Things I Did for Money (6 page)

Almost met him yesterday. My corkscrew has gone missing so I went to ask if I could borrow his. I'd just looked out the window and seen him down there, cat on knee, sitting around doing nothing. About fifty, backbone straight as bamboo. Nice profile, from a distance.

Down the stairs I tramped, rehearsing the chit-chat of the borrower. That corkscrew … I needed it. I'd just got off the phone from Shona — How close am I to finished? Am I using some white? Who am I bringing to the opening? And will I please try not to drink too much, because she's invited critics and what do they love better than making snide references to an artist's weaknesses? Nothing! And Nina, sweet thing, you can be tactless when you drink and we don't want to upset the nice people, do we.

Anyway, him downstairs. I knocked and knocked until I felt ridiculous, called out ‘Hello? It's Nina … I've just moved in upstairs?'

Nothing. I gave up and stood there quietly, trying to see through the bubble glass. At the end of that dark hallway was a tall shape bobbing around, so obvious it was almost comical. An outline that lurked, and listened, and waited for me to go away.

Our little game didn't last long. If Mr Elusive didn't want to lend me his corkscrew I had other doors to knock on.

It's so quiet down there. How can a person be so quiet?

Anyway, there are other ways to open a bottle. Quick sharp knock of the neck across a bench will do the trick. Messy, but money's too tight to waste on utensils.

Paint, coffee, cigarettes, milk. (Maybe more wine, but don't open that till later.) Then back to work. Three paintings, two days. I've done it before.

Crimson … cherry … flame … puce … kermes … cinnabar … cochineal …

I am starting to hate the colour red.

Will

My shins are covered in bruises. After half an hour's heaving I managed to shift the bed, but it keeps surprising me with its new position. Running my fingers over the skin I can feel the bruises blooming, overlapping like coins beneath the surface.

Things that change their location make me uneasy. I suppose I'll get used to it, it's just a bed. I must try to be more flexible.

Yes, there's a new noise coming from upstairs, and it has shifted: a rhythmic pounding and grinding, a gritty repetitive thump directly over the exact spot where I write. She's been at it all morning. Through many solid feet of wood and brick, the woman has a knack for finding my head and filling it with noise.

Her rhythm is blurred, sloppy, sullen. I know the signs of a drinker all too well.

I can't wear those earplugs — it's like suffocation.

So tomorrow I'll shift yet another piece of my life to the opposite side of the room: my desk, the bookshelf, transcribing machine and tape recorder, my computer, the snarled cords and lumpy plugs. It will take hours.

But I refuse to call James to rescue me. That makes me feel like a child. A backward situation, considering who spawned whom.

I wonder if he's handsome. His face, once set in my mind as six years old, has faded away. They say he looks like me. And I reply, half joking, Could you be more specific?

Enough of that.

The cat has scampered in and curled against me. His cold fur carries the rich, beautiful scent of night: damp sea air, wet rocks, looming rain and beneath it all something alive — his own musky skin, a hint of jasmine. Smart cats, Burmese. Quick-footed too. In four years I've only stepped on him once.

What is that woman doing up there? Grinding up bones?

Yesterday she came banging on my door, trumpeting her credentials. There was a smile in her voice but she sounded tense, overwrought. Given the little sleep I'd had I was hardly in the mood for a visit from the culprit herself. She persisted, but eventually concluded no one was home.

Ah. It's gone quiet up there. The silence is like a gap in traffic. Knowing it won't last, I find myself waiting for what comes next.

Nina

Why can't I find the red I need? I'm mixing up caput mortuum, a pigment named for the way the wet granules bunch together like tiny skulls. Must admit, can't see that level of detail myself right now … blurred from too much merlot. Might need another walk down to the sea for some fresh air, wake myself up.

Caput mortuum … merlot … plum … Venetian red … alizarin crimson …

One canvas down, two to go. Problem is, I've run out of abstractions. I need a subject, something solid. Not people — I hate painting people. (That woman:
Nina Verlane? Who's she?
)

It's soothing, grinding pigment. Almost hypnotic. But this building is so silent. I can just hear the faint crash of the sea, sometimes the clank of water in pipes. But the human silence is distracting.

When a cat yowled on the stairs just now it was a relief. I opened the door and he walked right in — a silky Burmese with bright green eyes, an intelligent face. He circled the room once, brushed against me hard, threw back an approving look and left. I shut the door behind him to keep out the cold.

Winter was announced on the radio today. I hadn't noticed the cold until I tried to steady my hand to paint. They say a storm is coming. There's an old fireplace; I'll find something to burn.

Russet … ruby … titian … Indian red … cadmium … maroon … fuchsia …

Will

There is nothing so shocking as waking from a dream to find it has followed you.

I had a nightmare: an intruder, a tall man in a black cloak, was rifling through my desk drawers. His back tensed as I filled the doorway behind him. ‘Who are you?' I asked coldly, buoyed by some fragile dream-delusion that I had the upper hand.

I could see him clearly, and this fact alone made my heart lurch — the dark velvety cloak, the pale curve of one cheek against the light. In his hand was a bundle of my Braille papers. He did not turn to face me. A sharp sea wind was blowing in the window, scattering papers off the desk.

In an impossible second he slipped out the window and vanished.

I awoke in a state between ecstasy and panic. I had seen the colours, the light and shadows of my home, seen another human being — but he was robbing me, and would not meet my eye.

And then it came: the real sound, the sound of an intruder in my house. My heart squeezed like a fist as I sat up in bed, every sense tuned to the noise in the other room: an urgent riffling, the sound of heavy paper fluttering in a stiff wind.

Time stretched as I listened. The noise came in quick staccato bursts — dry, rapid, almost panicky. There was nothing I could do but raise myself off the bed and creep toward the door.

