No Internet connection. I write a week’s worth of postcards.



Monday. The new house is on the quay. Stuff is still in boxes, but the sparkles on the Parramatta River come in through the windows, the white boats on the water bob in through the windows, and through the windows the sun fills the room.



Tuesday. I went out for the paper and I came back with forty-eight dollars’ worth of magazines. I hardly ever read Vogue, and I never read British Vogue, but I’m on holidays, so okay. There is a photo shoot in British Vogue to take your breath away. It is India, it is dusk, it is the hot sun, it is curving staircases and long dresses and colors like yearning, colors of the secret life in a girl’s secret heart.



Wednesday. There is a street named Darling, and we took it west to Rozelle, to The Barn, to great wood tables and mismatched chairs, to bacon sandwiches and bean soup, to fancy chocolate and honey yoghurt.

We were heading home and CC said, “If the baby falls asleep, we can go have iced coffees or something.” The baby lay down in her pram and co-operated, so then we went east on Darling, past the garden with the porcelain menagerie display; past the carpet of pink petals; past the lawn bowls and the old men with their bowling ball bags lined up by the fence; past the London Hotel and the two white pups on the wireworked terrace; down two hills, which meant later there would be up two hills; we went east straight toward the wharf, toward the Harbour Bridge curving beyond the orange trees.

At Thornton Park, the ferries came a-calling, Alexander and Scarborough and Charlotte, handsome in green and gold, and the baby smiled into the wind.



Thursday. I dream about ex-boyfriends and non-boyfriends, about walking down a path with lanterned lights, about Chinese students involved in an underground computer-smuggling outfit, about trying to find my way through a dank concrete building, about a bicycle ride in the dero-beauty of the Lower East Side. I wake up confused and tired, still.



Friday. The seagulls above Cockatoo Island circle like questions, like bits of white laundry on a spiral laundry line, like white confetti at a white wedding.

Once my friend Gab showed me a picture he took at a wedding. The image is black and white, and it is confetti all over, blurry and falling, and through the specks of celebration you see two grins, and a twinkle in the eye. And maybe I am remembering the photograph inaccurately, but certainly that is how it makes you feel.



Saturday. We turned right at the factory straight out of Chris Ware. There were smokestacks, even, but no smoke, because of Saturday.

Across the Anzac Bridge, the growers’ market in Pyrmont, the air smelling of hot coffees, of Saturday sausages and bacon on the grill. From white-topped stall to white-topped stall, there were samples of Christmas cake; of taro root; of pecorino; of salted butter yellow and thick and tasting of lamb.

When we left we had smoked trout in our canvas totes, and a fruit loaf fat with figs. A small container of fresh goat’s curd. A jar of raspberry jam, and strawberries smelling red, smelling sugar. We would have had a raisin snail and an apricot-almond tart, too, had we not eaten them, with hot coffees, on the lawn.

At home, I read in the Saturday sun while the water sparkled in the bay like Saturday.

Later, I was reading on the red sofa, and CC was reading on the carpet, and we are lucky to have each other. And she looked over at me and said, “Hello, sleepy.” “I’m not sleepy,” I said, and it is the last thing I remember, and then it was three hours later and I was stretching long and good and waking up, like Saturday.



Sunday. We danced to Otis Redding, me and the baby, and we danced to Django Reinhart. We danced to Bob Dylan, to his Queen of Spades, to her chambermaid. I sang her a song, a soft one, I rhymed “afternoon” with “bubbadoon,” she rolled over and she went to sleep. Me, I rolled upstairs to a slice of chocolate tart and a strong coffee in the sun. It was very warm on my neck. On page one-sixty-three I left a chocolate smudge and on page one-sixty-nine I cried.

When CC and Matthew got home from the largest IKEA in the southern hemisphere, CC made us French toasts. “That was tasty,” I said. “So it’s just bread and eggs?”

“And milk,” she said.

“Oh.”

“And cinnamon sugar.”

“Mm.”

“And fried in bacon grease.”

“Ahh.”