fraction of the traffic that will descend upon it within the next two hours. But what it lacks in quantity, it makes up in velocity. Cars and semis, with their lights still on, fizz past, urgent to make it through the square before the lights turn.

"And that Bitch..." Gap-tooth spots an opportunity, dashing through the traffic mid-sentence. The other starts after him, but, too late, has to jump back quick-time, his teeth rattled by the sound and shudder of a Mac truck. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, ready for the next break.

"The Bitch from Hell!" he yells across the bitumen, still looking, still sharp.

Diana walks closer, running her hand along the wall at the place the two men had collided in their boisterous play. She withdraws her hand from the brick, feeling on her skin the tiny grains of grit, rolling them between thumb and finger-tip. For a moment she stops to look down at her hands. She clenches her left fist then her right, weighing their capacity and strength, how much remains. Both voices come now from across the road. Reunited, the two men walk up-hill along Burton Street. Guessing correctly that they are making for the more tranquil Forbes Street as their best way back to The Cross, Diana simply lengthens her stride.

Gap-tooth sniffs. "Two-Bob was always water at the pinch, eh?" A badly cut rock of speed lodges down the back of this throat. It tastes like the rail yard. When he gets back home, he'll do it properly, do himself properly. Take the day off - a mental health day, he's heard it said. "Hey!" his voice hurtles down the street, busy only with echoes. "I'm gonna take a mental health day, but it's not gonna be mental health day," he says, "it's just gonna be mental!"

Mick laughs as he fends a few feather blows from his sparring partner. "We should have taken her, what d'ya reckon?"

"Two-Bob dropped his cutter, the fuck-wit."

"Dropped his load!" And they laugh again, sparring with open palms, like kids in a tickle-fight.

The classrooms of the private girls' school SCEGGS rise on their left. Gap-tooth halts in front of the sign, Mick following suit. "Snot-nosed … " He begins. "Snot-nosed Cunts … Eating … Girls … " But runs out of ideas. The light of William Street, just beyond where the road dips and the stairs begin, is still distinct before dawn. They cross St Peters Street, nearing the old church, now converted to the Crossroads Theatre. They reach the open gate as, from behind the gate, two strong hands reach for them. Their hair is yanked almost clean out of their heads. Two skulls smack against the stone wall. The two men look into the swirling dark.

The world wanders - now you see it, now you don't. And now it sees you. Diana stands in her own shadow. Mick sees her face emerge through his damaged focus. Gap-tooth, Zak to his mates, who are few, sees the light in her eyes. "The Bitch!" His voice cracks.

"That's right," replies Diana with mocking pleasure. "The Bitch from Hell."

The two men shoot wide-eyed panic at each other. How could she know? How could she know they said that? They look back at her, struggling with this proof of her sorcery. Mick makes to run, but Diana fells him with a crack across the jaw. Gap-tooth takes the chance, lunges at her neck from behind, digging with his fingers, but she spins through his grasp to face him. He claws at her eyes. She lands one, smack, flush on his jaw. His head jerks, hands fall. He staggers back. The church wall leaves him nowhere to go. He runs at her, but she catches his face, like a ball in a mitt, and throws him back against the sandstone slab. His head is loose on his neck. Blood drips onto the collar of his shirt. Diana steps forward. She reaches out. He looks into her eyes. His scrotum shrinks against her touch.

"Ask me nicely."

"What?" he asks in a voice he has not used for decades.

"Say squeeze them harder. And ask nicely," and the pressure now is crushing, growing, and gap-toothed Zak begins to cry, not with the pain, but with the effort of trying to see. "Go on." Her mind is floating, giddy, flying. Free. "Go on. You can do it. I know you can. I can feel it. Say squeeze them harder: Please."

His voice is gummy now, heavy with thick spit. "Don't kill me."

"I am not going to kill you." But she says it without belief. She says it with her mind in the black clouds of her future. "I am not allowed to," pouring her breath over him. "It would be illegal. Don't you know?" He doesn't know. He doesn't know anything. "Say it."

