Luna tunes
Luna Tunes is an Artist from Narrm/Melbourne. They have always been a drawer, but now they also do painting, design, video, animation, and lots of other stuff.
‘My art is many many things to me, but probably/definitely something else to you. To me, my art is memories, it’s day dreams. Little things I’ve seen or swam into my brain. It’s meditation. It’s time and space. It’s science. It’s little spirits. It’s ideas. It’s moments. It records. It’s feelings. Collected items in a pocket. Lots of other stuff ~ all hopefully balanced together in some way that seems just right in my gut.’
CONTENT NOTE
Rebekah Roma’s ‘Apartamento’ makes mention of housing insecurity, abuse, and animal abuse.
She notices the pain first. A sharp indication that the shortbread cookie Lottie is eating is too sweet—a throbbing in her back molar, causing her to rinse her mouth and spit into the sink of the open house. Pastel sprinkles line the bottom of the basin, which, she notices now, is discoloured with rust and grime. Not a dealbreaker, she thinks, as she runs the tap that only squeaks a little.
Ellen comes over to her then, preceded by the discordant jangle of her charm bracelet, as though led by sisterly intuition to the scene of Lottie’s shame. Ellen announces her displeasure at the quality of the house, and Lottie glares at her. Don’t let the agent hear you, she whispers. Ellen, impervious to the nuance of a renter’s desperation, rolls her eyes and trails behind her sister as they observe the rest of the house, which is simultaneously too defiant of the Rental Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act, and too expensive—for Lottie anyway.
After the viewing, Lottie sends Ellen home so she can walk along the river alone. She needs a reprieve from her sister—who is younger and less educated, but by all standard social and economic metrics, far more successful than Lottie. She tries and fails to dissipate her resentment, as she watches the people who could be her neighbours attend to their weekends. There is a group of people, about Lottie’s age, walkinprag together and laughing, carrying tote bags filled with market produce and specialty coffee beans. One of them draws her attention—of course it is the one with short hair and a sharp jaw. They look like Rhi. They are tearing chunks from a baguette and feeding them to the group, crumbs spilling around them all like asbestos crystals. Lottie shrinks in response to their presence, the group’s easy joy malignant rather than infectious. She looks away as she passes them.
It’s in the evening, during dinner, when Lottie is forced to concede that her tooth may actually be a problem. She ventures inward with her tongue, finding the spot that should be solid, but instead is spongey like a baby’s skull. She winces but continues to probe the site. She wonders if her compulsion to repeat and return to what hurts her is what has landed her here, staying on her sister’s futon, unable to house herself or cease masturbating to imaginings of her ex.
The next day, Lottie is washing one set of clothes. Black jeans, a vintage t-shirt, binder, and underwear. Once the wash cycle finishes, she pulls the sopping mass out of the machine. It is slightly viscous from the excessive amount of cleaning agent she poured in, but she is convinced it is still mildewed. She hangs each piece in the sun, watching the colours lighten as they dry. The longer she watches the calmer she becomes, and by sunset her skin is salmonella pink and she and the clothes are clean and dry.
Lottie arrives at work late the following morning after viewing an apartment on the north side. She had initially taken the morning off, but the realtor cancelled the open house halfway through, after receiving a text that the owners were going to move their university-aged son into it and forego the rental income. Lottie sits at her desk, trying to focus and leave her homelessness at the door. But she cannot stop thinking about the balloons tied to the apartment’s letterbox, which sagged in the heat as though they themselves were self-conscious about their presence.
When Lottie and Rhi moved in together, it was to a townhouse in an inner-city suburb. Very desirable. The listing cited ‘charming character’ and a ‘peppering of period detail’. Under property features it boasted ‘openable windows’. Omitted from the listing was the dark patch in the corner of their bedroom that always seemed to metamorphose. A Rorschach test with mould for ink, displaying at various points in their relationship: a finger, a moth’s mouth, a razor, an owl. Lottie would scrub it every Saturday with products labelled with skulls, filling the room with fumes that seeped into the carpet. She was sure that was what was making them both mad. Once, when Lottie ran out of one product halfway through and began scrubbing with another, she awoke hours later supine and still holding the sponge, her throat and eyes stinging.
Lottie is deep frying arancini when Ellen gets home. After she dumps her bags on the table, she turns to Lottie.
‘Ran into a new couple moving in down the road.’
‘Oh yeah? They seem nice?’
‘I don’t know,’ she pauses, ‘you can just tell when someone moves in, but they don’t own the place you know?’
‘And how can you tell, Ellen?’
‘It’s a respect thing, renters are just, I don’t know, louder.’
‘I’m a renter.’
‘Yeah, but you’re different.’
Lottie stares into the bubbling oil and conjures a retort, that if it weren’t for Ellen’s husband and his parents, she would have remained with Lottie on the wrong side of the noise–respect continuum. Instead, she stabs at her tooth, focusing on the heat rising in her gums each time the exterior caves in beneath her tongue. Ellen waits for a reply, but stalks out of the kitchen when it’s evident she won’t get one. Lottie finishes frying the rice balls and looks for a used water bottle or plastic bag to pour the oil into before throwing it away, recalling Ellen’s instructions. But now, she can’t tell if this advice is based on a myth or a fundamental piece of homeowner knowledge that she has never had to test. She tips the oil down the sink.
