Spray Painted Bananas

Chapter 8

Come on Amber, look like you’re enthralled by it. You’re a journalist working for The Art Review... if that is a real magazine. It doesn’t matter. Look intelligent, come on.

In front of me on a beech shelf, which looks suspiciously like Ikea, is a white bowl. Inside it is a pallid little egg and a bright green avocado.

I know that avocado. It’s the kind that’s always on offer in corner shops, the kind of avocado that never ever ripens. I once left one out in the sun and still it didn’t soften. When I finally split it open to see if it was filled with cement I found it had turned black. There was never an in between stage where you could eat it.

I bet its rock hard now. And that egg, I bet it’s not even free range.

Is that what I’d write in my review?

A young woman in a tiny red kimono dress and towering wedges bursts out laughing and makes me jump. I steal a look and catch her friends showering her with adoring smiles. Montague comes up behind her and puts a possessive arm around her waist. A photographer snaps at them and she poses as if she’s used to the fuss. Montague surveys the room and I try to get his attention but he seems to look through me. When he starts nibbling on his girlfriend’s ear, I turn around, feeling awkward.

It’s strange how alone you can feel in a room packed with people. I look at my watch. It’s seven o’ clock. If I go now I’ll have plenty of time to catch Farrell’s reading.

Elliott is still deep in discussion with an older man in a light grey suit who is leaning to one side as if propped up by an imaginary wall. Elliott catches my eye suddenly and my smile feels more like a grimace. He waves a finger at me, a sign he’ll be free in one minute. I feel a flush of pleasure. There’s still time. We can make contact, maybe arrange a proper date and then I’ll say I’ve got to go.

A man in purple spandex leggings and a floaty shirt covered in tigers sidles up beside me. His girlfriend is half his height and is swamped in a baggy Vintage Mickey Mouse t-shirt that looks so tired my Mum would have ripped it up to make dusters.

I shoot them a tentative smile and then move on to the next... to the next what? How do you describe a suspended, stapled carrot? Is it an installation? A sculpture?

‘It’s so symbolic,’ the man says in a nasal voice, about the bowl of one avocado and one egg.

‘Mmm totally.’

‘There’s like, all these, like, couples that are so utterly different and like, can co-exist in such a small space...’

‘Mmm... you mean like metaphysical space?’ The Mickey Mouse girl says.

I can sense the man stiffen. ‘No, I mean physical space.’

I bite my lip to stop myself laughing. If only Farrell was here, he would’ve loved that one.

‘There are like over 7 billion people in the world, Sylvia, there's not a lot of space left.’

I hover in front of the carrot, hoping 'tiger shirt' will enlighten me to its meaning. But someone else gets there first.

‘Fucking shit isn’t it?’ a voice says in my ear.

The voice belongs to a young man with waxy black hair who is standing beside me with his hands in his pocket looking amused. He’s wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark jeans.

‘Well I didn’t want to say anything.’

He laughs and offers me his hand.

‘Matt Costa,’ he says, and then with a roll of his eyes. ‘Art reviewer.’