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After a moment, he said, ‘Huh?'

‘What were you doing?'

Paul's eyes stayed closed. ‘Huh?'

‘You were masturbating, weren't you?'

Paul stayed silent, still.

‘If you must do that, can you do it in the bathroom? I'm trying to sleep.' Jane turned over and switched off her bedside lamp.

‘Sorry. Bit inconsiderate,' mumbled Paul in the darkness.

A bad silence like green leaves burning.

Jane said, ‘Well, are you going into the bathroom or not?'

‘Oh. No. I don't really feel like it now. You know.'

Jane switched the lamp back on and turned to him. ‘Don't you start laying all that guilt on me. It's not fair. Have you thought how you're making me feel right now? As if I've ruined it for you. Like I'm taking away your pleasure. When you are the one who woke me up.'

‘I never thought about it that way.'

‘That's why it's important we keep communicating. Now go in the bathroom and have your wank. Not for me, but because you want to.'

Paul sighed. He got out of bed and was halfway to the bathroom before Jane asked, ‘Who were you fantasising about?'

‘You. It was you.'

Paul went into the bathroom while Jane lay on the bed, her light still on. She said, ‘That post office guy isn't going to let us into the post office.'

‘No,' called Paul. ‘As soon as I saw he kept caged birds, I knew.'

‘We're going to have to kidnap him.'

‘But we won't hurt him, will we?'

‘Haven't you learned anything about Urban Revolution? You think that anti-vivisection group would have freed those poor animals if they weren't willing to torture that security guard? It's war, Paul. There are casualties.' Jane turned off her lamp. Then she called, ‘Hurry up and finish, so I can get back to sleep.'

Paul leaned back against the cold tiles of the bathroom wall, his penis lying in his hand like a sausage that had fallen off the barbecue and been retrieved from the sand.

Adam woke to sunshine dappled and dancing on his bedroom wall. The traffic had begun its buzz somewhere down the hill and for the first time he found it comforting. He lay looking at the open suitcase sitting on top of the chest of drawers and thought he might unpack it.

He got up and headed for the bathroom, whistling.

‘Oh, good morning Chris, ol' buddy. How was your night? Not a word!'

Antigone gently fluffed the feathers at the top of her back then let them settle. ‘He's in love. Listen to his song.'

‘No. He's been traumatised. The dance has been beaten out of him by events beyond his control. He's a string bag of neuroses and they're about to tumble through his gaps.'

‘Are you sure this isn't a little bit of reverse anthropomorphism? Are you projecting?'

‘Don't start on me, lady. I've seen things ... the flames of Orion, not to mention a once in a millennium flood in Mukinbudin – you can't even begin to comprehend.'

‘It is about you. You don't know the dance!'

‘I know the dance. Don't you worry about me. Collective unconscious is like riding a bike – you never forget, even if you never have.'

‘Deny, don't deny. You can or you can't.'

‘You're right. I'm over-intellectualising my dislike of you. No more denial. It is what it is – hatred.' Chris ruffled his feathers and shook his neck, sending out a scatter of tiny feather bits.

There was a knock on the door which became louder. The shower went off. Mary from flat three came in dressed in a cheesecloth caftan dress and carried a plastic bag to the kitchen counter.

Adam came out of the bathroom, starting to wrap the towel around his hips. ‘Ahh,' he screamed, dropping the towel and then frantically grabbing at it again.

‘The door wasn't locked,' said Mary as she started to bring fruit out of the plastic bag. ‘You have a very nice body, Adam. Don't be ashamed of it.'

Mary brought out a banana, strawberries, a pomegranate and two peaches.

Adam stood, transfixed and dripping.

She produced a large tub of yogurt. ‘This should get you going,' she said. She took the banana delicately between her thumb and forefinger and lifted it.

‘I don't want this,' Adam pleaded.

‘Ah, but there's a difference between what you want and what you need.'

She started to slowly peel the banana. ‘By the way, I think Harry is wrong about this, but...'

