The Fog of Trujillo

Australia. Part I.

The electronic doors in customs slide open and we step through, exhausted and blinking in the sudden sunlight; it's early in the morning here in Melbourne. And suddenly Jess and Cameron are there, right in front of me, and everything's all blurry with joy. I throw my arms around them. Outside, only 20 feet away, it's summer. Jess is holding the list of things she and Cameron have planned for us to do. The possiblities are endless. Jess puts her arm around my shoulder. "Time for breakfast," she says.

I ride to the end of every train line, just to see what's there. I write my favorite station names on the back of my hand with a pen I stole from Cameron. Diggers Rest. Batman. Sunshine. Craigieburn. Crowds of teenagers fill the platforms in the afternoon. Uniforms and ipods and glitter nail polish. I love the old ladies with tanned faces and flowered sundresses, sitting primly at the Yarraville station. I ask them questions, anything, to talk to them. "What's that?" I ask a tiny, ancient woman with a cane, pointing out the train window at an ugly and non-descript building. "That's a meat pie factory, Dearie" she says sweetly.

Marky and Marty meet me on the train platform. They have been in the studio for days, finishing their new album, and they are tired. We have lunch at the only cafe near the studio, the amusingly named New York Tomato, on the corner of New and York streets. The waiter will tell us several times in the next few days that his boss is thinking of changing it.
There are months and months of gossip to catch up on: babies on the way and sloppy seconds and mutual friends who get in hilarious scrapes. I sit across from them, laughing, at this sunny table here in the middle of North Richmond. In the middle of nowhere. I love them. These boys I so rarely get to see.

We spend the afternoon in the alley behind the studio, drinking bottle after bottle of beer and silkscreening t-shirts for the upcoming Candle Records showcase. Sunlight filters down between the buildings. When the shirts are done and drying on the line, Marky and I look around for random things to attack with the screen. There is now a very weathered old armchair in that alley that says, in bright white letters, The Lucksmiths. Inside the studio, we sit with Pilko and listen to the same songs over and over and over. And it's funny how different their hearing is than mine; so close to music, they hear blips and sounds and glitches that I would never notice. To me, these new songs sound perfect.

Cameron's band, Architecture in Helsinki, is playing a free show in the park. Marky and I walk there together, singing little made-up songs. It's dusk, the end of a day at the end of the summer. The most beautiful night in the world. Jess's grandmother is there, an octogenarian birthday girl sitting calmly in a lawnchair in the middle of a noisy crowd. She squeezes my hands and smiles up at me. Jess's family has spread a picnic out on blankets. They order me to eat. Later, a chocolate cake will be pulled out, secretly, and candles lit. "Turn around!" everyone will call out. And I tell myself fiercely that I am never allowed to forget her face, how beautiful it is, when she sees that cake. When we leave, she pulls me in close for a kiss. She smells like lavender. "Happy birthday," I whisper in her ear.

The Lucksmiths play a show later that same night. I haven't seen them play for more than a year, and I'm happy, really happy, to see them play again. So it's a mystery why there are tears streaming down my face in the middle of the set, tears I'm trying hard to hide with the help of a crumpled cocktail napkin. But it's not really a mystery at all; these songs are old memories. I am standing in Melbourne, Australia and I'm acutely aware that things can be thrown off by a split second, a missed glance, the wrong season, lack of experience, bad friends, heartbreak and happiness. The way things turn out is so tenuous. So gorgeously precarious that I have to cross my arms across my chest to keep from shaking. If things hadn't happened the way they did, I wouldn't be here, in the summer, laughing like crazy with Marky and Marty, with a sunburn and fingernails caked with paint from the the t-shirts we screened earlier that afternoon. There wouldn't be Jess and Birdy, muddy-kneed, planting succulents in the front yard on Sunday afternoons, Tropicalia on the record player and the jar of Tasmanian honey and loaf of fresh bread on the counter. There wouldn't be Julia, and how she makes me laugh, and the way we joke about my ridiculous crushes, and how I always feel like dancing when I see her. And I wouldn't be standing here with you in the back in the dark with these bottles of Coopers green and those loud girls in front of us laughing with Darren Hanlon. This first night of not knowing you. I was thinking about all of these things and how they worked out so beautifully when I turned to you and said "This is perfect."

And you nodded. Perfect.

Marky is late for dinner. But this is the final night to finish the new album; Marky leaves for Tasmania tomorrow, and everything needs to be done before then. Here on Hodgkinson Street, Erin is making pumpkin risotto, Connal makes fresh corn and guacamole. I make cocktails. Marky and Kellie get home, and the kitchen gets loud with laughter. I have brought vodka and blood orange juice over, and I make them drinks. "What's this called?" Marky asks. "A paper moon," I tell him, making the name up on the spot. "Really? he asks, and I say yes. Really. But he's giving me such a funny smile. He can tell I'm lying, but it's warm outside, and it doesn't matter. We decide to eat in the backyard. Kellie fiddles with some plugs. "Look!" she says, and suddenly there are stars everywhere; the giant palm tree in the backyard is glowing with little fairy lights. "It's amazing," I tell her. "I know," she says. She and I slip out the back door and under the palm tree where there are old railroad ties that serve as benches. Squinny the cat is furiously hunting mice in the vines and plants at the edge of the yard, but when I pull him onto my lap he decides to stay for a while. Marky appears in the doorway, balancing two plates and a glass. Grinning. "Champagne for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends" he says.

The house has been shared by this extended group of friends for seven years, but now it's being packed up and dismantled room by room and everyone is moving. Marky is in love; a few months from now, he'll be living in London. Things are looking so good for you, I tell him in the note I leave in his bag the next morning. But tonight is a little wistful; it's his last night in this house, the last night in his old room. Late that night, before we all go to bed, Marky puts a copy of the just-finished Lucksmiths songs on the battered old stereo and he and I stand there, silently, arms crossed, listening to them. When the last song ends, he walks quietly to his room to finish packing.

*This update typed while listening to Country Got Soul.