Novel - The Ozone Café, Land for Sale

Land For Sale

After two weeks of swimming, fishing, and cruising Satara Bay; Vincenzo wanting to visit every inlet, wooden jetty, foothill and quaint shop, the two men take a Sunday snooze on the front veranda. Vincenzo loves being close to the water, with a view to paddle boats, canoes, children wading, patting mud-cakes, and weekenders lolling about in the sun. Renato’s house sits snugly along the Esplanade. In the encircling the bay to the left and facing the water is Bill Sanderson’s general store, the Esplanade Hotel and beer-garden, and community hall with roller skating and dancing. To the right, and heading out to the point, are the Tea-trees, soft sand dunes road-edged in lantana. In the late afternoon when the tide is low and deplete, fishermen can be seen pumping and squelching blood worms into hessian sacks.
The two brothers have one more weekend before Renato will head back to the city, enough time for a new building project to start in Bondi. He is anxious and tense, often calling someone with his back turned to Vincenzo. On the first day in his holiday cottage, Vincenzo had mentioned how nice it would be to have Cattania visit. But he was met with a loud resounding, Per favore, non parlare! In other words, Please shut up! Vincenzo would not mention her again, the lampara having flashed.

Vincenzo’s voice is lazy, sipping red wine. 'I don’t think I’m gonna find a delicatessen for sale, Renato?'

'It takes time. We look again tomorrow in Bruce Kerr’s Real Estate. Some business premises will come up for sale and if not now, he will ring us later in Sydney.'

'I’m not so sure I wanna go back to Curl Curl. And I don’t like the main street of town much. What I want is a shop here on the Esplanade. You imagine that house up there on the corner next to the hotel being my premises. You would get all the hungry drinkers, families on their way home from the beach, kids maybe buying Gelati or sweets, or some such things.'

'There’s an old lady in there and her son. Maybe we could talk to her.'

'Ah, too much trouble,' says Vincenzo. 'I wait. I am a patient man. Right now, I have another wine and watch the sunset.'

'Tomorrow, we look for some land. I build you a nice house here. You seem to be settled, my brother. Like I said before, you and Pomadina are welcome to stay here. Maybe pay for the electricity, and of course it would make me very happy to know that my crisp lawn is getting watered.'

Vincenzo, having surrendered himself to the beauty of the bay, quickly makes up his mind. 'Yes, yes. I am very grateful for the chance, Renato.' He is only too pleased to think about staying for good, fishing off the jetty, catching a ferry to Rock Island for oysters, or having a beer at day's end, the familiar globe setting over Star Point. Besides, he wanted to be away from Renato’s stinging tone for a while. And then come to think of it, Cattania was of no consequence to him. To meddle in his brother’s affairs now would be very bad karma.

'Karma sutra,' he repeats, trying to raise his body from its lateral position. 'What a brother.'

'What?'

Both men laugh. 'You are pissed,' says Renato, as a glass rolls, as his rickety banana lounge folds in on Vincenzo’s collapsed handshake.

* * *

On his early morning walk with Pomadina, Vincenzo decides to inspect the length of esplanade. He has a strong feeling there must be something nearby, and if not close to Renato’s house, then a suitable property near the ocean beach or in the opposite direction around Oyster Bay. In their early hunting for land and houses in Renato’s car, Vincenzo found that his brother was too brisk with the inspections, that he had to follow Renato’s every whim, every direction, even his misconceptions. His brother was oblivious to what Vincenzo really wanted. And he himself hadn’t made his shoes walk the back streets to discover the many "For Sale" signs.

Crossing over Bream Street, he notices a strange odour coming from the property across from the general store. He lets Pomadina off to waddle and sniff along its low brick wall. Vincenzo finds it strange that the smell has now turned from a pungent smell to something like orange puke. He whistles to Pomadina as they venture beyond the side gate where gutters and eaves hang as if hit by a tornado. The cottage, made of fibro and weatherboard, and camouflaged in front by thick overgrown hibiscus, is in total decay. He walks around the back, finding a small orchard of citrus trees, a yard of dead oranges, an old copper, a metal bucket housing putrid seawater and a flywire door halved on the back step. He peers through the back veranda’s louvres. Nothing, just fungus and damp rooms. He twists a door knob and the door falls in backwards, the outer casing of the frame remaining while the rest splinters to the floor.

