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the flat of her hand as she says their names.
    â€˜I am thinking to do a room of you. At my place,’ Mireille says.
    â€˜Yeah?’
    â€˜I wish you could help me to decide where to hang them. Which should be the neighbour of which. I think an artist knows which baby belongs with which baby.’ Mireille nods, willing him to agree.
    â€˜I’ll give it a go,’ Harry shrugs.
    â€˜Between us, then, we might have the decisions.’
    â€˜Well, yeah. We might. Yeah.’

In the morning Harry is hung-over. He is reading The Saturday Age , in which there is a big black and white close-up of him, a contrail from his Camel curling in front of his face. The journalist in the aqua cashmere cardigan has called him the newest kid on the bleak blue block of post-modernism. Says he’s a nut who inhabits a loft and wants to hunt down Sidney Nolan. ‘Look out, Sidney,’ is the vote of confidence with which she finishes her article.
    Harry snatches a carving fork out of a drawer and stabs himself right in the mouth, through the whole Arts and Entertainment section and on into the wilderness of Real Estate.
    Suddenly they’re talking about him, and it makes him sick with fear. Where will it lead? It will lead to them finding out he’s a fake. It will lead to them finding out his paintings are just a thousand consecutive decisions made snappish and random to get hisarm moving and the paint flowing: big nose or small? Red hair or blue? Floating on the water or in a dark room? His sister or a chick from Greek mythology? A Scottie dog or the king of beasts? Make a choice. Fast. One minute with Pink Floyd cranked up to ten, wielding his brush like a conductor with a baton, swooping and swaying before the canvas, naked and clueless as a caveman. Next minute on guard, stabbing at the canvas with his brush, like Zorro. No cohesive theory. No all-embracing vision. Just Zorro slashing Zs into a chubby jailer’s shirt. Is this what artists are?
    The world has discovered him, and the world can’t help but discover this about him. Look out, Sidney? Did he really say he was hunting Sidney Nolan? His stomach churns and he scrambles for the sink, where he vomits a floodtide that launches a flotilla of empty bean cans.
    The Saturday Age isn’t fooling Harry Broome. He knows Mireille bought him out of a close shave with anonymity. He knows he should feel grateful, and he tries for some moments to admire what she’s done for him. But his attempt at gratitude quickly curdles into resentment. As he showers and his hangover recedes, his resentment grows. Once he has had coffee and is in his T14 Renault driving to her address, and has lit his first Camel, his resentment turns into anger and he damns her name out loud. ‘Bloody Mireille.’
    Now he’s strong again he is no longer afraid to admit that he really is an artist who has Sidney Nolan in his sights. And if only this menopausal skank hadn’t leapt in and bought all his works before the true connoisseurs could unfog their pince-nez and winkle their chequebooks from their sports-coat pockets, he might be hanging in boardrooms this morning. He might be hanging in galleries. Weston Guest, director of the NGV, might have anointed him by buying one. But none of them was given a chance.
    Worse, he suspects she purchased his paintings as a means of purchasing him, and that he is now beholden to her and expected to pay with himself. The big reward the world has to offer this fifty-year-old is a twenty-two-year-old, taut in the gut and veins, smooth skin tight with muscle. Last night’s artistic success was a fraud, a sale of bicep and cock, not heart and eye. She’s a rich woman and he’s been purchased like a gigolo.

    In raised lettering high on the front of her building a sign reads: THE HELL’S BELLS. This was once a waterside pub, a blood-house where, at day’s end, wharfies would pay for drinks with cargo they had