‘Don’t need a preening v-vulture to m-m-make me big,’ Clementine scowled. ‘’M good without it.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Dell said soothingly, and then, ‘you’ll make sure she gets home?’
Clementine wondered who Dell was speaking to, and a lovely, deep voice replied, ‘Not a problem.’
‘Benedick!’ she shouted. Then she grinned, giggled, sighed. ‘BenBenBenBenedick. You’re lovely. And you have nice legs.’ She thought he smiled at her, so she beamed ridiculously back at him. ‘And beautiful eyes.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘Yours are nice too. Now hang on.’
The taxi took off and she lurched against Benedick’s side. She straightened up, but at the next turn wobbled against him again, so this time she stayed there. ‘Warm,’ she pronounced.
‘Are you cold?’
‘Always a little bit cold,’ she confessed. ‘An’ I didn’t pad the back of this dress enough. Ruins the line.’
‘You should have brought a jacket.’
‘Hmmm,’ she agreed. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the texture of his shirt against her cheek, and the warmth of his wing, extended across her back but not touching. His arm was around her waist too, steadying and careful.
She must have drifted off for a while, because her next awareness was of Benedick shaking her gently. ‘Here we are, Clementine. Come on.’
She wobbled out of the taxi, holding his hand for support. She was fairly steady on her feet as they walked to the Avalon Towers entrance, but she leaned against him in the elevator again. His arm remained across her back, his wing held a gentlemanly distance away.
‘’S nice,’ she said sleepily.
‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘I was getting used to having to share elevators with packing crates and dents in the aluminium. This one even has classical music.’
It was not what she had meant, but the doors opened on the fourth floor and she had to abandon the train of thought in order to find her apartment keys. She dropped them, but Benedick caught them before they landed on the floor. She was distracted by how impressed she was with his reflexes, by how beautiful his hands were. Long, slender and strong. Elegant, too. He held her keys cupped in his palm, then deftly he selected the front door key to unlock it.
Then she realised he was patiently waiting for her to enter her own apartment. She wobbled inside, then stood there as though bemused by her surroundings. She turned to him.
‘Thank you for coming tonight,’ she said, so careful to speak clearly that the effort was obvious. ‘Sorry I’m drunk.’
‘Are you going to be all right?’
‘Sure. I’m always all right. I’m an expert at being all right. Doesn’t matter what they do or say about me. I’m always fiiiiiiiine.’
‘They’ll find him soon.’ Benedick put a hand out to steady her as she wobbled. ‘In the morning, you should hand that card to the police. It may have prints on it. The handwriting experts might be able to match it too. There might even be usable DNA on the gum.’
‘Swamp rot the son of a bitch.’ Clementine swung her hand for aggressive emphasis and had to be steadied again. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ She sniffed and screwed up her face against an escaping tear. ‘Sorry. I don’t cry. I don’t let them get to me. I don’t. But why couldn’t they leave it just one damned day?’
‘Hey. Hey, don’t …’ Benedick stepped through the door to reach her, to catch her hand and squeeze it. The edges of his sagging wing nudged a pair of easels she’d left leaning on the wall. He tried to catch them, but she turned and shoved them to the floor completely.
‘Sorry. I usually know if wings are coming to visit and I clear a path.’
Benedick nodded. ‘I … I see.’
‘I’ll leave a path for you, Benedick. I want you to visit me.’
‘Okay,’ he said soothingly.
She blinked at him. ‘Nobody can make up their mind about whether I’m stronger than they can imagine, or fragile like an eggshell.’ Her mouth lifted ruefully. ‘Nobody thinks you can be both.’
‘Eggshells are both,’ said Benedick. ‘New life grows in them, and then they have to break so that the life can grow some more.’
Clementine inhaled sharply and held the breath. ‘Oooooh,’ she exhaled, ‘I have such an idea for a painting now.’ She stumbled the rest of the way into her apartment and began groping around for an art pad and pencil. She found one and scrawled lines across the page.
