There was no avoiding the dawn, not in a tent. And everything stank of canvas. Industrious rustling, coughing, and moving dapples of thin light intruded from beyond the gently billowing wall: those with shit to do, already up and getting on with it. Kura reluctantly threw back the flaps and let herself into the morning.

   New to the suburb she liked to set her bones opposite something fancy if she could; a Georgian Colonial overflowing with lace. Just so's scowling at it made first order. She stretched and crunched the kinks loose from boxy shoulders, making ant trails of idiots shamble around to get by. Plenty to be said for the miracle power of scowling.

   The house stared her down. Blank. Impenetrable. Wires lax and curling in the yard, bile-coloured weeds flat to the ground but the paint never peeled, did it. No roof up and down the street so much as sagged beneath slithering dropping leaves. Morbid fuckers might well stand proud and empty 'til the rest of the world was dust.

   The nearby gutter sluiced with slow-moving waste. Threw off a shimmering miasma that curled nostril hairs; which was what you got for rolling up late with all the plum spots taken. Kura inhaled deeply, perversely. That je ne sais quoi of civilization: the promise of decency, at least in moderation, and a rough consensus of sanity. Every damn thing that pols stood for.

   This looked like a good autumn neighbourhood. It had gathered quite the population—Kura couldn't spy footpath for tents, had to crane on tiptoe to peer across the faded tops, which produced an alarming  pop in her back.

   No knowing how it'd shake out when the season turned and folk re-scattered through the districts. Inevitably there'd be bodies. Split by sun or frost, poor bastards, still clawing at cracks in the pavement like they could find their way through to somewhere better.

   Kura treated her partner's swag to an affectionate punt, the whump rewarded by Rashmi's blissful snore choked into a grunt. Rashmi was into grunting lately, as singlemindedly as Kura loved glaring. This was clearly the "five minutes" grunt.

   Five minutes, Kura's rosy cheeks. Rashmi'd been at it again all night. When Kura got up to make a midnight contribution, wobbling with one foot either side of the gutter, that incriminating square of light had beamed through the swag. Other campers on nocturnal business had flicked fingers down sleeves as they passed, superstitiously redirecting evil away into the ground. The earth around Rashmi's little patch of heaven must be lousy with bad vibes by now.

   Convenient, the two of them pitching so close together. Chafing her