A Woman Sphinx

what's this tree bent down with
flowers?
surely
it's this flower stick
bent down
with flowers surely
what's this tree bent down with
flowers?
surely
it's this flower stick
bent down with
flowers surely
out there
in the flower world
the floral world
among the sagebrush
there's a flower bush bent down with
flowers
surely it's this flower stick
bent down with flowers
surely

During, after and because of all the weirdness of the night before, Bryn had forgotten to set the alarm on his mobile.

Nobody had come in and woken him up. Feng must have still been pissed off about the coin-slash-flower incident, or was too involved with breakfasting and goodbye-ing his girlfriend, the close-up magician. Whatever.

Bryn shuffled out of his bedroom into the still, white lounge area. He could basically hear the hum of powerlines out on the street.

He turned his head gradually, so slowly, to see if there was a certain person in the TV pit.

He didn�t know what hours magicians kept, or whether they were prone to letting themselves out of other people�s houses. But at leat Adelaide had already cleared out, and had gone back to her magic workshop, or secret cave, or whatever magicians had as offices these days.

Bryn walked into the kitchen and saw that the offending cactus postcard was still on the fridge, a little bit on an angle, now, and off to one side. For the first time, he noticed the curly pink writing on it in the corner, humanising the photo of the cactus in the distance. The writing did its best, but Bryn still felt uncomfortable looking at it. Plus, it instantly made him feel like margaritas flowed through his veins again.

He looked at the time on the microwave. 10:52. He might just have to call in sick. Feigning illness was so infinitely much more preferable to being late. When you�re late, you still do the sick voice; it�s like you have no control over whether it�s happening or not, except you have to do it in front of everyone, especially your boss. It just wasn�t worth it. He�d have to get a doctor�s certificate, but oh, well.

Fuck it. He just wrote an e-mail to his boss on his phone. They wouldn�t care, as long as he got the doctor�s certificate. It wasn�t like the jumper widgets accounting could not possibly wait another day. Fucking jumper widgets.

He spent the next hour-and-a-half getting his shit together. The bulk bill doctor Megaplex was just down the road, but it was always just such a drag. He could never be bothered making an appointment, mostly because Feng didn�t like the colour of the magnet with their phone number on it so they weren�t allowed to have it on the fridge, plus he�d just never been bothered to take that useful step to plug the number into his mobile. Way too hard.

Oh, well. He�d just have to wait in the big room for ages, and then maybe, if he was lucky, he could pick up some affliction by osmosis, like ringworm of the hair. Maybe he�d get a couple more days off that way.

Bryn whistled down the street, feeling OK. He felt kind of free. He went past the scary reserve, across Nepean Highway, and up to the doctor Megaplex. It still had that new car smell even though it had been there for at least five years. Cool, there was just about nobody there. He should breeze on through, he thought.

�So, what seems to be the problem?� asked Doctor Pollux, or whatever mythical name she had. The classic opening line.

�Yeah, um, something to do with my chest, actually,� said Bryn, making it up on the spot. �Just some weird breathing, and, stuff.�

�Could you raise your arms, please? I�ll pop the stethoscope on your chest just now,� said the doctor, and she did that. She nodded, and moved it to another spot, and nodded again. Then, she did a couple of spots on the back, and then back to the middle of the chest, right in the centre. She started to nod more vigorously. Interesting.

�Yes, there�s definitely something in there,� she said with slightly more inflection than one who thought they were perfectly well and was being examined may have wanted or anticipated.

�You�ve got something in your chest. It�s rattling around when you breathe, and when you�re not, it still makes a noise.�

�It sure sounds like wind,� said the doctor, �but not the wind we normally mean when we�re talking about people�s bodies. It sounds literally like the sound you get on an incredibly windy night when howling gusts of wind are whistling down an alleyway. It�s akin to a�.. 1950s British suspense thriller set in the olden days.�

�Woah. That is very specific,� said Bryn. �Is that normal? I mean, have you heard it before?�

�To be honest, no. I think that the rattling sound in your chest is probably the thing we should investigate further, though. They could well be both related,� said he doctor. �How about we book you in for a chest x-ray in the next couple of days, and I�ll give you a certificate until the end of the week at this stage, and when we get the results, we�ll take it from there?�

�Yeah, sure, OK,� shrugged Bryn, mildly worried about the rattling that he couldn�t feel and the gusty alley in his torso, but way more into the idea of having the rest of the week off. If this was being sick, this was OK by him.

�Let me just ring x-ray, and we�ll figure out a time��.. hi, Jan- I�ve got a man here who needs his chest done in the next few days�� oh, OK� Friday? Morning, but not 9AM? Yes, I�ll ask ��

She put her hand over the phone. �Friday, late morning, say 10 or 11AM � is that OK?�

�Yep, 11 is cool,� said Bryn. Awesome. If that was the only thing he had to do this week, then that was pretty darn cool with him.