Benedick had followed her in—worried she would fall, no doubt. He held his wings tight against his body, trying not to brush against items in the art-cluttered room. She drew feverishly, and he watched the oval shape appear on the page. She sketched fine cracks in the shell marking an outline, like the silhouette on the candy moth he’d bought.
Clementine had flipped the page and was now roughly sketching a figure with cracked eggshell wing shapes behind it. Then she scrawled her pencil through the shapes.
‘Nope,’ she said, scoring black lines across it. ‘Nope, nope, nope.’
‘It’ll come to in you the morning,’ said Benedick.
Clementine kicked off her shoes and pulled the hat from her head. She sat the hat on the apex of an easel. She found Benedick presenting her with a glass of water.
‘Drink up,’ he said. ‘It’ll help come tomorrow.’
She drank the water, put the glass on the bench, missed, and Benedick scooped it up before it smashed.
‘You’re fast,’ she said.
‘I used to be.’
‘You’re lovely,’ she said next, ‘I like you. We can be friends, can’t we?’
‘We can.’ His smile was sweet and only a little concerned. ‘We are now, aren’t we?’
‘We are,’ she agreed. ‘Just friends. I can’t get serious about you. Even though you’re lovely.’
He took and held a breath and said, ‘Time for bed for you, I think.’
He took her elbow and guided her towards her bedroom, testing doors along the way until he found the right room.
‘You won’t like me anymore,’ said Clementine sadly.
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re lovely, but when you get to know me, you won’t like me anymore.’
‘You’re very drunk, Clementine.’
‘I know. But that doesn’t make it less true. They love me only until they figure out I’m always like this. Loud and pushy. They love me until they work out I love them but I don’t need them. And then it’s just me and the candy moths again.’
‘Well, they’re idiots. Here you go. Don’t trip.’
Clementine folded down onto her big circular bed with loose-limbed grace. She always felt tiny and lonely in her bed, but it was the smallest adult bed she could buy, and she refused to sleep in a child’s bed. She’d shared this one with partners, some of them with wings, and the space was necessary. She sprawled flat on her back, arms and legs spread like a starfish to take up as much room as possible, and she gazed up at Benedick.
‘We can still be friends even if I don’t need you, though? Can’t we?’
‘We can. We are,’ he promised her.
‘Kiss goodnight?’ she asked. ‘Friends kiss goodnight, don’t they?’
‘They can.’ Benedick leaned over and kissed her forehead. ‘There you go. I’ll see how you are in the morning, hm?’
‘Mmmm.’
Clementine’s eyelids were drooping—she was already falling asleep.
***
Clementine woke horribly hungover but with her memory mostly intact. She almost died of embarrassment, except Benedick acted as though nothing had happened. At the civilised hour of 10 am, he knocked on her door with a sweetened café latte in hand for her, and sat with her when a junior officer came by at 11 to collect the torn card she’d taken from the exhibition.
When Dell arrived at lunchtime to see how she was, Benedick made his excuses. Clementine, cursing her featherhead, said, ‘Thanks for last night. Coming along and … helping me home.’
He smiled warmly a
t her. ‘That’s what friends are for, right?’
She couldn’t detect any layers of meaning under that. He seemed straightforward.
‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘Coffee at Takahē tomorrow?’
‘In the afternoon, maybe,’ he said. ‘They’ve called me back to court to testify tomorrow. The prosecutor thinks I’ll even get to take the stand this time. I’ll let you know.’
And with that he left.
Clementine sighed, and found that Dell was watching her with an amused quirk of her lips.
‘He is interested,’ Dell said encouragingly.
‘We’re friends. Just friends. It’s fine.’ Clementine massaged her temples. ‘When he’s had a chance to adjust to the way his life is now, maybe then.’
‘I saw how he was looking at you last night,’ said Dell. ‘I honestly don’t think you need to wait.’
Clementine remembered how careful he was not to touch her with his wings when he could help it, in the taxi and the elevator and here in the apartment. Then she remembered the press of Benedick’s lips on her forehead. Her kiss goodnight.
