Pixie Henson sips her double strength, and doubts the efficacy of Sunday sessions and Berrocas.

“First rate coffee, Georgio,” she calls. “I can stand my spoon in it.” And she fields Georgio’s beam of pleasure for the patronage of his TV clientele.

But she regrets not agreeing to the Stamford, that dark, musty breakfast hall, as Manny had suggested. A fierce Sydney sun is lancing off the floorboards and the place is echoing like a lover’s leap. Well, Manny will just have to trip over from the harbour, and find space for his Aston Martin in the crowded eastern suburbs.

She checks her watch, runs a restive, thirty-somehow hand through her blonde, cropped hair; fights her annoyance, the throbbing at her temples, just knowing David and the production crew will be late.

Georgio’s minimalist décor gleams. Its emptiness underlined by the elderly gent, probably a widower, she knows the type, who’s staring a little too frankly from his table.

She’s been recognised. Occupational hazard.

A line from Max’s piece, dear old mentor Max, runs through her head. “With no resident royalty or film industry to sustain home grown stars, media personalities fulfill the role of demi-gods.”

Her stomach twists. The demi-god don’t feel so svelte. Another lousy soirée last night and no handsome prince despite all the frogs she’d been obliged to kiss.

She turns her paper to the social pages and there she is in that fabulous creation straight from the local op shop. It had jumped out at her along with the beautiful blouse she is now wearing. She runs her fingers along its silkiness, feeling her flesh bridle.

She imagines the young reporters getting wind of her lowbrow purchase, but they’re gormless, this current mob. She would have tumbled to the bigger story — her and Manny. Because at base she is a journo. A journo who’s done the rounds and now she had her own show. And the damn thing had traction, legs.

With a twist of her lipstick she closes him out. Resumes her thoughts, mindful of the epithets of her predecessors: the thinking man’s pin-up, the perfumed steamroller. And now her turn: the pixie with the stiletto.

She takes another swig, submits to the pulse behind her eyeballs, blinks into the dull chrome table, tries to define the puffy lips, the rheumy eyes of the journo.

But the Manny business worries. Yet what can she do; always rubbing shoulders with the adversary in her profession. A grey square on the chess board in Max’s parlance.

More lines from that same piece float up through the chrome.

“This sexy pixie with ice for eyes, steel for ducks down, and razors for lips is the most intuitive reporter of the decade. Pretty head and shoulders above the pack. Whether she maintains her journalistic and personal integrity in a world of mediocrity and expedience remains to be seen. Media personalities in this country occupy a curious position of being talked and written about in turn. They are both hunter and hunted.”

Boozy old Max. She misses him like hell — the bedrock, father figure to which her ballooning fortunes could be tied.

But now she sees that old boy is still star gazing. With a twist of her lipstick she closes him out. Resumes her thoughts, mindful of the epithets of her predecessors: the thinking man’s pin-up, the perfumed steamroller. And now her turn: the pixie with the stiletto.

Her rise had been meteoric. The slick interrogator emerged from her like another person. She had simply accepted her opportunities. And they’d all praised her judgment and sense. Then the tall poppy syndrome. It still stung when they imputed her integrity. She’d answered them with more certainty. But it had been like picking over stepping-stones in a deadly stream. The Pixie had shed her private tears, but in public she gave them nothing — nought.

“What you need in here is a good mirror Georgio,” she enunciates in the rounded vowels of her elocution. Then playing to her persona, that tickles him pink. “How can I be your glamorous TV host when you don’t even have a mirror?”

The Pixie had shed her private tears, but in public she gave them nothing — nought.

“I will buy you one with those winking lights, Signora.”

“That will never do, Georgio,” she counters in her warm hectoring voice. If he saw her makeup room he’d soon change his mind about showbiz glitz.

Pity those sages hadn’t deliberated on her judgement in another sphere of human endeavour. Monsieur Hare and Monsieur Tortoise.