So, it was settled. Bryn did whatever the opposite of plodding is back across Nepean Highway, four whole days� worth of doctor�s certificate in his pocket, feeling very pleased with himself. He had no idea what he was going to do with the rest of the week, let alone today.

He looked at his watch. Hm, it was only one-twelve. Awesome. Maybe he could watch Martha Stewart under a blanket, or nuke an egg-slash-cheese monstrosity in the microwave, or even both at the exact same time. Woah.

At that point in the short and sharp walk home, the eerie, black reserve across the road caught his eye. Only the very right-hand corner of his most right-hand eye caught a glimpse of it, and it was with his peripheral vision, the type of vision that works better at night. That kind of suited this scary garden. It was a garden that did things under the cover of darkness.

The twenty metre high trees at the back, in front of the ivy-choked red brick walls were far too big for the modestly sized reserve they were on; they were like black holes pretending to be trees. There were the ghosts of nests lost inside them, but you couldn�t tell from the outside. Bryn just knew that.

He stopped on the path on the other side of the road. He looked at the reserve. He thought about the reserve. He realised that he�d never been into it before.

Well, he had pretty much until Friday at 11AM to be a free agent. Why not visit the creepy reserve right now?

He shrugged at the empty street, looked both ways, jogged across the road, and entered.

The first thing you got greeted by when you entered the reserve was the hedge. It was a pretty normal hedge. And then, the shadows.

It was such a dark place, maybe because of that row of completely oversized trees at the back. But, even when the shadows were off to the south, shrouding the root infested Californian bungalow next door instead, it was still like a place that was never warmed by the sun. The sun must have gone there some time, as there was actual thick grass and all that, but I�m just sayin�. It seemed icy there.

Before you ask, there were no species of cacti in the reserve. Well, except for the burgeoning one in Bryn�s tummy which may or may not be metaphorical. But, metaphorical or not, it was still a cactus, at least in spirit.

Instead there were a few standard rose bushes with one or two deep maroon or black roses on them, sticking around and a little fossilised after the first batch of spring blooms. Someone must have pruned these bushes, but not for a while.

There was a weeping birch tree in one corner at the front, with a little brass plaque under it, like a memorial plaque, angled at ground level. Bryn went over to it. There was a nice little etched border on it. Inside the border, it said nothing.

There was a path that went into the reserve one way and out the other. The path was not hidden at any point, nor did it go through a series of garden rooms. Just in, then out.

Bryn decided to go on a stroll along it anyway. He shrugged again, more at the weeping birch tree with no dedication than anything else, and set off.

Well, there was nothing for it except to go back, he reasoned. It was quicker to get home from the entry bit of the garden than the exit. A full forty seconds quicker. He wouldn�t even have to go around a corner this way. Yay.

Just as he was beginning to walk back, he noticed that there was just one teeny tiny spot on the garden path � maybe fifty centimetres � maybe not even that much � where he couldn�t see the outside world. It was like he couldn�t hear it either, but maybe it was more to do with visual-slash-aural associations and that kind of stuff.

God, he felt uneasy. He glanced over to the giant, black trees at the back of the reserve. He felt like they were sucking the warmth out of him.

He started to walk down the path again. There was the outside world. There were the noises of traffic again. Phew.

And then, just as he was about to go out of the reserve, and zip across the road and up the stairs and back into the apartment to fling himself onto the couch to surf some serious daytime TV, he noticed something behind the artificially cultivated tendrils of the weeping birch tree, next to the farthest giant dark cypress.

It was just a pretty normal rose bush, like the bush roses or tea roses, he thought. Kind of old-fashioned, like the standard rose bushes near the entrance, standing in perfectly round holes of piled blood and bone in the grass, but this bush was shapeless. The branches were very leafy and went any which way they pleased in a way that suited the air around it, like a black rain cloud. It was rustling or vibrating a little bit, in a way that plants aren�t meant to do unless their name is Audrey 2, but Audrey 2 is a fictional plant. This plant was as real as sliced bread. Most likely. Yeah.

The leaves were shiny and uniformly, softly jagged on the edges. The thorns were all hidden underneath and the bush looked kind of huggable. It�s hard to explain why. Probably not a good idea, though. This was a vibrating rose bush we�re talking about here. Maybe the vibrating was what made it cute. It seemed more like a moth that was drying out its wings or something.

On the left hand side of the bush � maybe I should have mentioned this a bit earlier, but I was playing my cards close to my chest (oh, wait, I kind of did in the poem at the start of the chapter), there was a little branch that came out of the formless mass of the bush and was pointing outwards, pointing towards the path ad Bryn. It was shaking like a lolly on a string that a villain would wiggle at a child from around a corner. But it didn�t feel like a trap at all.

