There is a red pot that once lived at Lanfranchis for a long time. It came when Phoebe moved in so I always thought it belonged to her. It is made from cast iron with a bright tomato-coloured outer coating. It is round and heavy and impossible to break. It is a wonderful vessel. It simmers bolognaise, chicken soup, dahl, rendang, without letting the bottom catch . . . ever. It can make a meal for up to 20 people. It is easy to clean, even after it has been sitting by the sink with piles of other dishes for a week. In the Lanfranchis kitchen, where each resident had their own fridge and shelf space, but dirty dishes rarely had owners, a communal pot is a beautiful thing.
I don't remember all the times we used it but they include:
• when Bayu went back home to Indonesia after living amongst everyone's junk in the attic for three months
• when Kirstie turned 24
• when Josephine and Leon came over and we feigned a proper dinner party
• when Alex was sick with bronchitis and could only eat soup for a week.
By June, the eviction date was really looming, and there only seemed time to pack select items; books, clothes, equipment. I spent an afternoon on the back of a pickup parked below the fire escape and Alex lowered milk crates down to me on a rope. There were so many milk crates. There were so many mannequins. There were so many cables.
I began to think about what would be missed:
• taking refuge in the steam of the beautiful big sunny shower as cold winter winds whistled through the open window
• watching people move around their beige cubes in the apartment block across Dangar Place
• watching gigs in a venue instead of TV in a lounge room
• getting up at any time of the night and finding someone to chat with in the kitchen.
We went back in the first daylight hours after a weekend of stop-start-rolling finale parties. It had been a mix of excited strangers and teary-eyed friends, euphoria and claustrophobia. The water and electricity had been precarious but the building had pulled through like an old car that keeps on running with groans from the engine and smoke from the exhaust.
I spent some time foraging in the dim light and found only the lid to the red pot. The night before, our friends had pushed through their exhaustion and done a big collection in a two-tonne truck, so I held a hope that Phoebe had rescued it. I did find Sierra's diary, full of gossip and secrets. And I did take home to our new kitchen almost a full set of herbs and spices amalgamated from three separately deserted households; Lanfranchis , the neighbors downstairs and the neighbors below.
I saw Phoebe and Eddie at a 'Nerds Gone Wild' party the weekend after the warehouse finished. It turns out that the pot was Eddie's and had previously belonged to his grandmother. They didn't know what had happened to it though. It could be anywhere.
Possible locations of the red pot:
• the tip (most likely Tempe or Homebush)
• a new home with one of the guests from one of the last parties
• still at the warehouse awaiting an uncertain fate while the Development Application for the builiding is processed by the City of Sydney.
The day after the lease expired I went past and saw a truck out the front of the building full of bike parts and old furniture. The men were gleaners. The stuff in the truck was packed like they cared about it. The pot could have traveled with them.
The next day there was another truck in the laneway and men tossing more stuff into it from the fire escape. But they weren't lowering it carefully as Alex had done, nor were they arranging it when it reached the bottom. It could have been in that pile. It would have been beautiful dropped two stories, and I'm sure it wouldn't have broken.
picture of Lanfranchis kitchen by the charming Alex Davies