"Please," and he does not recognise this voice, the only one that he can find, "squeeze hard," he asks. "Please."

"All right." Diana smiles. "Since you asked nicely."

Zak's balls burst. He falls in a heap. Diana shifts her weight to her left, looks down over at the other man, Mick, who crouches, his jaw cradled in his spread fingers. Diana steps over fallen Zak for the second man, crouching over him. He looks up at her with milky eyes, guiding the movement of his head with his shaking hand. She hears from beneath his skin abrasive rubbing, clicking sounds. It is like a sack of rocks.

"You say nothing," Diana whispers. And the man obliges. She turns back to the other. His breathing is shallow, a series of quick shudders almost empty of air. She turns from him, without speaking. The sky above The Cross begins to burnish with the first direct rays of the sun. Diana leaves the church yard. Her attacker is dead by the time she reaches the top of the Forbes Street steps. The sun rises as she descends.


Tuesday 10 August
Fourth Quarter

17 "The cards were face-up on the table."

Christine was trying to steady her mind with house-work. It was a clear day, and light streamed in through the kitchen window. This was a time of year between seasons: it could be spring one day and winter the next. Now it was spring, though even in a day the change could come. She pulled the plug from the sink and removed her gloves. The loud suck of the drain followed her into the living room.

She put on a CD, without really looking, and adjusted once more the photograph of her mother on the shelf. After a few minutes she came to recognise the song she had selected, came to hear it as notes and words, rather than merely a vague sensation. It was an old Zombies number, She's Not There, a song Wet Money covered, though, from Jonathan's report, they did it too fast, trying to get too close to the original. The music drifted back as Christine stared into the frame that her hand still held. In the picture, the cards were face-up on the table; there was only one that could be made out for certain. On the Eight of Cups, the sun was in partial eclipse, and the covering moon watched a figure walking alone on the shores of a rocky estuary. In the foreground, the eight cups were empty, arranged in an incomplete pyramid that would make up twelve. The traveller searched alone for the missing cups of her life. She was looking towards the moon, and the moon, likewise, looked to her. They could offer each other no comfort or company.

A sad picture. Christine sighed, and looked away. Bruno was really sick this time, she knew it. She could feel it and, like an unwelcome emotion, it made her throat constrict. When she had phoned him that morning, he needed no convincing to see a doctor. So he knew too, but that thought had given her no comfort. He promised her he would call after the appointment, and she tried to keep her mind off it till then.

18 "My dear, the sky is truly the limit."

"So that's settled. Next Wednesday at eight."
Jonathan smiled as he heard the thin voice through the wire. He did not take her cue to hang up. He wanted her to talk some more. It gave him a good feeling in his guts. He left her a space to talk into.

Diana! Episode 11

14 "And kissed her cheek."

The glowing letters spelt WAIT, and a sound like a quick heart-beat or some demented summer insect issued from the casing of the pedestrian button. The traffic was sparse, but it had the randomness distinctive to the small hours of the Cross. Cars were turning onto William Street from Bourke and Forbes. Taxis made their pick-up, and were gone. Bomb cars or polished sports jobs lurched out of parking spaces. Even so, Jonathan would not normally haved waited for the lights, preferring a dash to the median strip, and then another to the footpath. But he was still shaken, still troubled at his partial memory and at why he had refused when Diana had invited him inside. The beat of the electronic signal continued, and he waited.

Diana's flat was the lower storey of a two-storey tenement, one of only a handful left on Victoria Street. At her door she had asked him inside. But he was tired, he told her, and his head ached. All he wanted now was sleep. She looked at him then, and he did not move. He understood that he did not mean what he had said. He felt afraid, and a little cold. He looked down at Diana's hands, and in the doorway, hesitated. One of those hands reached out to him, holding him behind the neck to draw his face towards her.

She smiled at him. He felt the heat of her. "Don't worry." She kissed his cheek. "Forget it." She let him go, and he rocked back on his heels. "Forget it Jonathan. Have a good night. See you next Saturday, in my new apartment. Give me your number and I will let you know if things work out."

