There were about thirty sets of dentures in the rattling box, most of them old and cracked. Sophia had the sense that certain pairs, those stained grey and black along the base, belonged to people who were now dead. She touched these lightly. There were two partial posterior dentures; she couldn’t tell which was hers by looking at them. Maybe someone else ground his or her teeth until they cracked, until the nerve was exposed, until they had to be extracted because they couldn’t afford an alternative. Gerry turned away and scratched his head while Sophia wiped the teeth with a handkerchief and tried on the first pair, then the second.

‘Perfect fit,’ Sophia said.

‘Happy we could help.’

‘Is it hard work, retrieving these objects from the sewage filters?’

‘It can be hard on the stomach,’ said Gerry.

‘I’m guessing you don’t need a particular trade qualification for this kind of labour?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Then it’s easy?’

‘Easy as you like. People learn on the job. Why?’

‘Because I’d like to apply for work.’

Sophia could think of no better job than rescuing precious objects from the city’s stream of shit. She put this in more formal terms in writing and posted the letter. Sophia wanted to be the person you visited when something important had been swallowed up. She wanted to be there when people came looking for the stuff they’d flushed away.

The sewage works offered her a job.

3.

Three months before her interview with Emily, Sophia had been sacked from the treatment plant. The state budget insisted on a ten per cent efficiency dividend across all utilities and the Sydney Water Corporation responded with a small program of job cuts. The plant manager told Sophia that she was the first to go because she was the last person hired in her department. An old-fashioned way to go about things, he said. A bullshit way, said Sophia.

‘I lost my job this year, too,’ said Emily.

‘But you’re working again? For a magazine that sends you overseas? Lucky you.’