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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 25, No. 6. 1962.

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As the introductory guitar chords struck he winced perceptibly. Strange how four bars of a particular combination of notes could affect one so much. What was it called? Mexico, that's right, Mexico. Hard to remember the names of these tunes that have no words to them. You associate tunes with people and places and incidents. but never words.

He turned as if to choose a table but instead he placed one arm up against the jukebox and leaned unsteadily on it. His breath clouded the curved glass panel and he patterned in the mist a triangular shape. Beak of a bird. The bird that flew so high above his comrades he lost his sense of direction and died on the wing searching for them. Lucas drew a sharp, thumb sized line through the beak. Shot down with its own arrow. He giggled foolishly.

The record had finished so Lucas put another sixpence in. He would play it until he had nothing left. If he could only burn the tune into his brain he might then be able to carry her around in his mind constantly. There would be no need to keep making these short, futile calls to visit her for a few minutes at every music box in town.

A rueful smile flickered on his lips as he contrasted the brightly snapping orchestration with his own body, in a state of semicollapse, draped around the chesthigh case. He had to absorb every chord, every harmony, into the million drugged tissues of his body.

But he no longer cared about any of that. He was happy because he could recall her clicking fingers and twisting slacks of that Saturday (or was it Sunday) morning some months ago. She probably had not known then or even now that this was how she would be remembered. She had given herself to the tune and danced a few careless steps on the carpet floor of the living room in her flat. She would not remember though. The tune had meant nothing more to her than a passing pleasure or the approach of another afternoon in her life.

And he had given her a cup of coffee in bed while the sun was rising and later they had .talked of good and evil and foothpath saints.

"It's good to see you again," she had said and he replied: "Good to see you, too." But the phrasing was a formality for both of them. She was as mentally tense as he was physically exhausted. But in the early Autumn of her eyes there was present for an instant the understanding that reflected some of the former intimacies of their relationship.

"Forgive her, Father, she knows me not."

Later they talked of trivial matters from opposite sofas while the streets outside cried their teething troubles to the world.

And when they parted, her lips formed a gesture, not a kiss.

Lucas nodded his head in time to the raucous beat of the tune. He covered his forehead and saw her again before him, her quiet sympathy enveloping him in a womb warmth. He felt through the cheap glass panel the rhythmic pulse of her palm on his, and the artificial sensation belonged to him alone. He felt his consciousness slowly ebbing, a riptide that was quickening in pace, as the current at the mouth of an estuary, and sweeping him away to an unreturnable depth. His mind struggled for coherent thought but tile words formed were like the numbers recited under the early stages of a nitrous-oxide anaesthetic. They split and shattered flashes of silver upon his senses, their meaning destroyed before he could grasp hold of them, each successive phrase double the eternity of the preceding one.

Lucas cursed desperately as his arm slipped, rapping his head sharply against the machine. Almost stumbling, he righted himself and swung viciously at the jukebox. The record had finished.

He knew he could not pay any more into it but he needed to hear the tune once again. He hammered harder still upon the transparent shield that was between him and the tune; the tune that was her's and was his. He had to release her from the prison of his own mind where she was ensnared and where she had ensnared him. Trembling with the sobbing self pity of a neglected child, he punched violently at the glass.

As it shattered, the gentle tinkling soothed him, and from his hand the slow crimson stain crept furtively amongst the fragments.

He smiled: he had freed her.

"Thank God the police took him away, Rose."

"Why?"

"Well, see for yourself You saw what he did."

"I saw what he did."

"Is that all you've got to say: 'I saw what he did'?"

"That's all."

"What a nasty type he turned out to be. It just shows you, doesn't it, Rose?"

"It just shows you."

"You're not really listening to what I'm saying, are you?"

"No."

"I can't make you out, sometimes, Rose, honestly I can't."

"It just shows you."

"Rose, you're laughing at me."

"I'm laughing — but not at you or anyone in particular."

"You're laughing at him?"

"No."

"I'll never serve him if he comes in here again. You saw what he did."

"I saw what he did"

"Rose?"

"What now."

"What was that tune he was playing?"

"Mexico—something like that. Does it matter?"

"No—I don't suppose it does really. I mean, when you come to think of it."

"When you come to think of it."

"Will I close the doors now Rose?"

"Close the doors."