That night, Lottie reads Bob Menzies’s election speech and learns about his aim to enable ‘little capitalists’ to own their own homes. She reads about policy changes, tented communities, and the pros and cons of rent freezes until her eyes burn and her tooth is screaming for reprieve.
While Rhi slept beside her, she would watch the rot. She would listen to the clock ticking and outside, she would hear the traffic and the chimes of electric scooters. The more she watched, the more the ticking and the traffic scrambled into each other, into the walls and floors. She could hear the neighbours’ dogs agitating; she could feel spores in her ears and nostrils. It itched her insides like coarse wool. She knew if she fell asleep she would snore, and Rhi would kick her awake again. She could not feel sane in the house or her body. She did not want to live in either.
The following week, Lottie views a Queenslander in a suburb with an elevation too high to be attainable, but the email alert had said ‘beatific bargain’ and Ellen had insisted she at least have a look. So she does. She looks at the corner in the sunroom where she could put a reading chair, nothing fancy, something from IKEA maybe. There is a wall where she could put a bookshelf, and a line of hooks where she could hang photos or her degrees. Lottie also observes her competition— the other people at the viewing—and places herself in the tenant hierarchy. She has no kids or pets, but she is a single income with no financial buffer to sweeten the deal. Her job is stable, but her piercings and tattoos suggest that she is the type of person who would take time off said job to go to a protest. There is a couple talking to the agent. They are both dressed in activewear, and Lottie can smell the wealth on them—it is musky and thick, imposing itself on the whole room. She leaves without lodging an application, the pictures of her potential belongings decomposing in the heat of the day.
It wasn’t until the dog, when Lottie had to admit that it wasn’t working. She was a ten-year-old staffy named Delilah. Lottie had been complaining to Rhi how she couldn’t help her clients because they thought they had a legal problem when what they had was a capitalism problem. Rhi suggested they join the local collective providing temporary care for family pets while their owners lived in cars or tents until they found suitable accommodation again. Lottie was relieved that Rhi was capable of making such a compassionate suggestion, she was exposed to that side of her so rarely in those days.
It took Delilah developing a limp and quaking when Rhi was around to force Lottie to question their situation. Rhi said Delilah was just adjusting, but soon, every time Rhi went to feed her, Delilah whimpered. Lottie recognised the way her fur would stand up, and the way she would avert her eyes and cower, and Lottie’s own dark spots began to ache. She made sure Delilah’s collar had a phone number on it, opened the gate, and retreated inside to pack a bag.
Lottie arrives at the apartment, a gelato in each hand. Pistachio for herself, and chocolate for Ellen. For letting me stay, she says, handing it over. Ellen doesn’t say anything but accepts the tiny cup. Lottie scoops the gelato between her lips. It liquifies and slides down her throat but she can’t taste it. Her fetid tooth has made her breath sour. Everything is bitter.
Later, she decides to go out. Lottie sits at a bar alone, gulping a dirty martini as cloudy as limescale. The bar has booths filled with other professionals and she wonders how many of them can afford to use their own services. Lottie is lucky that by never being able to purchase property or even find a secure enough rental to feel comfortable raising kids, not to mention the climate crisis, she probably would never need a family lawyer. Lottie had hoped that when she put herself in a public place someone would speak to her so she could prove to herself that she remembered how to have a regular conversation. Perhaps even a flirtatious one. But when it becomes clear that this will not happen, she pays the bill and leaves.
Arriving home, Lottie is drunker than she thought. She turns on the lights and fumbles her way to the futon, the arthritic springs creaking as she flops down. Ellen is standing in the door of her bedroom. And although they are adults and it is one in the morning, Ellen’s spite is just as focused as when they were teens, when they elbowed their way to claim the best side of their bedroom every time they moved house. After scolding Lottie for spending money when she should be saving for a house, or at least a bond for god’s sake, Ellen commands her to leave. I think it will be better for our relationship, she says. Lottie could ask where Ellen expects her to go, but she doesn’t want to find out if this situation is a result of Ellen’s ignorance of the current state of the housing market or inexplicable malice. Not knowing is better for their relationship. Lottie grabs whatever she can see and looks back to Ellen, but she is already turning away, closing the door, shutting off the light.
Back in the night air Lottie wanders down the street carrying her assorted belongings in her upturned jumper. She pictures herself as roadkill and wonders what passers-by would think if they checked her pouch and found a wallet, a lighter, and a ceramic mushroom. She continues to walk to the inner city, her heels becoming tender meat. Strangers outside of bars ignore her ragged breath, talking amongst themselves, encased in fruit flavoured vapour. A possum hisses and retreats into a bin.
Lottie stares at her feet as she walks. She walks until she is unable, until she concedes she has nowhere to walk to. And when she droops down next to a streetlight, and looks up, she notices the sky has taken on a hue that resembles her inflamed gums. She prods at her tooth, feeling the rush of pain to keep her awake, and pulls out her phone. She unblocks Rhi’s number and presses dial. Kookaburras cackle as an ibis flies overhead in the red sunrise. Its wings battle against the hot air, searching for a safe place to land.