He went closer. There were little buds all up and down this branch. It was a branch that was experiencing its beginnings of spring in a microclimate all of its own. Maybe the afternoon sun hit it just right and it was the only warm thing in the garden. Maybe some guy came and watered it every day, more than the others.

No, that didn�t work. Who makes individual rose bush branches grow heaps of flowers by sprinkling water on them and them alone?

Bryn shook his head. And the branch shook its head in answer. If they both had has, they might have doffed them at each other. Cool. I always wanted to say �doffed� in a piece of writing. Good time, good times.

Well, anyway, Bryn got closer. He left the path and stepped on the grass. There were no signs saying not to. The lawn was springy and filled with wide-leaved points of blue-grey grass. The whole place looked as if it was being viewed through a blue camera filter.

The flower buds were just about to burst open, all at the same time. He felt that if he touched one, it would. He didn�t dare do it. It felt somehow like he had too much power. It felt like it would be wrong to influence nature.

And then, in between all the buds and all the leaves on this branch, he saw the delicate piece of tissue paper that had been in his had the evening before. The piece of paper that said the invisible, �Sorry,� on it. Except you cold read the word now. It was written in dark pink.

The blood didn�t exactly drain from Bryn�s face. That would have been dangerous, probably. But it went cold and pale and matched the garden.

He didn�t touch the note. He just looked at it for a bit, trembling there in the rose bush�

Bryn jumped and would have hit the ceiling if there had been one above him of a fairly low height. Let�s say under 2.1 metres.

�Uhm,� said Bryn, feeling like he�d been sprung sleepwalking. His throat really needed to be cleared.

Bryn wondered whether Feng could see this weird branch with all the buds on it. For some reason, he wanted to keep it a secret, or maybe it was just that it was too much of a hassle to bring up in conversation.

He left the Sorry where it was and jogged out onto the path again. The air went back to warm colours.

�Hey, what are you doing home so early?� asked Bryn as he and Feng headed across the road together.

What? Thought Bryn, but surprisingly, only vaguely. He was mostly bummed out that he�d missed out on Martha Stewart and Ellen and all that. He wasn�t mad keen on Oprah, for some reason. Something to do with the Angel Network thing, and how she always gave her audience members stuff you were supposed to win in those raffles you end up entering in shopping centres where there�s a tiny car in bright yellow parked behind the table.

Bryn wasn�t getting bummed out at the right things anymore. The gale in his chest; the lost several hours in the reserve looking at the trembling branch with all the buds and the apology note on it, et cetera.

�So I missed all my daytime TV,� he said. �Oh wells. I think the rose bush in there is a little bit alive.� Bryn looked back and vaguely pointed a wiggling finger in the direction of the reserve.

Feng stopped Bryn on the footpath outside the steps to their apartment. He put his hands on Bryn�s shoulders and looked into his eyes. The look encompassed all the odd goings-on ever since he came home and found Bryn curled up on the floor, frightened of a postcard he essentially sent himself, through the shenanigans of the underpants and toilet combination fiasco, beyond the far too extensive nasal savouring of a coin in his girlfriend�s hand, all the way to now.

Feng gripped Bryn�s shoulders more tightly, like a person hosting an intervention. �Bro, why shit so crazy?� he asked.

This was weird for Bryn. He had always been the fairly normal one. He considered things for a sec.

�I�m sick,� was all he could think of saying. �I have a doctor�s certificate.�

�OK,� said Feng. �I�ll have to make you some piping hot Big M soup. What flavour?�

�Interesting,� said Feng, and he stroked his chin as they went up the stairs. Yes, yes, he could do that. He would start with a chocolate Big M base, and build it from there.

Two hours later, Bryn was buried under a blanket, gagging at the smell of his freshly, laboriously made soup. There were many plastic jugs that had lost their lives in the microwave that night. They had died so, so young. There were seven more reinforcements in the cupboard under the sink, though. It was like Feng�s mum had put them there instinctively for a time such as this.

�Well, eat up, eat up,� said Feng, leaping onto the couch and propping his head up on his elbows all in Bryn�s face.

�Thanks,� said Bryn. He kind of let the bowl sink out of view so that Feng might forget about it. He�d start to talk about himself and then it would all be over.

�I�m going to be the opening act for Adelaide�s magic show gig on Saturday!�

�Yeah! We get to play one song and everything! Adelaide said it had to be a cover, because of the kind of pub it�s in, but that�s cool; I can do Bryan Adams or whatever, I meant that�s not my preference; maybe like some Live maybe; yeah. Lightning�s crashing, and Old Mother cries��.�

�Hey Bryn. Are you coming to the magic show to watch me play? Will you? Will you? And will you act totally normal for once in your life, and not freak my girlfriend out, and cheer really loudly at the end of our song, because you would anyway, because you�re the best? And would you have a little bit of my soup right now, because it�s getting cold and it�s starting to grow a skin on the top, and I don�t like looking at it anymore?�

But yeah, Bryn sucked it up, and picked up the bowl, and dipped his McDonalds dessert spoon in it. The entire exposed surface of the plastic soup came up when he lifted the now partially melted spoon to his mouth.

�Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,� said Bryn. His face physically hurt trying to emulate the smile of the contented.

�Yeah, of course I�ll come,� said Bryn, sounding like all the tastebuds had been evicted from his tongue. �Can I just put this bowl down for a sec? I think I need to pop into the bathroom.�

Those tastebuds were never to return. I mean, new ones would grow back within a couple of weeks, most likely.

Uh, let me look at the metaphysical graph. Yeah. Yeah, they would grow back. Cool. Cool. Phew.

Let me tell you the goings-on in between now and the time those tastebuds are to grow back. I�ll start with the magic show. It was not the most relaxing event Bryn had ever participated in.

out in the mountain there
these look like
doves
& in the flower water
three of them
are grey & bobbing
three of them are walking
grey & side by side
there in the flower world

Bryn Mossman did not know this, but at work for the entire rest of the week, Trevor�s stuff was to be gradually pilfered until there was only a wad of pink little sticky notes lying there, in the corner of his desk.

Things had started to vanish off Bryn�s desk again as well, like he was starting to be absorbed into another world. Like he was fading out of a silver nitrate film, his face exploding over and over again into bubbles of desiccated emulsion.

Shit, that just scared me, what I wrote. But you should checkout a degraded silver nitrate film one time. I recommend Decasia. Good soundtrack, too.

Bryn spent the rest of the week inside, mostly in his bed, listening to podcasts, and occasionally emerging to watch something inconsequential in the TV pit, swathed in blankets. He was starting to think he was a little bit sick, but of course he completely forgot about the X-ray appointment. That would have been too easy. They might have been able to diagnose him with whatever he had and he could have been put onto antibiotics or operated on or whatever needed to happen. But he was to busy worrying about whether he did have a proper rattle in his chest. An he did not want to go outside.

Every night, The Majesty of Footscray would start rehearsing just when the 7:30 Report was about to start. The band had spent the first three rehearsals arguing over which out of the limited choice of covers would fully represent the band�s ethos. They finally settled on the disputed classic Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground. Not everybody was happy with that. Feng had of course wanted that terrible Live song, and Callan had wanted to play some Everclear song I�ve blocked out of my mind, but Jonathan and TJ insisted on Marcy Playground. They said that the song title was more awesome than the idea of lightning crashing and old mothers dying, and that people thought lightning was scary, and that everybody liked sex and candy, even diabetics because nowadays you could get sugar free lollies and carob stuff that was fiendishly masquerading as chocolate, plus it was two against a divided two anyway. And then they�d all had a tickle fight on the floor of the kitchen on the deciding day, just when Bryn was attempting to carry a cup of tea out of the kitchen, and the tea had spilled all over the bench, and he was very grumpy. Bryn said that they should have all just doe arm wrestles on day One like all people who need to resolve Incredibly Pointless Issues, and then Feng got mad and gave Bryn quite a severe noogie, and then said sorry, I forgot you were legally sick due to being within the realms of the doctor�s certificate, and then Bryn pointed out that they only had one more day left to practice, and Feng had said, fair point, let�s all go out for a drink and discuss what time to practice tomorrow, and Bryn was finally let in peace for couple of nocturnal hours.

Finally, Saturday rolled around, and a great deal of it was spent trying to get Feng�s hair into some sort of hairstyle that did not resemble Chinese Gymnast. The thing was, Bryn was no longer protected under the Elwood Apartment Doctor�s Certificate Act of 2010, so he was now free to be Feng�s slave.

They had no luck with the hair. Feng�s look of rock would have to rely entirely on the light blue shirt and casual slacks he had chosen to wear.

Finally, the time came around. They left the house, came back again to grab Feng�s bass, which seemed essential, and then headed off. To the pub. The place that Bryn would have yet another Actively Bad Experience in.

It was an innocuous place; a typical pub within which you could not possibly find yourself landing on your butt, no matter how drunk you were due to the incredible non-slip values of the floors having soaked up so much booze kindly drizzled onto the carpet over the years. The walls were black, the ceiling was black, the bar staff wore black; there were a couple of dark, dark grey bits of d�cor but they were generally overshadowed by the black things and the dim, beer-glasses lighting.

Bryn stood in the back corner of the band room while The Majesty of Footscray scurried around with their stuff, placing it on the stage like they did this all the time.

