I was down on my luck. I’d called Jen up that morning and asked – nay, begged – if I could hang out at her place for a few days until I got my act together. I didn’t tell her everything, but this time I really was stuffed. My roommates had had a gutful and after a big roundtable discussion it was decided that I was persona non grata. It was about the usual things, not paying my share and running up bills, but it was also about ‘trust’, they said, the sanctimonious bastards. They couldn’t trust me anymore. I packed up, and, not thinking about where I was going to sleep that night, left. I tried a few avenues before Jen without success, and as luck would have it, she and her husband Ralph were going to Melbourne for a week-long conference, so they (or more precisely Ralph) wouldn’t have to suffer my physical presence. I was truly grateful.

It was a pretty cool pad, I had to admit, a warm condo-style apartment in Bondi, not quite overlooking the beach, but nearly. It had sun lights and a bank of panoramic glass doors that kept the place lit and warm all day, even in the depths of a nippy July. The glass doors opened onto what was, for my money, the best feature of the condo: a low-walled patio that Jen had stocked with grevilleas and other native plants. I couldn’t help but picture the Sydney literati there, Jen moving among them with charm and ease, playing the affable host at a party or book launch. Back at uni, I’d been the one with the great future, but it was Jen who’d ended up doing well for herself, as an agent.

I wandered over to the patio, opened the glass doors, and stepped out into the sun. Though I was surrounded by other similar apartment blocks, all with patios, I seemed to be the only one taking the air. It was a beautiful winter’s day. Generally, I’m not given to self-reflection (it too often doubles as self-pity), but as I gazed out at trendy Bondi, I couldn’t help but feel the keen sting of my own Loserdom. How had I got to this point? How had I become a fraction shy of a pitiable couchsurfer? Me, Gus Anderson, of whom there had once been great expectations?

It all came down to one thing: luck.

Jen had said it herself. A year ago, she’d taken me out for dinner to a swanky place in Leichhardt and let me down easy just before dessert. She had said she couldn’t pedal my novel anymore, the novel she’d taken on as yet another favour to me, her loser ex-boyfriend from uni. It was an ‘unlucky time’. The publishers she’d pitched to had ‘just put out very similar books’. (Reading between the lines, I had thought, similar but probably better.) The ‘market was glutted’, ‘in turmoil’ and not really receptive to ‘such a cerebral exploration of modern relationships’. Could I write something more ‘book club’?

I’ve replayed that dinner in my head a thousand times. What if my luck had been different? What if Jen had told me that my novel had been accepted? I could have been a success – not a million-seller, granted, but maybe a prestige author – if only I’d had luck.

If only.

I was interrupted from these musings by a frantic hammering at the door. I considered pretending I wasn’t at home, but the knock was too insistent to ignore. I stubbed out my smoke and wandered back inside.

‘Alright, hold on!’ I called out. ‘Jesus!’

I opened the door and stood staring at a chunky little woman with a wide, attractive face and big green eyes. She wore a lawn-green headscarf that appeared too tight: the hem had left a series of angry red creases streaking like welts across her forehead.

‘You’re here!’ the woman said rapturously. ‘You’re finally here!’

She clasped her hands together and held them close to her ample bosom. An assortment of bangles slid down her forearms and collected in the crooks of her arms.

‘I’m so glad to see you! You simply can’t know how long I’ve been waiting.’

‘I can’t?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You can’t!’

She began a mad search for something in her shoulder bag.

‘Oh where is it? Don’t tell me you’ve been a dodo, Daphne, and left it downstairs. Daphne the dodo, that’s what Frank used to say. Got it! Got it!’

She retrieved a slender book and held it out for me to take. Her round face and wide eyes beamed up at me with the force of a cracked spotlight.

I accepted the book. What choice did I have? As soon as I took it in my hands, Daphne began backing away down the hall.

‘Oh, I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘I thought I could but I can’t!’

She continued to recede, staring at me as though I might at any moment vanish. Before she reached the elevator she quickly waved at me and then disappeared into it, leaving me standing at the door, holding the book, speechless.

I went back inside and battled with Jen’s espresso pumper until it yielded a sludgy ristretto. I stood in the kitchen sipping it, wondering if my day could get any stranger. As the caffeine began to hit, I took my first real look at the book the strange woman had given me.

