‘He’s changing the rest as well?’
‘Not all of them. Half a dozen, perhaps. He wants to tease out the narrative, unify the show along those same lines.’
Dante rakes a hand over his crew cut. ‘This is completely fucked, Jacks.’
‘I don’t think it will take that long to–’
‘It’s got nothing to do with time.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s this fucking response to tragedy bullshit.’ His fingers bob air quotes, savage stabbing gestures that match his tone. ‘This isn’t the show I commissioned. I want the dead city, the dystopia. I want the bloody grunt, not this bleeding-heart, back-to-nature crap.’
‘That’s not what he’s trying to say–’
‘I don’t want to hear it. I sent you up there to hustle his arse, not to give him editorial notes and not to change the whole damn show.’
‘I didn’t–’
‘Jacqueline was the best.’ Dante reads off the screen. ‘Please thank her for me. I wouldn’t have come up with it if she wasn’t here.’
Jacqueline winces. ‘Ryan said that?’
‘Ryan said that.’
‘I don’t know why he would, honestly. I didn’t tell him to change anything; he came up with it all on his own.’
‘Whatever, Jacks.’ Dante flaps a dismissive hand.
‘I’m serious. He wouldn’t even let me see the canvas until–’
‘Leave it. Just come up with a fix.’
‘A fix?”’
‘We have to spin this to the punters somehow.’ He looks through the images again. His nose wrinkles with disdain. ‘I mean, look at this shit. Is that a fucking parrot sitting on that lamp post?’
Jacqueline leans closer. Squints at the red and green splodge of paint Dante is pointing at. ‘I think you’re worrying about nothing. These photos don’t really capture the work. Once you see it in person . . .’
He straightens, suddenly. ‘Don’t tell me what I will and won’t see. I’ve been doing this a long time, babe, and I know from photos. Point blank, this is not the show I thought I was getting. This is the very opposite of the show I thought I was getting, and there’s squat I can do about it now.’
His teeth grind together. The muscles on each side of his jaw twitch. Jacqueline says nothing. There are no words she can offer which won’t be mangled and spurned and thrown right back at her feet. She wishes she could see the entire email Ryan sent. Wishes she knew precisely what it was he said about her.
Dante rubs a hand over his scalp again. ‘Look, you might as well go home.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Becca’s got a handle on things. You weren’t meant to be here today anyhow.’
‘I thought I could catch up on the accounts. Now that I am here, it seems silly to just–’
‘I think Becca got those done yesterday.’
‘Oh.’ Becca. Becca did the accounts. ‘I wasn’t aware she knew how.’
‘It’s not rocket science, babe.’ Her boss sits down at his desk and starts tapping away at the keyboard. ‘Didn’t know how long you’d be flitting about up there, did we? Bills gotta be paid, yeah?’
‘Perhaps I should go over everything,’ she offers. ‘Just to make sure she–’
‘Jesus!’ His head snaps up. ‘Territorial much? Becca did the accounts and I checked them; it’s not the end of the goddamn world. Go home and get some sleep. Looks like you could use it.’
Jacqueline straightens. ‘All right, then. An afternoon off would be good, actually. It’s been a long week.’
‘Take tomorrow as well, yeah?’ Dante turns back to his screen. ‘Becca’s on for a full day; no need for you to come in as well.’
‘Really? Don’t you think–’
His iPhone rings, the klaxon call of an old rotary-dial phone. Her boss plucks the thing from his pocket and swears. Taps the screen and holds it to his ear. ‘Susie-Q, I was just thinking about you.’
Susan Keyes, the money behind Seventh Circle. Behind Segue, the sister gallery Dante is angling to open by the end of the year, as well. He catches Jacqueline’s eye. Jerks his head towards the open office door. Monday, he mouths, before turning his shoulder against her. ‘No, my lovely, it’s all in hand. I’m literally looking at the proofs as we speak.’
Jacqueline backs out of the office. Closes the door behind her and walks down the stairs to where Becca waits with eyes wide and inquisitive.
‘How’d it go?’
‘Are you working this weekend?’ Jacqueline asks.
‘Only Saturday,’ the girl says brightly. ‘Dante’s going to man the ship himself on Sunday. It’s nice of him to give you a few days off after your trip – sounds like it was all pretty arduous.’
Jacqueline can’t tell whether or not she’s being sarcastic. She opens her bag and retrieves her collection of CabCharge receipts, neatly held together with a paperclip. ‘I didn’t get a chance to give these to Dante.’
‘I’ll make sure he gets them.’ Becca takes the receipts from her. Flicks them between her fingers. ‘So, you have any plans?’
‘Plans?’
‘For your time off?’
Jacqueline shakes her head. All she wants to do is go home and stand beneath a scalding-hot shower for several million hours. Sleep in her own bed for a few million more. Recover herself from the mess and sweat-slicked confusion that was Brisbane. That was Ryan Jellicoe. Recover and regroup. A few solitary days on her own, without the need to even speak to anyone, not even–
Ant. She’d almost forgotten about her sister in the spare room.
‘Jacks? Are you okay?’
Becca is reaching for her again. Dark nails inch close to her wrist.
‘Don’t call me that,’ Jacqueline snaps.
The girl snatches back her hand. Her red mouth rounds to a near perfect circle.
Jacqueline swallows. ‘Sorry.’
‘I was only trying to be friendly.’ Her tone is far from it now.
‘I know. I’m tired and . . . I’m sorry, honestly.’