I could hear my blood moving. I could hear everything. I felt terribly alive.

Nina

Early this morning there he was — the guy from downstairs, on my doorstep, in his pyjamas. He said, ‘I'm terribly sorry to disturb you, but I think there's someone in my house.'

Then I noticed his eyes, and before he told me I realised: he's blind. Completely. No colours, no light. His world is shapes, textures, echoes, smells; voices that come out of nowhere and fade back into nowhere.

He was shaky and spoke softly, head tilted to the stairs, listening. His hand was bleeding where he'd snagged it on the rail. I guided him in my doorway and into a chair.

The intruder was in his lounge room, he said, the noise had woken him up. He'd crept out of bed, down the hallway and out the front door. The other tenants leave early for work, and my door is the closest. He didn't know what else to do.

Even craning my neck out the kitchen window I couldn't spot anyone down there. He wanted me to call the police. But I took a heavy monkey wrench and walked quietly downstairs, with him tip-toeing behind me, whispering dramatically that we could both be killed.

It was a bird. A blackbird, flapping round the room, trying to find a way out. We got there just in time: the green-eyed cat was watching every wingbeat, picking his moment. I put the cat outside and caught the bird in a towel. Poor little thing. Must have been in the chimney when I lit the fire last night, fluttered its way down and got lost.

We were standing near the window. He flicked open the catch without hesitating or fumbling. Then he stopped and said, ‘Can I touch it?'

The bird was quite still. It did not seem afraid, cupped in my hands with its head poking out. The feathers, the bright black eyes: the whole animal was so beautiful I didn't answer for a while. He reached out, found my arm and followed it down. He touched the bird's feathered body very gently and just stood there. Neither of them moved. It was weird.

Then I pushed the window open and let it go.

After I bandaged the cut on his hand — tiny, but he made a real fuss — I stayed for a cup of tea. Realised I hadn't had a real conversation in ages. We talked about animals, books, the sea, normal stuff. The sea air is perfect for clearing the head, he said, but the rocks are slippery and there's a strong undertow; it's not smart to walk down there at night (how did he know I do that?).

He also asked if I could wear slippers round the house, ‘instead of those bloody high heels'. Apparently I've been driving him mad with all the noise I make. How was I supposed to know?

Mind back on the job: one last painting to do before the show tomorrow. When I came back upstairs, I found, on an old bit of foolscap near the door, a single drop of blood. A perfect red dot.

Blood … burgundy … port … claret … strawberry … madder … vermilion …

I can still feel that bird in my hands, its weightless warmth, the hard-soft shell of its feathers. It felt like nothing I've ever touched before. I hope it flew home: the storm's about to hit.

Almost there. If I can just block out that voice (
Who's Nina Verlane?
), I know I can paint something beautiful.

Will

Thunder woke me, a great cold crack across the ceiling of the world. The sea's been rough since last night; I can hear it smashing furiously against the rocks. The wet wind comes in gusts, splattering the windows, making the trees hiss.

James rang, wanting to visit, but I put him off for now. It was good to hear his voice. Yet I can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. I feel a strange grief.

Late last night, over the howl of the wind, I heard the faint sound of her front door closing. I lay awake a long time. I did not hear her return.

There is nothing moving upstairs, nothing. Complete silence, broken by the sound of unanswered phones: thirty rings, silence, thirty more. Then a lighter trill, also ringing out.

I finally met her — Nina. Told her she was driving me mad with her midnight tap-dancing, could I buy her a pair of slippers? I can hear a crumb drop down here, I said, and you've dropped a truckload. She was nothing like I'd imagined her to be. Noise reveals less about a person than you might think.

I felt foolish for being afraid of a bird but she didn't dwell on it. The previous night I heard her smashing something (an old chair, apparently, for firewood) and smelled woodsmoke. The bird must have come down the chimney, frightened. Before we let it go I touched its feathers, felt its little heartbeat under my hand, quick and persistent.

As Nina left she asked to borrow a corkscrew. I meant to throw that thing away years ago. Key to bloody nowhere: twist and pull, sink and drown. But there it lurked, in the back of a drawer. I was reluctant to give her the cursed thing but she insisted, said she hadn't painted sober in years. We quickly changed the subject.

She's a brunette, I'd guess, late thirties. Lanky probably, despite the booze — frets and smokes too much. But what surprised me most was this: the smell of jasmine belongs to her.

I hear feet on the stairs, agitated voices, fists hammering at her door. People calling her name, again and again.

When they knock on my door I open it immediately. I hear someone breathing fast, a second person shuffling, and a woman with a sharp, frightened voice asks me, Do I know where Nina is — do I know Nina Verlane?

I answer, Yes, I do know Nina. And although I try to hide it, my eyes grow wet. It is so very quiet upstairs, almost as if she had never been there at all.

NARCOSIS

We fell into the ocean backward, making the OK signal for the camera. Later I replayed that footage several times, but it never seemed accurate: all flailing flippers and ungainly limbs, smiles stretched around the mouthpiece, that messy shattering of the surface. Nothing like the slow, deadly grace of being underwater.

Four of us went down that day: my old friend Lucia and her husband, Will; my ambivalent self; and a man called Mick, an ex–opal miner with a boozy squint who seemed to take an instant dislike to me. I'd noted it over pre-dawn introductions at the marina and the feeling was instantly mutual. That's the trouble with misanthropes, I thought: they have a knack for recruiting the rest of us.

It's not ideal being stuck with a prickly dive buddy — the ocean itself is hostile enough — but Lucia and Will are annoyingly inseparable, so we had no choice. Anyway, I'd invited myself along on this trip, saying it was time I got back out there. ‘You sure you're ready?' Lucia had asked. ‘Completely,' I'd replied, my tone bright. ‘I'm back amongst the living.'