Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven Page B

that I could only interpret as arousal but in the weeks I’ve known her I’ve never heard her display in utterance. To feel she is human now is a lie, I must be with who she is. I feel her mind crackle on mine as our foreheads touch, I feel what is between her eyes. We lie down on the bed and she takes off my boots. Her hands are my body temperature. We embrace each other, cradle the warmth between us.
    Her shoulder connects, her arm loops into mine. I feel the weight of my own arousal, the humming in my breast. She doesn’t tire, her breathing remains steady. In the dark of the room, her shadow enclosed into mine, she could be anything.
    While we rest I contemplate telling her this is my first time in quite a while. To try and explain the reason why my knees shook, why there were tears of confusion on my face. I struggle to get the words out and wait for her reply.
    ‘Everything is new for me,’ she says. ‘I am renewal.’
    Surprised by her response, I look at her.
    ‘I was made to adapt,’ she says.
    ‘Adapt? Can you adapt to love?’
    ‘I already have,’ she says. She shows me her flowers, one on each fingertip of her right hand. Red, with a bit of yellow. No more than a millimetre.
    I’ve had bosses like him before. Authorial, edgy, say what they think without worrying about criticism.
    I’ve mostly stayed out of their way.
    Milligan doesn’t micro-manage me, but there is an expectancy that I go to see him every day, smile and say hello, and nod politely while he rants about the budget and reports. Milligan tells me some nasty truths about the Gov, and the more switched-on I become, the more I am uncomfortable. I realise how naive I was before coming here.
    When he talks about the sandplants he sometimes refers to them as ‘weeds’: ‘How you handling the weeds?’ he says.
    I don’t say much.
    ‘One week, you got left. You can go home if you’re pussy.’
    ‘Excuse me?’ I say.
    He laughs.
    I walked down George Street today. There was some big protest going on outside parliament house. Lots of Murris around. Stupidly, I looked for my uncle in the crowd. I got closer and stood in the background, watching the group of protesters move back and forth like chess pieces, not getting too close to the police watching from the bays.
    There were whole families and an even mix of men and women. Mostly in black T-shirts.
    One sign facing me said, The cultural displacement continues!
    I looked up at the windows of the tall building. President Sparkle wouldn’t be here, she was never here. She would be in Sydney or on the other side of the world. So why were these people here now? Then I realised that today was the date. By an online ‘enrolment’, Aboriginal people could sign up to live on Australia2. The government would decide whether the individuals met the Confirmation criteria, and assign them a block of land.
    It had come up so many times in the office, but I was used to hearing it from the other end, the guvvie buzzwords and contractions.
    What I was feeling from the crowd was so … raw that I felt my shoulders pull together and my stomach drop.
    As much as the government thought they did, as much as Sparkle thought they did, these people didn’t want to live in this new ‘country’. They didn’t want Australia2. I wanted to go up to them, introduce myself, feel their feeling. Tell them I’m Murri, too, even though I don’t really look it.
    I did end up talking to someone, a man who reminded me of my uncle, though he would be a decade younger.
    ‘You’re Marvin’s daughter, aren’t you?’ he said, coming alongside my shoulder.
    ‘Yes, how do you know?’ I said.
    ‘I used to know your dad quite well, and he would bring you along to barbecues and things.’ He changed his stance to greet me. ‘I’m Hugo.’
    Hugh Ngo. The artist. He must have seen my half-look of recognition because he said, ‘Your dad and I, and your uncles and a few others, we were all at Yarapi for a while. Your dad