Free Make Me Rich by Peter Corris

that.”
    For her, that was a commitment. I felt I could presume just a little. “You’ll see it. What’re you going to do today?”
    â€œGoing out—lunch.”
    â€œWhat’s a good time to ring you?”
    â€œNo special time. I’m busy being free. Why don’t you give me your number? Let impulse rule.”
    I wrote the number down for her, and she let me out of the flat and the building. I could feel myself smiling again as I walked down the sunny street.
    I took a good look along Greenknowe Avenue and around a few corners before I approached my car. It was after 10 a.m. and the parking ticket was fluttering on the windscreen. There was no one watching the car that I could see. I drove to St. Peter’s Lane and left the car where it costs me ten bucks a week to park rather than twenty-five a night, and went up to my office. I was still smiling and even whistling—something that gives pleasure to no one but me—as I climbed the stairs.
    No water view here, no high ceilings with plaster roses and soft, off-white paint. The office has cream-coloured walls which are trying to turn green of their own accord, and a ceiling so stained and dirty it looks as if it could once have been the floor. The filing cabinet has a typewriter sitting on it with a cover to keep the dust out; nothing keeps the dust off the windows or the desk top. You have to pay for a view and plaster roses and clean paint—the dust is free.
    I wrote out a cheque for the parking ticket, put it in the envelope provided, and felt virtuous. I entered the fine in anotebook under “expenses” and felt businesslike. There weren’t many entries under “expenses,” and I couldn’t decide whether to feel economical about that or non-industrious. I took the spare electric razor from the desk drawer and went down the hall to shave and clean up. A quick wash and mouth rinse, and I was ready to add something to the expense list.
    I sat in my swivel chair that has given up swivelling, put my Italian shoes up on the desk and thought about Helen Broadway. I wanted to ask her what part of Sydney she’d grown up in, and what she’d been doing on 11 November 1975. I wanted to know if she played tennis and if she’d read
The Great Gatsby.
I wanted to know what she liked to eat besides toast and drink besides coffee and scotch. But right now Paul Guthrie was paying and I’d have to wait until I was on my own time.
    Primo Tomasetti, the tattooist who rents me my carparking space, has a darkroom in his place of business. If walls could speak, those of his darkroom would tell Z-rated stories. I walked into the tattoo shop, held up the film cassette from the miniature camera and Primo nodded. He was working on the very large forearm of a biker who was watching the work, with his lips moving. The needle buzzed like a tormented bee.
    â€œWhat’s that, Primo?”
    He kept his dark head with its wild, uncombable curls bent over the arm. He looked up to a sheet of grubby paper with typing on it and then back to the job. His white coat was spotless as always, he wore Italian shoes too but his were pointed.
    â€œRules of his club, Cliff.”
    The biker glowered at me and pushed back his thick, greasy hair with his free hand.
    â€œGood idea,” I said. “What’s the first article?”
    Primo looked up enquiringly at the customer who gavehim a sullen nod and me a look of hostility mixed with suspicion. But he was pleased with what was happening, and it made him half-civil.
    Primo tested his handiwork by reading directly from the skin: “No member shall use a machine of under 1500cc.”
    â€œThat lets me out,” I said. “Everything set up in the darkroom?”
    The camera uses a standard 15 mm film, and processing these days is child’s play even to the technically handicapped like me. I did the things you do with the solutions and pegs and fixative and