When my cigarette was smoked down to its stub, I ground it out on the dirty cement floor and began gnawing at my fingernails. For the first time since the previous evening in Fiona Lambert’s flat, I thought about the cut on my finger. Peeling away the flesh-toned plastic strip, I examined my wound. The skin was wrinkled and bleached, the cut shrivelled to a tiny slit. My finger looked like a sea slug, horrible little mouth and all. Very appropriate, I thought. The way things were going, I might as well be part of the flotsam and jetsam in the bottom of the pool.
Hard against the wall immediately beneath the windows was a work bench littered with piles of fabric, tangled chicken wire, bits and pieces of half-made piscine puppets. Maybe I could find enough timber among all this parade-float junk to rig up some sort of ladder. If I got as far as window level, I could perhaps find a handy drainpipe to climb down. On a building this old, the plumbing was bound to be external.
But the only timber at the bottom of the pool was bamboo, flimsy shafts with polystyrene starfish jammed on the end. I went around the back of Willy the Whale and stuck my head into his rear-end aperture. More parade paraphernalia had been dumped inside-jellyfish costumes of green and blue lycra, papier-mache fish masks, plastic sheeting cut up into seaweed shapes, bicycle helmets with fin attachments. Beneath all of this, I found two lengths of aluminium tubing.
Thick as my wrist and about three metres long, they were painted a mottled greyish-blue and tipped with rubber. This was promising. Grabbing a pole in each hand, I backed out the whale’s bum, dragging them after me. First came the poles. Then a set of rubberised fishing waders. Then a bulbous blob covered in blue and grey fabric. Then some kind of bodysuit covered with strips of coloured plastic. Then a tangle of foam-covered wire.
I hauled the whole rigmarole up beside the pool and examined it. Metal plates in the insoles of the waders were riveted onto matching plates welded onto the aluminium struts. The bodysuit, complete with foam-rubber midriff, was sewn securely onto the waders. The result was a octopus costume on stilts. The artistry was truly execrable, but the engineering was superb. So much so that it was impossible to detach the poles. Great. Just what I needed. An Oscar the frigging Octopus suit.
Propped against the wall, the aluminium shafts reached only halfway to the windows. My ladder project was shaping up as a dead end. At this rate, I’d be here for the rest of my life. I returned to the fire door, picked up the iron pipe and pounded away in futile rage. Then I spent fifteen minutes trying to lever the bolts off the roller door. I smoked my last cigarette and realised I was hungry. If this Prisoner of Zenda crap went on much longer, I’d be reduced to drinking my own urine. Eventually, like a dog to its dinner, I went back to Oscar.
All my previous stilt experience had been on jam-tin-and-string models when I was about six years old. Octopus costume aside, these babies were the real thing, fully three metres tall. Even if I managed to get myself upright, I’d still need to be standing on the bench to reach the window sill. A fall from that height would do nothing to improve my general well-being.
On the other hand, I had to do something. The Environ Mental Puppeteers might not be back for days. The jerk with the violins said they’d left already. He didn’t say where to. Maybe they were on an international tour. Taking the best of the worst of Australian artistry to the world.
Oscar was mostly foam rubber. A big foam rubber cocoon. So if I fell, as long as I didn’t topple over the edge into the pool, the damage would probably be limited. A fractured skull, a broken neck. Nothing I couldn’t live with. In a wheelchair. If only I had a few more cigarettes. Just one, even.
I sat on the floor, took my shoes and pants off, stuck my legs into the trouser part of the waders and hoisted the engorged champignon bit up around my waist. The toes pinched, but the fit wasn’t too bad. Tugging the straps of the overall part over my shoulders, I wiggled my arms down the sleeves and into the washing-up gloves sewn on the ends. A cowl sort of thing fitted over my head, held in place by velcro tabs. The rubbery waders made my legs tacky with sweat and a necklace of tentacles dangled to my knees. I felt vaguely fetishistic. Christ alone knew what I looked like.
So there I was, disguised as a giant cephalopod, flat on my back beside a dehydrated aquatic facility in a derelict cultural resource centre, with absolutely no idea of what to do next. When I’d taken on the job of adviser to the Minister for the Arts, I somehow hadn’t imagined myself in such a position. If this didn’t work, I swore, I would make it my personal mission as a senior government functionary to see that the Environ Mental Puppet Company never again received a penny of public funding.
Now that I was togged up, there was nothing for it but to proceed. Grabbing a leg of the bench, I dragged myself upright. Then, flailing my many appendages, I swept the tabletop clear and climbed aboard. By extending the blue poles behind me and pressing my palms flat against the wall, I could form a reasonably stable triangle.
Thus I advanced, palms splayed out before me. Little hop, inch. Little hop, inch. Palming myself along like Marcel Marceau trying to get out of that fucking invisible box of his. The trick with stilts, in case you ever need to know, is to stay in motion. Much like a bicycle. Or politics. Stand still and you’re stuffed. Keep moving or you take a dive.
By the time I was five metres up, my priorities review committee had urgently convened. Second thoughts were in the majority. I was bathed in sweat, my arms were aching from the effort, and my sea slug was throbbing. But it wasn’t just the prospect of crashing to the floor in a welter of shattered vertebrae and ruptured organs that was urging me to reconsider my strategy. A structural flaw in the plan had became obvious. The transom was rigged to open only part of the way. Even if I managed to get as far as the sill and push the window open, the gap was too narrow to admit a man with a blue rubber mattress strapped to his midriff.
Just your head and shoulders will be enough, I told myself. Even in a precinct teeming with cultural offerings, the spectacle of a man in an octopus suit sandwiched into a window frame could not pass unnoticed for long. Eventually a passer-by would see me, realise I was not an art object and mount a rescue effort.
Grunting, I pressed on. Finally my fingers closed around the metal of the window frame. Pushing the transom open with my beak, I wriggled forward. Somewhere far below, my stilt feet lifted off the floor. My head and shoulders poked through. My position was as tenuous as the Liberal Party leadership, but at least now I had an outside chance of hailing somebody.
Immediately across from my vantage point was the saw-toothed roof of a warehouse, closed for the weekend. Below me was the narrow street I had glimpsed from beneath the roller door. It was an access lane to the warehouse. Not much hope of passing traffic at this hour on a Saturday morning. Not that I knew the hour, not with any precision. My watch, along with my wrist, was encased in latex. But I knew that if I didn’t get noticed soon, I might as well throw myself from the window and be done with it. If I didn’t meet Agnelli I wouldn’t have a job. And if I wasn’t at the airport on time my life wouldn’t be worth living. Except that I couldn’t even get far enough into the window frame to defenestrate myself.
My only hope was the building next door, the Ballet Centre. Its parking levels were faced with vertical steel slats. By pushing myself out the window as far as possible and swivelling sideways, I could just make out a row of parked cars. Eventually somebody would come to collect one of them. Then all I had to do was shout loudly. And hope that whoever heard me would have the sense to stick his head over the edge of the parking deck and look sideways.