The Fat Man in History and Other Stories by Peter Carey

down a little bit. I walked to Pier Street the slow way, nibbling as I went.
    I came through the door ready to face the whole menagerie but they weren’t there, only the hook-nosed lady, arranged in tight brown rags and draped across a chair, her bowed legs dangling, one shoe swinging from her toe.
    She smiled at me, revealing an uneven line of stained and broken teeth.
    “Ah, the famous Lumpy.”
    “My name is Paul.”
    She swung her shoe a little too much. It fell to the floor, revealing her mutant toes in all their glory.
    “Forgive me. Lumpy is a pet name?” She wiggled her toes. “Something private?”
    I ignored her and went to the kitchen to make bait in readiness for my exile on the pier. The damn mince was frozen solid. Carla had tidied it up and put it in the freezer. I dropped it in hot water to thaw it.
    “Your mince is frozen.”
    “Obviously.”
    She patted the chair next to her with a bony hand.
    “Come and sit. We can talk.”
    “About what?” I disconnected the little Mitchell reel from the rod and started oiling it, first taking off the spool and rinsing the sand from it.
    “About life,” she waved her hand airily, taking in the room as if it were the entire solar system. “About … love. What … ever.” Her speech had that curious unsure quality common in those who had taken too many Chances, the words spluttered and trickled from her mouth like water from a kinked and tangled garden hose. “You can’t go until your mince … mince has thawed.” She giggled. “You’re stuck with me.”
    I smiled in spite of myself.
    “I could always use weed and go after the luderick.”
    “But the tide is high and the weed will be … impossible to get. Sit down.” She patted the chair again.
    I brought the reel with me and sat next to her slowly dismantling it and laying the parts on the low table. The mushrooms were beginning to work, coating a smooth creamy layer over the gritty irritations in my mind.
    “You’re upset,” she said. I was surprised to hear concern in her voice. I suppressed a desire to look up and see if her features had changed. Her form upset me as much as the soft rotting faces of the beggars who had been stupid enough to make love with the Fastas. So I screwed the little ratchet back in and wiped it twice with oil.
    “You shouldn’t be upset.”
    I said nothing, feeling warm and absent-minded, experiencing that slight ringing in the ears you get from eating mushrooms on an empty stomach. I put the spool back on and tightened the tension knob. I was running out of things to do that might give me an excuse not to look at her.
    She was close to me. Had she been that close to me when I satdown? In the corner of my eye I could see her gaunt bowed leg, an inch or two from mine. My thick muscled forearm seemed to belong to a different planet, to have been bred for different purposes, to serve sane and sensible ends, to hold children on my knee, to build houses, to fetch and carry the ordinary things of life.
    “You shouldn’t be upset. You don’t have to lose Carla. She loves you. You may find that it is not so bad … making love … with a Hup.” She paused. “You’ve been eating mushrooms, haven’t you?”
    The hand patted my knee. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
    What did she mean? I meant to ask, but forgot I was feeling the hand. I thought of rainbow trout in the clear waters at Dobson’s Creek, their brains humming with creamy music while my magnified white hands rubbed their underbellies, tickling them gently before grabbing them, like stolen jewels, and lifting them triumphant in the sunlight. I smelt the heady smell of wild blackberries and the damp fecund odours of rotting wood and bracken.
    “We don’t forget how to make love when we change.”
    The late afternoon sun streamed through a high window. The room was golden. On Dobson’s Creek there is a shallow run from a deep pool, difficult to work because of overhanging willows, caddis flies