Peter Carey - Theft - A Love Story

"So you faked a receipt for titanium white."

"That was just plugging a leak with chewing gum. For about two days the painting was legit again. But before too long there would be a real X-ray and then we would be, excuse me, totally racked."

So now I understood. "It was insured. You arranged to have it stolen."

Her eyes were a little puffy and the light from Prince Street was soft: and blue. For all the time she had told the story she had seemed dejected and I was therefore slow to spot the shadow of a smile which was now showing in the corner of her mouth.

"You personally stole it."

"Well, Olivier was not going to do it."

"You walked a mile through the bush at night?" In New York it had begun to rain, great fat drops which struck Fanelli's window and cast dance-floor shadows on that lovely rather lonely face as she explained, checking my reaction constantly, how she had paid cash for a pair of nipple-tipped gardening gloves, a set of screwdrivers, carpet knife, wire cutters, wood chisel, nail pullers, a flashlight, a roll of duct tape and a Wonder Bar. She lived for two days in a Grafton motel and when she knew Dozy had left for Sydney she drove along those lonely back roads to the Promised Land. The rental she parked on an abandoned logging road and from here she walked along a ridgeline through scrubby country, and although she had some difficulty locating the pole, she climbed it easily and disconnected both power and telephone.

"How did you know how to do all that?" She shrugged her left shoulder. "Research." By the time she arrived at Dozy's front door the night was a shower of crystalline stars in a velvet sky.

Working with no more than moon and starlight, she used the Wonder Bar to remove the mouldings on the glass panes in the door. This was something I remembered from the press report, the local detectives saying the robber had been a "neatness freak". Marlene had left the mouldings tidily stacked on top of the dishwasher.

Dozy had already shown her exactly where the painting was and how it was secured. Now she used a bolt cutter to sever the cable, and carefully removed the frame which had always offended her. She covered the painting with a number of pillowcases, wrapped the entire thing with duct tape, and walked up through the bush.

"What then?"

Her lowered eyes were suddenly wide and hard. "Do you still want to have anything to do with me, baby? That is really the question."

I should have been scared, but I wasn't. "I'll have to hear the whole story."

She raised an eyebrow. "You want a written confession?"

"The whole story."

"Oh, really. Indeed," she said, a little rattled.

"Do you remember, when you first came to my place and you saw what I was working on?"

"I've never lied about your work. Never. Ever."

"I don't mean the paintings."

"Yes, you had some lovely drawings of insects."

"Flies, wasps, some butterflies."

"I remember thinking, Thank God, he can draw." She coloured.

"I was ahead of myself."

"Well, the Stalk-eyed Signal Fly, for instance..."

"Michael, you did tell me this before. It's called Borobodur. It's rare except that Boylan found it near his house."

"Borboroidini. That's the Wombat Fly."

"I know."

"When we were looking at Tour en bois, quatre in Mr. Mauri's office, there was a Stalk-eyed Signal Fly caught in a spiderweb on the back. That's a very local insect also."

It took her a moment, but when she got the point she seemed almost pleased.

"You're a very clever man." She smiled. I am.

"So, my sweetheart, tell me how I made it smaller?"

"You tell me."

Just then someone turned the light off in the bar, and she leaned across the wet laminated table and kissed me on the mouth.

"You figure it," she said.

Fanelli's was closing and we stumbled out, down along the slippery cobbles to the big dark loft. We said nothing much really, but when we made love that night it was as if we wished to tear ourselves apart, to death, devour. Hide inside the secret wonder of the other's skin.

The aircraft seat too narrow the roof too low but then Olivier gave me two more yellow pills and soon it was very nice to be above the clouds. My father never saw this sight. Not in all his life. Nor the Kings of England. No-one in the Holy Bible witnessed such a thing unless views are granted in the process of ASCENSION. Blue Bones could not have imagined me, his DISAPPOINTMENT, suspended above the earth, angels and cherubs all around, my heart and arteries clearly seen, being bounced through the heavens like a ping-pong ball inside a gumboot.

At night the eternal river of the sky, my soul like blotting paper dropped in ink. Olivier could not look out the window he said it reminded him that he was nothing. Then he said he wanted to be nothing. He said he only wanted Marlene. He didn't care she had burned down the Benalla High School. It had been a shock to discover but it made no difference to him now. He was all for burning down.

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?