‘Harry?'

‘Yes, he's worried about you. I said I'd help.'

Adam grabbed the top of his towel tightly in one fist and marched out of his flat.

Mary looked over to the canaries and said, ‘I knew this wouldn't work but you can't tell Harry anything.' She looked at the cages sitting near each other in front of the window and went to them. She opened Chris's cage door, then opened Antigone's and pushed the open doors up against each other. ‘Enjoy.'

Chris blinked at the opening. Antigone was blinking too.

Jane peeked through the eyehole of the door of flat one and watched Adam stomp upstairs and hammer on the door to flat four. ‘I think he's going to complain about the sawing noises. Won't get much change from Jake.'

‘Who's Jake?' said Paul.

‘We'll surprise him when he gets back.' Jane opened the door and moved swiftly across to the open door of flat two. She was carrying a balaclava and a vicious-looking steak knife.

Paul followed less swiftly, also carrying his balaclava.

‘Oh, hello,' said Mary, looking up from the kitchen bench.

‘Oh,' said Jane. ‘Um, is Adam home?'

‘He can't be far. He's only wearing a towel. Hi, Paul.'

‘Oh, hi there. Neighbour.'

Jane dragged Paul back across the hall. The door to flat one slammed as Toby, the local postman, backed in dragging a very heavy cardboard box. Mary came to the door of flat two and said, ‘Shall I tell him you called?'

‘Mary!' said the postman. ‘This is so heavy.'

‘I'm not expecting anything.'

‘No, it's for flat two.'

‘Oh, you poor thing. Bring it in.'

Toby dragged the package into Adam's flat. He said, ‘I don't suppose, um, you'd have time to take a look at my back?'

‘Harry, please get her out of there.'

‘Hand me those six-foot planks, man. And you said you'd call me Jake.'

‘No, you told me to. I never said I would. There's a difference.'

‘That's the spirit.'

Harry was working on the deck. Sections of ceiling were stacked against one wall. Electrical wiring hung. On the record Elvis sang ‘Don't'.

Adam held his ground and his towel. ‘Harry, I have to go to work. Can you get her out of my flat?'

‘You still look very tense, Adam.'

‘I'm tense because all these things keep ... keep rushing at me. No, wait. That's not true. I didn't wake up tense. I woke up happy. I woke up happy because I had a dream.'

Harry crouched and nodded to him, interested.

‘And I woke up this morning with a decision. I'm going to ask Evelyn out. On a date. I'm ready and I think I can do it. I've sent her an e-mail.'

Harry stood up and started beating his chest like King Kong. It made a fat-slappy sound.

Adam said, ‘So, you know, I don't want to have fruit tipped all over me, and have it licked off by the local prostitute.'

‘I won't have you running down my wife, especially when she was probably making you breakfast.'

Adam stood very still. He finally whispered, ‘Your wife?'

Harry nodded, serenely proud. ‘Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. You know that saying. That's a ten-dollar piece of philosophy if ever there was.'

Adam looked around the gutted flat and then up to Harry standing on his boat. He looked to the door and out across the top landing in time to see a postman going into flat three with Mary. ‘She pays for all this, doesn't she? The boat materials. Your time.'

‘And the rent on two flats. Food, rum. You wouldn't believe the power bills.'

‘You are the most selfish man I have ever met.'

‘I try to be, Adam. I try.' Harry rubbed his hairy stomach with affection. ‘On the other hand she does have sexual needs that one man cannot possibly satisfy.'

Adam was distracted as he dressed for work, failing to get his happy whistling feeling back. He found a plate of fruit salad and yogurt in his fridge and decided to eat it. He turned on his computer to check if he'd received a reply to the anonymous e-mail he'd sent the night before. There was nothing. He didn't notice that the two birdcages had been pushed together. Nor could he notice their silence. He didn't notice that there was a large cardboard box under the bird table.

