They walked back to the tram stop on Melville Rd. The sun was no longer visible, but its bleached-yellow glare still permeated the bottom third of the pale blue sky. Soon it would begin to set.

"Your dad's a professor?" Fraser cocked an eye.

"Yeah. English Lit. So is my mum."

"So that's why you're so good at English."

"They don't actually talk about their work that often, you know."

"My mum's a real estate agent," Fraser said.

"Lorraine Sinclair, Sinclair and Horton?"

"How do you know?"

"My parents used to have a whole bunch of real estate brochures lying around. I used to read them for fun. Your mum's name came up quite a bit." Titus gestured at the house they were just passing. "Solid double-fronted brick veneer. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms. Master bedroom with built-in robes and ensuite. Fully renovated kitchen with stainless steel Smeg appliances. Spacious living room with fireplace. Large backyard with laneway access and garden shed. Yours for the low, low price of... just joking, you can't afford it."

"You used to read them for fun?" There was a note of confusion in Fraser's voice.

Titus felt the rush of blood to his cheeks. "Yes." The panic subsided as quickly as it had came.

"What are we even looking for?" Fraser kicked a crumpled drink can lying on the footpath into a thicket of weeds. "The script of the musical? What's it even about?"

"It's about a private detective called Sam Deacon who lives in New York, and his misadventures. That's what it said on that page we found." Titus' eyes tracked a sparrow as it flitted across the street. At the very corner of his peripheral vision, a white Volkswagen Golf with red P-plates parallel-parked. "I just want proof that it really happened."

"So what's the big deal about it?"

"We'll have to ask that Michaelis guy. We'll have to pay a visit to his bookshop."

"Where was it again?"

"It's just across the road from North Richmond Station. You might have even seen it before on your way home, if you were sitting on the left-hand side of the train."

"We can go tomorrow after school. I've got nothing on."

"You know, you don't have to do this." Titus suddenly seemed to be extremely interested in a clump of lemon verbena poking out of a front picket fence. "I still don't get it."

"What don't you get?"

"Why you insist on coming with me. We barely even know each other."

Fraser suddenly felt the urge to put his arm around his new sidekick. He did so. Titus did not resist. "I don't know how to explain it. You're just so different from everyone else."

Titus digested this in silence. The answers that other people gave never seemed to quite match up to the questions he had in mind, or the answers he had imagined that they would give. He changed the subject. "You're getting off at Moreland Road and catching the 510 bus, right?"

"Yeah. I guess." They had reached Melville Road. The tram stop was on the other side of the road, a patch of concrete on the nature strip adorned by a wooden bench and a pole, dwarfed by the red-brick mass of St Joseph's Catholic Church behind it. Fraser pressed the button for the pedestrian light.

"I'm getting off there too." Titus stared straight ahead.

"Are you catching the bus as well?" Fraser's face brightened at the thought of spending a little more time.

Titus shook his head. "No. I'm walking."

"How far?"

"Just a short walk. Five minutes, maybe. I've never counted."

"I'll come with you, then. I don't have to be home until late. Unless your parents-"

"No, not at all." Titus was looking out at an indeterminate point on the horizon once more. He realised that It had been a long time since any of his other mates had expressed interest in his parents. "They're not even home, anyway. I think they both said they were giving lectures."

"Well that's perfect! You can take me on a tour. You can show me your cat. Assuming that you have a cat."

"I don't have a cat. One of the neighbours' cats drops in now and then, though. Maybe he'll be there." Titus tried to recall if there was anything particularly embarrassing at home, but he could only think of the elated look Fraser had just given him, the light in his eyes.

"So we're going to your house?"

"I guess so."

"Yes!" Fraser punched the air.

The light turned green. They crossed. A single-armed pantograph appeared on the shimmering horizon, followed by the blocky silhouette of a tram.

*** 

The house was a relatively nondescript double-fronted brick affair, essentially the average house of the inner northern suburbs. The front garden was well kept and there was a neat little postbox on the edge of the front brick wall.

Titus scanned the wooden fence at the edge of the driveway first. "Sometimes the neighbours leave us lemons," He explained. "They've got a tree in the backyard."

The front porch was cluttered with potted plants. Titus produced a key and they went in. It smelled faintly of incense.

His bedroom was the first door to the right, with a window that overlooked the front yard. Apart from the unmade bed and cluttered desk, it was threadbare. No TV. No games console. Just a full bookcase next to the desk. The only thing stuck to the wall was a reading light above the bed.

But somehow it suited him. Fraser could clearly imagine Titus sitting on the bed, nose stuck in a book.

Then he noticed the paper, the abundance of it. There were piles and piles of looseleaf paper, stacked on the desk, on the floor, even jammed into the bookshelf.

Titus, standing next to him, seemed acutely uncomfortable that there was someone else in his room. "I know it's messy enough as it is. If I fill it up with any more stuff it's going to be completely unmanageable. My mum complains enough as it is. If I had full rein this place would be like one of those hoarder's houses."

"You should see my room." Fraser gingerly pulled one of the sheets from its pile. There were layers and layers of intricately detailed doodles of the same kind he had seen in his exercise books, stacked almost on top of each other, as if he was trying to use as much of the surface area of the paper as physically possible. In some places the pencil had been drawn over in pen. "You're really talented."

"Thanks." Titus blushed. "I mean, my drawing style hasn't really evolved since Year 7, but I guess it's good enough."

"Why the looseleaf?"

"I don't like sketchbooks."

"Why?"

