stood nervously, in the middle of his neighbour’s living room, while Elton went upstairs. James hated interiors, even his own; what was it that bugged him? His mother had always known of it and blamed herself. As an infant, James screamed when left alone, as though a pin had been carelessly misplaced with his snap-crotch jumpsuit. How come no one at the antenatal class said anything about the constant bawling? Websites suggested she should switch off his light and shut the door, and they explained that if she refused to give in to the child, he’d soon settle down. But James never did and, in his teens, he began to abhor confined spaces as a cat hates a backyard kennel. Both his parents discussed the issue but his father Simon just shrugged. He was raised in an artistic house in Warrandyte where no one dared move without thinking laterally; as far as he was concerned, the boy could act as he pleased.
Except when it came to careers. Simon had hoped his son would follow in his footsteps. But James bypassed university for a job in roadworks, a move that smashed all records for lateral thinking. Both his parents were professional artists and a cultured life was critical, impossible without education. But James’s path was a different one, wide and concrete with expansion joints every three metres. He wanted to hone other skills: the manoeuvring of forklifts, bobcats and trucks; the operation of hydraulic jackhammers, cherry-pickers and vibratory rollers; expertise involving winches, welders and asphalt mixers. These were things his parents, with all their artistic training, could barely conceive, let alone understand. And each night James returned to his parents’ terrace at number 44. But he could easily sidestep any confrontation; he lived in a bungalow out the back, paid rent and kept to himself.
He scanned the shelves of his neighbour’s living room: carvings, handcrafts, figurines and other touristy nick-nacks. A large antique map of the world caught his eye and he ambled over to it. Half of Australia’s coastline was missing, allowing the Pacific Ocean to flood the interior. He thought of his own little abode next door. He liked his bungalow but even there he was hardly relaxed. Each night he’d warm some ordinary thing on the gas stove, eat it by the light of his fourteen-inch TV and then go out again. He’d walk the streets, anywhere, everywhere, with no sense of purpose at all, encouraged by the general feeling that he was at last free, of what, he couldn’t say.
But now, he needed a bike. One night he’d stumbled across three graf boys working on the defacement of a new apartment block. Over several evenings, James secretly watched them, noting the rapid application of their sweeping, deftly applied strokes, and he’d felt a peculiar stirring which he likened to the ‘inspiration’ his father had often explained. Art can be anything, the man had stated with some authority. You don’t choose your medium; it chooses you.
So James chose graffiti. Before long he was seeking out any surface on which to practise his newfound craft. On the front façade of his parents’ terrace the word framed in looping script could still be faintly detected. It was James’s tag: he had spray-painted it there and it was he who’d been paid by his unsuspecting parents to spray-paint it out again. But his own ’hood was limited; it could not compare to the wild frontier of other suburbs. For that, a bicycle was required.
At least ten minutes had passed since Elton disappeared upstairs to fetch the helmet. James listened for some sound but detected nothing. He edged across to the bottom of the stairs.
‘Elton?’ A bus pulled up out front; he heard the hiss of airbrakes and the engine burst to life as the driver pulled away. ‘Elton?’ he called again, and put his foot on the carpeted stairs.
On the top landing, he turned towards the front of the house and a room that was filled with sunlight. Stepping cautiously along the short passage, he came to a darkened doorway on the left, and across the lightless expanse, he saw the back of Elton’s head silhouetted against a computer screen, large headphones straddling his skull.
‘Elton?’
The chair swivelled instantly. ‘Jason! Sorry man! I had this message from some random guy in Connecticut and … There’s no helmet, or if there was one I can’t see it.’ James did not doubt it; his eyes were still adjusting to the gloom.
‘Okay, no problem.’ On the periphery of his vision he noted various aspects of Elton’s room, weakly illumined by the pixelated light. A single bed was pushed against the wall and the rest was all technology. No books, trophies, posters, memorabilia; not even scattered clothing, which was the omnipresent feature of his own room. James wasted no time exiting that dim, dark hole and out in the passage he breathed deeply, allowing his pupils to contract before descending the stairs.
‘I can let myself out,’ he said, and headed towards the door. ‘By the way, it’s James, Elton.’
‘What?’
‘My name. It’s James, not Jason.’ As he stepped into the street, he called again. ‘See you,’ he said, though that future prospect was furthest from his mind.
JAMES’ PARENTS, Simon and Stefanie, always arrived home in the same car. Their art studios were almost a suburb apart but it was a regular routine for Stef to swing by and pick up her husband on the way home, and the procedure was reversed each morning on the trip out. Rarely did either venture into the other’s work area. They liked their own privacy, their own ‘autonomous space’, but there were other reasons as well. Simon was a conceptual artist. He abhorred the idea of ‘art as product’, of ‘object making’, of ‘project’, of ‘frameability’. His work was ephemeral, installation-based, interactive, site-specific. By contrast, Stef was a painter and no further explanation was required. She came home enveloped in a faint aura of pure gum turps, with oil paint in her pores and a smudge of sienna up the cheek. What she envisaged as the ultimate work, striven for but never quite attained, was so far off Simon’s radar as to seem like a lost language once spoken by primitives.
Clearly, it was not Stefanie’s philosophical stance that originally attracted him to her. Instead, as Simon would happily attest, it was her superbly proportioned figure, her wicked laugh and the twinkle in her brown eyes. He was Head of the Art Department and Stef was his student. As art school seemed to dictate, the young woman cared little for virtuousness, so flirtation with a senior lecturer that lapsed into sudden liaisons in the storeroom was not at all out of the question. A relationship flowered and it was not long before it occurred to Simon that if he was ever to keep her, he should propose.
They both declared their love – though it was desire that underscored their union. Stef craved recognition but, as all art students know, there is a yawning chasm akin to the moon’s Sea of Tranquillity between being an artist and being an important artist. For Stef, Simon was the bridge and she crossed it, up the embellished passageway of the Government Registry Office. For Simon, Stef was the perfect companion and at the best gallery events he felt flattered to be with her: the sparkling young graduate who was more effusive than most, who brazenly confronted even the most conceited senior art figures.
But that was then, the early nineties, and time had intervened. Now they were husband and wife, like so many others, sharing expenses and household concerns, a night at the cinema with a meal afterwards and, every so often, a holiday overseas. They generally agreed on most things and could sidestep their differences, such as their diametrically opposed artistic sensibilities. At least most of the time.
Stef glanced at her husband, twelve years her senior, and marched towards the kitchen. ‘Are you ready for your show?’
‘When is anyone really ready?’ Simon called from the sitting room. ‘I’ll get done what I can and work it all out in situ.’
Stef carried a bottle of sav blanc to the lounge where Simon had already slumped into one of the black leather couches. She poured two glasses.
‘Are
