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They both turned to Adam and the man said, ‘And this is our new neighbour. I'm Harry, but you can call me Jake. This is Mary.'

‘Adam. Pleased to meet you, um ... both.'

Mary said, ‘If you ever get ... hungry, Adam, you come straight to me.' In spite of the fact that she seemed older than his recently departed mother, Adam was sure she gave her breasts an extra jiggle.

‘Now Mary, he needs his strength – so he can help me.' At that he clamped a large hand on Adam's shoulder and steered him into flat four, where Adam discovered the source of the sawing and hammering. Harry was building a boat.

It sat like a giant rowboat with its stern near the front door and its bow nudging the single bed in the bedroom. Most of the wall to the bathroom had been removed with two metal poles propping up the ceiling joist. Half of the wall leading to the bedroom had also been removed. The bricks were stacked along other walls where they supported tools, papers and a dusty personal computer screen. A record was spinning on a turntable – Elvis. The floor was covered with wood shavings, chunks of plaster and fair depth of saw and plaster dust. A couple of empty rum bottles floated on the mixture.

Harry held his arms open. ‘Ain't she a beaut? Well, she will be. Here.' Harry lifted the plans from a stack of bricks, dislodging a couple of pieces of old spaghetti noodles. ‘Had the deck braced using the ceiling joists as my framework seeing as they was already there.'

Adam looked up to see where Harry had punched a huge hole in the ceiling and attached his woodwork frame to the jarrah beams below the tiles of the flat's roof.

‘Better not tell Mrs McGready about this. Sure there's some goddamn rule somewhere against hobbies.'

‘The landlady? No, I won't tell.'

‘Good lad.'

‘How have you kept her from finding out?'

Harry fished under some tools and brought out half a bottle of brown rum, wiping the top on his boxer shorts. ‘She got you psyched out, huh? What I do is I complain first.' He gulped some rum. ‘About everything. Her damned cat. The plumbing. My plumbing. You start in on your ability or inability or overability to take a crap, most people back off pretty quick. Got her so she doesn't want to come near me to get more complaints. Or maybe she thinks taking a good, cleansing shit in the woods might be catching.'

Adam smiled, but shook his head at the offered bottle of rum.

Harry went to a very long wooden beam. ‘Grab the other end.'

Adam went into the bedroom and got the other end of the pole. It was heavy. ‘Is this the mast?' asked Adam.

‘Yep. Got to get it up there on the deck. I was going to use a hoist, but I don't think the joists'll take it.'

They began to manoeuvre Harry's end of the beam up over the deck.

‘Where you from?'

‘A place called Mukinbudin.'

Harry nodded as though he knew the town. ‘Wheat and drought?'

‘Yes, sir. And floods once a century.'

Harry had his end up on the boat and came down to help Adam lift his.

‘So how you finding the city?'

‘I'm not sure. I feel a bit disconnected right now.'

They heaved and the mast thumped onto the wood of the deck.

‘Disconnected huh? That's a good word. Fella your age should be disconnected. Stay loose. And wild!'

Adam worked his shoulder a little, easing a twinge from the lifting. ‘Yeah, well I'm loose all right.'

Harry began to study Adam. ‘If you don't mind me saying it – you are anything but loose, Adam. Relax. You got a girl yet? You have,' laughed Harry. ‘I can tell.'

‘I've only been here a day.'

‘Gotta move faster in the city, Adam. If there's anything that will relax you, it's getting...'

‘What are you going to do with the boat when you finish it?' interrupted Adam.

‘Yacht. A sloop actually. Thirty-eight-foot monohull. All wood. Boats are for bathtubs. What I'm going to do with this baby is I'm going to sail it around the world.'

Adam looked at Harry's ceiling and the remaining walls. ‘But how are you going to get it out of here?'

‘Cross that bridge when I come to it. You think of all the problems, you'd never do anything.'

Adam nodded, considering this philosophy.

Harry patted Adam on the shoulder. ‘You see, my belief is this – dreams are only the blueprint for building reality.'

Adam smiled. ‘That's good.'

‘You like it huh? Well, if you want you can use it any time you like, but you gotta give me five bucks every time you do.'

‘Five dollars, huh? You got any cheaper philosophies, Harry?'