It was a volume of poetry, called Inferno, and the author was a guy called Andy Gustafson. I’d heard of him, but vaguely. I flipped to the author bio and my eyes rested on the photo there. The thin, almost greasy-looking dark hair, the swollen cheekbones and deep set eyes – not to mention the pasty, pockmarked skin – were, at a glance, remarkably similar to my own. I am not a pretty face, and neither was this Andy fellow, no matter how flattering the light or creative the photographer. Clearly, Daphne had mistaken me for him. As I examined the book, two photo-sized pieces of paper slid out onto the kitchen bench.

They were photos of Daphne. Naughty photos. Selfies, actually. In one, she was in garish red lingerie, her tongue poking out through painted lips, Inferno practically wedged down her cleavage. The other one was … well, especially daring. She was reclined in bed, fixing the viewer with an insatiable stare, a hill of red satin pillows glistening luridly behind her. In one hand she held Inferno, but the other lingered above her lace panties, her fingertips nudging suggestively under the frill. She had written For Your Eyes Only on the backs of the selfies, along with her contact details. She lived in the apartment below Jen’s.

I nearly jumped when my mobile went off.

‘Gus, how are you?’

It was Jen. She’d hardly been gone three hours and already she was calling to check up. I had to give myself a shake before I was ready to talk.

‘You can tell Ralph I haven’t gone berko,’ I said.

She told me all about what was happening in Melbourne. They’d barely touched down and, despite the freezing weather, she and Ralph were having a fabulous time. She did have a bit of a sniffle though, but it would probably go away. She rabbited on, and I listened patiently, waiting for the opportunity to ask her the question I really wanted to ask. Finally, my window of opportunity arrived.

‘Jen,’ I said, trying to sound disinterested, ‘who is that kooky soul that lives downstairs?’

‘Oh, that’d be Daphne.’ Jen sighed. ‘Her husband left her six months ago. It’s hit her pretty hard.’

‘Bit of a cracked egg.’

‘She’s lovely, Gus, really, really lovely. And she loves poetry. Be kind to her, Gus, she deserves it.’

‘Oh, I will,’ I said. ‘I will. I might invite her up for dinner later on, if that’s OK with you.’

‘Sure.’

‘By the way, Jen, are you expecting any other guests? Some poet guy? Daphne mentioned him.’

She paused for a moment and then remembered. ‘Andy Gustafson!’ she said. ‘I almost forgot. But he shouldn’t be staying until next week. He’s coming for the Writers’ Festival.’

‘Daphne seems to have mistaken me for him,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that a hoot?’ I explained about the book, but no way did I tell her about the photos.

We chatted for a while longer. When we were finished, I put my mobile down on the countertop. I stared at it for maybe five seconds.

Then I grabbed it and tapped in Daphne’s number.

. . . .

I don’t get much, if you know what I mean. As I said before, I’m not a looker, and I’m not successful. My only chances are with women I meet at parties who don’t know me or any of my friends or acquaintances and who are blissfully ignorant of my Loserdom. Usually, I’ll pretend to be a writer, and with any luck, they won’t twig to my act until it’s too late. Right or wrong, that’s how I roll.

So it wasn’t really that much of a stretch to invite Daphne up and pretend to be Andy Gustafson. Usually, I just pretend to be a writer; with Daphne, I was pretending to be a specific writer. A little more challenging, granted, and a lot more dishonest; but, as I saw it, this value-added deceit was still well within my bullshit range.

I approached my new role like a real actor. I spent time researching my character, scouring the Net for tidbits that might make my performance more convincing. By dinnertime, I had Andy down – including his somewhat effeminate hand gestures and slight lisp – so that only his mother could tell us apart.

When she came up, I noticed that Daphne had added a cape to her general Blavatsky outfit, and I thought she’d done something unfortunate to her hair. It was a brilliant orange, very short and styled into peaks like sharp little eruptions from a solar surface. I tried not to stare.