"You have to adjust yourself to the sketchbook. You're not just drawing on that page. You're also drawing on all the other pages under that. And the page shifts under your pencil, and you have to worry about leaving marks on the page below it. And then you turn a page and the thickness changes and you have to recalibrate all of your senses. It's much easier if you have a single sheet of paper on the table every time. Then it's the same every time. Long story cut short, they encourage- how should I say it- a certain type of drawing. I don't like being forced to draw a certain way."

So why do you still have sketchbooks?" Fraser pointed to a stack of spiral-bound volumes sitting in a corner.

"Well, I had to pass art class."

"Why don't you do VCE art? You'd be good."

Titus replied with another question. "Well, why don't you do cross-country as a winter sport?"

"But you'd be so good at it. You'd be so much better than everyone I know who's doing Art this year."

"I know that. They tried to talk me into it. But I just didn't want to do it. Also, I can't stand all that art theory stuff. Justifying your artwork. That just sounds like complete gibberish to me. I can't do that stuff. Two years of that would drive me insane."

"So what do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

Fraser noticed a framed portrait on the desk. He picked it up. "Was that you when you were little?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Year 6. My mum insists I keep it there."

"You literally haven't aged."

Titus gestured at one of the piles of paper. "Well, there's probably a hideous self-portrait in there somewhere." He looked at Fraser. "I'm going to get a glass of water. You want anything?"

"I'm fine."

Once Titus had left, Fraser turned his attention to the bookcase. There was the usual stuff. The Hunger Games. Roald Dahl. Artemis Fowl. Two Weeks With The Queen. A bunch of Scandinavian noir stuff that he kind of recognised from his mum's bookcase in the living room. Bryce Courtenay. Alice Munro. Henning Mankell. Peter Temple. Margie Orford. Other names that he hadn't heard of before. An awful lot of the books seemed to be detective novels.There was also a surprising number of Babysitters' Club entries. A whole row of National Geographics. All five volumes of something called A History Of Commonwealth Engineering.

I take it you're a fan of Wallander." he said, when Titus returned from the kitchen.

"You know about Wallander?"

"My mum used to watch the TV show."

"Oh. The English one. They had to change a lot of things, you know, to fit the TV series format. For example, in the books he always drives a Peugeot. Every couple of years he goes to the dealership and trades it in for a new one. It's a small detail, but an important one in establishing his character. And they just changed it to a Volvo in the TV series. Because we all know that the audience will forget it's set in Sweden if the main character isn't driving a Volvo. I mean, for maximum geographical accuracy, they should have had him driving a Scania truck."

He wondered if he'd lost Fraser, but he seemed to be following along just fine. "I've got all the books. Except for the second one. The Dogs of Riga. He goes to Latvia and there he meets his girlfriend, who is a political dissident, I think. The reviews are a bit mixed. Apparently it's not very realistic. Henning Mankell always had this tendency to just write about whatever interested him, even if he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Still, I want to read it."

"Why do you like Wallander so much?"

"I don't know. I just relate to him. He's a lonely guy who feels he's somehow out of place in modern society."

Fraser continued to riffle through the bookshelf. He pulled out a copy of Infinite Jest, covered in odd reddish stains. "What happened here?"

"Ah. I bought that as a novelty doorstop at a garage sale. It was meant to resemble a brick. Then I accidentally dropped it one day and it cracked and I realised that it was actually a book that someone had covered over in fibreglass."

There was a loud noise coming from the back of the house. It sounded like a bird of some kind. It had been going on, low level, for some time, but only now was it getting strident enough to not be ignored. Fraser had initially assumed it had come from an adjoining property.

Titus perked up at the sound. "Ah, shit. I need to let them out." He made for the door.

"Let who out?"

"The chooks." Fraser followed him through a hallway, through a kitchen and a cozy-looking living room, through the back door to the backyard, onto a well-kept lawn with a Hills Hoist in the middle. To one side there was a large veggie patch slathered in pumpkin vines, on the other a tin shed and a chicken coop.

Titus was already opening up the coop. A white hen popped out, closely followed by a black hen. The black hen appeared to be wearing a pompom on its head. They made for the nearest patch of bare earth and started scratching away with gusto.

Fraser looked behind him, at the back of the house. His friends' houses all had a verandah, or a deck, or some kind of entertainment area that the back door opened onto. He'd never seen a house where the house just ended, with only a concrete step bridging the back door to the yard.

He looked back at the chickens. The black one pointed its beak in his direction He realised there were two beady black eyes under the pompom, glaring straight at him.

"Can I stroke her?" Fraser looked expectantly at Titus.

"Which one?"

"The one that's like a pompom with a beak."

"A goth pompom with a beak," Titus corrected. "Everything on her is black, you know. Their skin is black. Even their bones are black."

"Is that a yes?"

"She'll have to let you."

"Will she?"

"I don't know. She's a free spirit. She does her own thing." Titus beckoned at the silkie. "Hey. Come here."

She looked at him for a moment, then broke free from her friend and darted over. She let Titus scoop her up, regarding Fraser warily from her new position under Titus' arm.

Titus gestured for Fraser to come. He stroked her back, feeling the fine, downy feathers. It was almost like a very soft coat of fur.

"She's so soft," Fraser, said, captivated. "How do you clean them? Do you give them a bath?"

Titus gently dropped the hen on the ground. She shook herself out, then ran back to her sidekick. "No. They have dirt baths." He pointed towards a patch of dry earth under a camellia tree, not far from the compost heap.

Fraser sat down on the grass. He felt like he could stay here forever, next to Titus, watching the chooks roam around the yard. He looked up at the darkening sky.

After a while, Titus herded the chickens back into their coop. Fraser left not long after, having suddenly remembered he had a biology test the next day.

Titus watched him walk down the street from his bedroom window. He breathed in. His room smelt different now. He couldn't decide whether he liked or disliked the smell. He wondered if his mum would notice.