He looked out the eyehole of his door. The door of flat one was closed. The sound of hammering immediately above him was underscored by an occasional whipping noise drifting down from flat three. He went out, softly shutting his door before hastening out of the vestibule door.

Paul raised the curtain a little. ‘He's going to work.'

‘Good,' said Jane at the computer. ‘Gives us time to build this.' She had found an interesting site:
Hand Guns Using the Spare Parts of a Rover.
There were helpful diagrams. ‘I need you to break off the radio aerial. Oh, and get the wheel brace.' She looked around the room. ‘I guess we'll also need to saw off a bit of the leg of the kitchen table. Coffee table might be easier.'

‘But he's gone.'

‘We can't do it here. Too many people have seen us. By the way, how did that woman know your name, Paul?'

‘We say hello. On the stairs.'

‘Really.'

‘You said you admired her. Her defiance. Her willingness to use men's craven desires against them.'

‘I was trying to support a sister. She's a receptacle used and
discarded by men. At least, unlike your mother, she gets paid for it. You don't get any of this, do you?'

It was true. Paul didn't. And he was getting it less every day. He looked at the plans for the zip gun on the computer screen glumly.

‘And you're sure,' said Jane, ‘your dad has bullets? None of this is going to work without those bullets.'

Paul nodded. He regretted that he had mentioned his father's bullets. At the time, it had excited Jane in a way that Paul had mistaken for something else. His eyes dropped to the waste bin under the computer desk where seven sticks of mining grade dynamite still lurked in a crumpled McDonald's bag. He was starting to hear a ticking sound somewhere in his own head.

Adam went straight to the pet shop but found the front door locked. He peered in the window but there was no sign of Evelyn, even though the lights were on and the birdcages uncovered. Adam wanted to ask Evelyn out and he had wanted to ask that morning before work, while the e-mail was fresh, while his resolve was strong.

He wondered whether his poem had somehow affected the previously smooth running of Milton's Pet Shop. He'd been worrying about his e-mail since leaving the flat. He'd spent some time on the first line the previous night. The problem had become finding a term of friendly endearment for Evelyn. He'd originally typed,
To the girl of my dreams,
but it somehow seemed patronising, suggesting an imaginary age difference based on an implicit gender superiority of maturity. Whereas,
to the woman of my dreams
sounded a little tribal and implied ownership. Yet Adam could not bring himself to adopt the recent spelling he'd seen. Besides how did you turn
wimmin
into a singular, or was this the intent, a kind of indivisible army of sisterhood? Adam tried
To the person of my dreams
but knew he may as well be writing
Dear Householder.
He loaded the CD-ROM
Thesaurus
and found
human being, spinster, matron, mistress
and
consort.
He gave up after
squaw,
and finally settled on
To the one of my dreams
as the least offensive, if not the most passionate.

He wondered if there was a reply waiting in his computer right
now. He wondered if he'd offended her so much with his advance that he'd made her ill and unable to go to work. He went to the post office wondering and worrying.

When Evelyn's boss, John Tagliatelli, had turned on his computer that morning after opening up the pet shop, he too whistled. Business was good and the ability to look for things and order them via his computer was proving to be one of the most satisfying parts of his day. The computer made him feel as if he was linked, almost instantly, with every component of his business. It gave him, as the sales blurb on his
Complete Stocktake and Ordering Interface for Small Business
CD-ROMs had suggested, ‘the power to stay on top'. The shop and everything in it was part of John and now he felt even more in touch with it than ever before.

When the computer powered up, he found an e-mail and when he clicked on the e-mail he found a poem.

The e-mail declaration had caused him a deal of confusion. He had not considered himself and others in a romantic way for some years now. He had certainly never regarded himself as having any power over his young employee, nor had he ever done anything which approached flirtation even of an innocent kind. On the other hand, and probably more to do with having loving parents and brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces, rather than any particular gifts, John liked himself. He assumed others did too. So John took the shy little missive seriously. He also took the timidity of the person who had sent it in such a way with great delicacy.