There was a black curtain dividing the front of the stage from what was behind. Any other colour would have been a bit disconcerting in this pub. Bryn wondered what lay behind it. An Aztec Tomb? One of those things you saw people in half with and you lop off smiling heads with? Doves? A row of vials containing different pastel liquids that could read your thoughts?

He leaned even more into the corner which probably wasn�t a very good idea. Any more leaning, and he�d never get unstuck from the wall. He�d have to rip himself out of the shirt, and this was a pretty good shirt. He�d gotten it in New Zealand. He just didn�t want to open himself up to the possibility of letting Adelaide be behind him.

He looked around. She didn�t seem to be anywhere. He kind of wanted to see her off in the distance, or a movement behind the curtain, or even someone saying, �hey,� to her off stage. Feng didn�t seem remotely interested in finding her himself, and she was his girlfriend. Feng was standing on the stage right now, vainly attempting to shape his hair into something fully sick. As if Bryn hadn�t tried already. Nothing would transform that hair into anything but business in the front, business at the back.

He thought he heard an early morning bird call, coming from somewhere within the big room. He was not going to investigate.

Since the wall was mostly holding him up, so he wasn�t bothered by worrying about such banal things as standing there, Bryn started to daydream about the jumper widget account, the default next most banal thing he could think of. It turned into a full-blown reverie, with numbers dancing past his eyes in different colours � the black-on-black of the room and the dull buzz of The Majesty of Footscray wondering where the drum stool was all kind of encouraged this. He wondered how much work Trevor was going to have when he got back, and how much stuff had been eroded from his desk over time.

He was jolted back into the real world by Feng, who was basically shaking him off the wall. �Dude, man, man! This is fucking insane! We are fucked, man! We need to you to out to the van, very calmly, and open up the back, and see if the drum stool is in there. If it is, bring it back to us and put it on the stage, then gently alert me to the fact that you have located it. If you don�t find it, just have a poke around under the car seats, and if it�s still not there, go back inside and find Jonathan straight away and tell him that he�s a very naughty man. Can you do that for me?�

He looked back to where he�d been on the wall. There was a hint of a light grey outline of his arm and back, like a ghost. That wasn�t cool. He would have to shower in his clothes tonight.

He went out into the dark around the corner, near the housing commission flats. It was kind of edgy there at night; ancient cars would cruise by with darkness inside them and there was never anyone walking by on the footpath.

Oh yeah. There was the van. Cool. Bryn realised that Feng had forgotten to give him the key, but it was pretty fucking easy to break in anyway. You just had to lift the back door a particular way. So he did that.

He could tell straight away where the bloody drum stool was. All you had to do was look for the thing that had a slight glint of silver amongst all the Big M carcasses. It was weird; this wasn�t even Feng�s van, it was TJ�s van, but he�d certainly made his mark on it.

Bryn dove into the milk cartons and dragged the seat out. After doing that he thought, yes, definitely shower in my clothes tonight. Now he had the distinct scent of stale flavoured milk upon him.

He slammed the van door especially hard. You had to do that because you had to force it to shut while it was locked, and it didn�t like it very much when you did that.

The result of the huge van door bang was that a small deer across the road, in front of a photography shop, got startled, and looked across at Bryn with a big eyelash look that deer love to do.

This was all a bit strange, especially because there are no deer as far as I know on the whole entire Australasian continent, except probably in a couple of zoos or something. But this deer was a particular type of deer you wouldn�t even get in a zoo on this side of the world. You get those European ones, or Ibexes or something.

This kind of sighting was starting to become something that Bryn Mossman could take in his stride. At least he didn�t have the urge to put his tongue on it and experience the taste of seasoned fur. Bryn counted this as a personal victory. At least it wasn�t a shaking plant trying to give him messages in an evil-feeling reserve that stole time away from him.

He heard the early morning bird call again. He shivered and went inside with the stool.

By now, there was a slight crowd of ne�er do wells lurking in the mostly red light coming off the stage. None had succumbed to the flypaper walls as Bryn had. Well, good on them.

Bryn did his thing, i.e. the placement of the stool upon the stage in the correct area, namely behind the slightly improperly set up drum kit, and Jonathan promptly placed his buttocks upon it, one at a time � no mean feat, but drummers can do that.

Feng stopped tousling his hair to no avail, and suddenly got into performance mode, which meant that he had an unstoppable urge to screech into a microphone until it was time to sing. Thankfully, the space of time between that which he snapped into performance mode and that which it was appropriate to begin singing was a mercifully short one, because it only took as long as the announcing of the full name of the band with gusto, and that took about�.. one minute.

Then they began to play that Marcy Playground song. The sound of the first four bars kind of made Bryn gag slightly. He was glad that he was not imbibing beer at that exact time, because he would have let it out through any and all of the holes in his face, simultaneously, even his eyes. No joke.

