Ed

I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Paint sails across the wall and the things that are in my head sail from can to brick. See this, Lucy. See me and you emptied onto a wall. See us so big that you can’t miss it, even if you get here after I’ve gone.

Lucy’s boss sits on his step, watching and texting. Every now and then I turn to check for Lucy and see that he’s still there.

I finish and stand back to take it in and I know it’s my best wall yet. I hear slurping behind me. The old guy hands me a coffee. ‘I like your work,’ he says. ‘Shadow, right?’

‘Right. Actually it’s Ed.’

‘Al.’ He puts out his hand and I shake it. ‘It’s different from your other pieces,’ he says, pointing at the wall.

‘I’m trying a new style.’

‘I like it.’

‘I like your stuff, too. The ceiling flowers. I thought they were trumpets but then Lucy set me straight. You’ve texted her, right?’

He only looks surprised for a second. ‘A few times.’ He texts her again. ‘I expect she’ll come speeding over that hill any second. You’re working early today.’

‘I haven’t been to sleep yet. I’m not so much working early as working late.’

‘I always work this early,’ he says. ‘Sun coming up is the best time to make glass. No other time has such great colours.’

I see why Lucy likes Al. He reminds me a bit of Bert. I ask him about the course she mentioned and I tell him I can’t read too well and he says universities can help with that. ‘Maybe you qualify for a scribe. Someone who writes things down. You ever had someone like that?’

‘Leo used to write for me, when I was at school. I left in Year 10. I don’t have a folio.’

Al sips his coffee and looks at the wall. ‘Maybe you do. Lucy takes a good photograph. You and she could borrow my camera. Take some shots of your paintings.’

‘And that could be a folio?’

‘I’m not sure. But there’s a woman I know, Karen Josepha. I could ask her.’

‘Mrs J.’

‘Miss J, actually,’ he says. ‘She’s Lucy’s Year 12 Art teacher.’

‘I know her. She’s very cool.’

‘She is very cool,’ he says.

We look at the hill, waiting for Lucy, who’s taking her sweet time, as Bert would say.

‘I like Vermeer. Do you like Vermeer?’ I ask after a bit.

‘I do,’ Al says. ‘You go to the exhibition earlier this year?’

‘Me and a friend went. My old boss at the paint store. I lost my job, after he died.’

‘I’m looking for a cleaner. You got references?’

‘Uh-huh. I got references.’

And just like that he offers me a job. We go inside his studio and he shows me round. I give him Valerie’s number. ‘You could ask Mrs – I mean, Miss J too. She’ll tell you I’ll do a good job.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

I wander around, looking at the glass. ‘The Fleet of Memory,’ I say, picking up one of her bottles. They’re the coolest things. Memories sitting on putty. It’s like the inside of her head’s out there on the table. The last bottle in the series has a tiny Shadow wall inside. It’s the one I did of a blue sky on bricks. ‘You never see blue like that around here,’ I tell Al. ‘That blue’s exactly right.’

I leave a message for Lucy with Al and head off. I’m at the end of the street when I see her, that helmet with the lightning bolt on the side flying towards me. I stop and wait for her to arrive.

‘Hi,’ she says.

‘Hi,’ I say back. ‘I met your boss. He offered me a job cleaning his studio.’ I want her to know straight away that I’m not the guy I was last night. I don’t know who I am but I’m not that guy.

‘That’s great, really great,’ she says, taking off her helmet and hanging it over the handlebars.

‘You don’t look all that happy. You look like this.’ I make her face.

‘Really? I meant to look happy for you,’ she says. ‘Are you sure that’s what I look like?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Maybe this would be easier if you covered my face.’

‘Still a romantic, I see.’

She covers her own face. ‘Before you left the casino, I meant to say it’s important to you. All those things like leaving school and not having a job and not being able to read all that well are important to you, not to me.’

I got something inside me now. It’s not much but it’s more than I had. ‘I didn’t rob the place.’

‘I know. I went to save you.’

I look at that spot on her neck and make a few travel plans.

‘Do you think I’ll be on the run from Malcolm all my life?’ she asks.

‘Uh-uh. Leo’s brother took care of it. But I’d stay out of dark parks.’

‘You shouldn’t have lied to me all night,’ she says. ‘I feel really dumb now because of all the things I said about Shadow. You should have told me the truth. That bit matters.’

‘I know.’ I keep looking at that spot. I owe her something for what I did. I think of that Vermeer painting with the scales. You got to weigh something, in the end. Even if it’s not very much. ‘I like you. I didn’t want you to think I was stupid so I lied. I tried to tell you when we stopped at the freeway.’

She’s quiet for ages.

‘Now would be a good time to tell me I’m not stupid,’ I say.

‘Why did you get back with Beth if you like me?’ she asks.

‘I didn’t get back with Beth.’

‘Really?’

‘Okay, take your hand off your face, it’s too strange.’

She takes it off and smiles and I think of wall after wall after wall. Green mazes wandering and two people wandering through them. Doorways that lead somewhere. Skies the exact kind of blue I’ve been looking for.