by Mel Campbell
Nothing was actually being projected yet; the outdoor screen was showing a rectangle of searing white. ‘Pretty bright, hey,’ said Renton. ‘This baby’s got 100,000 lumens on her. That’s about 500 watts.’
‘Renton, I don’t think we’re going to need all that wattage.’
The Plato’s Grave podcasters studied the image. ‘Yes, we admire the purity of the vision,’ said Holden, ‘but these days art is much more narratively driven. Where are the plot twists? Where are the shock reveals?’
‘Where’s the sexposition?’ added Ford.
‘Oh, wait!’ Alan said, ‘I’ve got something to show you!’ He scurried down the hall.
‘This isn’t the kind of sexposition I was expecting,’ Mercedes said drily.
Rose noticed a shape obscuring the bottom of the screen. A man in a top hat was sitting in a canvas director’s chair directly in the projector’s line. Thin curls of smoke were wafting from the hat’s glossy surface. Ugh, was this some kind of gimmicky ‘smoking hat’?
She went into the yard and discreetly crouched down beside him. Wow, it was warm out here. ‘Excuse me,’ she whispered, ‘your hat’s blocking the screen.’
He didn’t even turn. ‘It’s part of my look,’ he said flatly.
‘Well, maybe you could look at me when you’re talking to me.’
He sniffed. ‘I’m watching the screen.’
‘Listen, mate, I’m the one you’ve come to see.’ She grabbed him on the shoulder, and at last he turned to face her. ‘So you should …’
She trailed off in horror. Whether it was his swivelling motion or the hat shifting on his head, something ignited the smouldering chapeau, and the flimsy construction of silk and shellac exploded into flames. The man let out a high-pitched shriek and began frantically patting his head, knocking the fireball to the ground. His luxuriant shoulder-length curls ended above his ears, where a shiny pate curved up towards a strange, horn-like nub of hair that had been anchoring the hat.
‘Hey, it’s Krusty!’ said an onlooker.
The man dropped to the ground and began to roll around. What was going on? Was an exploding hat part of his look? Then she heard a whooshing sound behind her, and turned just in time to see fire engulfing her painstakingly crafted cinema screen.
‘The projector!’ Rose cried. She traced the retina-scorching beam back across the yard to its source – the lounge-room window – and above it, Renton’s shocked face.
‘What setting is it on?’ Rose shouted at her brother.
‘I dunno,’ he said, ‘the highest one?’
‘Turn down!’
‘For what?’ Renton shouted back.
‘Are you blind? It’s a fucking death ray!’
Renton grabbed the projector, fumbling for the controls, and the beam slewed away from the screen. Unfortunately, it landed on their mother’s collectable life-sized waxwork bust of Gestapo agent Major Arnold Ernst Toht from the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, which promptly began to melt.
Sarah screamed. ‘Don’t look at it, Mum!’ Renton yelled. ‘Keep your eyes shut!’
Other partygoers were now running around the yard in panic. People were accidentally stumbling through the projector beam and then screaming in pain.
‘Don’t go into the light!’ Rose shouted, but nobody was listening. She ran back into the house, where Renton was frozen in panic beside the projector. ‘Turn it off!’
‘I don’t know how! The labels are all in Japanese!’ He picked up the projector. ‘Ow, it’s hot!’
‘No shit,’ said Rose, ‘it’s set fire to half the yard.’ She started following the power cord to see where it was plugged into the wall.
Inexplicably, Renton was still juggling the projector, turning it over in his arms to find the off switch. Now the beam was directed at his feet, and he danced away from the char marks on the floor. ‘Ow! Ow! Burny!’
Rose heard a smattering of applause, and turned to see the Plato’s Grave podcasters transfixed by Renton’s spasmodic dancing. ‘Ah, yes, Bernie Sanders. Very topical,’ said Holden. ‘The scorching beam of white supremacy turns against even those who seek to wield it.’
She finally located the power point, and yanked out the cord. ‘It’s unplugged!’
‘It’s not stopping!’ Renton said. ‘It must have an auxiliary internal power source.’ He looked wildly around the room. ‘I need a mirror!’ He started holding random objects in front of the beam; most of them melted instantly.
