Natasha and Katrina

The grappling hooks of lust sunk deep in to Natasha at the De Kooning retrospective when she saw Katrina, whose long blonde hair fell over a black mohair top and down to the zip of her retro Biba mini skirt. Natasha knocked back her fourth lemon margarita and made her way over to her in…

Waiting for Vivian Leigh

Picture the scene, boy, my Grandfather said as he jiggled me on his knee and blew cigar smoke in my face. I was seven years old and wanted a story. It’s a sunny day. Dead calm with the rich and richer working on their expensive yachts and power boats, pulling a sheet, tightening a cleat,…

The Escher Street Removalists

The two tonne removalist truck pulls up outside 11 Escher Street with the chassis groaning and airbrakes hissing. Roger is hunched in the passenger seat with a five day growth, bad acne and doggy breath from tooth decay. He stares up at the house. Three bloody floors. Roger’s recently divorced and the father of two…

Here Comes the Dream Bomber

The dream was always the same. He’s sitting in the pilot’s seat of an old Lancaster bomber in full kit, flying at 18,000 feet in formation with 20 other planes. He crosses the coast and below, lies the chequered green and yellow fields of Holland. The cockpit smells of oil and fuel. He scans the…

Red Guard at The Raven Hotel

David Muller was the product of an elite private school education and a large inheritance, which included The Hotel Raven, an eastern suburbs pub where the handshakes were firm and the smiles counterfeit. In the City of Churches, men such as Muller, who boasted a robust entitlement, were like moss: attractive but slippery. His pedigree…

Belfast Boys

Off the ferry from Scotland and in to a taxi to central Belfast. It’s monthly pay night and it’s going off. Drop my bags at the boarding house and saunter in to town to a bar near the Europa Hotel and then a few more, blending into walls of laughter. It’s a caricature of that…

Babylon

A crow craws as the Babylon Apartments slowly wake and text-ready hands reach in the darkness for mobile phones. Tiny blue screens beep, chirp, tink, ping and buzz as a flood of tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram’s and emails, shine on yawning faces. Rochelle Caries was worried. Tommy, an ex-client, had left a voice message. He…

The Soul’s Windows

Delacroix, Goya and Turner saved Melissa. She was transfixed by their paintings of working men and women, living in revolutionary times. Their pocked faces full of pain and ecstasy, the excruciating detail of close combat, of slaughter and triumph. At 12 years of age, her father took her out of school and on a tour…

Falling Out

The billboard from the train reads, ‘Retire in Paradise. Beach blocks start at $350,000’, with a picture of smiling young woman from the 1960s, with sunglasses perched on her head Jean Shrimpton-style. Across her red bikini top was the slogan, ‘once seen, you’ll be sold’. In a neat cursive hand, under her belly button, a…

Magic Valley

I don’t know what part Magic Valley played in my life but I know without it, it would be like a jigsaw with a piece missing. You’ve seen people like Mad Mike and Sweet Suzette, the sole residents of the valley. Their hippy garb and faie ways date them from an era long gone or…