Monsieur Hare, first off the blocks, sweet, sweet, Dazzer, beautiful jet black hair, insincere emeralds for eyes. Researchers say people with green eyes are misunderstood. They’d been cadets and rising stars together, almost twin, linked in the public’s mind. Dazzer and Pix. Then they had discovered his journalistic short cuts and he had fallen away while the Pixie’s star had risen. Of course, he had blamed her. Unfair recriminations delivered from the misunderstood eyes. Look, there was competition between them. It may have accounted for some of his journalistic excesses. But that was no excuse. Dear Dazzer, if only he’d been less of a ninny, blaming everyone but himself. And damn, she’d waited for him to straighten out. But he’d wallowed in his self pity. When he’d finally picked himself up and braved the ladder again, she’d lost interest.

Max had warned her against in-house tangles. But had she listened? No. So along tootled Monsieur Tortoise — Martin — a reaction to the first? — with his rimmed glasses and dandruff and his briar pipe and his moth-eaten column like the moose at the Empire Club. Yet she could have settled for that stuffiness, for that slow and steady, had there been just one mitigating quality. But what you saw was what you got. He had come up on her insidious, like a cancer. Though, at first, she had found that honesty refreshing in her bitch world. It had brought her reassurance. Had she found a Max substitute? Oh, how she missed Max.

But Monsieur Tortoise was over the Friday night, — night, seven thirty, evening for God’s sake, she’d fronted his flat wanting to whisk him away for a meal and a good chat after a grim week. Found him in his UGG Boots and flanneys ready for sleep. And he meant sleep, not bed.

Anyway he’d drifted off to Perth, the new frontier, the excitement state, met some plain Jane and they were stupendously happy bored stupid together. Monsieur Tortoise was wowing them in the west. She chuckles. Ole Marty had always brought out her cruel streak.

She checks her watch. These working brunches, people dawdling in late. It was unprofessional, rude.

And talking of rude, that lonesome Charlie stretching his coffee, pretending there’s someone to meet, was staring again. She should, no — shadow of a smile and these old farts spout like a fountain, murder you with their opinions. She’s been down that road before.

She thrums the table with hopeful fingers, nails still cut short for her dwindling print stories. She’s unforgiven for branding the think magazines graveyards of excellence. And now she, who used to let the chips fall where they may, has cold feet over publishing her dearly worked on short stories. Too many whetted knives.

Her foreshortened nails patter to a halt. She might as well grow them for the show, every week a different manicure; escape the pressure cooker to the gossip of the ordinary girls. Shonky Sydney, a flawed opal with a running flash. Radar tuned to their chatter, a heart beat from a story, she’d sport nails of blue or cerise. Nay tacky not what the show was about.

She raises her head straight into a disconcerting stare. Dammit, that man again, it was getting beyond a joke — there was something manic in his glare She clamps on a spasm of panic. Hell, not a nutter, a stalker. He seems to be taking notes or maybe drawing behind a filthy duffle bag. She turns away. Her flesh creeps inside the silky blouse sensing his scrutiny about her clothing, her body. She will give him nothing.

“Di pia caffee, Georgio,” she calls out for relief, “and bring the menu. I’m tired of waiting for this lot.”

“Something fresh for that headache figlia, it will help.”

“Not oysters in Worcester sauce,” she cracks, the self-suggestion again setting her stomach churning.

“Seared fig in honey, melon balls, pikelet. Fig beautiful this time of year. Georgio’s special source. You see little daughter, it will help.”

Crazy being spooked. But now an inkling, some faint professional alarm bell is ringing. Where has she seen that face? An angry flush rises to her cheeks. She is pleased to have some vague handle on him which may serve to unlock and defeat him.

She craves the freshness, the cool balm of it. “Sounds heavenly, Georgio, but be a darling and bring the coffee first.” She produces the dazzling professional smile when under pressure.

But those hostile stares have unnerved her. She glances over obliquely to assess the threat. Only to find him deflated, withdrawn from her as if defeated by Georgio’s presence. Her perceived manic light drained to a dull disconcerted suffering. He continues twiddling but now she sees an absorbed smile. He’s definitely drawing. And he has turned his attention to the elderly couple just settled at the window.

Her turn to stare. She collects herself. Crazy being spooked. But now an inkling, some faint professional alarm bell is ringing. Where has she seen that face? An angry flush rises to her cheeks. She is pleased to have some vague handle on him which may serve to unlock and defeat him. Silly.

