Peter Carey - Theft - A Love Story

As Colossi's transparencies had been a PILE OF SHIT my brother determined that the pair of us would visit the galleries and display the paintings IN THE FLESH. The following Monday morning he parked the ute on the No Standing place in Bathurst Street and so we had a BLUE with a parking cop which resulted in a threat of immediate arrest and a hundred-dollar fine but Butcher said this did not matter because the ticket would be lost in the system. As we loaded the ute my heart was racing like a TWO-BOB WATCH but soon we were in Paddington outside the PINAKOTHEK and we parked in sight of the front door and carried the first crated painting inside, a big room ugly as WATSON MOTORS with shiny concrete floors and so-called works of art hung around the walls. These paintings were red and blue and green, so badly done the colours winked and jumped like fleas on a blanket thereby creating a feeling of ANXIETY beyond the range of VALIUM.

The young NANCY BOY behind the desk mistook us for FEDEX or DHL and he could not wait to get us put in our proper place which he judged to be the loading dock.

Where's Jim? says Butcher Bones, and we laid our crate down on the floor.

There's no Jim, said the Nancy Boy. And you can't bring that crate in here.

But the Butcher was wearing our father's wide thin grin. Jim Agnelli, he says.

Mr. Agnelli passed away, said the fellow.

If Butcher felt grief, he did not have the time to show it. Well, he said. I am Michael Boone.

This name seemed not to have the effect he had desired. He added: And I came to show Jim what I've been up to.

He did not say, Shame I missed him, but that was his tone.

In that case, said the young fellow, I'd be happy to look at your transparencies. Perhaps you could leave them with me.

You know who I am? the Butcher asked but it was clear the young fellow had not been reading five-year-old issues of ART & AUSTRALIA. Well never mind, he said, you'll bloody know me in a moment. Hugh, he ordered, get the drill.

Yes sir, no sir, but just the same I wished my father Blue Bones could see me as I sought the LETHAL drill and screwdriver attachment, displaying the nous to return with a thirty-foot extension cord to reach the two-hundred-and-forty-volt outlets.

Quick as a wink, I had it all set up. Nobody told me do not touch the switches.

The young fellow was not so pleased to see the drill and soon we were the object of a HISSY FIT but nothing could stop the Butcher where his ART was concerned and soon the drill was screaming and he had the screws out of his crate and we were rolling out his canvas a dreadful blasphemy the WORK OF A MADMAN in my opinion.

I expected the Nancy Boy to have CONNIPTIONS but instead he folded his arms across his chest and cocked his handsome head and a little smile made its presence known at the corner of his mouth.

Oh Michael BOONE, he said. Of course.

That's right, said the Butcher, but he didn't puff himself. Instead his big chin shivered and his eyes went smaller than before. He was out of style. Even I saw that. I helped him roll up his canvas and he could not wait to make an exit. The Nancy Boy must have felt sorry for him as he stopped and picked up all the screws we had abandoned in our rush.

Transparencies are really so much better, he said as he dropped the screws into my palm.

You would think the Butcher would be destroyed but he bought 12 bottles of wine @ $40 per and in the morning he had got his puff back. What he needed was an ARMANI suit and that night when I came home with my chair he was looking like a bouncer at a strip club. I did not ask him how much money we had remaining but he immediately decided we would go to an OPENING together and he advised me to eat and drink what was on the trays because our funds were running low and we would not be having dinner from then on. It turned out that there was nothing on offer but Kraft cheese and pickled gherkins and I knew I was going to be badly BOUND UP if this continued. Afterwards he must have had an urgent need to NETWORK because he took me back to Bathurst Street and locked me in FOR SAFETY, bless me. I walked up and down the stairs a great deal and for a long time I sat on my chair just inside the door to the street. On one occasion someone attempted to enter and I successfully pretended to be an angry TIE DOG.

Early next morning Butcher was back and we once more loaded up the ute and when he had shaved his head again we set off like ELECTROLUX MEN to present our wares. The Armani suit now smelled like an East Melbourne brewery and I was in no way surprised that my brother required the HAIR OF THE DOG before he faced the galleries. It was a dreadful business for him, day after day without relent, and there was no SMOKE-OH, no free time to wander off down George Street and set up my chair in the shade beneath the Cahill Expressway. Some of the proprietors were nice to Butcher and once we got taken to a Chinese restaurant but many of the younger generation could not give a FLYING FUCK about Michael Boone and by the third day he was DRUNK AS A SKUNK from brekkie onwards and that was how he came to crash the ute into a Jaguar parked in the lane beside Watters Gallery. As always he could admit no fault and when he had reversed twice and crashed twice more, he sped off down the dead-end lane, bouncing against all sorts of bins and cars leaving behind an entire bumper bar which might easily have been used in evidence against him.

That was a Wednesday night. There were no openings and he bought a flagon of McWILLIAMS CLARET @ $8.95 and then took me to the Hare Krishna restaurant in Darlinghurst where even my brother looked a giant of AUSTRALIAN RULES.

There was not a steak or chop or even a decent butcher's sausage. Eating their horrible foreign food I thought I would go mad myself to see what we had come to. I resolved to take my chair and set off to the Marsh again, and I might have done it if I could have found the road. Sometimes I am sorry I didn't do it. It would have been a better life by far if I was not afraid.

The moment you think you've got the bugger happy, he is in the shit—there's been a brawl, an accident, frottage, larceny, arson, a misunderstanding about removing goldfish from a bowl.

Every new town or street or city is a problem which was why, in Bathurst Street, I was very pleased to discover, in the middle of Arthur Murray's former dance floor, a lopsided, dingy, bronze, battered, twenty-dollar steel chair, no longer much to sit on, but useful for more than hiding dope or changing lightbulbs.

"Bloody chair," Hugh said. "Bless me." And took possession with his big square arse.

My brother had been raised on a chair, had spent his life after third grade on a chair, rocking back and forward in front of the shop. So when he stood and folded up his treasure, I didn't have to ask him where he planned to go. He was so fucking happy, I had to smile.

Outside was a decent width of footpath, and although close to the crowds of George Street, it was quiet enough for what Hugh craved, the chance to politely watch the world go by. Soon I set him up, potato chips on one side, Coca-Cola on the other, and as I headed back inside he turned to me, wrinkling his nose up towards squinting eyes, a sign that he was either very happy or about to fart. Beauty, I thought, that's done. But of course it wasn't done at all and half an hour later, coming down to check on him, I found him missing.

I wish I could say this shit gets easier with practice. It does not help that he's ham-armed, slope-shouldered, wildly strong— each time I think he's dead, drowned, run over, picked up by sick-ohs in a van with sliding doors. And there is not a thing that I can do but wait, so all that afternoon while I was unsuccessfully trying to organise a line of credit, I ran up and down the stairs like some hairy reincarnation of our mother waiting for Blue Bones to turn up from the football in Geelong.