A Small Free Kiss in the Dark Read Free Page A

he’d been in a fight and they’d kicked him out. It wasn’t as if I was the reason he’d left.
    When he found out I had trouble sleeping, Billy taught me about visualisation . He said it was a useful technique to use when you found yourself in difficult circumstances . Turns out, visualisation is what I do when I’m making pictures. I imagine things in my head and draw them, except I can’t imagine my mother’s face. When I’m trying to go to sleep, I like to picture some place I’ve been to in real life, or something that’s really happened to me. Billy said it’s okay to do that or you can make something up if you want to, like being on a tropical island. The thing I like to visualise best of all, especially when it’s cold, happened one hot night when I drew the wedding birds.
    It was on the Friday before pension day, almost three months after Billy and I met. Billy had no money and I was nearly out of chalk, so we pinched six packets from the Reject Shop. When we found out they were all white, I had the idea about seagulls. I wanted to draw a gigantic flock of them on the footpath outside St Mary’s Cathedral. There were always weddings there on Saturdays, and I wanted to make it look like my chalk birds were eating the rice that people threw at the bride and groom. Billy says throwing rice is supposed to bring good luck but I don’t know why, unless the people getting married haven’t got anything to eat.
    We stayed up till two o’clock in the morning. Billy kept a lookout in case the police came while I was drawing. I don’t think the police like art being done on footpaths. I was nearly finished. I used the last bit of my black to give the birds their shadows, and I had a stub of red left to draw legs on the ones that were standing in the gutter. Then I heard the footpath-sweeping machine. It came out of a laneway one block up, did a left-hand turn and was whizzing down our side of the street. Billy and me disappeared ourselves into the shadows beside the church.
    All the sweepers had a sign on them that said: ‘Caution, slow moving vehicle’. During the day that was true, but at night-time the drivers cut loose. I thought this one was going to run over my seagulls for sure, but he didn’t. He stopped and got out and squatted on the heels of his boots to take a closer look. Billy stepped out then and I heard the driver say, ‘They’re bloody unreal, mate. No kidding, I half expected ’em to fly away when I got close!’
    Billy turned around and signalled with his head and I knew it was okay to come out.
    ‘This is Skip,’ he said. He never called me ‘kid’ any more. ‘Skip drew the birds. He’s going to be a famous artist one day.’
    ‘Another Leonardo, mate?’ the driver said.
    ‘Could be,’ answered Billy, nodding.
    ‘Archimedes,’ said the driver, sticking out his hand, ‘Call me Archie.’
    He and Billy shook hands and then they sat down on the seat outside St Mary’s. Archie took a cigarette from behind his ear like he was a magician and he and Billy shared it as if they were old friends.
    They talked about my picture for a while and then Archie said, ‘I reckon my old man could’ve been an artist, except he was a mollydooker. Back in them days the teachers used to give kids the cuts for drawing or writing with their left hand. So me old man gave up drawing. But later on, when he got crook and couldn’t work, he used to design stuff for a bloke who does tattoos. This is one of his.’
    Archie lifted up his high-visibility shirt and pointed to a tattoo of a leopard. It was really beautiful, even though it had tufts of black chest hair growing out of its back. When Archie flexed his muscles it looked like the leopard was going to leap off his chest.
    After that, he and Billy talked about pigeon poo on public buildings and the Grand Prix, which is a car race, while I finished off my wedding birds. I wondered if Archie was a racing car driver in his spare time because of the