‘There’s one on the wall,’ said Rose. She looked up in time to see Renton holding the mirror in front of the projector’s beam, directing it back on itself. The light was still hot enough to melt the outer casing. There was a loud bang as the lens exploded, then smoke began to pour from inside.
The house’s smoke alarm went off; Rose grabbed a cushion from the couch and waved it in front of the alarm to dissipate the haze.
‘I stopped it!’ Renton said. ‘I turned its power against it!’
‘It was unplugged, dumb-arse!’ said Rose. ‘If you’d just waited thirty seconds, it would’ve cooled down on its own.’
The Plato’s Grave hosts walked forward, still applauding. ‘Bravo!’ said Ford. ‘A scathing take on Western society’s failure to accommodate those out on the extremist fringes.’
‘A new avant-garde approach to cinema projection,’ mused Mercedes. ‘I loved it.’
‘Can I come on your podcast?’ Renton said hopefully. ‘I’ve got a hot take on how Batman vs Superman was really a western.’
‘Sorry,’ said Holden, turning for the door, ‘interpretive dance doesn’t really work in audio.’
The three hosts strode down the hallway, just as Alan emerged from his office holding a framed movie poster. Proudly he turned it to show them his prized vintage one-sheet for François Truffaut’s 1966 classic, Fahrenheit 451.
‘Ha! Nice one,’ said Ford, and followed his colleagues out the door.
‘Aww,’ said Alan.
‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ Rose said, ‘they were losers. They thought Renton was entertaining.’
Alan frowned. ‘They didn’t ask him on their show, did they?’
Rose shook her head.
‘Oh well,’ Alan said sadly, ‘they can’t be that bad, then.’
‘Hey! I’m right here,’ said Renton.
‘And luckily, so is the house, which you nearly burnt down,’ Rose said. ‘What setting did you even have that monster on?’
Renton picked up a chunk of the ruined projector and examined it. ‘Xtoremo Intensu?’
Rose looked at her watch. ‘Still ten minutes before the show comes on. Anyone want a drink?’
A few hours later, the guests had cleared out. Rose had done her best to clean up, but it was too dark outside to see the full scope of the disaster. Her parents hadn’t helped her at all; they’d just planted themselves on the couch and discussed their encounter with the Plato’s Grave team over and over. She understood it was a big deal for them, but the injustice of coming home after a full day’s work to find the house a bomb site had her seething by the time she’d retreated to her room to give Nicola a call.
‘I feel sick thinking how much money my parents blew tonight,’ Rose said, her best friend frowning up at her from her laptop screen. ‘They had lobster, and champagne, and those little mini pancakes with caviar on them …’
‘Ooh, I love those mini pancakes,’ Nicola said. She’d been at work when Rose’s episode had aired, so the plan was for them to watch it together now. But Rose was too annoyed to pay much attention to the same episode twice in one night; because Renton’s projector had melted the television’s antenna cable, the family had ended up watching it on Rose’s computer. They’d tried Sarah’s iPad first, but Renton had broken it by holding it in front of the projector beam, believing the front-facing camera was a mirror.
‘And,’ Rose
sighed, ‘now I’m going to have to borrow a belt sander to try and grind away those burn marks Renton made in the lounge-room floor …’
‘Hon, you’re making me feel sad now,’ Nicola said. ‘You’re way too young to have the weight of the world on your shoulders like this.’
Rose shrugged. ‘They’ve trashed the house; I don’t know what I’m going to do. They spent so much money on food and drink; I’ve got to pay for repairs. I thought I was getting ahead financially with this job, but I’ll barely be breaking even for the next month at least.’
‘Sounds like they’re the ones grinding you down.’
‘I don’t mind that I’m the breadwinner. I love them to bits and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. But we never, ever seem to get on top of the money situation.’
Nicola frowned. ‘It’s really unfair the way all this gets put on you.’
‘Eh, it’s mainly just frustrating. I really need this job to work out.’
‘Shh,’ Nicola said loudly, pointing at her screen. ‘It’s you!’