Dinner was a breeze. Being Andy, I found it easy to turn on charm that I didn’t know I had. And Daphne was pretty good company, too. Her readiness to laugh made up for her tendency toward bizarre non sequiturs. Whenever the conversation lagged, she would mutter odd words and phrases, such as ‘cummerbund’, as if she were trying to cast a spell. Despite this, we talked mostly about poetry and poets (with Daphne favouring Maya Angelou). The naughty photos lurked unspoken, and thus highly conspicuously, behind every word. It was when dinner came to an end and we were sitting close together on the couch sipping Irish coffees that we suddenly stopped talking. Our eyes met, and the next thing I knew, Daphne and I were pawing at one another like teenagers on a babysitting date. We retired to the bedroom, dropping clothes as we went. While I’m not complaining, the sex was of the sweaty and grunty variety, full of bed-shaking histrionics and porn-movie dialogue (Daphne at one point throwing her head back and exclaiming, ‘Bone me, Andy, bone me, yes, yes, YES!’).

After the third time, I was relieved to start pillow talk.

‘I hope you didn’t think I was too … forward?’ she said, referring to the photos.

‘Nope.’

‘Well, that’s the new me,’ she said, ‘the new Daphne, she goes for it. She knows what men want and she goes for it.’

Then it all came pouring out. She told me the story of how her husband had left her. The upshot of it was that they had grown apart and he’d found someone else.

‘I’m sorry to hear all that,’ I said.

‘Andy, I…’

She cut herself off. Her face clouded over and seemed to split in half, one side battling, Gollum-like, with the other. At one point she shook her head and whispered, ‘No, that’s what the old Daphne would do!’ It was like watching a ventriloquist act that had no dummy.

‘Andy,’ she said, finally, ‘you could help me.’

‘Help you?’ I said, a bit warily. Helping people was not my forte.

‘With your poetry. You could win Frank back for me with a poem. You’re so fortunate to have that talent, Andy. A poet is like … being a Tintoretto of the soul. Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Sure, but…’

‘Do you think you could do that? Could you write a poem so powerful it would bring him back?’

‘Well, Daphne…’

‘You know,’ she said, sitting up, ‘something like you did with Inferno, something deep and swirling, a witch’s incantation of a poem. Deep. Profound. Mysterious. Like love itself, Andy.’

Jesus! I thought to myself.

There was no stopping her now. The words came tumbling out.

‘I could give the poem to Frank, you see, and pretend it was from me. The poem would be full of secret things, powerful things – phrases, images, memories – that only Frank and I would know. I could write those things out and you could toss them into the bubbling cauldron of your imagination. If you could do this Andy I’d be so grateful. There’s no underestimating the power of poetry. I know my plan isn’t strictly…’

She stopped to shrug her shoulders.

‘…strictly…’

She couldn’t seem to find the word.

‘Legit?’ I offered.

‘Legit! Yes, that’s it! It’s not strictly legit.’

Her hand slipped over my penis.

‘But all’s fair in love and war,’ she said, her voice a seductive purr.

‘And poetry,’ I added.

We screwed again. Daphne called out this time for Frank to ‘bone her’, and tears began to stream down her face. I didn’t think they were orgasmic tears. I wondered, between thrusts, if I would ever hear a lover yell, ‘Bone me, Gus’.

I decided that it didn’t really matter and concentrated on the task at hand.

. . . .

The next morning I woke up feeling hungover and leather-mouthed. I hadn’t had a night of such sexual abandon since … well, let’s just say too long. Daphne had worn me out. I went to the kitchen and went mano a mano with the coffee machine again. This time it yielded a tepid non-potable sludge, so I settled for instant. On my way to the couch I spied something lying on the floor. An envelope, slipped under the door.

Daphne, I thought to myself.

I walked over and picked it up. Inside was a letter, written in curly estrogen-fuelled handwriting. It seemed to be a list of disjointed phrases and descriptions, but I had no idea what they meant. Then it hit me: it was Daphne’s list of ‘secret things, powerful things’.

I think I audibly groaned. When I’d agreed to her request I thought it was just one more nutty inspiration that ran through her mind at any given moment. But, judging from the comprehensive list, it appeared that Daphne was serious. I gazed at it, wondering how in hell I was supposed to make poetry out of words like cummerbund, gefilte fish and, amazingly, ichthyosaur? No, I would have to go back and tell her the deal was off. I’d make up something, like I was in the middle of a set of cantos and my focus and creativity simply could not be diverted. Or that I’d simply just reconsidered. She would just have to lump it.