She notes the earthy mo, the stray wisps of white hair which he smooths with quick unsettling movements. His creepiness gave her an impression of dishevelment. But he is actually a neat man. Slim and trim. Shirt buttoned-up, no flash chains on grey-chested masculinity, advertising sexual hope. No ostentatious watches, bracelets, chains, badges of the subtle, avaricious populace who once affronted, but whom she now takes for granted. He simply looks after himself. Not unusual out here among this pampered affluence. And now he has struck up a friendly conversation with that couple at the window. Hell, he’s just some harmless old punter escaping his red-brick unit, with its refurbished stairwell. Dozens of those places round here. She just knows there is no wife. She sees these wistful fellows all the time — they siren lonely.

But as if sensing her, his eyes stray to hers and, caught out, he turns red, consuming himself, downcast. Silly old bugger.

Now that she has his measure, she is inclined to be more charitable. He was probably handsome in his day. Arch eyebrows and old bedroom eyes deeply recessed, imbedded in stamps of red and brown.

Her speculation is halted by Manny loping in, owning the room, indifferent. She is relieved, when she should be blasting him for being late. That purposeful sprung step belying the indolence of his shaggy clothing: the creamy summer hat. The tall, rambling insouciance of him, Monsieur Lighthouse — to ordinary citizens an improbable beanpole, an exotic tower.

He stops to talk to that fellow. His jocular self-assurance, the fluid competence of his money. He’d be the same at Buckingham Palace or in a Bangkok cathouse. Settings, ambiance, are meaningless to him. Unimpressed, he carries his own reality, commerce behind everything. Old Mannybags. Here he comes, no idea he is late, tuned only to the business at hand.

“Ethan won’t do the interview without a list of questions. And no close-ups.”

That manner of addressing her, as if were talking to a wife. He utters these un fait acccompli, like a lawyer. He has swooped onto the minimalist chair, his legs a causeway around which the assured waters of his enterprises flow.

“Good morning, Emmanuel,” she hectors in her trained voice, “it’s a social custom — greeting one’s fellows. “Who’s the elderly gent?”

“You’ll save a packet on camera angles.”

“Manny, who were you talking to?”

“Close-ups are out and no live singing.”

“God forbid on the latter, who were you talking to?”

“And no questions about Amie, the whole matter is sub judice.”

“Manny!”

“Felix.”

“Felix who — Felix Unger, Felix the Cat?”

“Hoffman. They say he’s gone funny since his wife died, touch of Alzheimer’s, but he seems alright. He likes your blouse.”

“Indeed. He’s been stripping me naked with his eyes. An expert on blouses, is he?”

“Well, yes, he was a fashion designer with his wife Margaret McConnell. Her real name was Helga.”

“You knew them?”

“My folks did. From the same neck of the woods.”

Yes, yes, Margaret McConnell. She’d considered that piece, but it had never happened. But her radar is sounding, probing the gap.

“There’s something about him, Manny?”

“You tell me. You’re the art buff. ”

Of course, her journo instincts, Felix Hoffman, the artist, hardly a name to the public but an icon in the art world,

“I nearly did a piece on the wife.”

“I told you the Amie matter is sub judice. Do I care who he bashes up?”

“Not Ethan’s wife. Hoffman’s wife.”

“And you can’t say his last album was a flop.”

“It was a bad album. What am I supposed to say?”

“He is appealing to a more discerning audience.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Tell me about the Hoffmans, Manny.”

“Came out as engineers, after the war. Had problems with their qualifications, started a little garment factory in Surry Hills. My folks bought from them. I remember them once, sitting and sewing together, him too, and once, greasy as hell, both doing maintenance on the machines. Place ran like a Swiss watch. And they were telepathic, hardly needed a word between them, and they knew what you wanted.”

“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.

Intimacy, of course, had banished the flashy impresario myth. His boarding school, bullyboy manner passed for flash. His clothes, so ill-chosen they seemed bohemian. Yes, that part was endearing. The fortunate accident of his image. She wouldn’t change that. And if stylish European parents couldn’t teach him dress sense, she wasn’t about to try. It was his little rebellion for that school, for their wanting the best for him.