Bryn had flashbacks to the time that the Majesty of Footscray had played their first ever public gig. At least this time, it was only one song. Last time, it was a lot like when the Blues Brothers had played at Bob�s Country Bunker, except it resembled only the first half of the gig. Furthermore, the Majesty of Footscray had only survived the onslaught of missiles onto the stage due to the extremely slight, nerdy build of all members thereof.

Somehow, they worked OK at the house party in the apartment, but maybe that was because Bryn had mercifully fallen unconscious in the toilet doorway pretty early on.

Anyway, thank Christ it was just the one song. Come to think of it, Bryn had never survived more than one song of theirs in a row. At that last public gig, he�d fallen over this person skanking wildly around in an ellipse with a traffic cone on their head and had to go out to the public bar bit to ask for a band-aid and had loitered on purpose out there.

Some people seemed to enjoy the Majesty of Footscray�s sound. These people were few and far between, and they seemed to be the types who wore glasses without lenses and claimed to like the recent works of Cher as well as the more demanding selection of Einsturzende Neubauten�s oeuvre. Namely, wankers who enjoyed things only for ironic value.

Come to think of it, Bryn suddenly required a beer so he popped out to the public bar for a sec, and beer in hand, he came back. Phew. The whole thing was over already.

Bryn looked around and took an extremely large sip of the beer, the brand of which was the one that both you and Bryn equally hate. He had flashbacks of all the times this particular beer had served him well, inevitably by getting him outlandishly drunk and then going past the very most rear outcrops of his tongue, trying to erupt out the nose. He shut his eyes and felt like shit. He hadn�t felt this bad in a few days. He took another comprehensive swig and looked around as the Majesty of Footscray packed up their stuff, clearly feeling like grade fours who had just done their jazz ballet end of year performance to I�m On My Way by the Proclaimers in orange fluorescent bike shorts. That feeling, my friends, by the way, is chuffed. I know, because I have done that.

He spotted Feng�s family over at the stage. Those parents were above and beyond, really. They�d suffered permanent ear damage, a harrowing glimpse underneath the fa�ade of their golden child, and missed out on watching the last episode of The Bill as it went to air. They�d had to tape it.

Can I just iunterject and say that I know the last episode of The Bill was not shown in early November 2010 as this novel is currently set. Yeah, I know that. I did my research and all that. But I just used artistic licence. But everything else was real. I swear upon my pet mouse and everything.

Mary was there, too, at the stage. She was not looking up at Feng, asking him whether he�d felt nervous before he�d attempted a best-forgotten one-hit wonder. At least it hadn�t been the Goo Goo dolls. If you thought hard enough, there was always something to be thankful for.

Bryn had a feeling that Mary was looking for him, but he was in the shadows (which was pretty hard not to be in this place, admittedly).

Maybe. Or looking for the bird call. Or both. In his mind, these things were coming together. Converging and congealing. From the outside, it was much easier to see. From outside all of the worlds.

the dawn
out in the flower water
three of them
are grey & bobbing
in the mountain there
these look like doves
out there
& in the flower water
three are grey
& bobbing
three of them are walking
grey & side by side

Now that Feng had been temporarily sated by his departing parents� deceptively encouraging words, he was after the same thing from Bryn. You could tell � he was doing the exact same thing Mary had been doing just a minute ago. There was something about their eyes � the way they narrowed into the dark bits of the room, and the way their heads flicked around like a puppy; something exactly the same about them which went, �Where�s Bryn?�

Bryn receded into the shadows even more. He was waiting. He did not want to be disturbed.

Finally, the Majesty of Footscray cleared off the stage. The requisite dry ice began to unfurl and languish around everyone�s feet. It was no mean feat that the dry ice managed to stay unstuck from the beer-soaked floor. Good on you, dry ice.

It was going to be sleight of hand and all that; they were all aware. However, real magic would happen to one person in the room. Not like the piddly bits and pieces that had been hanging around the edges thus far into the novel. Forget that. This was big time.

It was something to do with the whole germinated seed situation going on in Bryn�s tummy. It was also something to do with brain waves, and suspension of disbelief being torn slightly, thus leading to real things that were beyond disbelief happening kind of messily, and distress on the part of not a few. But, we�ll get to that point.

The dry ice continued to unfurl. You could hear the puffy sound the machine made. That was about the only noise in the room, except for the muffled pounding of rock from the front bar and perhaps the far-off cry of an eagle�

Some magical music began to play over the PA; a dirge, dark and slow. The lights dimmed. The curtains opened. You could only tell because the dry ice was trying to escape off the stage in big, rolling clouds from the centre; the curtains were kind of wiping them off the stage.