He’s a friend, she thought. It’s a good place to start.
‘So tell me how it went last night,’ Clementine asked Dell. Cheerful and satisfied with even the publicity generated by the cruel card and the preceding vandalism, Dell told her all the sales, marketing and media details.
Chapter Eight
Benedick left early for the court next morning, and was grateful for the book he’d brought along. The ridiculous potboiler of a spy adventure was undemanding but filled the time until, at long last, the court officer came to collect him.
Benedick walked tall and ignored the defendant, who stood blank-faced beside his lawyer.
Don’t think about his connections to TAPP. An alleged conspiracy is not your concern. You’re not investigating this crime. You’re part of it. A witness. A victim.
His drooping wing shivered and he caught Jones’s quickly suppressed flinch. Jones’s face was nothing but a blank mask again when he looked a second time.
You did this to me.
Anger simmered and rose in his gut. He breathed in deeply and tried to calm his agitation. Rage was no use to him now. He’d gone over this with Liam, so many times, from so many angles. Rage at what Jones had done. Rage that he hadn’t even been the target—Benedick was only collateral damage in Adelphium Jones’s vicious, callous act. Rage that everything he’d worked for had been shattered in a moment, though it took him months to accept the fact. Rage at the ongoing struggle to in fact accept it.
Benedick closed his eyes as his name and former rank were read out in court to be entered into the transcript. He breathed in again. Held his breath.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Clementine Torres, a candy moth in her hair, as she smiled at him underneath the pines. He saw her muzzy from wine, saying, ‘You’re lovely.’
He saw her raising a glass of champagne at the exhibition, defying pity and scorn alike. Here’s to the ones who make wingspan without wings.
He exhaled slowly.
‘Mr Sasaki, can you lead us through what happened on the day of the treaty talks?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Benedick answered questions about what had happened the day he was part of the escort seeing Cabinet Minister Bennelong to the Lua Pele Islands treaty talks.
Adelphium Jones’s counsel tried to cast doubt on Benedick’s memory of the afternoon. Benedick was able to very clearly and correctly describe everything from what the Minister was wearing, to the weather reports, to what flags were on which flagpoles at the Kambera Parliament building, where the meeting was held. Describing the person who had shot at them from the Kurrajong Plaza Hotel rooftop wasn’t difficult. There wasn’t a thing about that day he could forget.
Not the taste of the air, or what Minister Bennelong was wearing, or the cold-blooded look in the eye of the man who shot at him and the minister even as they fell. He could not forget the strain on Bennelong’s face as he tried to keep them both in the air. He could not forget the pain or the terror as Bennelong’s grip failed and Benedick plummeted with his shattered wing onto the grassed terrace below, further breaking his right leg and left ankle. Those bones had healed, but the wing would be broken forever.
After his testimony, a recess was called. Benedick escaped the justice building to take in some fresh air.
He thought of Clementine again, and how strong she’d been at the exhibition, and how fragile after. She’d been more herself the next morning, but he could see the texture of her better now. As fragile and as strong as eggshell.
Benedick saw someone wave to him from on high, and recognised Lieutenant Marca Sifakis as she came to land beside him at the fountains.
‘Marca. Hi. You look well.’
‘Benedick. How’re you doing?’
‘Fine.’
He did not feel fine. He felt out of sorts, all a-tumble, like a wind-tossed sparrow, with his anger at seeing Jones again tangled up with the strength he’d taken from the memory of Clementine’s courage.
‘That must have been hard, going over all that again.’
‘Not the most fun I’ve had,’ he agreed. Then his wings twitched out, stretching and shaking his feathers down, and he laughed self-deprecatingly. ‘Not the worst day, either.’
Marca shifted uncomfortably, unable to meet Benedick’s eyes. He felt awkward that she felt so awkward about him still. She kept her eyes glued to his, the not-looking at his lopsided wing so obvious it was almost as bad as staring. He tried to distract her from it.