Mannybags. She didn’t need his dosh, the show had seen to that. She wasn’t after a free ride. It was about the choices he offered: working or not, attending to children, or even trying that life of a writer.

At the Museum of Contemporary Art she’d seen a painting; a pyramid of slimy creatures, all pushing over each other trying to unseat the figure at the top. And the top figure peering down at them with a look of horror and understanding and inevitability. Journo world could find another torchbearer.

Yes, despite the gaps, Manny’s was an attractive offer.

No, there was something lacking. C’mon, you’re thirty somehow, Pixie, no ideal relationship exists. And she’d have a fine arrangement, be a fool to turn it down. People fussed over love. Good careers and sound finances made enduring marriages. Just her cup of tea — a not-quite-boiled cup of tea. God she didn’t want that. Her agitation was growing. Yet cliché of clichés, she’d edit it from any piece, the biological clock was ticking.

…she’d seen a painting; a pyramid of slimy creatures, all pushing over each other trying to unseat the figure at the top. And the top figure peering down at them with a look of horror and understanding and inevitability. Journo world could find another torchbearer.

But could she attach herself to this man engrossed in her newspaper and her food. Nice if he’d noticed the blouse instead of some stranger.

She’d have to be sure. There’d be no changing horses midstream. No confronting the clueless male with the long brewing decision, no mucky arrangements over kids.

Because he expected as a given along with his business deals; a woman, an engagement, a bride, a showbiz wedding — his office would see to that — glitterati, paparazzi. He’d make a speech and tomorrow, business as usual.

And the after-wedding, the marriage, would be an unquestioned dimension into which, no trying, no changing, he would dissipate — into the bosom of his family.

But putting aside the specially chosen pure white dress — let them write their fingers off about that, could she be the bride of expectation, the embodied form of custom? What happiness or self betrayal would exist for her in that first dance? What hollow or fulfilled, desperate or determined person would she be? — the woman in the guise, the gown, a dancing compromise, a whirling absence, a sham? Would something wholly unexpected break from him during those time-honoured steps? Or perhaps she would press his lanky body to her with a ray of fondness. This bloke has a lot going. We’ll give it our best shot.

She puts a bemused finger to her lips, studying those grinding jaws. Would she crack under that energetic absence, or grow used to it? She’d exist in a jack-in-the-beanstalk scenario, flanked by giants, a Mardi Gras of people on stilts. But think what she would save on ladders. “Take down that jar, for mum, sweetheart,” and an ungainly, pimpled giant, product of a lustreless marriage, in the beautiful home, would oblige. Manny world. She grimaces. You’ve got to start white-hot to descend into that, Pixie.

She stares hard. If only she could see him as others did. The tall and charming impresario, and not look beyond, to his torpid flame which hardly fans her fire, to that lack of engagement of mind, to the comfortable, work oriented, low hearth marriage, the harsh imaginings and recriminations of her own insight. Yet if he asked again she was going to say yes. Probably, yes.

“Emmanuel,” she says. “That golden mushy object you are devouring is my pikelet.”

He smiles, his quick blue eyes diverting to the door where David and the crew, trailing laptops, art boards, excuses are finally trailing in. Unbidden, they form about her and Manny. Dependable, cheery David gavels down on the chrome.

“Let’s get this ordering business over.” He’ll bring structure to the morning, despite its casual billing. But the ordering takes an age. She finds herself drumming pointedly on the table and then she is aware of disturbing noises, sounds of distress. She swivels to witness this man Hoffman standing over the elderly couple’s table. He is brandishing these sheets of paper with a startling, stabbing motion. The woman is flinching and the man is embarrassed, grinning. A powerful dread wells in her. Hoffman is insisting with his offering and they are protesting, half on their feet, showing him money. Then a mad bark, which propels their sheepishness to alarm, and he wheels away leaving his unwanted gift. And he is swinging the remaining sheafs wildly, wading through the tables, coming towards her.

The voice, contemptuous and reassuring: he means no harm, though they do not believe him. He has only a present for the beautiful miss and he will be gone.