Finally, as the music began to pick up, and harmonica sounding things and wailing strange horns and tiny chimes and pointy strings and something that sounded like periodic party poppers on the PA spread out their sound and put everyone into a different place outside the pub and outside the ordinary realms of everyday existence, the lights began to undim into a red haze. It would take some time for the eyes to adjust to the shadows on the stage.

Obviously, the shadow in the middle was Adelaide Hermann. She was pitch black, mostly because of what she was wearing. You couldn�t tell where her elbows were.

Feng was up the front somewhere. You could tell that because he was up the front, ruining the vibe with the best of intentions.

Feng liked to do that when he was excited about something. He did it a lot in the bathroom after he had bothered to floss his teeth, on those rare nights that just inspired him to do so. The later he stayed up, the more likely it was to happen, and the odd but increased likelihood of pairing it with having Bryn�s ear screamed into from below in the mornings. Many a time had Bryn been jolted awake to the sound of it, panicked, and then realised what was going on. The first time it had happened, about six months after they�d been living together, Bryn had thought it was related to self-pleasure; he tended to yell it though gritted teeth, and when you�re doing that in the bathroom in the middle of the night, well, yeah. I don�t blame Bryn, really.

The way Bryn had found out, all those years ago, was that the next day, when they were eating whole tomatoes for breakfast in the backyard. Bryn had been feeling uncomfortable and silent. Feng had squished the tomato in his fist, and began slurping the bits that oozed out between his fingers.

�Ah. So fresh, so clean,� Feng had said. That was before the Outkast song utilising the same phrase had come out, interestingly. Feng was to try and sue the pants off Outkast when the song first came out a few years later, however after consulting a law student he kind of knew from hanging out at the same pizza shop at uni who said basically the same thing Bryn had said about it, which was that it was a fully crap idea, Feng had abandoned the whole lawsuit.

Anyway, this story within a story within a story thing is getting intense. I�d better step back a layer.

So after Feng had said, �Ah, so fresh, so clean,� and Bryn had said nothing, and had merely shuddered, not even rally in response to what had been said, Feng went on. �Just to clarify, I flossed my teeth last night in the bathroom. Maybe you heard my screams of ecstasy after.�

Bryn had mustered a nod in response, had still been traunatised yet satisfied with this answer, and they had finished their tomatoes and had gone on with their lives.

Thinking back to this incident in their deep past, maybe Feng had not actually been flossing. Maybe that had been a weak cover story.

It was kind of like Crocodile Dundee. The first movie, I�m pretty sure. The bit where there was a grumpy bovine style mammal in the dirt road, and there was a high-tension situation about to unfold in the middle of nowhere. When he makes a fist but he sticks out his pinky and his thumb and hypnotises and neutralises the bull. Some kind of bush magic.

Finally, her elbow could be discerned. Well, if you count it as a part of an outstretched arm, with the palm facing down.

She lowered it, slowly, and Feng basically got neutralised. He was pretty drunk at this point anyway, but he would remain inert and in a strangely calm state for the rest of the night.

It made a dramatic start to the proceedings. The room remained quiet, internally. Everyone was on tenterhooks.

Bryn emerged from the dark corner a little bit more, but it was easy. Everything was in shadows.

�Good evening, lades and gentlemen,� said Adelaide�s voice, but strangely, not her face, in appropriately booming tones. �It is time�.. time for... The Magic Show.�

And then extra curtains somehow whipped off the two sides of the stage and flew towards Adelaide�s dark form, dashed in front of her, and flew to the opposite sides.

Adelaide�s head had gone missing. The rest of her was standing there like someone in a movie whose head had just been sliced off with an extremely pointy sword, and was waiting the obligatory amount of time before crumpling to the ground.

From out of the red haze, a football shaped thing congealed and hovered to the fore, dripping what could only be estimated to be pretendies blood. It was Adelaide�s real head.

It bobbed up and down, rhythmically and slowly, to the sound effect of a theremin.

I�ve heard that�s a sure-fire sign of a good magic show. An �ooooh,� closely, but not too hastily, followed by an �ahhhhh.�

The eerie head rose to squelch itself back onto Adelaide�s neck. She put her hands up to it and pushed her head down to help it along.

�Let me just check to see it�s screwed on properly,� she said, in a magical sounding voice.

Her head span around a slow, full turn like an owl or like in The Exorcist or something.

This was pretty darn good. It was probably a bit better than it should have been to have had a warm-up act such as the Majesty of Footscray.

They just need to practice more at band practice instead of constantly bickering, practicing their rock poses, and tickle fights. They need to retain their day jobs, desperately.

Anyway, the first trick was over. Officially. There was an awed type of applause from the forty or so spellbound people in the audience.

Bryn took a few steps more closer. His stomach rumbled inside, oddly. Not like how it does when you�re hungry.