‘Actually, life’s getting a lot better. I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do next, and thought I’d go back to university.’
‘Go back to Law? That’s where you started, wasn’t it, before you joined the Police Corps?’
‘It was. It’s an option I’m considering, anyway.’
‘Inspired by the public prosecution, eh?’ Marca grinned, relaxing a little into their old teasing habits.
Benedick grinned back. ‘Long hours, low pay, nobody’s grateful: it’s just like being a cop, really.’
‘Only without the sexy uniform.’
‘I don’t know. I can look very sharp in a suit.’
‘Something black,’ agreed Marca. ‘To go with your wi— ah. Wings.’ And back they were to uncomfortable square one.
‘It’s okay to mention wings, you know,’ Benedick said quietly.
‘I know,’ she replied tersely.
Benedick sighed and decided to change the subject. ‘Any progress on Clementine’s case?’
Marca pursed her lips and shrugged. ‘We’ve a line we’re pursuing. The card that your artist tore up yesterday helped a bit.’
‘Prints? DNA from the gum?’
‘A partial print, and a lead on the paper stock. No useful DNA evidence.’ Marca glanced away, as though hoping that would end the subject.
So it seemed she was as uncomfortable talking with him about his former work as she was about his former capacity to fly. Her reticence annoyed him. ‘Talking about the case isn’t going to break my ex-copper’s heart, Marca.’
Marca glared at him, her jaw clenched and mouth tight with irritation, though she could still hardly look at him for more than a few seconds. In the old days, if he’d seen that behaviour in a suspect, he’d have thought she feels guilty, defensive. He supposed it meant the same things now.
Marca’s tone was curt as she replied: ‘The material could apply to four separate people, Benedick. Could be messy if we clip the wrong wings. Best we keep it quiet till we’ve been able to question a few more witnesses.’
‘Right. Ah. Look. I don’t know if you’ve thought of this angle,’ Benedick offered, rushing through with the thought before Marca decided to shut him down again, ‘But Clementine’s pointed out that the nature of these letters and the vandalism is kind of weird.’
‘Yeah, it’s weird. Some moron has got it in for a wingless artist.’
‘No
, I mean it’s the wrong kind of behaviour for an avianist.’
Marca pulled a face. ‘Avianist. What does that mean when it’s in the nest?’
‘You know. Avianism. Discriminatory ableist behaviour, biased towards fliers.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Marca, frowning. ‘Go on. Why is this … atypical avianist behaviour?’
‘Hate mail and vandalism belong more to the tactics of racism and misogyny than avianism. Most of the time, avianism is less direct and hateful. It’s more about … eliding the existence of the wingless.’
‘Eliding …?’
‘Ignoring us.’
Marca appeared confused. ‘Ignoring you?’
Benedick sighed. ‘Look, what normally happens is that people just act like the flightless don’t matter much. It doesn’t even occur to most people to wonder about grounded life. Hence all the noise Clementine and other advocates make about accessibility. We get curious whispers, occasional snide comments, we get people just not being very aware of or even interested in the problems we have accessing buildings and services. This stuff … feels different. More hate, less apathy. It’s not the pattern.’
‘Right. Okay. Well. I’ll bear it in mind.’
Benedick was almost certain that his point would be put aside about thirty seconds after they parted company. Typical avianism, in fact. He wondered if he should point it out, and decided he couldn’t face the discussion that would follow. Another day he’d have the energy, but not after testifying today.
Uneasy silence reigned for a few moments and then they both tried to speak at once.
‘I’d better—’
‘So. Ah, Benedick—’
‘You first,’ he said.
Marca hummed and bit the inside of her lip. Then, all in a rush, she said, ‘So, I’m going to Orville Woodhouse’s wedding next weekend if you’d … ah. Like. To come. With me.’
‘Orville. From Narcotics?’
‘Yeah. He hooked up with Mercy Moreau from Admin after you … after. After.’
‘After I was shot.’
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