8 Tuesday 13 August – Waxing crescentWho 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."