Harry chuckled. ‘Nope, that's my cheapest one.'

Adam became aware that Elvis was singing, ‘It's now or never'. He realised he had the rum bottle. He noticed that the hairy man dressed only in his underpants was smiling at him a little too tenderly.

‘Gotta get going, um Harry.' Adam gave back the bottle and headed for the door.

Harry called, ‘Don't be a stranger now.'

Adam left flat four to see a boy and girl of about his age coming out of the other flat at the bottom of the stairs. They were dressed in black. The boy stopped to look at the boxes outside Adam's door, but when he saw Adam, he turned and said something to the girl.

She looked up. ‘What do you want?'

‘I live here. Well there, in flat two,' said Adam going down the stairs. ‘I've just moved in.'

‘Hi,' said the boy, now looking at Adam as if he were trying to place him, but the girl grabbed his arm and hustled him out the front door.

Adam opened his door and began dragging in the boxes.

Chris looked up as the light came on. ‘Where the fuck have you been? No phone call. No message.'

Adam stacked the birdseed on the table next to Chris's cage.

‘I thought you'd been run over or something. Is that my dinner?'

Adam started to open the boxes and unpack his new personal computer on the other little table in the corner of the lounge room. ‘What a day. I've made an enemy, and a friend, and I've met the woman of my dreams. Things sure happen fast in the city.'

‘Yeah, well maybe I should get out more too.'

‘You can send e-mails with this. On a computer, all you have to do is type in the number and you can contact the person.'

‘Like a telephone you mean. Or like meeting them? Anyway, I wouldn't get too excited. We're not staying. You've clearly recovered from all your post-traumatic stresses, so we can go home.'

Adam pulled out the monitor and put it on the desk. ‘What do I say?'

‘Adam, there's a cat here. It wants to kill me.'

Adam started to pull plastic from the heavy keyboard. ‘I don't want to come on too strong, you know. Harass her or something. I only want to get to know her.'

‘You're asking a canary for advice on your love-life? You listen to me you'll end up dry-rooting her armpit or something. Not that my knowledge is anything other than theoretical, you understand. Thinking of which, can we get a television again?'

Adam pulled out a number of cables. ‘Why is it all so complicated?'

Chris looked out at the five unopened packets of birdseed. ‘Hey, I'm starving here.'

Adam spent the evening setting up his Commodore Amiga 500 personal computer, running floppy start-ups, attaching the special modem cable and contacting a dial-up service to connect him to the rest of the world. After two hours he remembered he'd bought birdseed and fed Chris. Soon after that he realised he'd forgotten to get some food for himself and started snacking on Chris's seed. It was surprisingly tasty.

Adam marvelled that e-mails could flit across the world in moments; could speed across the city like a rocket-propelled carrier pigeon. If Adam were able to work out what he might say to Evelyn, and if he had her e-mail address, the e-mail would reach her in an instant.

Only, Evelyn, who did live on the other side of town, in some much taller flats than Adam's, did not have a personal computer. All
her e-mails went to her work computer. And she was asleep, her bedroom blind open to the stars. She slept under a white frilly doona glowing in the moonlight. There was a poster of white swans gliding on a tranquil pond. Some peacock feathers poked out of a grandmother's vase. There was another poster, of a curly haired girl, in pinafore, clutching a battered teddy. Evelyn slept and dreamed.

Looking down from above on a nineteenth-century bell-like cage as wide as it is high in the centre of an ordered park. Passing through the steel ribs into the palms and ferns and fully grown trees within. Colour splashes soaring flitting, floating bright. Birds. Scarlet parrots. Emerald rosellas. Multicoloured toucans. A snow-white ibis lifts its velvety wings, stretching, then settles. Looking up at a high branch, nestling together, a pair of red-faced lovebirds. Going there to gaze at their red faces, the yellow on the breast and blue in the tail. A contented sigh, from the dreamer, blows gently at their feathers. The lovebirds nuzzle in a patch of golden sunlight.

Jane and the Rover 2000 TC were under a bright patch of arc light on the docks. The hood was up and a security guard from the nearby mining company warehouse was looking at the engine judiciously. ‘Bad place to break down.'

