Just then the front doorbell rang and Elton’s body went as rigid as a shop mannequin. He listened for his mother.
‘Elton, can you get it?’
Reluctantly, he lumbered down the stairs just as the doorbell rang a second time. Through the spyhole he saw a young man about his own age, standing casually, thumbs in pockets. Elton stayed perfectly still, and it wasn’t until the bell sounded again that he removed the safety chain and opened the door. On second inspection, he decided that the guy was a little older, perhaps even into his twenties.
‘Hi. I was wondering if you want your old bike.’
Elton eyed his visitor suspiciously. ‘I don’t have an old bike.’
‘Whose is it then? The one up the side of the shed. I live next door and saw it when I trimmed the hedge. It’s a mess, rusty and everything … I thought you might want to part with it.’
Elton tried to think. Perhaps there was a bike; he recalled some angular object being unloaded with their other junk from the old house. The removalists must have shoved it up the side. It was probably his father’s.
‘What do you want with some random bike? Like, why don’t you get one off eBay? Be in better nick than ours.’
The older boy shrugged. ‘I just thought, if you don’t want it I could clean it up, pump the tyres and –’
‘Twenty bucks.’
‘Twenty bucks?’
‘Ten then.’
A motorbike blattered past and James paused.
‘Okay, ten bucks. Can … can I take it now?’
Elton hesitated before backing away from the door. He called to his mother. ‘We got a neighbour. Wants to buy our old bike.’
Adele came out of the kitchen drying her hands and introduced herself.
‘James Warner,’ the boy volunteered. He glanced at Elton, who was avoiding eye contact. The two were not at all alike. Elton was tall, thin and pale with red hair chopped by his own mother and waxed into soft spikes, while James looked solid and well-muscled. He stood with legs spread and his black hair, long and unwashed, fell about casually, a parody of his general demeanour. Adele broke the silence.
‘James, this is Elton, I suppose he didn’t introduce himself.’
Elton nodded and James addressed Adele. ‘He said he’d sell me his bike.’
‘Sell it?’ she laughed. ‘You should just take it.’
Elton shrugged. ‘He said he’d give me twenty bucks.’
‘Twenty? You said ten.’
‘Whatever.’
Adele suggested they go sort it out and Elton led the way into the backyard, his shoulders slumped as though the sky weighed heavily. James entered the narrow space between the wall and the fence and dragged out the bicycle. He went down on his knees and spun a pedal. Elton watched with accomplished vapidity.
‘Needs a bit of work,’ James declared, jolting Elton back to consciousness. ‘The tyres might be buggered. The seat’s wrecked.’
‘Don’t take it then; I don’t give a flying fuck.’
James pushed the bike towards the door. He could use it, he said, though he didn’t have the money with him. Elton told him to shove it through the letterbox later. He held the front door to let his neighbour out, and it surprised him to see the older boy lift the frame and carry it under one arm. He closed the door as soon as James stepped onto the footpath.
AN HOUR LATER Elton was assaulted a second time: the doorbell rang again. His mother had already left for work so the young man, once more, had no other option but to answer it himself.
‘Hi, I brought your money,’ James said, fishing into his pockets. ‘And I was wondering if you ever had a stack-hat to go with it?’ It was raining lightly and Elton could scarcely believe that his neighbour was standing there, apparently unaware of it.
‘A helmet,’ James added.
Elton thought he could visualise one stuffed in some tight corner, another thrifty preserve of his mother’s.
‘Ten bucks?’
‘That’s what I paid for the whole bike.’
‘Take it or leave it.’
James nodded, the beads of light rain sitting on his shoulders. ‘Do you want me to come back?’
The possibility of another visit stirred Elton to action. ‘I’ll go have a look, okay?’ He was about to shut the door but thought the better of it. ‘You might as well come in,’ he said, ‘out of the storm.’
‘It’s not a storm,’ James said and stepped inside. ‘Bit o’ bloody rain never hurt anyone.’
James 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