“I think I met him once or twice.” Derek March had been a frequent visitor to the house when I was there, often around for drinks or dinner. Decades ago he had made a name overseas with his photographs of musicians and their groupies. Now he attracted controversy with portraits of young girls and boys, posed in situations from basements to darkened playgrounds. Virginia and Skye had appeared in some of his photographs.
“What’s your situation, work wise?” Fred asked me. “I know Derek’s looking for a studio assistant.” He led me through to the big living room, where Derek March was seated in a corner talking to a young woman in black, a glass of red wine in his hand and a bottle on the coffee table in front of him. He still had that slightly emaciated Keith Richards look, his face more lined than I remembered, his deep-set eyes an unsettling pale slatey blue.
“The man of the hour!” he said when he saw Fred, raising his glass.
Fred introduced me as an old friend of the family, a great talent, just returned from overseas. March was used to young artists seeking favor. The woman sitting with him was probably one of them. His gaze grew more sober as he examined me.
“Fred said you might need an assistant,” I said. I did need work. I liked the idea of being back in a darkroom, the closeness of the space, the fumes of the magical chemicals, the concentration.
“Let’s talk,” he said. The young woman reached for the bottle. He tilted his glass toward her and she refilled it. “Come and see me at the studio. Two-forty Denis Street. Not far. Other side of Balmain.”
“Thanks,” I said. “When?”
He waved his glass around a bit so that the wine came close to sloshing over the edge. “Next week will do. You can usually find me there. Don’t make it too early.”
One of his pieces hung on the wall across from us, a photograph of Virginia. She looked as I remembered her when we met in high school, her dark hair long and wavy, her lipsticked mouth somewhere between sullen and humorous. Her face was the only spot of light in the image, shadowy trees in the background, her arm on a fence collapsing under the weight of ivy.
Fred put one hand on my shoulder. “Now excuse me while I mingle,” he said, smiling, his work done, the introduction made, the favor conferred.
I was making my way along the stone path that led to the front gate, when Skye appeared, stepping on tiptoe over pebbles and the hard little seeds from overhanging bottlebrush trees. “Where are you going?” she asked, falling into step beside me.
“Home.” Back to Surry Hills where I was staying in a musician friend’s flat, empty while he was on tour. Home didn’t sound right.
“Do you still sell drugs?” she asked.
I stopped and faced her. “What? How old are you, fourteen?”
“You were fourteen,” she said. “You and Virginia.” She was wrong, but not by much. By fifteen we were trying something new every weekend.
“Forget it,” I said. “And no, I don’t.”
She came closer and put her fingers around my wrist and bit her lip. Her eyes were bloodshot and I wondered whether she was stoned. I pulled my wrist away, hard.
“Ow,” she said in a hurt little voice.
Fred called her name from the deck. I headed toward the gate.
“Fuck you, Rob,” she called after me.
Most of the time in high school I had envied Virginia her family, but there were times like now when I closed the gate behind me with a sense of escape that took me by surprise with its force.
A few days later I found myself at the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills, drinking alone. Years ago this had been a frequent haunt of the old crowd, as Fred had affectionately called them. Since then it had received a makeover and now sold boutique beer. I didn’t expect to see any old faces, but then I caught sight of one at the other end of the bar. Finn. He had grown a long, solid-looking beard, and it took me a moment to recognize him. He glanced over and saw me and frowned and smiled at the same time. His hair had grown longer, and it suited him, like the beard. He walked over with his glass in hand.
We talked about what he was doing and what he was planning to do, a familiar conversation. He was working on some amazing home brew, organic and heirloom, he said, better than this overpriced shit at the Clock. Planning to develop it, expand. He always had ambitions that he made sound convincing. I wondered if he was still selling from here. I remembered Fred’s anxiety, and asked Finn if he was in touch with Julian. He shook his head. “Weird,” he said. “No one’s seen him.” Julian had put in an order with him, he told me, a month or two earlier, not a big one, just a small one, but he never showed up to collect. “I thought maybe he’d taken off overseas, like you.” He smiled. “Or somewhere. Maybe there was some kind of trouble, I don’t know. He always said he wanted to go to Tasmania.” He shrugged. “Maybe he just moved back to Cremorne. What does Virginia have to say?” He tried to sound casual.
“He’s away for work.”
“What about her sister?” he asked.
“What? Skye?”
Finn put his glass down on the bar and studied it. “Too bitter for an IPA.”
“What about her?”
“Just wondering,” he said. “She’s a bit of a wild child. And now I’m off. Internet dating.” He smoothed his beard. We said goodbye.
I lost my way a couple of times getting to March’s studio, turning through old streets no wider than a lane, sandstone curbstones and asphalt footpaths broken up by eucalyptus roots. Glimpses of water, eerily flat in the late-afternoon light, showed through gaps between houses, and glinted through windows in Victorian terraces with all the inner walls knocked out, everything given over to the view beyond. Expensive cars were parked on March’s block with half their wheels up on the curb to make space for other vehicles to pass through the narrow street. I recognized Virginia’s old car, a blue 1980s Mercedes sedan, parked at a haphazard angle. She worked for the gallery that represented March; she was visiting for something to do with that, probably, and I was surprised to find that I didn’t particularly want her to be here. A high wooden gate in a brick fence led to the studio, a tall boxy structure clad in corrugated iron and half covered in creeping ivy, set back from a brick courtyard. The front door was ajar, but there was no answer when I knocked. The place was heavy with quiet, cut with the sounds of insects intermittently buzzing.
“Hello?” I called as I pushed the door. Inside was an open space like a warehouse with a room toward the back that looked like a darkroom. A half-assembled motorcycle sat in one corner surrounded by parts and tools. Stairs led to a loft, a bed strewn with clothes. Blinds let through slivers of light.
March lay on a low sofa, his eyes closed. Skye sat in a high-backed leather armchair across from him in front of a white fabric screen, hands resting neatly on the arms of the chair, her head tipped back, eyes open and unfocused. Her tawny hair was down and she was naked. Between her and March was a camera on a tall tripod. I waited for one of them to stir, but neither of them did.
“Skye?” I said. She was wearing long dangling earrings of silver and jade and they swung as she turned her head toward me. She smiled dreamily.
Stuff covered every surface apart from a clear space around Skye’s chair: ashtrays, books, glasses, bowls, vases full of dead flowers. March hadn’t moved; I looked closer and saw the belt around his arm, the syringe on the coffee table. His lips were tinged with blue.