‘I’m sick of me,’ Rose said.
‘You look great,’ Nicola said. ‘You never told me you were star material.’
‘They’ve got me in these skin-tight clothes. It’s ridiculous.’
‘You look great,’ Nicola repeated. ‘And clearly I’m not the only one who thinks so.’
Rose looked at the episode playing out in the corner of her screen. Dave was clearly ogling her as she pointed towards a set of shelves. ‘Shut up.’
‘Did you enjoy the pictures I was sending you today?’ Nicola said. ‘I spent half my lunchbreak selecting the finest screengrabs for your viewing pleasure. Okay, maybe the love robot helped me a bit. They’re adding the attraction modules this week and that robot is seriously thirsty.’
‘Then they hired the right gal to translate for it.’
‘Don’t even joke about it,’ Nicola sighed. ‘My landlord came over yesterday and he started flirting just the tiniest bit, and now I’m pet-sitting his owl.’
‘He has an owl?’
‘He has an owl and three apartments; he’s basically my dream man. But he’s off to Osaka for a fortnight so now I’m taking care of Harippo-chan.’
‘Harippo … wait, is that a Harry Potter reference?’
Nicola put her face in her hands. ‘Yes, yes it is. He must have bought it during a Harry Potter craze or something. It’s a giant bird that bumps into everything! It shat on my laptop!’
‘Maybe you should introduce it to the love robot,’ Rose said. ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’
‘I can’t kill any bird,’ Nicola wailed. ‘One dead bird and I’m out on the street.’
‘Then you’d have to come back home!’
‘Not likely,’ Nicola said, ‘I’ll be helping the love robot scan for screengrabs of Dave’s butt for weeks yet.’
‘You almost got me in trouble with those,’ Rose said. ‘I was so worried the real Dave would see them on my phone.’
‘So, have you boned him yet? He definitely looks up for it.’
Rose theatrically collapsed backwards on her bed. ‘I want to,’ she said, her arm thrown across her face. ‘God, I want to. TV does not do him justice, trust me.’
Nicola frowned. ‘He’s still married, isn’t he?’
‘He doesn’t act like it, and she doesn’t seem interested in him at all, which is frankly insane. I’ve never seen them together once off-camera, and he’s always wanting to work one-on-one with me.’
‘That sounds kind of sleazy if you ask me,’ Nicola said.
‘It’s not like that, though. I wish he was sleazy – then I could just tell him to leave me alone,’ Rose said. ‘He’s funny, but I can tell he’s really smart too. He doesn’t show it off, though. I’m sick of arts guys who expect my underpants to vanish once they start talking about postmodern phenomenology.’
She smiled to herself. ‘He’s really interested in learning about what I do. He respects that I’m a tradie, and that I might know things he doesn’t. It’s just so nice to have a cute guy be interested in who I am, not just how I look.’
‘I can imagine,’ Nicola said.
‘I keep thinking none of this is really my problem,’ Rose said, sitting back up. ‘I’m single, I’m footloose and baggage-free. If he wants to get himself into trouble, that’s not my problem. I’m not the one doing anything wrong.’ She picked up the laptop and looked at Nicola. ‘Am I going too far? Am I reading too much into all of this? If they were all over each other I’d totally give up, but they don’t seem to even talk to each other!’
Nicola shrugged. ‘If they’ve got problems, that’s on him to sort out,’ she said. ‘But honestly? What you’re saying is what everyone says when they’re about to become the other woman.’
Rose hung her head. ‘I know.’
‘Do you?’ Nicola continued. ‘I don’t want to hear you in two years’ time talking about how he’s still totally going to leave his wife for you while you’re crying because he’s had to break off another sneaky date at a Chicken Shack in a suburb where nobody knows him.’
‘I don’t even like Chicken Shack,’ Rose said.
There was a knock at her bedroom door. ‘Yes?’ Rose said loudly, not quite able to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
The door opened smoothly – one of the advantages of having a professional woodworker around was that no matter how much their old house shifted on its foundations, Rose always kept the doors plumb – and Alan stuck his head in.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said, ‘but we’re going to need the rent by the end of the week.’
