THE GAGA-GALAH CONUNDRUM OF KILLARA
Frankie “The Spanner” Palladino had been a plumber for thirty-seven years, and in that time, he had seen a lot of things under sinks. He’d seen nests of redback spiders that could give a man a heart attack. He’d seen penicillin farms that would make a biologist weep with joy. He’d seen a mummified possum that had been there since the Whitlam government. But he had never, ever, seen what he saw at 14a Waratah Crescent in Killara.
That’s why he was now in his van, parked outside a café in Crows Nest, shoving his phone into the face of his oldest friend, Salvatore “Sally” Di Pietro.
“Just look at it, Sal. Look at it and tell me I’m wrong.”
Sally, a fellow plumber and a man whose own van was held together by duct tape and sheer will, squinted at the screen. He saw a tangle of 50mm PVC drainage pipe, a chrome P-trap, and a rusty old shut-off valve. It was a mess. It looked like every other undersink horror show in every upper-middle-class home on the North Shore.
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“It’s a pipe, Frankie. It’s a pipe under a sink. I’ve seen ten thousand of them. My eyeballs are bleeding from the monotony.”
“No, no, no,” Frankie insisted, his thick fingers zooming in on the image. “You’re looking at the whole composition. You’ve got to look at the gestalt. See the sweeping curve of the trap? That’s the shoulder. The long horizontal run? That’s the arm, reaching out. And the shut-off valve, the one with the red handle? That is unmistakably the meat-dress.”
Sally rubbed his temples. “The meat-dress.”
“The Lady Gaga meat-dress! The one she wore to the 2010 MTV VMAs. It’s iconic. It’s the red handle!”
“It’s a piece of brass, Frankie. It turns the water off.”
“And look,” Frankie continued, his voice rising with evangelical fervor, “look at the top. The vertical vent pipe curving out of the wall. That’s the hair. The iconic, bleached-blonde, lacquered-to-the-gods hair. Now, tilt your head to the left. Squint.”
how long do king-parrots live?
Sally tilted his head. He squinted. He saw a blurry picture of a sink drain. He sighed, a long, weary sound that contained the accumulated exhaustion of two decades of friendship.
“So it’s Gaga. Where does the bird come in?”
Frankie beamed, swiping to the next photo. “I took a few. This one’s from a lower angle. The vent pipe and the trap combine to form the face. The shut-off valve is the eye makeup. But look at the negative space! Look at the gap between the trap and the cabinet wall! You see it? That’s the Rosella.”
Sally stared at the empty space. It was, in fact, empty. “It’s a shadow, Frankie. It’s the absence of pipe.”
“No, it’s the crimson of the Rosella! The red highlights! The way the dust motes catch the light from the window, that’s the bird’s blue cheek patch! She’s holding a native Australian parrot, Sal! She’s holding it like a bouquet! It’s a commentary on Australiana! It’s performance art hidden in the plumbing infrastructure!”
Sally handed the phone back. He had seen Frankie go down conspiracy rabbit holes before. There was the time he was convinced a specific brand of flux was causing a shortage of silverfish in the Eastern Suburbs. There was the time he swore a burst water main in Neutral Bay was caused by the vibrations from a new tunnel-boring machine that was actually a government front for looking for UFOs. But this was different. This was delusional.
“Let me get this straight,” Sally said, holding up his fingers. “You were under the sink of a Mrs. Henderson in Killara, replacing a washer, and you looked up, and you saw Lady Gaga. The world-famous pop star. Wearing a dress made of meat. Holding a galah. Made of PVC pipe.”
“Rosella,” Frankie corrected. “Different bird. Galahs are pink. Rosellas are more vibrant. And she’s not made of pipe. She is the pipe. The pipe is her. It’s a manifestation. A liquid-transporting deity.”
“Frankie, I am an expert on two things. One, is fixing leaks. Two, is Lady Gaga. I have a shrine. I have the ‘Born This Way’ album cover tattooed on my calf. I know her choreography. I know the names of her backup dancers. And I can tell you, unequivocally, that Lady Gaga has never, in her entire career, been photographed under a sink in Killara, holding a bird, meat-dress or not. The bird is wrong. She’s a dog person. She has French Bulldogs.”
“But the shape!” Frankie wailed, gesturing wildly at the phone. “The elegant line of the trap! That is a performer’s posture! That is the ‘Bad Romance’ video! The Gaga energy is undeniable!”
“The energy is sewage! It’s greywater! That’s not a performer’s posture, that’s a P-trap that’s about two degrees off plumb! You need to ream that joint and put a new nylon washer on it! Art doesn’t leak, Frankie! Art doesn’t give Mrs. Henderson a smell of rotten eggs every time she does the dishes!”
Frankie slumped back in his seat. He looked at the photo on his phone. He could see it so clearly. The platinum hair. The dramatic shoulder. The commanding presence of the red-handled valve. And yes, nestled in the negative space, the proud, unmistakable silhouette of a Crimson Rosella, its head cocked as if to say, “I am a native treasure, and I am being cradled by a pop icon in a domestic setting.”
Sally grabbed the phone one last time. He zoomed in on the shadow. He looked at the curve of the pipe. He looked at the rust on the valve. He looked at the dust. He saw nothing but the mundane reality of a suburban home.
“Frankie,” he said, his voice soft with pity. “You are absolutely, certifiably, nuts. You have lost your marbles. They have rolled down the drain and you have flushed them into the Lane Cove River.”
He handed the phone back.
“You just don’t have the vision,” Frankie muttered, starting the van.
“I have the vision to see that you’ve been huffing too much primer,” Sally shot back. “Now, are you coming to the pub or not? My shout. But you have to promise not to show anyone that photo. I can’t be seen with a man who thinks a rotary drill is an homage to the mechanical bull from ‘Telephone’.”
Frankie smiled, a small, secret smile. He put the van in gear. Sally would never understand. But it didn’t matter. He knew what he saw. And somewhere, in a quiet house on the North Shore, under the kitchen sink, Lady Gaga was still there. A silent, PVC goddess of pop, holding her rosella, waiting for the next plumber with a poet’s soul to come along and discover her. Frankie just hoped he’d get the call before Mrs. Henderson decided to renovate.