I wait at the lights and wonder if I should open a boutique department store in the building that's for lease next to Vintage Cellars. It would be like the one in Mestre where Graziella took us and the sales people wore black Armani suits and white t-shirts underneath with the name of the store printed very small on the upper chest.
At book club we talk about the Carver short stories and try to make the boredom and disappointment specific. To the setting, to those people, to that time in their lives. Maybe it's about regional America. I surpress the "what if" and ask questions that try to narrow it down. Make it rooted in time and place, and his view, and his sad alcoholic life. But in the end what if he's right and that's all there is for any of us: disappointment?
I go home, check the damp concrete shower wall and listen to my i-pod. The Killers sing that everything will be alright. I don't believe them.
This morning as I drive to work there's a council worker in a flourescent vest on the playground swing in a park at Glebe. He's trying very deliberately to go as high as he can. He's smiling.
I sit with Chris and Ray at the White Horse drinking lemon, lime and bitters and relay the things I know about people in my street. They are amazed at the volume of detailed information I’m able to collect from the comfort of my own bed.
Hazel from number 53 is dying. She is in hospital. I know this because as I lie in bed on Saturday morning I hear her daughter on the phone: “she’s dying, she’s dying, she’s dying. How dare you ask me to check how much the other houses in this street are rented out for. She’s dying.”
Number 47 is being harassed by a man on the phone. She picks up the phone, yells “this is harassment” and hangs up. The phone rings. She picks it up, yells “this is harassment” and hangs up. And so it continues. Two weeks ago it went like that till 3 in the morning. The Lorraine voice inside my head also tells me that number 47 doesn’t have proper curtains. Just a navy and white striped sheet tied up to the rail.
When I had the flu on a Friday afternoon, the gay couple from my side of the street pulled up outside the window. As the engine died: “I can’t take this anymore. I spoke to Glen today and he mentioned us having a silver bedspread. How does he know that? Answer me that. Just how does he know that?”
Later as I’m getting in my car to go get the smoked salmon I crave I hear a scuffle on the other side of their front door. One of them is crying and the other is repeating: “Get off me, get off me, get off me, get off me.”
Annie didn’t realise that the one with dreads is gay. She says that living in San Francisco impeded her judgment in that respect. Tara told me that one of them works at the Powerhouse and I had been meaning to say hi. Now I don’t think so.
This makes me sound like Mrs Crabberts from Bewitched. I’m not even really home very much. And this information seems to seek me out as I’m in my own home trying to sleep, clearly a sneaky and prying thing to do.
Based on all of the above I didn’t find it too difficult to believe the research released this week about people in the inner west being among the most unhappy in Sydney (Australia? or was it the world?). I had been thinking for some time that Roberts Street is particularly angst ridden, or there’s something intense about the alignment of the stars in Q1 2006, or at the other extreme, I lead a comparitively calm and drama-free life. I am an observer.
Last night between three and four a.m, a man lay snoring in the tiny verge of garden outside my window. I think he thought it was his house because he had tried to open the screen door with a key that didn’t work.
When I heard the key in the door I lay breathing fast wondering what was going to happen next. What happened next was that he lay his head down on the seaside daisies outside my window, went to sleep and snored. It wasn’t continuous snoring. At one point he coughed and I thought he might be vomiting, but then he just settled back into a heavy breathing rhythm.
Our neighbour came home with a friend, said farewells on the footpath and went inside her house. Snoring boy kept on snoring. At first I was annoyed thinking that if I’d wanted to be kept awake by a snoring man I could have gone out and picked up. But then I dozed and when I woke I couldn’t hear him breathing any more. What if the vigour of his snoring had prompted him to inhale a sea-side daisy and he had choked? What if he lay dead outside my window? I began to panic. But then…snoring. Relief.
I did wonder, though, how it might end. Would I just open the front door in the morning, say g’day and step over him on my way to breakfast? Would he still be snoring? Would it turn out to be someone I knew?
Just then he started to talk which was helpful in discounting one possibility. I didn’t recognise his voice. I thought he said bitch, bitch, bitch but it could have been itch, itch, itch or even big itch, big itch, big itch because he started scratching at the same time. Soon after, I heard him shuffling around and he might have said: gotta go, see ya which made me wonder if he wasn’t alone. He must have walked away down the street but I didn’t hear his footsteps.
At 4.15am Hazel’s daughter was on the street talking to a cab driver: “we ordered this cab for 4.30 and my daughter is still in the shower, can you come back at 4.30?” At 4.30: “she’s going to the airport and we’re a bit short of money so can you take her the shortest way?” Then she’s saying goodbye and crying.
Hazel, dressed in a house frock, used to walk her dogs up and down the street, partly for the dogs’ sake and partly in the hope of meeting someone to talk to. After Gina and I were caught a few times we once pretended we were jogging so that we had an excuse not to stop.
This morning I read a few more Carver short stories in preparation for book club, played Nancy Sinatra and Nebraska and wondered how a night spent sober could feel so unreal.
It was real. His shoes are there still, on the front step. And socks. The shoes are worn down and have holes in the back. He leans to the outside as he walks, that snoring boy.
I wear the green shoes and then I have to drive everywhere. I drive to my meeting at the Park Hyatt. I drive to the bank at lunch time. The speedometer is broken. It claims that I drive everywhere at between 170 and 210 kilometres an hour.
At the Park Hyatt I see Bob from The Biggest Loser. He's saying how are ya to the doorman and then eating scrambled eggs and vegemite toast.
When I get back to the car it has unlocked itself. Sneaky little minx.
I'm buying chips at the bar and ask why so many people in for dinner when there's no show. He tells me that it's Valentine's Day. I take the chips back to my desk and eat them.
There's a crow perched near the broken TV aerial outside the window as I'm putting my face on. I look down to moisturise and then it's gone.
In the supermarket they ask to check the Bruce Springsteen bag every time. It's made of clear plastic and you can see what's in there. I buy bread and basil and make tomato bread salad. There's almost too much garlic so that it burns my mouth but the oil is good and I can feel the garlic stripping away my sore throat.
There was a time when everyone tried to sound like The Strokes, and Gerling sounded most like them on that one track. A dubious honour. Now The Strokes sound like Franz Ferdinand. The Arctic Monkeys sound like Ziggy Stardust David Bowie, on the next track like The Living End. And we respond.
I was drying my hair and overheard the neighbour say: "I hate that new bird on the Today Show". With all this talk about how appalling Jessica Rowe is I was almost compelled to turn it on for a few minutes. Do we think it's a Channel 9 ratings ploy?
Of course, any kind of breakfast television is appallingly depressing and I'm sure I have a much better life for avoiding it.
Apparently, in the absence of having anything actually worthwhile to say, our Jess just "loves" everything. http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/rowe-laughs-last-and-loudest/2006/01/30/1138590441154.html I don't know who this Gwyn Topham is but I love him/her already. "Madge to Rowe's Dame Edna." Hee hee. I love it .I'm sure that when you're earning half a million dollars a year it's suddenly a whole lot easier to love a whole lot of things.
In the inevitable rearrangement that happens post flatmate departure I came across my Diana Vreeland book. It's from her Harpers Bazaar "Why Don't You..." column that I think began in the 60s. Pricelessly dated advice such as: "Why don't you...buy a smart navy car, have it upholstered in navy leather and always have a mulberry cashmere knee rug stashed in the trunk." Go on, why don't you?
I'm thinking of starting a similar column, except everything will be negative as in "Why don't you...never watch breakfast television and you'll have a whole lot better life." I love it already.