Breaking it off is probably what a sensible person would have done. But like I mentioned before, I don’t get much. Breaking it off would have meant no more fucky-fuck. Daphne was not really a preferred partner, but I wasn’t in a position to choose. Wouldn’t it be easier, I wondered, just to knock a poem up, so I could continue doing the same to Daphne? It would be even easier, now that I was thinking about it, to cheat. I could turn to the Bard, to Keats, to Wordsworth, and for a bit of eastern exoticism, Rumi would be my man. We’d have another bonk session, perhaps two, then I would palm the poem off to her and by the time anyone was the wiser I would be on my not-so-merry way.

This, I decided, was the way forward. A win-win solution: Daphne would get her poem, and I would continue, at least for the next day or so, to get laid.

I set about my task with gusto. I got on the Net and began to lift the best lines from my trusted sources. I chose lesser known works, of course, to crib from, and vanity dictated that I steal from a few of my own poems (yes, I once considered myself a poet, too). By midday I’d finished a first draft and was very pleased with my morning’s fraudulent effort.

Just as I was sitting back and enjoying a well-earned ciggie, the intercom buzzed. I sauntered over to it and pressed the talk button. I expected it to be Daphne, but the voice that came over the system was halting and a bit shy.

‘Oh … uh … hi, I’m Andy. Andy Gustafson?’

. . . .

I couldn’t believe my lousy luck.

There I was, performing to the height of my abilities as a counterfeit poet, and the real author just had to come along and ruin it.

‘Did Jen tell you I was coming?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, speaking into the intercom. ‘But not ‘til next week.’

‘Oh. Well. I…’

I buzzed him in. I had no choice. I didn’t want him standing down there at the entrance where Daphne might see him. While he was coming up, I checked my phone. Sure enough, there was a message from Jen. There’d been a change of plans and Andy had to arrive in Sydney early. Her tone of voice sounded relieved that I would no longer be the sole custodian of her home. I paced about the living room, wondering how on earth I was going to tell him about Daphne. A moment or so later Andy knocked on the door.

I opened it and stood face-to-face with the man I had been impersonating. I’d done him justice – too much, in fact. My Andy had presence, charm and even a lady-killing charisma. The man who stood in front of me was a weedy little ponytailed twerp, puffed up in a battered North Face jacket, hiking boots and cargo pants. With his Trotskyish glasses and goatee, there was a whiff of the lefty socialist about him, but mostly he emitted a dull carbon tax activist, David Suzuki, vibe. When I offered coffee he asked if I had any roasted dandelion.

‘Some what?’ I said.

‘Roasted dandelion,’ he said, peeling off his jacket. ‘It’s a coffee substitute.’

‘Bet it’s shit,’ I said, and made him a decaf instead.

For me, I made a double strength ristretto. I figured that I would need the fuel. I went to the patio and gave him his mug of neutered joe. He raised his fine little hands and took the mug from me very graciously, nodding his head with appreciation. He sipped it and smiled and looked as content as if I had fed him a three-course meal.

‘Just the way I like it, Gus,’ he said. ‘You’re a master.’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘It’s only decaf.’

His Weary Traveller act irked me; he’d only come from Brisbane, for fuck’s sake, not the Himalayas. His presence really put me out. I glared at him as he shared a story in a quiet lisping voice about a party Jen had thrown here on the patio where she’d spilt red wine all over Peter Carey’s trousers. I told him a few mild tales from our uni days. When the conversation slowed, I said that I’d read Inferno.

‘Oh,’ he said, in mock horror, covering his mouth with his hands. ‘That. What can I say? It was my first collection. Pretty try-hard stuff.’

‘I’ll say. More of a sausage sizzle than an inferno.’

If he was offended, he didn’t show it.

‘It was the best I could do at the time,’ he said through a smile.

‘You know, Andy, I’m a poet as well.’

‘Are you?’ he said brightly, sitting up, like a schoolboy getting pudding for dessert.

I hadn’t really written any poetry for years, but I told him about my work. To my surprise, he seemed genuinely interested.

‘You’ll have to let me read some, Gus,’ he said. ‘Sounds like great stuff. Have you tried to publish any of it?’

I shifted in my seat and told him my tale of woe. I described one more time that soul-crushing dinner with Jen.

Andy shook his head. ‘Bad luck, mate.’

I was tired of playing nice.

‘Funny you should mention luck, Andy,’ I said, ‘I have this theory.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘The only difference between a published and unpublished author is luck.’

‘Luck is important,’ he admitted, wagging his head.

