Cosmo Cosmolino by Helen Garner

pranced by with the fingers of both hands shoved deep into her uncontrollable hair, fishing out combs and stabbing them into its tangles which now he saw outlined in a fuzzy halo against the light of the doorway she was approaching, the entrance to the central room of the house.
    He followed, sniffing her wake with dread, but it was untainted by perfume: it smelt like wood or glue and he wondered why. He wondered too whether thiswas a car-stripping neighbourhood, whether he should offer to go round the corner to the shop for a couple of pasties, whether he could take a quick look round upstairs by asking to use the toilet, and whether she was the modern angry type of woman—whether he should time his announcement with care, or just open his mouth and blurt it out.
    She bounded in four steps across the central room and out through another door on its opposite side, but he resisted her pace and stopped in the middle of the carpet. Even with his sunglasses on, his eyes began to water and he had to screw up his face. Was this the place? The autumn light in the room was dreadful. It bounced in brutal sheets off a large white table that stood right under the window; shafts of it shot out on sharp angles from the backs of white-painted wooden chairs and swam in the curves of white cups, white plates, a white teapot. What he saw and squinted at was a blinding mirage of spotlessness, and yet for all its blaze the room was grubby. The crockery, shoved into piles, was stained with lipstick and gummy with dregs and crumbs; and the chairbacks showed the grey fingerprints of newspaper readers and chip eaters. On the wall near the kitchen door something dark red had exploded, dripped and hardened. All this he registered not in detail but as a general discomfort, a falseness under what proclaimed order; but he did clearly see that the table itself was pocked and snicked. Nailheadsbroke its surface, and down the length of it ran a deep groove that someone long ago had tried to plug with spackle; where the stuff had dried out and crumbled he saw the thicknesses of white paint that caked the timber.
    He laid his right hand on the left breast pocket of his shirt. The little book was there. It comforted him, and he did not need to open it to find the phrase for this alarming room which, though it pulsated with light to the point where furniture levitated, was only a white-washed tomb, a whited sepulchre.
    â€˜There’s nothing here but bones,’ cried the woman gaily from the kitchen. She appeared in the doorway with a flat dish in her hands, holding it out to him and beaming like a housewife on a label. ‘An old carcass. Do you want to have a pick at it?’
    If only she knew how desperate he was. Not for the food—that he could scrounge anywhere, he was not proud—but for her gesture: the offering, the direct gaze, the smile. Self-pity swarmed through him. He kept his eyes on the dried bones and breathed slowly and evenly. At last he looked up. Maxine saw her own reflection in his lenses: a dish thrust out, behind it a shiny nose, a fading smile, a bush of hair.
    â€˜Is it a bit too awful?’ she said. ‘Sorry.’ In shame she lowered the plate.
    He put out both hands to reassure her.
    â€˜Thank you,’ he said. ‘It will do very nicely.’
    She laid the dish on the white table and they sat down facing each other over its pitiful contents. So extreme was the light that the shrivelled remains of the chicken seemed about to dematerialise in it: the bones bleached as they stared at them.
    â€˜It is awful,’ said Maxine, with sagging shoulders. ‘It’s awful .’
    â€˜Never mind,’ said the man. ‘We’ll manage.’
    He hung his cardigan over the back of his chair, pushed up his cuffs, and seized the bird’s poor ribcage in both hands. With one wrench he parted it.
    â€˜I thought so,’ he said. ‘A little bit of stuffing left inside.’
    Carefully he