ST. JAMES STREET

Brisbane 1990

I could live there. This small room with its single bed. A single bed. I thought I could perhaps drag my king-size futon from under Laura’s house and lay it out on all the available floor space. The edge of it would butt up against the sink but I could be careful with my washing up. Or I could roll the futon up during the day, or I could stick with the single bed. A single bed and the celibacy it implied.

A man shuffled out into the corridor to stare at me. They were all men. I could smell them, the horror of unwashed socks and stained underwear, old-man’s long johns hidden under flannel shirts. The man was older than me, but not so old. Maybe in his fifties, probably not too much older than Brian. I clutched my bag, suddenly aware of the low swing of my shirt and my breasts swelling out of it. The man stared with the kind of unabashed curiosity that we must grow into, all shyness abandoned after hard years of practice. I stepped back into the room that might be mine. A sink, a bed, a tiny desk, a stove and an oven that may or may not have worked. It was affordable and I could live there.

The caretaker shook his head at me.

“I won’t rent it to you.”

I watched the old man shuffle back into his room. The door rattled closed. Loose paint flaked onto the musty carpet. He would be my neighbor. At night I might hear his pathetic attempts at masturbation. We would share the shower down the hallway. I would find his gray pubic hairs fossilized in the communal soap.

“I can afford it.”

“I won’t.” He swept his arm across the shadowy view of the corridor with its myriad of closed doors. “Old alcoholic men. That’s who live here. And junkies. I’m not renting it to you.”

I took a step back and the floorboards creaked. Outside the clouds were gathering. It would rain again.

He walked me to the front steps. “It’s not for you,” he told me, concerned. “Look love,” and I could have hit him; my hand became a fist, the nails bit into my palm, “there.”

He pointed out toward the overcast sky. I squinted but I couldn’t see anything—just a hill I would have to walk up and houses pressed hip to hip; coming rain.

“Up at the top, near the Fiveways, there’s a block of apartments. Cheap. I know there’s a couple free. You should check that out.”

“I’ve got the deposit,” I told him. “I’ve got it in cash.”

He eased me down the stairs, the flat of his palm in my back. “St. James Street,” he told me. “I don’t know the number.”

Rain spat in my face when I glanced upward. Light rain, but it would get heavier. I breathed in jasmine. Exhaled gardenia. It was a Brisbane summer day and there was rain coming.

 

 

There were angels in the garden. White stone creatures perched on dry fountains. There were naked women hoisting stone basins onto their shoulders. There was a house behind these whitewashed figures. The house was perched at a lean, heavier on its top floor than it was below. Threatening to spill bathrooms and lounge rooms down into the weedy garden with its picket fence.

I climbed crumbling steps and knew as soon as I stepped up onto the tumbledown porch that I would live there. A blue heeler lifted its lazy head from its paws, its eyebrows crinkling over sleepy eyes. I smiled and bent and patted its solid head and I smelled its doggy scent on my fingers. This was the room, the one that the dog was guarding.

Beside the dog was a broken couch with a blanket thrown over its spilled stuffing. There was a man asleep on the couch. He was all elbows and knees and his breath caught in a discreet snore that sounded more like the purr of a contented cat. There was paint on his fingers, red paint. There was paint on his shirt and I noticed his sandals were an abstract work of red and yellow splatters. He smelled like my family. Turpentine, linseed oil, nicotine. His fingers had the yellow stains of a heavy smoker. There was a pouch of tobacco on the couch beside him. Dr. Pat. The same tobacco that I had been smoking. The same tobacco my grandfather used in his pipe.

I was careful not to wake him as I stepped over the dog and slipped the key into the door.

There were two rooms inside. The first was nothing more than a large bay window but it was big enough for my bed and the view was fringed by frangipani flowers and bougainvillea. The floorboards were already dripped with a splatter from the haphazard paint job. The kitchen sink was half aluminum, half rust. No toilet, somewhere there would be a shared toilet and a shower, but there was a gas stovetop and a bar heater on the wall. I would be fed and I would be warm. I suspected I would be happy.

I stepped out onto the porch and the young man was awake and leaning on one hand as he rolled a cigarette with another. He blinked, squinted. He pushed himself up until he was sitting a little unsteadily. There was an odd, unfocused vagueness in his eyes, but he looked straight at me and he grinned as if we were great friends.

“Ah,” he said to me. “You’re home then.”