‘No, Andy, it’s not just important. It’s the only difference.’

‘What about talent?’

‘Talent is subjective, and again, it’s luck.’

He pursed his lips.

‘I don’t know … talent is luck, but only to an extent. But what someone lacks in talent, or luck, one can make up in hard work. That’s what I believe.’

Suddenly I was inspired.

‘Care to put my theory to the test?’

‘What do you mean?’ he said. He seemed a little irritated now, which pleased me.

I told him about Daphne. I didn’t feel squirmy or sheepish; in fact you might say that I revelled in what I saw as my own slyness. I didn’t think Andy shared that interpretation.

‘Jesus,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Unfortunately, no.’

‘You pretended to be me, so you could sleep with a woman?’

‘Correct.’

He shook his head in disbelief. ‘That’s appalling.’

I took a long drag on my ciggie and let the smoke out through my nose in thin grey streams. I wanted him to think, This bloke’s a bad-ass. He probably wasn’t aware of it, but there was just the tiniest hint of uncertainty, even fear, in his eyes.

‘You’re telling me you wouldn’t have slept with her? That you’d knock back a sure thing like that?’

‘That isn’t the point.’

‘Got a girlfriend?’

‘No, but…’

‘I rest my case. Now, this is what I really wanted to tell you.’

I told him about the poem Daphne wanted me, or really, him, to write.

Andy was horrified. ‘That’s an offence against poetry. A terrible abuse.’ He seemed at a loss for words. ‘I can’t even begin to say how … even if the husband came back to her it would be based on a deception. It couldn’t last. I would never have agreed to use poetry like that, Gus.’

‘You would if she’d been stroking your dick at the time,’ I said. I realised then that Daphne had been manipulating me as much – maybe even more – than I had her. ‘You’re like me, mate. You’re no Lord Byron. You don’t get much. So you take it whenever it comes.’

This was too much for Andy.

‘Look, Gus, I’ve got a lot of work to do,’ he said, plunking his decaf down and rising from the table. ‘I’m giving a talk on landscape poetry at the festival. I’d better get something prepared. Thanks for the coffee.’

‘Do you want to see the poem you wrote for her this morning?’

He lingered over the table, and I handed him the poem.

‘It’s weird,’ he said once he’d read it. ‘What’s all this stuff about ichthyosaurs?’

I explained about Daphne’s list.

‘It’s not bad, I guess,’ he said.

‘You could do better?’

‘I really don’t know, Gus.’ He handed the poem back. ‘Like I said I’ve got work to do.’

I was in danger of losing him.

‘I’ve had a bolt, Andy. We could each write a poem to give to Daphne. I’ll say that I came up with two but couldn’t decide which was better. The choice could be hers. What do you say?’

‘What do I say? I say, why on earth would you want to do that?’

‘To test my theory, of course. If Daphne chooses mine, it proves what I’m saying about luck and being published. If she chooses yours, it shows I’m full of shit.’

Andy’s expression told me that my being full of shit was never really in question, but he didn’t say it. He just shook his head.

‘Sorry, Gus. I can’t be a party to this. Poetry – creativity – is a sacred thing. It shouldn’t be used for impure or dishonest purposes. I’m sorry but I can’t help you. And I’ve got plenty of work to do.’

He went off to unpack his things and left me standing on the patio.

. . . .

I lingered there, reviewing the situation. I was quite impressed with my performance. Though it hadn’t snagged an agreement from Andy, it had revealed at least one useful thing: like all writers, Andy was vain. What really irked him was not that I’d impersonated him to sleep with Daphne, but that I, acting as Andy Gustafson the poet, was going to write her a poem. That was what really got to him. My evidence? When I showed him the poem I’d cribbed, he gave me a look that said, You can pretend to be me, dickhead, but you can’t pretend to be the real poet.

Pure writerly vanity.

This was the angle to exploit. I just needed a pretext to engage with the enemy. I decided to bring him a bit of lunch. I worked diligently preparing sandwiches and more coffee, humming away to myself. I was relishing what the near future held in store. When I was ready, I had a bracing smoke, stubbed out my ciggie, and knocked on Andy’s door.

‘Room service!’

The door opened. Andy looked at the tray I was carrying.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

He tried to take the tray from me, but I squeezed past him and placed it on the bedside table. In the corner was an old-fashioned roll top desk. Andy’s laptop was fired up on it.

