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He said, ‘Oh, go away. Go away or I’ll shoot you. To put you out of your misery.’ Now, seeing who he was, she turned away without speaking and headed for the back of the house. From the foot of the stairs, before he started to climb, Raymond glanced after her. He saw her shoulder and heel disappear into the kitchen. The bulb hanging there was lit. It swung slightly, and the shadow above it swung too. This he would remember.
    Kim’s door was closed. There were no voices, and no light showed under it, so he turned the handle and walked straight in. The room was stuffy, and almost dark. He stepped round the low bed, flicked back the curtain and pushed up the window, wedging it open with a hunk of chair leg she kept on the sill. Better air came in under the raised curtain, and at the same instant, in the tree right outside the room, a bird started to sing. He could see it, in against the trunk. It was a small bird but a loud one, and it was shrilling and yelling without any tune, making the kind of racket that sent Kim into fits. He felt a surge of meanness. Holding up the curtain with one hand, he turned his head to watch her wake.
    The bed was a turned-over confusion of materials. Only the crests of the folds caught the light. Where was her face? Was she even there? This stupid bird! It was louder than a whole treeful of cicadas and still she didn’t hear it. There was a pale bit of her up between the pillows: was it a cheek or a forehead? He stood there with one hand tangled in the curtain, feeling for a nail to hook it back. It caught, but still the light on the bed kept darkening: he was straining to make out her face. Outside, the bird shrilled and thrilled. A bit of her hair had got twisted across her chin. He pulled his hand out of the curtain folds and threw himself to his knees on the very edge of the mattress. It bounced. The smell hit him. Her mouth, half open, was cloggedwith vomit and alive with a busy-ness of insects. His head and torso jerked back as if on a rein. He made no sound, but across the ridges of his windpipe rushed the shrieking, the squalling of the bird in the tree behind.
    He reeled down the stairs and out on to the street. It was almost night. The rooflines of the houses sliced a green and bitter sky. Bells tinkled in showers and somebody was feebly panting, but otherwise the soundtrack had shut down. He kept walking, bumping the shop windows with his shoulder, dragging the soles of his rubber thongs. He blundered past a man sharpening his fingernails on a red brick wall, a bare-faced waitress swabbing terrace tables, a busker unpacking a saxophone in a doorway. He was heading for Alby’s, if Alby’s still existed; it must, it must, and he travelled slowly, trying to keep himself unfocused, for if he stayed submerged long enough he might surface at last flat on his back under Alby’s scratchy grey blanket and open his eyes to see Kim standing crossly beside the bed, trampling Alby’s comics with her heavy shoes, scowling at him and biting the split ends off her hair. But the night went on and on, and he ran out of vagueness. It gave out on him. He came to the end of it, and then he knew that nobody on earth, nobody he would ever hear of or meet had the authority to rescue him from the cold fact of what had happened; and yet, as he slunk along the avenue where the mercury vapour lights flushed and whitened, he gazed with stupidlonging at the line of spruikers outside the porn clubs, kings of the pavement, big fast-talking dangerous boys in long black overcoats and greasy little ponytails who moved him to awe as angels would, they were so tall, so graceful, so inky with unused power.
    He was shoving his spare shirt into a bag when the knock came at Alby’s front door. What day was it? Sun was shining. It felt like afternoon. He opened the door and Ursula was standing there. He looked quickly behind her for blokes, but she was on her own. Her face under the