Cairo by Chris Womersley

anything. But listen, Edward. The thing is …’ Another burp, followed by a groan of discomfort or disgust. ‘Think about it. For what we could get for her, it could be so simple.’
    â€˜That’s easy for you to say, Max. You don’t have to deal with, you know …’
    â€˜I’m aware of that. Believe me, I am.’
    â€˜This isn’t just some old Norman Lindsay painting of ladies with big tits sitting in a river. This is the towering genius of the century.’
    There was the strike of a match and the dry crackle of a cigarette. I smelled smoke as I pressed my ear to the wooden door.
    â€˜I’ll deal with them,’ Max continued. ‘I promise. Imagine that much money. This could be the making of us.’
    â€˜Or the unmaking.’
    They started to wander away, and their conversation dissolved into an urgent sibilance of whispers, from which I could only make out fading words or phrases. ‘Millions … Only one risk … A real crime not to seize this opportunity …’
    I stood in the hallway until I heard a door slamming shut. Then just the wind through the leaves of the peppercorn tree. When I was confident they had gone inside, I opened my front door and peered out into the warm, jasmine-scented night. No one. A possum scurried along the railing, stopping to glare at me before going on its way. I closed the door and returned to my bedroom, where I sat on my bed, thinking about what I had overheard.
    After ten minutes or so, I turned on the light and pulled out my yellowing copy of
The Story of Art
. I located the entry for the
Girl with a Pearl Earring
. Sure enough, Max was wrong — it was Vermeer who had painted it. I admired the colour reproduction, enraptured by its unearthly charm: her smooth face and eyes; those parted lips; that earring.
    I switched off the lamp, lay back in bed and closed my eyes.

FIVE
    ABOUT A WEEK LATER, AFTER BREAKFAST, I CLOSED THE DOOR on my cool haven and made my way along the walkway with some herb seedlings, a tin watering can, a sack of potting mix and a trowel I’d found in a bathroom cupboard. I was intending to rejuvenate Helen’s plant tubs on the rooftop with some fresh herbs.
    Even at 8.30 a.m. I recognised the pensive, almost post-nuclear hum of a Melbourne midsummer morning. Some people dislike Melbourne in summer — and there’s no doubt it can be a difficult season, with its gritty northern winds, abrupt mood changes and wilting public gardens — but for me it has always been the most wonderful part of the year, and on that morning the heart in my chest swelled, a balloon of pure joy. I was seventeen years old, alone in the city, the world at my doorstep. Innocence, I have since discovered, is a condition to be both relished and feared.
    The rooftop was a concrete expanse, edged by a railing, measuring ten metres by twenty metres or so and, in accordance with the overall design of the block, in the shape of a deep U. It was littered with a number of cracked and dried-out garden pots, deckchairs and the detritus of numerous parties — grubby streamers, bottle tops, butts and empty bottles. Although stillpartly shaded, in an hour or two it would became unbearably hot up there.
    To my surprise, I spied Max Cheever sitting in a tattered canvas deckchair on the far side. Although he was already in the shadow cast by the peppercorn tree, he sat in the richer shade of a large, rose-red beach umbrella jammed into a hollow pole possibly intended in the past to support some sort of structure, an awning perhaps. In front of him, his slender back to me, sat his friend Edward. Each of them held in one hand a fan of playing cards. On a rickety coffee table between them lay disordered piles of playing cards.
    Max was talking in a wry, fluting voice: ‘But, Edward, for God’s sake, democracy has run its course. There’s absolutely no reason why it should be the default