‘Doing some writing?’ I asked.

‘Like I said, Gus, I have a lot of work to do.’ He stood by the door, waiting to usher me out, but I wasn’t ready to go. Next to his laptop was a picture in a frame, a photo of Andy as a teenager.

‘You have a picture of yourself on your desk?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘For inspiration.’

‘Just yourself. Nobody else?’

Again, he nodded.

‘Dude,’ I said, ‘that’s fucked.’

He drew a deep breath. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’

‘You’re right there, I don’t.’

‘If you must know, I keep it as a reminder of a promise I made to myself.’

He walked over to the desk, sat down and picked up the photo. He seemed to consider for a moment, and then, in an against my better judgment tone of voice, he launched into a story that might have been called Portrait of the Artist as a Sulky Teenager. On a miserable school trip to the Blue Mountains, he had promised himself to become a writer.

‘Before me was the green sweep of forest around the Sisters. I couldn’t see them; they were shrouded in early morning mist. And I said to myself, I’m going to be a writer. I actually said it out loud. When I did, the mist suddenly cleared, and the Sisters were revealed in all their natural beauty. Gus, I was stunned. I couldn’t explain how I felt. Some kind of mysterious power thrummed through me, as if I’d become a conduit, or a vessel of some kind…’

Yada yada yada. When he’d finished, I said, ‘Very impressive, young Skywalker’ and made a wheezing noise like Darth Vader.

A beat or two of stunned silence followed.

Struggling to keep his voice even, he said, ‘I was going to suggest that we work on the poem together, Gus, but clearly that’s not possible. I think you should leave now.’

He raised an arm and pointed to the door. I stayed where I was. He swiveled huffily round in his chair.

‘I checked your poem out, by the way. You plagiarised.’

‘So?’

‘Well, that’s not right!’ He whirled around again. ‘Don’t you have any standards?’

‘Come on, Andy,’ I said. ‘It’s your reputation you’re worried about. If that’s what really bothers you, just write one of your own.’

He raised his eyes to mine. ‘You too, Gus. You can’t test your theory with a plagiarised poem.’

He had me there. Clearly it had been a mistake to show it to him.

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Daphne could choose from three poems. A cribbed one, one from you and one from me.’

Andy sighed. He must have regretted ever setting foot in Jen’s apartment.

‘So it’s on?’ I asked, holding out my hand to shake on it.

He turned his back on me again.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

As I turned to leave, I said, ‘Why not a picture of the Sisters, then, instead of yourself?’

He didn’t answer.

. . . .

If this were a movie, I would now be writing the montage sequence in which the hero – Rocky, for example – would engage in extensive, inspirational training. He would be shot in a kitchen drinking raw eggs for breakfast, and then for the coup de grâce, the man of the people would be shot running through the streets of Philadelphia cheered on by his blue collar peers.

I really can’t do anything comparable. For one thing it’s not clear who the hero of this story is. It probably isn’t me. Just as well – my training routine of ciggies and coffee, though effective for me, personally, wouldn’t make great cinema. We wrote. We ate. We made sure our paths did not cross.

Oh, Daphne and I had another bonk session. I suppose I should mention that.

But really, that’s all that happened.

The good stuff started the next morning when it was time to hand the poems over. I knocked on Andy’s door and told him his time was up. He came out and handed over his poem.

I read it quickly, greedily, a grin spreading slowly over my face as I read. I glanced at him. He was seething.

‘Dude … it sucks. Your poem sucks!’

Still looking at him, I said, ‘And you know it. You know it’s crap!’

He said nothing, just kept glaring at me, but his throat worked up and down like a short-circuited elevator.

‘It’s not my best,’ he said, finally. His voice was stiff, on the verge of petulant. ‘It’s not pure,’ he mumbled. ‘I should never have…’

He walked away and locked himself in his room.

I was pretty chuffed. The way I saw it, I was finally on the verge of erasing the memory of that painful dinner with Jen. And, surprisingly, it’d felt good to be back on the literary saddle. I hadn’t written for more than a year but when I sat down to do it, muscle memory must have kicked in because the words flowed easily. I was really keen to get Daphne’s response.

