“They made a success together?”

“Not the great success of some. They did alright. My folks said their stuff was quality, a cut above. His art was the drawback. Always at it. He refused to change his name and it counted against him in the beginning. That’s why he’s not so well known today. He’s a proud old bastard.”

“But they anglicised the business name.”

“Yea, they saw the sense in that.”

She muses on post-war Sydney, a reincarnation for the young refo couple. Helga Hoffman becoming Margaret McConnell. Today, Helga Hoffman would be the preferred, chic, fashion label.

Georgio’s chilled concoction, just beginning to ooze, arrives.

“Aah, sustenance,” she quips, “some enjoy it for its own sake.” He eats unconsciously, anything anywhere, anyone’s. “Food Emmanuel?”

“His people have scientifically proven close-ups are distorted.”

This she interprets as a yes.

“Manny, we do aging rock stars as aging rock stars, who does the consecrated boy think he’s fooling?”

“No interview with close-ups.”

“No close-ups no interview.”

She contemplates the match, the deal. And the whole jumbled merry-go-round begins anew in the one known for her delineation.

“You’re not the only fish in the electronic sea.”

“Yea, but we are the biggest and the best, and we pay the most.”

“I already have you-know-who lined up.”

“He won’t do you-know-who.”

They will go on like this. Through the upcoming session and his importuning for the veteran cosmic rocker. And it will all happen. At first she was just steamrollered by Manny, but then she got a handle. The key to this end of town wasn’t cleverness, it was assumption. Take what you can get. You held your ground until they came round, made the deal.

And now she’d shared her adversary’s bed. And he had made his proposition. This man helping himself to her breakfast. She contemplates the match, the deal.

And the whole jumbled merry-go-round begins anew in the one known for her delineation.

She’d have to face something basic. His would be love leavened lukewarm, the weaker strand to the essential entrepreneurial thrust of his energy. He was physically shy with women, that private school, boy’s only upbringing. Something virginal about him, though not entirely unappealing.

The parents must have been remote, no confiding about girls. But she was fond of Liddy and Tomas, more in tune with their European ways and their interest in culture than Manny. They helped plug a gap. He was interested in artistes that turned him a dollar.

But there were other pages in the Manny ledger. He wasn’t money only. His nature just made money. A bit of a genius in his field. And his business methods, stripped of the hoopla, were sound. While others followed trends to disaster, he kept his council, landed on his feet. And he wasn’t mean. His spending was independent, unfettered, never narcissistic.