He began searching for a pen, but she told him she would remember. "See you then," he had replied, and retraced his steps along Victoria Street. He passed the trees planted in the footpath one by one. At the stairway, where it dropped steeply into the darkness, Jonathan had tried to remember all that had happened there, but he could not put the pieces together, not in any order that made sense. It was not so much the space they occupied, but the time. The moments he saw were partial - a face, a look; but not what gave rise to that look; a shape of moving, but detached from body. These bits of memory, pieces of circumstance, they circled each other like motes in air, around and around, kept apart by their own action.

A few blocks further, and he reached the paving beneath the gigantic conglomerate of cheap, nasty city housing: the ugly monster that had made Juanita Nielsen disappear. Once, he had been inside that labyrinth, working as a courier, delivering a package to a door with a number. The corridors had little pockets inset for the doorways; the doors were arranged in threes, in a half hexagon, and that shape repeated and repeated itself as the corridors lengthened. Within these halls children ran, with parental commands hurrying after them; old women in pairs made their way, walking on leashes tiny dogs that stank.

Jonathan had been glad to get out. This night, he had walked quickly through light shining from the entrances of the Victoria Street Development Project. He passed 202, Juanita Nielsen's house, with its purple window sills colourless in the night, its dark windows blank-eyed. Her famous house, like her infamous killer - a survivor. Now he stood, resting against the pedestrian light, feeling and hearing the warning signal: WAIT. The signal shrieked and the beat that followed was quicker now, and at a higher pitch. By the time he reached the far side of William Street, he found himself humming a simple tune.

15 "She is not too proud to beg."

When she began to find herself alert at four or five in the morning, it was as though a new youth had descended upon her. Although at eighty-two, her days might be short, it seemed the long, wakeful nights were adding hour upon hour before the final night fell. But it was a trick, a betrayal. She soon found that two hours dozing in front of the TV was an almost daily occurrence: a nap after shopping; a lie-down with a book after dinner, each time retrieving the book from the floor where it had fallen. Older and wiser, she wakes from shallow sleep, paces through the darkness that her apartment holds, grits her teeth, and mutters.

It happens slowly, but for this woman, too soon. She will give everything to keep it from happening.

Her brittle bones ache; one is already broken: the Radius; she knows their names. This has been her body. It is old and creased, but, like a ten dollar note, good as mint, and it is hers: she will not let it go.

In her pocket there is a 30-day train pass only two days old. It belongs to her. Her pension cheque will arrive tomorrow. Nothing can stop it.

She moves both arms to claw the air. She can feel the air under her nails like skin or dough. The scream and panic in her brain squirms against her grasp. But she holds onto it firmly, she cradles it and comforts it, with a whisper: 'not now', she croons, 'not now' and 'tomorrow I can afford a surprise'.

There is a telephone that might help. She is facing death. There is a world outside her door. Death.

She is not too proud to beg. In the Thirties she was beautiful and got by without the dole; in the Seventies she served in a tobacco booth between a sex shop and a cafe: cash. She got along, asked no favours. But she is a sensible woman - this is different.

She begs. Damned if she doesn't.

'Take the silver' she says, and 'come tomorrow' and 'I will give you everything'.

Diana! Episode 10

Diana and Jonathan descended the damp steps from upper Forbes Street. They crossed William Street, which was bright and wide and busy. A bunch of boys in peaked caps and white muscle-shirts passed by them, off clubbing. Diana watched as they headed up hill. "Why do they wear their caps backwards?"

"It confuses the predators," and they edged through Woolloomooloo, along Forbes and Cathedral, into lower Kings Cross. Diana walked beside him, with the escarpment rising on her right. "So, that would be the harbour end of Victoria Street?"

"Yes," and Diana ran her fingers along the sandstone containing-wall. "I normally take the second stairs."