She’d arranged for us to meet at a café rather than her place. I arrived first and took a seat at a table. While I waited for her to show, I laid the poems out before me and read them over. The upbeat feeling I’d had vanished. Andy’s poem might have smelt strongly of the poetic dunghill, but I’d been so carried away with my own cleverness that I couldn’t see how bad my own poem was. By the time Daphne bustled into the café, I was feeling less than sure about the whole venture. I watched her flirt with one of the skinny-panted coffee-jerkers. I thought about nicking off and forgetting the whole ordeal, but she spotted me, trudged over and swung into her seat. She gazed expectantly up at me.

Now call me old-fashioned, but after the amount of intimacy we’d had together, I expected at least a peck on the cheek upon arrival. But no. Today, Daphne was all business. When she saw that there were three poems, she cocked a penciled eyebrow at me.

‘You inspired me,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders. ‘What can I say?’

‘Oh Andy,’ she said, ‘these are wonderful, wonderful things.’

She gazed at the poems as if they were holy relics or precious gems. Then she clasped her hands together as if she were about to start praying or give thanks and began to read the poems.

Out loud.

All I could do was wince. If I’d suspected they were bad before, Daphne giving them voice confirmed it. Their total lack of sonority and grace could not be hidden.

But Daphne didn’t seem to mind.

‘Andy, they’re … I don’t know what to say…’ she said when she’d finished reading them. ‘They’re wonderful! Absolutely…’

She’d covered her entire face with her hands now, peeking out at me from between her fingers.

‘You like them?’ I asked, incredulous.

She nodded.

‘Well,’ I said, trying to hide my surprise, ‘there’s a catch. You can choose only one poem.’

I wasn’t sure how Daphne would respond to this, but she took it in stride. She nodded her head as if my request made all the sense in the world. I thought that I’d gotten away with it but her face suddenly darkened.

‘What if I choose the wrong one, one that won’t bring Frank back? What then?’

Her lips began to quake, but then she righted herself.

‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘that’s the old Daphne talking. Poetry is about feeling, about the senses. I’ll know which one is the right one. I’ll just know.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ I said.

‘Do I have to decide now, Andy?’

‘Well…’

‘Oh,’ she said, suddenly excited, bangles jangling, ‘I’d really love to read them in my Reading Corner.’

‘Your what?’

She explained that at that precise moment, her apartment was being surveyed by a Feng Shui practitioner to determine the ‘optimal location for creative receptivity’.

‘It’s probably the dunny,’ I said.

She threw back her head and laughed. ‘I think it’s the alcove. It both receives and traps. Wherever it is, I’ll call it my Reading Corner. I’ll just have to read your poems there.’

There was nothing I could say.

‘As long as you let me know which poem you choose. That’s important.’

She nodded, then turned, leant over and, in classic Daphne fashion, began ferreting about in her bag. I watched her fumbling hands and realised that, despite myself, I was developing a fondness for her. The café was one of those ultra-modern affairs with all the charm of a steel cube, but her presence, her dippy Daphne-quality, warmed and gave life to the place – even to the soulless electronica that beeped out of the sound system. It was a joy to watch her bring out a little pink notebook from her bag. It must have been scented, because the air suddenly smelt flowery. She took the poems one by one and filed them carefully into the notebook. I found myself smiling at her. It may have been the only genuine smile I’d had for quite a while.

I leant across the table and tried to touch her hand, but she took hers away.

‘Andy,’ she said, ‘we have to talk.’

I stared at her. Her tone said it all. I’d been through this so many times before that I could have completed her words for her. If she said, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’, I think I might have screamed.

‘I don’t think it’s right, Andy…’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Well, it’s only cheap, meaningless sex.’

‘I don’t mind. Really, I don’t.’

‘It’s beneath us, Andy. I’m sorry that I … tempted you.’

Even while pretending to be a poet, a real published poet, I was getting dumped. Daphne explained that the Feng Shui guy would be waiting for her.

‘And let me tell you,’ she said, ‘he isn’t cheap!’

She gave me a quick peck on the cheek.

‘So you’re just going to take the poems and go?’ I finally said.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Andy.’

That was fine.

Except that tomorrow never really came.

When I got back to the apartment, I found my bags packed and waiting for me at the door. Jen and Ralph had come back early from their trip. That sniffle she’d picked up had developed into a raging flu. She lay on the couch, blasting into a tissue and clutching a hot water bottle. Andy was there too. As soon as I came in the door, I could tell from their faces and the tension in the air that Andy must have had an attack of conscience and confessed everything.

