Repeat After Me

Chapter 6

Asten messaged me. My heart did a little pivot on tiptoe. 'Wanna make the most of this lockdown situation and paint the town red?'

'Sure,' I typed back. 'How about Friday?'

'Midnight. Flinders Street Station.'

I was worried that the police would be patrolling the streets. We were now in stage 3 restrictions and the only valid reasons to leave home were shopping for essential items, medical or caring for someone, exercise, work or study. Apparently the police were dishing out $1600 fines for non-compliance. My city had become a police state. I rehearsed in my head what we could say if we got picked up – that we were working on an art project for school. This was a study trip into the city.

When I got to the station, though, there was hardly anyone around, except a few homeless people in sleeping bags, sitting against the wall on Flinders Street.

'How'd you get here?' Asten asked.

'I walked.'

'Aren't you scared walking on your own?'

'I'm a big girl.'

'How cool is this?' Asten said, holding his hands up in the air. 'Have you ever seen the city so empty? Could you even have imagined this? It's like we're in a post apocalyptic movie. Melbourne has literally come to a standstill.'

'It's crazy,' I said.

'It's like we're in a global sickbay and waiting for the wake up call,' Asten said, excitedly. 'My job is screwed. We've all been sent home. But now I get to work on my art all day. I can't pay any of the bills, but who cares, yeah? I've got time finally.'

'What do you do?'

'I work at a printing company. But we do work for entertainment and hospitality mainly, so all our clients have shut up shop. So we're not getting any work. It'll bounce back though. So I'm enjoying this temporary holiday.'

'Shall we go?' I asked, looking around. This was exactly the type of place cops would be looking for people. There were hardly any cars on the road. I'd counted maybe five since I'd arrived. We crossed Flinders Street and started walking down Swanston Street. Usually on a Friday night it would be full of people – girls in midriff tops self-cuddling, guys talking at the top of their voices. But all the stores were closed, winter leaves were piled against the locked doors. It was sad and depressing and I was confronted with how much the world had changed in just a matter of weeks.

'What are you painting with?' I asked, noticing that Asten didn't have a backpack.

'Oh ...' he looked down uncertainly. 'I have stickers tonight. Have I shown you these?' He pulled out a bundle of stickers from his back pocket. 'It's my series called "Cliché". I stick these on anything that's too mainstream, predictable or reeks of bad taste.' He showed me one of the stickers – it had the word "Cliché" overlaid on a melting ice cream cone.

'Let's go down here,' I said, taking Asten down a laneway near Chinatown.

He stood around quietly keeping an eye out, while I sprayed dandelion stencils. I was almost able to forget he was there. I sprayed dandelions in different positions down the laneway. Sometimes I saw Asten from the corner of my eye putting one of his stickers up over a band poster or a window. But mostly I saw him watching out for me.

Once I'd finished, I wiped the stencil with a paper towel and put it away in my backpack. Asten came up and stroked the back of my neck and whispered 'Nice work, Ivy.' My heart pricked me with a feeling so sweet my teeth might decay.

We walked back past Federation Square. The forecourt was deserted. The TV screen played a repeat message 'STAY AT HOME, STAYING APART KEEPS US TOGETHER'. We sat on a bench by the Yarra River. The Melbourne Cricket Ground lights were off – it felt like someone had dimmed the whole city.

'What do you do at the printing company?' I asked.

'I'm a print technician ... nothing fancy. We print mostly brochures, menus, we do the Comedy Festival guide, that kind of thing. It's pretty unskilled stuff. But when no one is looking, I can print out those stickers and things, so it's been kinda good.'

'That's cool.'

'It's noisy. The sound of the machinery is relentless. It can do your head in.' He paused and looked around. 'This silence right now is bliss. We're in the middle of the city and how quiet is it?' I tuned in to the quiet hum of the city in lockdown, where noise dwelled rather than yapped.

Asten rested his head on my shoulder and we sat like that for a long time. I wondered if he was going to try to kiss me. Five minutes went by, maybe ten. Soon, I was liking him more because he hadn't tried to kiss me, because if he were to kiss me right then, I'd want to put a 'cliché' sticker on it. I felt that when he did kiss me, it would take me by surprise. It will be a sudden, unexpected moment. My lips tingled, forecasting our first kiss, a radical assemblage of expectation building.