‘I wish I had minions,’ Frank sighed theatrically.
‘No you don’t. You have lists,’ said Milo, as though this was better than minions by a long stretch.
‘And a diary,’ added Gabey.
‘You make me sound like an accountant.’
‘A sexy accountant,’ said Milo, with wanton bedroom eyes.
‘You sound like an excellent producer,’ said Gabey, ‘and you are one.’
Frank ducked his head, then looked her in the eye. ‘It’s easy to work with talent like yours. Thank you for giving me the chance.’
For a moment everyone sat in an exquisite silence of slightly embarrassed mutual admiration, before Tessa stuck her head in. ‘Love fest done?’
‘Cherry Bar, tick; Toff in Town launch, tick,’ Milo assured her. ‘Frank’s got the bullet points to prove it.’
‘Frank does the best lists.’ Tessa, indeed, was a fan and had bought a new Moleskin and a four-colour pen of her own, neither of which she’d used past the eighth day.
‘His bullet lists are legendary,’ laughed Gabey, ‘and I’m pretty sure one of the points was “clear out so that Tessa can work”.’
‘I do have a website to update and book-keeping to do. But I can work around you.’
‘No you don’t.’ Frank rose, and the others with him. ‘We’ll take our butts to lunch at that pizza joint round the corner. I’ll bring you back a calzone, yeah?’
‘Best boss’s boyfriend ever,’ said Tessa. ‘I love that place.’
‘You love the soup bowl of coffee they do,’ teased Milo.
‘Zuppa di papa,’ Tessa sighed. ‘Very nearly enough coffee for my morning needs, and those little biscuits! Better than croutons. Oh, before you go Milo – I’ve got a couple of grant requests for you to check and approve. Do you want to do those now or come back after lunch?’
‘I’ll be full of pizza, chocolate bombolone and a strong urge to nap. Better do it now. See you down there! Order for me, babe? You know what I like.’
Gabey and Frank departed and Milo flumped back into his chair to look over the grant requests. Tessa only brought him submissions that fit the selection criteria, then he looked for things he thought Paolo would have liked.
Milo absent-mindedly fiddled with the beads on the braided leather bracelet he wore on his left wrist – a gift from Frank, four years ago. The two beads clacked together faintly. The rhythm was helpfully distracting.
‘For when you want to chew your nails,’ Frank had told him softly that day, tightening the toggles on the thing, then kissing Milo’s fingers, the quicks ravaged with anxious biting.
Milo had been defensive. ‘I can use a pick, Frank. I don’t need fucking fingernails to play.’
Instead of fighting back, Frank had only held Milo’s hands. ‘You know if you never play again, it’s okay,’ he’d said. When Milo didn’t reply, he’d added, ‘Milo, baby, you are literally eating yourself alive. I want to help. But if you don’t want the bracelet, I’ll get rid of it.’
Milo had started crying, like he used to all the time back then. ‘Don’t leave me.’
All of their conversations had been like that, the year after the park murders. All apparent non-sequiturs, all bound by that underlying fear: that they were losing each other.
‘Never. Never. I’m here. I’ll always be here, and I will keep you safe and I will never ever leave you. I love you. Kitten, my sweet Kit, I love you, and that bracelet is my promise. I’m here. Please. Stay with me. Don’t–’
‘Eat myself alive.’
‘Yeah.’ Frank was crying too by that stage.
After the bracelet, Milo had stopped the nail biting and most of the random crying. He was eventually able to sleep again. He started writing music again, using a pick until his nails grew back.
He never took the bracelet off unless he needed to; and he fiddled with it, whenever that urge to bite at his hands came back. The steady clack-clack, clack-clack, a little syncopated heartbeat, kept him focused and out of the dark well that had nearly swallowed him.
Milo had set up the Paolo Cruz Foundation to create a better legacy of his friend than a lurid newspaper headline. Milo’s skin still pricked with dread sometimes when he thought of how and why Paolo had died; how he’d nearly met the same fate – murdered for what some broken man thought was a noble cause.
Most days, Milo was fine. Some days, he wasn’t, and the remembered panic of being trapped in a car boot, expecting to have his throat cut, made it hard to breathe, even five years after the fact.
Milo breathed in deep and exhaled, like his therapist Sandra had taught him. He focused on the carpet beneath his feet, and the softness of the chair, and on the sound of Tessa putting things in order at the desk, and the clack-clack of the beads of his bracelet. He counted the coffee beans in the poster on the wall, which everyone thought was a Melbourne thing, but he and Frank knew was a Keep Milo Calm thing.
When his heart had stopped thumping and his breathing returned to normal, he studied the submissions.
The smaller grant was for a teenager who’d been turfed out of home after coming out. Mediation was helping him reconnect with his family but the kid wasn’t confident enough in their support to return home yet. The grant would cover a hospitality course at the William Angliss Institute, so that the boy could find work and support himself. Milo signed it. He also approved the second request, for funds to revamp a kitchen in a communal house for homeless HIV positive teens.
‘I’m off, Tess,’ he said, putting the documents on her desk. ‘Oh, and band stuff shouldn’t be coming here, so if you get anything else like that Number One Fan letter, bung it on my corner of the desk and I’ll look after it.’
‘Will do.’ She was focused on the computer screen, fiddling with an image of some guitars Milo had donated, via the Foundation, to an Indigenous project in Mildura.
Milo closed the door behind him and stopped to admire the door plaque. It had taken a few years to build the Foundation up, with some very low points in there. But he’d survived them all, and Duo Ex Machina had even done a studio album which the critics didn’t hate.
The excellent royalties from the song off the Lunchtime Legend soundtrack had kept them in the black, too. Now they had a new album coming out, and Frank had cut his producing teeth on Gabey’s new record while theirs was being finalised. All three of them were coming out of the shade of the last few years.
Still, when the lift opened, he couldn’t step inside.
You’re allowed to not want to, said Frank’s voice in his head. It’s not failure to take the stairs. They’re just stairs.
It’s just a lift, he said back to the voice in his head, but mind-Frank wasn’t having any of it.
You’re allowed to prefer the stairs.
Milo took the stairs, popping out in the foyer and then onto Little Bourke Street. To his surprise, Frank and Gabey were still there, Gabey with her hand in the crook of Frank’s elbow.
A wiry guy in black T-shirt and jeans appeared to have bailed them up, but Frank was walking away from the guy with determination.
And ah, shit, the wiry dude had spotted Milo now. Intense Fan Alert!
The guy hovered uncertainly while Milo tried to walk past.
‘Milo Bertolone?’ said the man. He looked troubled.
‘I’m just heading to lunch,’ said Milo, calm but clear.
‘Nah,