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Australians of 2596 be able to enjoy their heritage if your sticky fingerprints have eaten it all away?’
    ‘Let ’em make their own,’ said Janey, still staring out, eating a spoonful of froth. Her lipstick had worn away in the middle, showing the rawer pink of her lips, glistening more lively than the dark-painted rim. It felt rude to look at it; Chloe fixed on Janey’s eyes instead, but the paint wasn’t perfect there, either, and she could see Janey’s eyes naked beneath it, the stream of her thoughts, the brush and twitch of her lashes as the eyes moved along the docks, into the sky.
    ‘When is that woman coming with our cakes?’ Chloe said, as an excuse to look away.
    ‘Person,’ said Janey automatically.
    ‘She
was
a woman, though!’
    ‘They might
send
a man, though.’
    ‘What’s this, anticipatory non-sexism?’
    ‘You got it.’ Janey grinned and sipped experimentally. Then she looked around the coffee shop for the first time, balefully, licking froth from her nude lips. ‘None of these people are
artists
.’
    ‘Artists can’t afford to do morning tea. They have to stay in their studios and slave away while the light’s good.’
    The light was feeble, wintry. Janey’s stirring hand looked sculpted. Chloe could identify at least seven levels of light, shade and reflected light among the fingers, and down the cushioned outer side of it to the wrist. They changed, flitted away, affixed themselves in different ways to different things as if
they
were the living things—like Peter Pan’s shadow—not the objects, bodies, movements that interrupted the light.
    ‘I’ve got it too,’ she said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘An attack of artist’s eyes.’ Chloe stared as if mesmerised at the spoon cavity in Janey’s foam.
    ‘Don’t worry.’ Janey patted her hand. ‘It’ll go away, in time.’

    It was Sunday at Chloe’s place, with all Joy and Dane’s friends, and Janey and Isaac. Chloe sat between her mother and Joy’s old friend Carl, her attention drifting as they dissected people from their past she didn’t know.
    She heard Isaac getting passionate at the far end of the table. ‘… I mean, you build people these little Toytown apartments to live in, and they’ll start having
play lives
. Tack on all the tack, all the latticed balconies, the cute little bargeboards, the roof ornaments—and the lives inside will start
fitting into
these prettified boxes. You live in that kind of space, you end up thinking that’s the only space you deserve. And it’s bad for the people outside, too. When these things stop being eyesores and start being invisible because they’re so familiar, I think everyone should start to worry about what’s happening to us inside, to our eyes, to our minds. Why accept it
now
, when we didn’t accept it when it first went up? We saw
then
that it was wrong and ugly, and it’s
still
wrong and ugly. I think we should go on wincing.’
    ‘Maintain the wince,’ said Maurice, reaching for his wineglass. He nudged Jube next to him, who was talking to Dane. ‘Did you hear that, Jube? Isaac says we should
keep
letting our morning walks be spoiled every time we pass “Ashdene” and “Bellamy Towers”.’
    ‘He does?’ Jube looked mystified.
    ‘You should,’ said Isaac. ‘For the good of humankind.’
    Maurice smiled benevolently at him. ‘For our collective consciousness’s sake. Very well, I shall.’
    ‘Bingo—another convert,’ said Nick, who was stretched out behind them in a lounge chair.
    ‘Nick’s still holding out on me,’ Isaac explained to Maurice. ‘I’m nearly there, but the lure of the quick buck is pretty strong.’
    ‘Just as a means of supporting those few fantastic touch-earth-lightly-type commissions, if you know what I mean,’ said Nick.
    ‘But if we only do the kind of work we can stand to do, that we feel
should
be done, we’ll have a clear profile, we’ll get a reputation, and more of that work’ll come our way.’
    ‘… do you,