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.
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