Blue Moves

J.S. Breukelaar CHAPTER ONE:

Elvis Actually

The Honda Blackbird roars down Bay Road with its headlight on, dull and dusty fromtravel and pulling a parachute of heavy weather behind it. But Fulton, even with wires in,gdang, gdang, and eyes down, hears it before he sees it, the groundswell that signals anadvancing engine, powerful but not racing. Definitely high end and possibly foreign, hethinks, yoinking an earphone, and there it is. So black it’s blue. The rider hunched into itlike a lover, dreadlocks beneath the helmet in a dervish whirl, doing eighty maybe ninetydown toward the Point, past the church, and then gone, him standing alone at road’s edgewith sound bleeding onto the grass from the dangling earphones, and that techno-prowlstill wrapped around his slowing heart.There is only one way in or out of Falls Point, and that is Bay Road. It runs straightdown from the highway, bisects the stubby peninsula like a vein, and then loops aroundthe Point, a distance of no more than a couple of miles. In the sudden silence left in thewake of the bike, the gated homes and high hedges seem to hold their breath; a birdshrieks and then another as if to bully the world back into normality. Fulton hesitates,

unsure of what to do. The gray sky flaps high above him, the wind gusting. A pair of lorikeets watches him—their red eyes the only thing moving behind the gaudycamouflage. He steps sideways onto the church lawn toward an old messy maple, andflops onto his back, his cap falling off and black hair tumbling out and the sweat coolingon his neck. He fumbles for the comfort of buttons and dials but then, abruptly andwithout warning, feels a wet tongue in his ear and there’s Bob, gentle humper, smellinglike saltwater and dandruff and weighing in at thirty-five kilos with jaws evolved to ripliving flesh from bone. Bob is this: Falls Point’s most wanted dog due for imminenteviction because of his faggy humping ways, and the goddess knows it’s not a sexualthing, says his owner, Miss Maye but the Dangerous Breeds committee of the TownCouncil stopped listening to the goddess or Miss Maye a long time ago. Fulton groanswhen Bob’s broad brindle shoulders dig into his sore ribs, and wrestles him to theground, powerful cheeks pulled back from dripping fangs and the animal’s breath hot onhis skin.The bike veers left and keeps on going to just before the road begins its looping climbaround the peninsula. Falls Point hangs out over the vast and indifferent harbor like ahitchhiker’s thumb, wreathed by massed bushland and black rock up high, and lower, pink sculpted foreshore and sandy beaches. To the left and right of the hurtling bike arethe mansions and gates of the rulers of the realm, who live here high up on the Point,where the flowers are gaudy and the leaves are always free of dust, and even on a dullday the air takes on the shimmer of the water all around. The machine slows at acrossing, pulls up to the curb and stops, the engine yapping, the bike so big and black and

low to the ground with those strangely outdated lines like something from the future. Therider, slim in full leathers and with heavy dreadlocks still helmeted, kills the engine,dismounts and pockets the keys. Then walks stiffly toward a gabled two-story home behind a stucco wall and stops at the side gate. A painted sign hung over the key pad onthe gate says ‘The Ritz’ or would except for the graffiti sprayed over the R so that thelegible part of the sign now says, among other things: ‘The Pitz!’ The biker’s shoulders beneath the leathers lift a little and there is an almost imperceptible shake to the helmet asthe gate clicks open and she disappears behind it.Later, Miss Maye says, “Female. Who’d have thunk?”She stares down Bay Road in the direction of the vanished motorbike. Above her,rust-coloured cloud trawls the evening sky. She leans against a high broken fence thatlooks like a row of rotten teeth. Beside her house is another one just like it, one of onlytwo Victorian waterfront cottages remaining on the peninsula in its original state; this inspite of the best efforts of Time Out Enterprises, the company that transformed FallsPoint from a dockside town into a high-end getaway for the guilty rich. But it was acompany town long before that, as far back as 1878, settled by hard men, wharfies,dockers and prostitutes generally too drunk to get their brogue around its original name,Thawanbundaanhi, which means either Land of Falls or Fallen Land, no one knew for sure. The whites could get as far as saying ‘Towonby’ before falling off their stools, soTowonby it became. Until Natura Petrochemicals set up shop on the eastern shore after WWII, and decided Towonby sounded too English, so it became Falls Point, a high-falutin name that suited the new kids on the block, Time Out Enterprises, whose investors