The waitress asked him would he like a drink. He said he was already at thirty-thousand feet. I had a beer.

Olivier smelled of perfume and talcum powder like a BABY'S BOTTOM. The waitresses had been ALL OVER HIM since our arrival and when his lovely white jacket passed between them I saw a slight silver shimmer, a creature flown out of the night to cling to the wall above a woman's bed.

He whispered to me that he did not care his wife had turned out to be a PSYCHOPATHIC LIAR but he wished she would not pity him. Why could she not be like a normal woman and dump him in the street?

He said Marlene either loved my brother or his work, who could ever tell which one? She was a romantic fool and had no idea of the bad character of artists.

I said I understood completely.

He said he understood completely from the day that he was born.

I said it was the same for me. Exactly. When he said his father was a selfish pig I reached to shake his hand.

The waitresses brought dinner on a tray and Olivier thought he might have just a CHOTA PEG which was only whisky in the end. I had a beer.

TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT BOG IN DON'T WAIT.

Olivier nibbled at his RABBIT FOOD but then got bored with it and arranged his bottles like checkers on the tray.

He asked did I want him to tell me his pills.

That was OK with me.

He praised TEMAZEPAM he said the ATIVAN was also good and would I like a GENERIC VALIUM. There was much more than this. These are the ones I knew the names of at the time but he must have had ADDERALL as well.

He took a CODIS tablet and one or two assorted capsules and then a sip of Tasmanian pinot noir saying the wine would POTENTIATE the pills by golly.

You must not think me a sot, old Hughie. See I am in agony. I love her but she is a terrible, terrible woman.

I did not know what to reply as Marlene was my friend and she and my brother had been ROOTING LIKE RABBITS with my full knowledge. I was an ACCESSORY AFTER THE FACT for all I know. Many is the night I had to put my head beneath the pillow to block the noise.

Ask me how many women have I been to bed with, Olivier said.

He was like a film star with his red lips and curly black hair the skin of his eyelids was soft as a penis freshly bathed. I said ten.

That made him laugh. He patted my elbow and rumpled up my hair and said there was not one of them like his wife. Just the same it had been a RED FLAG to discover she had burned down the school. He had learned this in the most dreadful way, being told at dinner by a client of his advertising firm who knew only that Olivier's wife came from Benalla.

How old is she? asks the client.

Why twenty-three, says Olivier.

Then she must have been there when that Marlene Cook burned down the high school. What's your wife's name?

Geena Davis, said Olivier.

Like the movie star.

Same, exactly.

I will not easily forget the day I was declared too slow to return to Bacchus Marsh State School number twenty-eight. I would have burned them to the blessed ground if only I had had some damn good pills to stop me being afraid of punishment. God bless me, save me, I have been made good by cowardice nothing more.

Olivier said I might as well have another beer. I had the weight to soak it up, he said so. He asked me did I know Marlene was a thief. I said she was my friend.

At this he moaned, saying she was his friend too, God help him.

Soon he was saying the most frightful things and it took a while to understand he had switched the subject to his mother a very nasty woman. He was happy she was dead. He got a rash when he remembered her.

He was called away by the waitress and I thought he must be in trouble for his violent language but then he returned with airline socks which I must put on. Everyone must obey this rule. He MINISTERED UNTO ME, kneeling to remove my sandshoes and whiffy socks which he tied inside a plastic bag. He said it might be better if I LIMIT MY FLATULENCE to the rear of the plane where it was needed, and then we laughed a lot.

You should have been rich, old chum, he said. You could employ me to change your socks every day.

The waitress brought us each a brandy and put my socks and shoes in the locker overhead.

Olivier said he could have been rich easy enough but his mother was a thieving whore who stole everything from him and it made him sick to think of what she'd done. He would like to be rich and that would be perfect, to look after his horse, to ride like hell, he looked at me and smiled and I knew exactly what he meant—the blood and heart, everything pumping, happy, fearful, the human clock in the river of the day.

She has ruined me, he said. I thought he meant his mother.

Am I her pet dog, he continued, so I knew that was Marlene.

You see, that is exactly what I am, he said. She will fill my bowl and brush my coat. I would rather be put down.

I can ruin her, he said a moment later. That's the irony, old chap. I can destroy her. But what would be the bloody point, old man? If I ruined her she would not rub my ears.

I woke up in the sky above America with my mouth full of dust, scents of fancy gargle, shaving cream, female soap.

That's Los Angeles, he said.

This was my first sighting and I did not know what it could mean, but later I would see the swarms of tiny lights clustered through the night, the cities and highways of America, the beauty of white ants, termites devouring, mating signals glowing in their pulsing tails. Which prophet ever foretold such infestation?

Olivier tapped my knee and said, I am in a state old chap. He offered a pill packet and a sip of his water. He said that if he ate peanuts he would die, if he had oysters his throat would close, but if he did not have Marlene he might as well cut his own throat with a Stanley knife.

I returned his pills. He took one too.

He said, I've just decided I am not going to sign that thing for her.

I asked what thing.

He said, It is completely bogus, so I won't. It's time I had some principles.

I asked what it was.

He said, She would never think I have the nerve. But you watch her old chum. You watch her when I refuse.

I asked would he destroy her.

That made him laugh a long time, stopping and starting and snorting until I feared he had gone mad.

Finally I asked him what was so bloody funny but we were, as they say, PREPARING FOR LANDING and when the aircraft banged itself to earth my question had not been addressed.

39

The taxis in New York are a total nightmare. I don't know how anybody tolerates them, and I am not complaining about the eviscerated seats, the shitty shock absorbers, the suicidal lefthand turns, but rather the common faith of all those Malaysian Sikhs, Bengali Hindus, Harlem Muslims, Lebanese Christians, Coney Island Russians, Brooklyn Jews, Buddhists, Zarathustrians—who knows what?—all of them with the rocksolid conviction that if you honk your bloody horn the sea will part before you. You can say it is not my business to comment. I am a hick, born in a butcher's shop in Bacchus Marsh, but fuck them, really. Shut the fuck up.

Yes, it is insane to consider educating them one by fucking one, Miss Manners, but when I find a moron leaning on his horn outside my window...

So I had to go to the supermarket at a time of night when you would expect the trip to be a swift one, when all the nice Jewish grandmothers should be home in bed or making their special gefilte fish for Rosh Hashanah or whatever it is they do—but perhaps the crowds of grannies in Grand Union were Christians or Tartars, but by God those old women were a subcategory of their own and they would smash you with their shopping carts if you could not match their speed. I was jet-lagged, a foreigner, and I was slow. God help me.