The True Story of Butterfish by Nick Earls

precise, an original circa 1978 Space Invaders console, refurbished and in full working order, sitting there low and sleek and black with its red knob and glass top. The perfect antidote for overthinking or boredom, or the times when every sound seemed like a big mistake.
    â€˜What? Who are Space Invaders and what space are they invading?’
    â€˜Don’t do this.’
    â€˜Ha,’ she said, and smirked, looking down at the smudgy surface and, yes, coffee rings. ‘I was just kidding. Maybe. It’s a toy from the twentieth century, right?’
    If I had come back to Brisbane to stop being a rockstar, Annaliese was determined to get me there as quickly as possible. I wanted to be much cooler than the ageing flabby man I felt I was at that moment, the gormless stack of a creature showing the young girl his old grubby toy.
    â€˜I think I’m missing all those people I used to pay to give me self-esteem.’
    â€˜I’m sure it’s a good toy, Curtis,’ she said, without a hint of esteem-support in her tone. ‘Hey, in the language of your time, I dig you, man. I dig you like a fossil.’
    â€˜That’s so not my time.’ Fossil. Excellent. Dig you, man. Also excellent.
    â€˜Fifties, eighties, whatever – it’s all history.’
    â€˜You can’t say that. There’s a generation difference. You can’t just dismiss it as being all the same.’ But she could, and she had. ‘The fifties is my father, and he was this old high-panted guy who didn’t think there had been any real music since the war. By which he would have meant World War Two.’
    â€˜Every guy over thirty looks high-panted to me.’ Dismissed again. ‘So, can I hear something?’ She was looking towards the Mac and the keyboard.
    â€˜Yeah, good idea. It’d be nice to have a chance to show you this isn’t just the junk room.’
    â€˜Well, yeah. I guess you didn’t know that you’d be having a visitor.’
    Behind her and through the window, I could see Kate step into the gap between the bushes at the back of their house. She had a pool scoop in her hands and was lifting out leaves. Annaliese followed my eyes, and turned to see her mother.
    â€˜Okay,’ I said, filling a space in the conversation before it seemed like a space.
    I wasn’t sure if I saw her smiling before she looked down at the keyboard and said, ‘So show me. Show me how it all works.’
    I thought of her, in that same gap between the bushes the day before. And now here in her midriff top and her short skirt. I wanted to open the window and call out to Kate, let her know Annaliese was here for the studio tour. I was sweating. The airconditioning was blowing cold air at my head, but the room was still full of trapped heat.
    I woke up the Mac and the track I’d been working on was sitting there, laid out on the screen.
    â€˜Wow,’ Annaliese said, as if my job had turned real in that instant.
    I opened a new file, and set up master, midi and two audio tracks. I fed the keyboards in through the M box and assumed that a few bars of something I could work with would just find their way to my fingers. Annaliese was beside me, close by my right shoulder. Her eyes were on my hands, which were sitting neutrally on the keys. Her own hands were held as if they were ready to follow any move I made.
    â€˜Actually, why don’t you?’ I pushed the chair back from the keyboard. ‘Why don’t you play something and then I’ll do some work on it?’ I stood up.
    â€˜What?’ The self-assured Annaliese of the fossil remark was momentarily absent and she seemed, for just a second, fragile. ‘All right. All right, I will. I’ll give it a try.’ She sat, manoeuvred herself in the chair, touched the keyboard with the tips of the fingers of her right hand. ‘Anything?’
    â€˜Anything. Just let me get it started.’ I reached for