Jane, who was now dressed in a Che Guevara t-shirt and what could best be described as skimpy sleeping shorts, giggled and said, ‘I thought I was off to Captain Munchies for some Choc Bots, and I must have turned the wrong way. I always get mixed up with my directions.'

‘Choc Bots?' It was hard to tell which of the words he was most interested in.

‘The yummiest biscuit in the whole world. Chocolate on the bottom, of course. And a kind of cookie on top with more choc chip bits in that.'

The security guard smiled, indulgent and a little besotted.

‘I'm really glad you came along,' said Jane. ‘This is a very lonely and desolate spot.'

He looked down at the car's engine again hoping something about
its operation would come to him. ‘Are you a member of the RAC?' he finally asked.

Jane fought to keep her eyes bright and empty. ‘What's that?' She pointed to the distributor cap.

‘Oh, it's the ah ... manifold carb.'

Jane allowed herself a derisive eyebrow raise before saying, ‘Is that little squiggly piece supposed to be on or off?'

‘Hey, it does look loose. Let's give it a try.'

Before the guard could reattach the distributor, an alarm started in the mine stores he was supposed to be guarding.

‘Oh my goodness. What's that?' yelled Jane as loudly as she could.

The guard was already heading for the padlocked gate which led into his workplace, fumbling for keys, torch and radio all at once.

Jane scowled towards an orange flashing light somewhere in the yard beyond. She leaned in and reattached the distributor and threw down the hood. ‘I might try the engine,' she called as she ran to the driver's side. She started the Rover and wheeled around in the wide deserted dock, driving to the end of the fence where Paul was squeezing from the opening he'd cut earlier. He grabbed the back door of the car and tumbled in as Jane accelerated, sending seagulls scattering near the grain terminal.

In the Lost Mail Department, Adam's desk is empty. The shelves, sagging with stacks of lost letters and packages, stretch off into a dim distance. Down the end, far away, there is movement. Something bright, floating. It is Evelyn coming out of the dark in a white, flowing dress. It should be diaphanous, but the light coming from her skin is too strong. She's wearing red lipstick. A smile? No. A secret look. She glides to a shelf. Chooses. A bundle of letters, tied with a red ribbon.

She turns. She looks straight at him. Mischievous now. Plucks the red ribbon, the letters cascading down. Flit, flit, flit. Now up. The letters turn to white doves. They fly. Behind her other letters pour from the shelves then float, feathers filling the aisle, all around her. She stands facing him, amidst the fluttery blizzard, her hands coming up. She has the red ribbon still. She tosses it forward and it becomes
a rosella that flies slowly forward. She is smiling. She is reaching for the buttons at the front of her dress. She is looking at him. The rosella smashes into his brain.

Adam woke sweating. There had been a noise that wasn't his brain smashing. He listened upwards but Harry wasn't working. He went to the window.

A rubbish bin rolled in the street. Mrs McGready's cat made off into the darkness.

In the Lost Mail Department the actual light of day meant the green yellow of hanging fluorescents. Adam worked under the brighter white of his desk lamp.

‘Grandilla! Yes.' Adam gave a little punch to the air and flipped the found mail into the out-tray, where it sat alone. He swung on the recently fixed and now firm arm of his chair and contemplated the rows of lost mail. He peered down to the wall at the end of the rows, lit now and covered by a huge grey filing cabinet and the sign:
Lost Mail Department.
No rosellas.

Adam shook off the unsettling half memory and went to a large box that had arrived that morning. The
Lost Mail Procedure Journal
had suggested that working the most recent cases first was the best approach and only after clearing most or all of those to work chronologically back through the older, more difficult or dead losses later.
After all, your predecessors had trouble there, didn't they?

Adam suspected his immediate predecessor was the writer of ‘the journal'. It had started in an orderly fashion suggesting the logging and categorising of incoming items and hints for approaches to common street names. Then it got more and more philosophical. It soon interrupted itself with printed scrawls like
WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE?
And
Communication. What does that mean? Is it possible?
Soon there were little messages down the bottom of the page, like footnotes, such as
Don't tell your supervisor if you break an item of lost mail. It gives him too much power over your life.
This theme, Adam thought, was picked up near the last entries, where it was written
Howard is a brute.
Kill him. Kill him.
The last two pages seemed to be a long letter or poem which started
To My Dearest Wuffles.