‘Sure, Dad, whatever.’ She gestured to her computer. ‘I’m talking to Nicola.’
Alan stayed in the doorway. ‘And the gas bill is due.’
‘That’ll be fine,’ she said, more tersely. ‘As soon as I get the money, you’ll get it, okay?’
‘And I’d like to get your mum a new iPad for her birthday.’
‘You mean you’d like me to get her a new iPad that you can put your name on,’ Rose said.
Alan’s face fell.
‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean that.’
‘I’m really hoping I can sell this article on which superheroes would vape,’ he said, ‘but even if I do, I won’t get paid until the end of the month.’
‘It’s tough, I know, Dad.’
‘Freelance pay rates haven’t gone up at all in the last five years,’ he said, rubbing at his hair. She hadn’t noticed until now how thin it was getting. ‘It’s fine for eighteen-year-olds to get paid $200 for a brain dump they spat out in half an hour. But I’ve got more pride in my work. And when you’re writing a 3000-word dissertation on the socioeconomic ramifications of rebooting the Speed franchise in a renewable-energy economy, that kind of money isn’t really enough.’
‘I know, Dad. I’ll take care of it.’
‘Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
Alan carefully closed the door behind him. Rose turned back to the screen and sighed.
‘They’re still struggling, huh,’ Nicola said.
‘They’re never going to not struggle,’ Rose said. ‘They’re basically unemployable. I’m just glad Renton got a job.’
‘Can’t he help out?’
‘I didn’t say he got a good job.’
In the episode of Mansions in the corner of the screen, everyone was suddenly running around in a panic. An ‘intruder’ had somehow found his way onto the set and two ‘security’ men were escorting him away – although Rose knew that in reality they were a couple of the burlier tradies. ‘And all this is bullshit too,’ she said, waving at her laptop.
‘So, that guy didn’t really sneak onto the set to make life a living hell for his former partner?’
‘Ha,’ Rose said. ‘He’s really the brother
of Jenny Morgan, the mum. He just showed up to get the keys for their holiday house. You’ll notice how “security” doesn’t actually lay a hand on him. Hang on, here comes the best bit.’
Onscreen, Michelle was standing in the middle of Corona Court, yelling, ‘Leave her alone! You’re not part of her life anymore!’
‘Notice how you never see him in any of these shots,’ Rose said. ‘They just show her and then edit in clips of him leaving while keeping her on the soundtrack.’ It was true: as the man got back in his car Michelle was heard shouting, ‘She’s trying to move on from you!’
‘Oh yeah,’ Nicola said. ‘He’s not reacting at all to any of this.’
‘I tell you, everything you see on this show is completely fake,’ Rose said. ‘There’s no way an intruder could get on the set, anyway. We’re so far out in the middle of nowhere they’d spot them coming a mile away.’
‘You’re really getting good at this stuff,’ Nicola said admiringly. ‘You’ll be able to put together your own show soon.’
‘Yeah, The Tradie Is a Tramp.’
‘Oh hon, let it go.’
‘I can’t,’ Rose said despairingly. ‘What am I going to do? I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.’
‘Not even Simon, back in high school?’
‘This is so much worse than Simon,’ Rose said. ‘I didn’t feel this messed up until after Simon dumped me. And even then only for, like, a week or two.’
‘I wish I could be back home,’ Nicola said. ‘Love robot be damned.’
‘I wish you were here too,’ Rose said, and pressed her hand against the screen. ‘I’ve honestly never felt this way about someone before, never. And he’s giving me all the right signs.’
‘You’ll figure it out. You always do.’ Nicola smiled at her friend. ‘You’re the sensible one.’
‘Sensible hurts too much,’ Rose said. ‘I’m sick of being sensible.’
Rose had always been a morning person, but she was finding the long drive out to the Mansions in the Sky set more and more draining every day. The landscape was dead flat, the roads were a gently winding maze that was only just starting to become familiar, and whatever mix of music and podcasts she tried always ended up sounding like a soothing lullaby long before the PENIS sign came into sight.