§
My solid steel door-and-frame unit burst free of the surrounding walls with an unholy crash and shattered the jarrah floorboards of the hall. The Mack backed up a few meters and Mauricio planted his foot, the crazed fuck. The truck surged through the gap, taking out Share’s fur on the Queen Anne hall stand. The elephant’s foot umbrella tidy disappeared under a Dunlop High Rider. My rented hall was wide, wider than a Mack truck, but it narrowed once you got past the arched entrance to the Seminar Room. The truck hit the bottle-neck hard. The oak staircase to the right twisted and snapped. The repro Von Gerhard fell off the wall, glass splintering and skewering the paper. I didn’t stop to watch any more, I raced over to the desk, hauled Share out by her ankles and dragged her upright. She was screaming fit to burst, but there wasn’t much panic in her voice, it was all anger, distilled fury.
“That was fucking sable, you arsehole.”
“Not my fault,” I yelled.
“The prick in the truck! I got that fucking thing in Paris France. Champs E fucking lysees. Five hundred thousand francs. Pure albino sable.”
“Rabbit,” I said.
Her reply was drowned by the howl of the engine as Mauricio backed up for the coup de grâce.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake,” I yelled. “We’re outta here.”
I dragged her towards the French doors that opened onto the courtyard. Of course they were shut, locked and secured by automatic solenoids. A shock wave from the coup de grâce twisted them free. I gave the central strut the boot and we were through. Clouds of dust followed us like mustard gas billowing across the Somme. Broken glass and bricks started to rain down fairly heavily. As we ran, a pot plant took a direct hit. Poinsettia mysteriosa, I’d never liked it.
§
I got Share into the garage and bundled her over the passenger side into the Cobra. Luckily the top was down and we didn’t have to play ladies and gents with the doors. I bounded into the driver’s seat and grabbed the remote for the roller door into the lane.
“Night soil forever,” I shouted at Share over the noise of a major collapse in the main house.
“Start the bloody car you idiot.”
I did. The turbo kicked in with a growl that would teach the Zoo’s farting lions a thing or two. But we had to wait interminable seconds as the roller door slowly dragged itself off the floor. When the gap into the lane was almost high enough I gave Share her orders.
“Keep your head down,” I yelled.
Mauricio bounded into the garage, took a flying leap straight over the Cobra’s spoiler and into the luggage compartment behind the seats. I winced, thinking of the buttery leather jacket folded there.
“This is a coupe, you arsehole,” I shouted. “No room for three. And watch the jacket.”
“Drive, Purdue,” Mauricio yelled.
“Jesus Christ, he’s got a gun,” Share shouted.
“Of course he’s got a gun, nutters like him are always waving guns,” I said and put the pedal to the metal. The Cobra shot into the lane. I fishtailed it round to the north and tested the shockers on the cobbles.
“Smooth as a baby’s,” I said.
“Drive to a police station,” Share said insistently.
“Do a circuit, Purdue,” Mauricio said, gesticulating with the gun over my shoulder. “Up Sydney Road, down Victoria Street, hang a lefty onto Melville and back to Royal Parade. That’ll give the cops enough time to arrive and set up shop. Who’s the tart?”
“Sharon Lesser, meet Mauricio Cimino, my landlord.”
“G’day Sharon,” Mauricio said.
“She’s called Share,” I said. “Put the fucking heater away. And take that thing off your head. You’re making a spectacle of yourself. You ought to be ashamed.”
Mauricio did as he was told, throwing the balaclava onto the tram tracks in Royal Parade and wriggling down into the luggage compartment, pulling his overalls off in a complicated series of maneuvers that bumped the front seats. We ground to a halt at a set of lights in Sydney Road. I turned round and had a good look at Mauricio. He was wearing a cashmere business suit, striped shirt with French cuffs and expensive opal cuff-links. Beside me Share started a search for the Cobra’s door handle, but the lights changed and we were away.
“Just what are you pricks playing at?” Share asked in a tone not to be trifled with.
“Fang Shooy,” Mauricio said.
“It’s fong shway,” I said. “I keep telling you.”
“This is some sort of joke?”
“The alignment was all wrong,” Mauricio told her calmly. “Wrong ghosts kept coming down the hallway.”
“What crap is this?”
“Like Purdue says, feng shui,” he told her airily. “You’ve got to line up the hallway with the cosmic force fields, otherwise the daemons and ghouls and all those inhorse...inhorse....”
“Inauspicious,” I said.
“Yeah, all those inauspicious omens put the mockers on things.”
She nodded at him over her shoulder. “Ah. You were realigning the house. With a truck.”
“Reckon.”
“You demolished it.”
“Fuck.” Mauricio grinned, I could see him in the mirror. “I’ll have to start from scratch.”
§
For a while we drove in silence. Autumn evening was falling fast, although with the greenhouse effect it still felt like late summer. I flicked the Cobra’s lights on. A delightful shepherd’s sky hung over Tullamarine and the tram wires were etched against it like cosmic force fields. There was a lesson to be had in the wires, but I couldn’t quite put it into words. I sensed that the mood of quiet contemplation that had settled on the Cobra’s occupants required nothing as crass as speech to give it meaning.
When we rejoined Royal Parade, Share finally said, “I take it that house was heritage-listed?”
“Governor LaTrobe once kept a mistress there,” I said.
She nodded. “So the Council wouldn’t even permit you to build a dog kennel in the backyard, let alone knock the whole place down and build....” She paused, trying to imagine the atrocity we must have planned. “Fifty-seven brick venereal units.”
“Eighteen units,” Mauricio said, offended. “Top of the range. Master bedroom with en suite sauna and walk-in robes. En suites for the other two bedrooms. Studio/study with sun roof. Security entrances standard. All fittings stainless steel or owners’ choice if bought off of the plan. Which saves on stamp duty, which isn’t getting any less pricey these days, you mark my words.”
“Good Christ. Criminal vandalism!”
“Inner city resurgence. Breathing life into urban decay.”
“Decay? Parkville?” She knew her real estate, did Share, as had everyone who’d prospered in Melbourne in the days of rampant financial lunacy and negative gearing. You might get more per square meter in patrician Toorak, but Parkville was still there near the top of the chart as a den of restorers and gold chip heritage bricks & mortar.
“Structurally unsound, the way it is now.” My former landlord tutted at the public risk he’d just averted. “A menace to passersby. Rise from the flames of destruction like a fee nix. That’s progress, Share.”
We were approaching the wrecked household, but the whole street was blocked by police cars,