�Thankyou,� said Adelaide, in her stage voice. �And now, I invite you to visualise something. All of you can do this. Visualise for me an ordinary object. Maybe it�s something you saw today, or was on the TV recently. Whatever it is, close your eyes and think of it, very intensely. Think of every surface, and its colours, and forget about everything else until you feel like it�s time to open your eyes. Alright. Now�s the time.�

Everyone in the place did it. They all screwed up their eyelids and thought hard.

After twenty one and a half seconds, they all opened their eyes up at the same time.

�Thankyou. And now, I�m getting some vibes from all of you,� she said, her fingers to her temples in deep magical thought. Yes, yes, I think I can see what you were thinking of� How curious, it all seems to be quite�. ah, ahem,� she said, appearing to start to choke. �Um, just a second � just need to clear out my throat a bit ��

After a bunch of coughs and splutters, she turned back around again, holding her hands out in front of her mouth. She coughed up a little thing. It must have been lodged in her throat. It was a little, tiny, limp thing that immediately began to inflate itself and, at the same time, seemed to magnify as well.

It grew, and inflated, and grew, and inflated, and by the time Adelaide had to grip it before it rolled off her hands, everyone suddenly tore their attention away from being mesmerised by watching the object grow and fill out and realised that she was now holding the very thing they had all, collectively, been thinking about.

It was a soccer ball. It didn�t even look like it had been regurgitated or anything at this point.

There wasn�t even any applause this time. There couldn�t be. This was just too freaky weird and cool. From now on, there could only be, �woooh�-s. They were the only things that could come close to doing this justice.

Bryn stepped closer. He was just about at the back of the unnecessarily tightly packed crowd now. He could feel their rapt state.

�Hey, whoever catches this gets to help me with the next trick,� said Adelaide, in a slightly un-magical and slightly more personal voice.

She squinted into room. �Well, I can�t see a single thing, ad you probably can�t even see each other on account of the high levels of dry ice we�ve got swirling around here right now, so try not to bump elbows, but here we go!�

She flung the soccer ball out into the darkness. Even though this ball had ostensibly been lodged in her throat for some unknown period of time, that didn�t seem to have an effect on the eagerness of people to try and grab the ball.

But they couldn�t reach. They were all too close together, and they didn�t know where they were in the foggy darkness exactly, and they didn�t know where each other were, either. The ball sailed over their heads and partly outstretched arms.

He sort of didn�t even know that he�d caught the ball. That happened to me one time in Primary School, when we were all forced to play kickball in December, right near the end of school, presumably because the teachers couldn�t be bothered doing any real teaching at that point of the year. Because Rosie and I had pretty low levels of interest in the playing of the game, we would stand as far away from the action as possible and have a big gasbag. If it was softball, even better, because we could do the same thing, but with the added bonus of chewing on our leather gloves. Anyway, this one particular time, our little plan was foiled by the teachers who made us field pretty close to the action. Suddenly, after hoping to God the big, flaccid ball would not come anywhere near my head, by some zillion to one chance, it unwelcomely thwacked right into my tummy, and my bad reflexes caused my arms to close in way too late in order to protect myself from the missile, thus resulting in me having caught the ball and gotten someone out. I got a gold star for that effort.

So that was basically that had happened to Bryn, too. He�d caught a ball without trying, as far as his conscious mind was aware. He�d won something, but not a gold star. What it was he had actually won, was an unknown.

Everyone looked back to see who had caught the regurgitated soccer ball. It was futile. All they could see was a fog of dark.

Adelaide squinted and shielded her hand over her eyes in an inefficient attempt to see what had happened. �Did the ball get caught?� She asked.

�Can the fortunate or unfortunate, lucky or unlucky person now approach the stage for the next trick, please?� She asked. �I�m not sure which way around you are at this point in time. We will just have to see how the trick goes,� she added, cryptically.

The audience parted down the middle like a turn-of-the-century matinee idol�s slick hair.

Bryn slowly walked up to the stage, holding the ball in front of him like it was protecting his tummy from some unseen attack. It was churning quite a bit inside, but still nothing like an ordinary upset tummy. It was just a rare, tiny, young cactus, you know, unfolding inside there.

Now�s not the time to throw up, folks. You have plenty of time to do that after the novel�s finished.

He stood there, at the foot of the stage. Adelaide held her palms out. Bryn stopped using the ball to protect his tummy and threw it the diagonal metre-and-a-half between them.

�Thanks,� she said, catching it. She put her right index finger on top of the ball and her left index finger on the bottom. She drew her fingers together, shrinking the ball until it was barely nothing once again.

Adelaide threw the remnant of the soccer ball over her shoulder like garlic and held out her hand to haul Bryn onto the stage.

He drew up to her eye level. She looked at him like she�d never seen him before. Maybe it was part of the act.

But things were about to happen that weren�t part of the act; things that neither of them understood. It wouldn�t be cool.

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