And she is with and without awareness, locked onto those crazy eyes. She stands, the two men about her puzzled. They aren’t reacting. Then he is reaching across. She flinches; a tiny betraying squeak of terror, her plate breaking distantly on the floor. His bony fingers fiercely clasp her jaw. But there’s no pain, only his ardent grip and the fierce longing in those terrible eyes. “The passing of spirit between one and the next,” the voice echoing foreign. “Do you believe in reincarnation, miss?” Fingers of infinite care now stroking her sleeve. “No accident, not in death, but blessing the living. Margaret,” the whispered love of that, “are you there?” The face contorts to anguish. For God’s sake, where are her men? She takes hold of the arm and firmly withdraws it from her. No menace in it. Only the peculiar recognition of him in her fingers. Manny and David, in reluctant alarm reaching too late to restrain him. The voice, contemptuous and reassuring: he means no harm, though they do not believe him. He has only a present for the beautiful miss and he will be gone. The men’s grip warily loosening and he has twisted free and is pressing the rolled papers fallen to the desk, on her with startling justification. Yet with a quiet triumphal sense. His gift for her that she will love. A last stroking of her blouse. “Never sell this, miss. It was for only you, Margaret.”

And he is turned and he is going out the door, the men harrying him, baying like bloodhounds.

She dimly hears the scandalised cries of her work companions, a calamitous hubbub. Manny and David are in close attendance, commiserating, offering doctors, cursing the madman. “I should have knocked his block off. Idiot — crazy. We can prosecute.” Georgio prancing about, this violation, in his establishment, to his favourite.

But she sees only the terrible and yes, beautiful eyes. Is that you, Margaret, “Do you believe in reincarnation miss?” No, not rationally, but yes, forever Margaret in that look.

And no one but Margaret has donned this special blouse. She is overwhelmed by a deeply defiant sense of ownership. She will be its champion. It wasn’t designed for Manny’s mum or any other customer in the world. It was made only for her, Margaret.

“Pixie, are you alright?” She hears David’s concerned voice coming from inside a well and she knows what it must look like to them.

But she is drawn to those sketches by hypnosis, their integrity. Something emanating beyond depiction. Two women, uncannily similar, yet different; one inscribed, Margaret, one herself. Herself in clarification, not blurred, but in focus. As she wants to be, as she is.

The two women, one invoking the memory of the other, produced in memory, through herself. The achievement sings in her brain. They are not a comparison, but an endorsement.

“C’mon Pix, snap out of it, have some water.”

Something emanating beyond depiction. Two women, uncannily similar, yet different; one inscribed, Margaret, one herself. Herself in clarification, not blurred, but in focus. As she wants to be, as she is.

Yes, the message streaming from the depictions is the same, breaking her heart. She sees two teenagers while storm clouds gather over Europe. Two youngsters pledging to each other in the chaos of war. The devastation on a departing post war ship, their foundations wrenched from beneath them, rubble. Their dubious arrival, down the gangplank, a foreign land. But they never gave up their dream; him painting, her designing. The two mates sewing together, fixing those machines, greasy as hell. The strength of the bonds in the face of all that, their lives. With all her vaunted insight and intuition, she knows the fecundity of their relationship. She knows it. Every now and then there is an exceptional match, a glove that fits.

She gains the room again. She is aware of drinking water from a paper cup administered by Manny’s shaking hand, a cool viscosity dribbling down her neck. And knowing so definitely it is not her jaw that is trembling but the hand that has been proffered. The long, caring sweep of that arm that has passed so close to her mouth, the most intimate moment she has shared with him, and while she’s about it she must send those short stories off to Richard knowing the man who belongs to that arm is a working colleague only from this moment, now and always. And somewhere behind them, David is attempting order, the session shot.

She is aware of the drawings still clenched in her hands and the fierce conviction of her shout, bringing the room to attention. She brandishes the sheafs, waves collectively, points individually realizing in her ardency that she is parodying of the crazy man they have just evicted. “Can anybody, can anybody?” She sees their puzzlement. This is tough old Pix fobbing it off, sending the whole thing up. Here comes the punch-line. Though they don’t quite get it. Or is she coming out of shock, no she’s not been in shock throughout, despite what anyone thinks. And as she slaps the drawings, the words just burst from her.

“Can anybody, can anyone give me this!”

They supply only their blank faces.