‘I might know someone who can fix it,’ her brother suggested. ‘The guy next door. He sold me this bike. He’s a tech head, got an amazing stash of gear. Do you want me to ask him if he can have a look at it? I bet he’ll do it – for a price though; the prick knows the value of things.’
‘I don’t want no stranger in my room. He might be some mutant geek that, you know –’
‘He’s not like that. ’Bout your age, straight as a freakin’ flagpole, lives in the total dark – you might like him.’ He flashed her a grin.
‘Can you take it over to his place?’
‘No way! I hate his cooped-up idea of a life, him and his mum squirrelled away, sleeping through the day.’
‘What’s his mum do?’
‘Christ knows. Nurse, I reckon – or a prosty.’
‘You lookin’ to root her?’ She bounced lightly on his bed.
‘Bloody hell Jess, was that necessary?’
She reached out with her foot and pushed him in the back.
‘Piss off, woman!’
‘Get the geek to fix the computer, okay? Take it over to his place. As long as he doesn’t want the world for it.’
James spat a little more spray onto the shiny black frame. ‘Don’t worry, I’m keeping a record of every cent you owe me.’
Jess left and James righted the bike, studying it carefully. He could see himself flashing down side streets, no lights, silent and unseen as a blacksnake, keeping to the shadows. A helmet was hardly necessary and was only needed for his signature style. Like the Green Lantern’s logo, he’d paint it up symbolically, though the artistry would hardly approach his parents’ ideals.
Just then there came a tap on his other door – the one that led into the back laneway. Behind all three terraces there ran a cobblestone alley along which, a century earlier, the nightman had travelled, emptying battered drums of human waste into a horsedrawn tank. But now that artery was hardly utilised, except as James’s usual access.
The knock came again and James called through the door.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello! It’s Nikos from the corner. Got a minute?’
James opened the door to find a thickset middle-aged man standing in the fading light.
‘Nikos,’ he repeated, ‘but people call me Nick. That’s my property on the corner, number 40, where the verandah is.’
James knew it well, the third of the three terraces, the one right on the corner of Frederick and Ward. It had an awning out over the footpath straddling both streets and beneath it, the original full-length shop windows were still in place.
‘You like the verandah? I built that. Used to be one there in the old days – I got me ’ands on an old photo, out of a newspaper. Someone knocked the original one down, so I put it back up again – and painted it two-tone. That’s what they used to do back then – paint the verandahs two-tone.’
James wasn’t sure how to reply.
‘Anyway, I didn’t wanna trouble ya,’ the man said, ‘but don’t you work for the council?’
James nodded.
‘Thought so. Seen ya doin’ that new footpath on Johnson Street – that’s my café over the road. Know that one? Best spanakopita in this fair city and that’s a fact. Proper Greek tucker.’ He looked into James’s eyes. ‘Tell you what I want; I need the services of a man who knows how to use an excavator and I thought, if I hire one, an excavator that is, maybe you could drive it for me? Make it worth your while o’ course. How much do ya think it’d be? For cash?’
‘Sorry mate, I don’t want any afterhours work, okay?’
The man stood in the laneway, hands on hips, and lightly angled his head. James could see his brain ticking.
‘I’d make it worth your while.’
‘No.’
‘Cash in hand.’
‘Sorry, mate.’
He didn’t want to leave. ‘Tell you what: I got the original plans to this building. Want to see ’em? Pretty amazin’. There used to be a cellar in my place, right on the corner. It used to be a butcher shop and I bet they stored all their meat under the floor. In the cellar. Pulled up the floorboards expecting to see a bloody great hole but it’s all been filled in. I’m going to dig it out again. What d’yer reckon?’
How, James asked, did he expect to get an excavator into the room? Through the side window, Nikos declared, unperturbed. Not the whole thing of course, just the bucket. He admitted it would require real skill and again implored his neighbour. Cash in hand, he repeated.
‘I wouldn’t try it if I were you,’ James warned him. ‘Too risky. Anyway, I can’t help you. Sorry.’ He stepped back and put his hand on the doorknob.
‘Right. Okay. If you change your mind you know where I am, eh?’
NIKOS CHRISTAKOS expected to score handsomely from the purchase of number 40. It had been passed in at auction and he’d made his successful offer a month later. From that moment on he told anyone whose attention he could arrest, just how rapidly his investment was multiplying, adding small increments weekly. In Nikos’s opinion it was already worth fifty percent more than he’d paid, and with the ongoing renovations – for more than a year now – its value was rising like the morning sun.
He didn’t live there himself. Instead he rented it to two tenants who had a bedroom each upstairs and a shared bathroom and kitchen on the ground floor. He’d had no trouble finding renters. He’d placed a small ad in the suburban newspaper and a dozen people turned up. Most recoiled immediately, one woman actually reprimanding him, declaring that he had no right to offer such shabby conditions to potential tenants with the advertised claim: Excellent shared accommodation – suit professional couple. But two people put some cash on the line, there and then, no contracts, no agents, no anything.
One was an Afghan, the other an Englishman. They’d eyed each other curiously on that first day as they handed a month’s rent to their new landlord. The older Englishman was tall and blond, with a narrow face and pale complexion. Pronounced pockmarks climbed up his neck and scrambled onto his cheeks. The Afghan was short and dark, his hair, beard and eyebrows as rich as black velour. He was perhaps ten years younger than his fellow renter and wore a blue, long-sleeved shirt and grey trousers. The Englishman was similarly dressed – blue shirt, grey trousers – which was something they both noticed. But their cultural differences far outweighed any coincidental dress code. Regardless, as each nodded in agreement to the landlord’s lack of terms, they tacitly accepted one another, though as neither could produce a single reference, the decision was hardly theirs to make.
WHEN ARMAN Khan took off his shoes and stepped into his new sleeping room, six metres by five, it felt as though a significant milestone had been reached. His room and his window that looked down onto the side street and onto the bright yellow roof of the taxicab he now drove. He scanned the interior and smiled at the immensity of the double bed with the sturdy steel legs and decorative headboard. He did not require it, an extravagance of space he would not normally consider, but it came with the room. So too did the freestanding wardrobe and a wooden dresser, not antique but very old and of a style not seen in Afghanistan. The dresser had a mirror affixed and Arman gazed at his reflection within its bevelled edges. He’d had his hair cut since arrival, believing it aligned somewhat with his new country, but he’d kept his full beard in accordance with the Prophet’s example. He noted in the poor light that only the whites of his eyes were apparent between eyebrows and beard. He exposed his teeth; white and straight, though a back molar sometimes throbbed. His own mirror and his own dresser.
He