‘Gus, how could you?’ Jen said, through a blocked nose.

She went on for quite a while. I stayed to listen. The thought went through my mind that this was indeed a low point. No one said anything else. Jen’s obvious disappointment and disdain for me said all that needed to be said.

I was turfed out of the apartment – the second in a week – and probably out of Jen’s life. A bridge that had been smoldering for a long time was now fully and irrevocably burnt.

. . . .

You’re undoubtedly thinking: so that’s it? That’s all? I came all this way to have Gus cop out with an unresolved ending? And not even a good one, at that? Going back to the Rocky analogy, it would be like the movie ending before you found out who won the big bout.

Well, if it’s any consolation to you, that’s exactly how I felt. I’d put a lot of work into the caper with Daphne, and there had been no resolution about my theory of luck and publishing. Believe me, it ate me up.

But a resolution did happen, and it happened by chance, or, you might say, luck.

About a month after my indecent exposure, I was wandering through Glebe. I ducked into Sappho Books and spotted Daphne at a table at the back, her nose in a book. She seemed to have ditched the Cross My Palm With Silver look in favour of jeans and a jumper, but she was definitely still Daphne. She reclined with her short legs stretched out in front of her and she held the book high up on her bosom only inches from her face. She was totally engrossed in what she was reading. In fact there was such an air of perfect contentment about her that I didn’t want to disturb her. But I had to find out which poem she’d chosen. A little bit tense, I walked over and greeted her.

The first thing she said was, ‘How could you?’

‘Well…’

I saw in her eyes what I had done. I had genuinely hurt her, and I felt worse about it than I did about hurting Jen. Something – a knife in my guts – seemed to twist inside me. I was about to explain myself, to go through the whole sorry mess of what I had done and beg forgiveness, when she said, ‘Just bugger off like that? Without a word? Without a note?’ She was on the verge of tears but she fought them back. ‘Did you have writing commitments?’

‘Writing commitments?’

It dawned on me. They hadn’t told her. For some reason, they hadn’t told her. She still thought I was Andy the poet.

‘Anyway, I wanted to thank you.’

‘Thank me? Why?’

‘For inspiring me.’ She smiled.

‘Sorry?’ I said, totally flummoxed.

And out it came.

‘You know the poems you gave me? Well, I just wasn’t happy with any of them. Then I had an idea. Daphne, I said to myself, why don’t you write your own poem? Why don’t you be your own Tintoretto of the soul? So I did. I sat in my Reading Corner all day, writing and drinking green tea. When I was done I read all the poems over again. I decided that mine was the best.’

She was positively beaming now. In the span of four short weeks Daphne seemed to have become an entirely different person. No capes, no bangles, no headscarves. Her hair was still short and spiky but it was in what I assumed to be her natural colour, a lovely chestnut brown. I hoped that she would let it grow.

‘So I wanted to thank you. Without meeting you, Andy, I don’t know if I ever would have written that poem.’

‘So, did you give it to … what was his name?’

‘Frank?’

I nodded.

‘Fuck Frank,’ she spat, startling me. ‘I can’t explain it, Andy, but once I’d finished writing the poem, I felt so certain, so sure. I was happy. Happy writing and happy being by myself. I’m going off my meds, slowly, and I’m going to get a dog, maybe a Pomeranian. I think I’ll be fine. Better than ever!’

‘That’s great, Daphne,’ I said, ‘that’s really great.’ I actually meant it.

We chatted for a while, but I never succeeded in finding out which poem she liked best.

‘They were all much of a muchness, Andy, I’m afraid,’ was all she would say.

I believe that we parted as friends.

When I got home, I scribbled down the following note:

Dear Andy

Daphne chose my poem.

Just wanted you to know.

Your mate

Gus

I posted it to him, c/o Jen. I don’t know if he ever received it.

Why didn’t they tell Daphne about what I’d done? I don’t really know – probably because she seemed to have turned a corner and they didn’t want to risk upsetting her. It’s nice to know that maybe some good has come out of all this.

As for me, the above letter would attest that perhaps I’m not greatly changed by the whole experience. I’m still living in flats with sanctimonious roommates. But for what it’s worth, I’m writing again and feeling pretty good.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll have better luck this time.

THE END