"Victoria Street. You go for the development sites then." Jonathan brushed back his fringe, which was obscuring his view of Diana's neck, the ridge of muscle along her shoulder. "At least no-one was murdered defending Macquarie Lighthouse." In the Seventies, he told her, Victoria Street was graced with terraces and an avenue of trees. When developers moved in, the locals put on a stink. It was quite a show for a while: headlines, pickets, evictions. The developers had won, easily in the end, and publisher and local hero, Juanita Nielsen, disappeared: kidnapped, murdered. In those days the term was 'Underworld Figures'. The Victoria Street Development Project now stretched in big red-roofed clumps the length of the escarpment, clotted in knots, like old blood. "No wonder," he said, "you want to leave."

The ridge of the Cross rose on their right, the sandstone cliff reinforced by slabs of convict stone cut and lugged from who knows where. Their shadows slid across a mass of graffiti. In white paint, someone had written: 'God hates homos'. In green paint beneath read the reply: 'But does he like tabouli?' A little further ahead a set of stairs sliced through the sandstone. As they turned up into it, a man barred their way, asking for one dollar. Then they were aware of two others, standing behind them. Jonathan felt his hands tingle and sweat. He looked towards Diana, but in the darkness her face was obscure.

"Money, quick!" said the first man in a hoarse whisper that was urgent and confident. Jonathan tried to take up space. He spread his elbows as dug for his wallet, opened it to show the notes inside, then handed the money over. "You too!" Diana stepped back. Jonathan turned. Diana pressed herself flush against the wall, and now the light revealed her cool, still face. Full of mobility, the man's face smiled. "Pretty!" His voice changed as he examined his knife's naked blade. Diana did not move. "Give us your money, bitch!" She pressed her back against the damp, cold stone.

One of the others joked about credit. The third said, through wide-spaced teeth: "Maybe we'll have to take the hairy cheque book." All three laughed as the first man moved in on Diana.

Jonathan's lunge did not even get started. The robber at his back kicked his leg out, the crook of his knee. Collapsing onto the steps, he copped another in the face which knocked him flat and left him struggling with consciousness.

Time drifts. Through the smoky haze that seems to surround him, he hears: "Jonathan." Jonathan hears Diana say: "You did not need to do that," all in a whisper, soft with breathing, quiet and controlled. He is vaguely surprised to see her standing there on the far side of the stairway as three men, in a purse-string arc, draw closer.

The first man came forward, stepping out of the line. He sucked a sharp breath and launched his knife at Diana's face. But his bright eyes moved more than his bright steel did. Diana had him caught at the wrist. His arm was stuck mid-air. The others laughed, paying Jonathan no more attention: they were spectators to something new.

The man bared his teeth with a kind of growl. His knife, this time, would cut deep.

It. At his command his forearm only shuddered. He looked at her, wondering. It. Her grip tightened. Hurts.

He could not comprehend, this man, as his knees callapsed under a wave of pain. And Diana did not let go.

From behind the two who stood by enthralled and motionless, Jonathan saw the robber on the ground, his raised arm still held at the wrist, and Diana, in light and darkness, standing over him. He saw the man's face lose its blood. His growl, again between clenched teeth, was now sick, and sickening, with pain. There followed two distinct cracks: one, and in a second, another. The man's head jerked. Spew slopped through his rubber lips. He passed out, sliding on his belly down the stairs. Diana shot a glance, knife-bright, at the other two, and they bolted.

"I am sorry, Jonathan." Her voice was rich and dark with care. "Are you well?"

"I'll live." Jonathan knew his words sounded weak and slurred, and he felt humiliated that just two syllables could come out wrong. His eyes began to focus. "I'll live." Better.

Jonathan held out his hand and Diana grasped him by the arm. She raised him, straightened him against the wall. Blood trickled from his mouth. She wiped it away with her thumb, pressed her thumb against her lips.

"Yes," she said, now that her lips were free, "I think you will." Diana waited while Jonathan gained his feet. She retrieved his wallet from the mouldy step, and together they resumed their climb to Victoria Street. Jonathan had forgotten about the man below, but as they reached the top he heard a moan from the darkness, and remembered. "Shouldn't we ring an ambulance or the police or something?"

Diana turned to him. "Why?"