I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  ‘Well,’ she glanced down. ‘This might be a copy of my latest book.’

  ‘The erotic fiction?’ he enquired politely. He was standing right by her shoulder, and she found herself beginning to chatter.

  ‘Yes! It’ll be my erotic fiction! I know, it’s such a cliché! Me, a housewife in the suburbs, writing this sort of trash! This one’s full of multiple orgasms, you know, and I’ve never even had a multiple orgasm . . .’ She dropped the letterbox lid and it swung crookedly.

  ‘I could fix that,’ said the Canadian.

  He was gesturing at her letterbox, but when Fancy looked up, and into his eyes, she saw that they were dancing.

  MARBIE ZING

  Marbie and Vernon sat on the front porch of their apartment, drinking iced tea and waiting for Listen to get home from her first day at school. The afternoon was hot and the neighbourhood children were playing with a garden hose.

  During the summer, Marbie had taken some time off work to spend a few days with Listen. Together, they repainted the apartment and drove up the coast.

  Side-by-side on their beach towels one day, Marbie told Listen about the day when a beach umbrella almost killed her.

  ‘See my scar,’ she said, proudly.

  Listen had heard the story before, but this time Marbie told it differently. ‘I wasn’t concentrating,’ she said. ‘Everyone was shouting, look out for the umbrella! And I was just sitting there staring out to sea. Why didn’t I get out of the way? And that’s the thing, Listen, most bad things can be avoided if you just pay attention.’

  ‘But what if you concentrate really hard,’ said Listen, ‘and everything still turns out bad?’

  Before Marbie had a chance to respond, Listen continued, ‘Like, for example, if somebody didn’t have anyone to sit with at school, even though they tried hard to find friends.’

  ‘Well,’ said Marbie, scraping her heels slowly along the sand. ‘I guess you know that the person would have to go back to school next year and try again. Somewhere at the school there would be friends for that person, if she just kept on trying.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Listen quickly. ‘Okay. I know.’

  ‘So that’s what you know,’ said Marbie, ‘but here’s what I think. I think St Carmel’s have had their chance with that person. I think that person is much too precious to go back to the school. I’m not letting that school anywhere near that person ever again.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No way in hell. We’re tracking down a different school. For that person.’

  ‘Well,’ said Listen, casually. ‘Bellbird High seems like the kind of school a person could try.’

  ‘So she could,’ said Marbie.

  And she did.

  20

  THE SPORTS CARNIVAL

  Cath Murphy (teacher, Grade 2B) stands at the carnival coffee table. Paper cups are set out in orderly rows, like a choir about to perform, and each has already been filled. How long has the coffee been sitting there, open to the breeze?

  ‘Milk?’ says Mrs Nestle (tuckshop lady).

  Too late, thinks Cath.

  The oval is almost empty. The last children are climbing onto buses. Mrs Nestle begins tipping coffee onto the lawn.

  Cath heads to the staffroom which is empty and still. She glances at the corner kitchenette: the sandwich maker which she and Warren bought; the coffee machine, where Warren teased Breanna for self-consciousness.

  She collects her mail and handbag, locks the staffroom windows, and imagines, for a moment, her evening: the new apartment with its bare linoleum and the fridge that squeals when she opens the door; her feet on her new coffee table; Violin, like a teasing scarf, climbing across her shoulders to sit on his side of the couch.

  Outside in the school car park, Miss Waratah sings, ‘Farewell, Cath!’ Mr Bel Castro straddles his motorbike and kicks aside the stand.

  She drives towards the gate, but brakes slightly, as something in the rock garden catches her eye. It is the corner of a lime green book, hidden underneath a rock. She puts her car in Park, opens the door, and pulls the book from under the rock. She waves it in the air, and smiles self-consciously at Mr Bel Castro, who is waiting patiently, revving his motorbike behind her.

  She tosses the book onto the passenger seat, and drives toward home.

  THE HOT AIR BALLOON

  Once upon a time there was a confectioner who flew in a hydrogen balloon.

  This was in 1810. He invited a friend from Bristol and the flight began well enough: they drifted over the Bristol Channel towards Cardiff.

  Four miles off Combe Martin, however, they crashed into the sea.

  But they did not break their legs or drown; they did not catch alight and burn.

  Instead, something extraordinary happened: the basket bobbed on top of the waves, the balloon billowed out behind them, and presto! they were saved. They spent an hour wafting along in this manner, and were rescued by a boat from Lynmouth.

  Maude Zing has always preferred the confectioner’s story to the tale of the watercolour painter whose parachute was upside down.

  She likes to imagine how the balloon must have looked, floating on top of the sea. The tiny basket, the immense sphere of cloth, the hopeful little men, the great expanse of water and sky. So strange, so lovely, so mystical, as with all unlikely, dreamy things such as whales, flying fish, pavlovas, and unexpected snowfalls.

  But the confectioner’s story was more. It was disaster transformed. A sailing ship conjured from a capsized balloon.

  EXTRACTS FROM THE ZING

  GARDEN SHED (Burnt Fragments)

  MORE BESTSELLING FICTION AVAILABLE FROM PICADOR

  Markus Zusak

  The Book Thief

  It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

  Liesel Meminger and her younger brother are being taken by their mother to live with a foster family outside Munich. Liesel’s father was taken away on the breath of a single, unfamiliar word – Kommunist – and Liesel sees the fear of a similar fate in her mother’s eyes. On the journey, Death visits the young boy, and notices Liesel. It will be the first of many near encounters. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery.

  So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found.

  But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up, and closed down.

  The Book Thief is a story about the power of words to make worlds. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

  Praise for The Book Thief:

  ‘Zusak’s novel is a highwire act of inventiveness and emotional suppleness, balancing offbeat humour and compassion with the kind of savagery that made the Holocaust possible’ THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

  ‘This is a beautiful book . . . the characters are warmly, wonderfully real . . . Zusak’s language is almost hypnotic . . . A superb book you will be recommending to everyone you meet’ HERALD SUN