Things I Did for Money by Meg Mundell

Author:Meg Mundell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000, FIC029000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2013-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

VERMILION

Will

The woman upstairs is drunk again. You can hear it in the slight drag of her footsteps across the floorboards, the little stagger as she steps away from the canvas to refill her glass or find another cigarette.

Yes. This is the kind of woman who paints late into the night, wearing high heels and drinking heavily, in an upstairs flat with floorboards.

How do I know wine is her poison? She drops her empties in the bin on rubbish night. A wine bottle smashing sounds quite different from a beer or spirit bottle. She polished off six or seven last week, judging by the size of the crash. Red wine, not white — caught a whiff when I lifted the bin lid to dispose of my own glassware.

My guess that she’s a painter is just that — a guess. But the smell of linseed oil and turps is hard to mistake. It floats in through my window like an exclamation mark.

Voices carry in the stairwell, and hers is loud. That voice: a slight musical swoop in her vowels, carefully practised, a vocal trick that almost hides the dull whine of the suburbs. I hear her resonating Hellooo on the stairs whenever she passes a neighbour or answers her mobile phone. This morning I overheard half a conversation, the floating words pressure, pigment and finger food.

Thankfully that voice, accompanied by the clacking of heels on concrete path, warns of her approach. Yesterday she almost caught me daydreaming in the stairwell, distracted by a beautiful scent — jasmine perhaps? — drifting up over the balcony, overpowering the mineral smell of the sea. When I heard her coming I slipped my palm over the smooth rail, traced it upstairs and vanished into my flat.

God help me — now she’s turned on the stereo, some loud rock music with guitars and screaming. What a cruel joke that I hear so well. (Earplugs, earplugs, where are they?)

Often she drops things: brushes, keys, unnamed objects. An hour ago she flung something forcefully across the room, some mysterious clattering tool that painters use to torture their neighbours.

I am not used to this. Change sets me adrift.

The speaking clock says it’s three in the morning. She has set up her easel in the floorspace directly over my pillow.

Tomorrow I will shift my bed. Tonight I will take a Stilnox, plug my ears and dream the sounds of wine bottles smashing and stilettos being sawn into tiny, useless pieces.

Nina

The cost of paint is killing me. But worse, I’m stuck … the show opens in two days and I’m still three paintings short.

Nothing but red, and I’ve run out again. It seems you can’t manufacture passion, and now this whole red thing is making me so nervous. The exact colour I’m looking for — maybe it doesn’t exist? Or maybe I’m just tired.

Scarlet … rose … auburn … brick … magenta … damask … cerise …

Ten canvases line the walls. That first one is just right; that rosy stickiness is almost alive.

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