'This I could not live in,' Vincenzo says to Pomadina. 'Borers. And maybe something else.'

He crunches in. Old floor boards seesawing as he painstakingly guides his shoes along a tightrope of exposed floor girders.

Writing Suspense

Class of 31st October 2008
Recently I conducted a class on writing suspense. We looked at various genres, summising that most suspense was familiar to us when it came to TV crime series such as Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple, CSI, Law & Order, and Murphy's Law. We considered suspense in novels, writers like Agatha Christie, E.M. Forster & Nancy Price, to name a few. It was also interesting during class to listen to a member's short story (first published in indigo #2 & on Radio National, Nov 2008). Our writer's short story was full of suspense. Only one thing was wrong, and it was really a shame, the ABC had decided to cut the best "suspense" paragraphs. Nevertheless, we enjoyed her story Crossing and soon discovered that our writer had included all of the following techniques, in building tension, increasing suspense & also revealing an "ever-increasing peril" in the crossing of her shore-to-island story.
1. The moment-by-moment technique - slipping in emotions, no matter how sublte, for a short period of time (1-2 mins) during which the tension or suspense is at a heightened level. You write every emotion, every thought, every sensation (heart stopping panic, prickling skin, sweaty hands, smells or sounds that the character could possibly hear during that time.
2. The slow-mo - slowing down time from the main character's point of view. It is a kind of slowing down the action, as if the main protagonist is moving underwater. In slow-mo you describe everything that the main character sees, hears, smells in this type of pacing. This should arise at the moment of high tension or suspense, and should be used sparingly - no more than once or twice in an entire book/ short story.
3. A third technique is a mixture of both of the above. You slow down the pace of a certain scene, by weaving in sights, sounds, smells, or recurring scary thoughts in the main character's head. A short line or two in between the scary parts draws out the tension, contrasts the creepy with the normal, giving a scene a moment of surrealism.

Novel - The Ozone Café, Train to Satara Bay

Train to Satara Bay

They travel to the Sunrise Coast by train. Rennie wants to show Vincenzo the beautiful countryside and the way for future trips. He knows that if his brother is familiar with the journey, buses to Satara Bay, he can commute on his own, taking little Pomadina with him.

Vincenzo has bought a summer suit for the occasion and he has also packed a beach towel and bathing costume. He is excited by the fact that Rennie has his own holiday house and motor boat for fishing. Vincenzo is a little jealous of his brother’s wealth; a large house in Curl Curl on a hill, with views to the ocean. A double deck, like a peaked cap on the house, overlooks a swimming pool and an undercroft garage containing his work truck and two cars. Rennie has given him the whole second storey where he sleeps, relaxes, feeds Pomadina, and plays billiards on the largest pool table he had ever seen. Vincenzo is also astounded that his brother’s first wife up and left, just as he was making it big in Australia. He knows there is something strange going on with a woman up the street, but after the first blow-up with his brother, he won't say anything anymore. He’s hoping in time Rennie will spill the Bertolli beans, perhaps when he’s good and ready. When he talks to Maria on the telephone, they both worry about poor Cattania; a child from their village as an exchange wife, and never heard of since.

On the train everything passes quickly, each station showing of blur of faces as they plough through, then a ten minute stop at a river junction before heading directly north.

‘See that fellow,’ says Rennie, pointing towards the window. ‘He’s selling oysters. We get some for lunch.’

Vincenzo pops his head out of the carriage window, and watches the man’s hands extend into the train, while at the same time passengers reach for the slim creamy bottles. The briny air and tang of fishing makes Vincenzo think of home. He could always smell the sea from his rooftop retreat. When he worked in his shop all day, all he could smell was glue and leather. So with the lulling sounds of the clickety-clack, he falls into a deep reverie imagining his own cottage and anchored boat offshore.

‘Another half-hour, says Rennie, ‘and we are there. The bus will take us along Sandy Bay Road, and then two streets down near the water is my bungalow.’

Suddenly a thrust on the rails sends the train rattling through a very long and dark tunnel. Vincenzo makes a mental note that the encircling smoke will give him enough reason to buy a car he noticed in Manly. He hopes next time they might drive along the Pacific Highway, with the fresh mountain air not blocking his sinuses.