The girl nods and walks back to her desk. Tosses the CabCharge receipts on top. ‘So, we’ll see you next week, then.’ She brings Jacqueline’s suitcase around, taking small, delicate steps in her spiked heels. ‘Don’t forget this.’
‘Thanks.’ Jacqueline grips the handle tightly. ‘Tell Dante not to worry about the Ryan Jellicoe show. Whatever he needs fixed, I’ll handle it.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ Becca says.
Jacqueline wheels her case through the gallery doors. Pauses to wave a polite goodbye. The girl returns a thin smile, the press of her lips as cold and hard as the glass that slides shut in front of Jacqueline’s face.
Her apartment is a mess. Boxes stacked in the corners of the living room. Clothes draped like discarded skins over furniture. Dirty dishes, most of them glasses, crowd the sink and kitchen bench, which makes Jacqueline wonder at the vast depths her sister’s sorrow needs for drowning. To be fair, she can’t wholly blame Ant for the state of the place. If her sister knew Jacqueline was coming home early, then she would have tidied. Would have insisted on picking Jacqueline up at the airport. Would, no doubt, have wanted to talk the entire drive home – the kind of rambling, broken-hearted babble Jacqueline was not yet prepared to face.
A messy apartment is a small price to pay for solitude.
For a few precious hours in which to gather herself before becoming – again, always, still – Big Sister.
She tugs her suitcase towards the bedroom, planning to unpack before tackling the kitchen. Only in the hall does she register the muted spatter of water coming from the bathroom. Jacqueline’s stomach sinks. Ant is supposed to be working day shifts all this week and yet here she is, treating herself to a mid-afternoon showe
r. Goodness knows what time she managed to drag herself out of bed. A wisp of steam curls beneath the door.
‘Fine,’ Jacqueline mutters. ‘That’s just fine.’
Her bedroom appears to have been recently occupied by an invading army. The bed is unmade, the doona sloughed halfway off the mattress. A near-empty wine glass perches close to the edge of the side table. In front of the wardrobe, a suitcase gapes like some huge, stomach-slit beast, spilling a tangle of clothes and boots over the floor. It looks like her sister’s room always did when they both lived with their mother.
Except this is not her sister’s room.
Jacqueline feels intensely, absurdly violated. She leaves her own small case outside in the hall and returns to the kitchen. Fills the kettle and opens the fridge to check for milk. The smell of stale curry is sickening. Wrinkling her nose, she extracts the half-dozen or so takeaway containers that have been crammed onto the shelves. One of the lids must be loose as too late she notices the thin trail of yellow sauce following her to the rubbish bin.
‘Damn it, Ant!’ Her eyes prickle. She bites the inside of her cheek, hard. Draws herself along the pain as though it is a lifeline.
Down the other end of the apartment, the bathroom door opens.
Jacqueline braces herself. Forces fresh air into her lungs. ‘It’s only me,’ she calls. Her voice is strong and calm. ‘Everything wrapped up earlier than expected.’
No answer beyond the heavy fall of footsteps and the closing of a second door. The door to the spare room, where her sister should have been staying all along. Should she have made that clear? Should she have needed to? Jacqueline runs water from the kitchen tap. Waits for it to heat and then foams the dishcloth with detergent. The spilled curry turns the cloth a bright yellow. Not the sort of stain that will rinse out and so, once the floor is clean, she throws it into the bin with the containers. Locates the plug beneath an unrinsed cereal bowl. Starts to fill the sink with suds and steam.
Behind her, a throat is cleared.
‘I thought you were working today,’ she says, turning to face–
–not her sister but Paul. Standing beside the kitchen bench in his customary black T-shirt and jeans, hair loose and still dripping from the shower. That same smug grin on his face that she’s always detested.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘You two are back together?’
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘Is she here?’
‘At the restaurant. She’ll be home for dinner.’
‘Home?’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘Here, you mean? Is there something wrong with your place?’
He shakes his head. ‘I need to explain.’
‘Never mind.’ She doesn’t want to hear his excuses. His flimsy justifications for behaving the way he did. Artistic temperament? Wounded pride? Fear of abandonment? Bad enough her sister obviously deemed such offerings worthy of forgiveness. Bad enough she will have to listen to Ant rationalise it all herself anyway. Validation for the lovelorn. For the terminally lost.
Jacqueline turns back to the sink. Flicks off the tap and begins to pile dishes into the near-scalding water. She’s furious. At Paul. At her sister. At Dante and Ryan Jellicoe and sweet little Becca in whose mouth butter wouldn’t so much as soften. But mostly at herself, for allowing everything to spin so completely out of control. Beneath the suds, her hands tremble. She considers the razor blades hidden in her toiletries bag.
She needs time. She needs to be alone.
‘Here,’ Paul says, close by her side. ‘Let me.’
Jacqueline swivels on her heel. Looks up into a face that looms higher than she remembers. That seems somehow different. Finer-boned or whiter-skinned, with eyes pale as polar ice. Were they always like that? She would have sworn his eyes were brown. Brown or hazel. Some dull, muddy colour. A vague recollection of a Halloween party skitters across her mind. Ant with her face and forearms powdered and irises tinted a disconcerting shade of red.
‘Are you wearing contacts?’ she asks him.
This smile is nothing she has seen before. Cautiously open and more genuine than she would have thought Paul capable of being. He takes her hands from the sink. Dries their reddened skin on his shirt.
‘I need to explain,’ he says again. ‘Please.’
Jacqueline stares at him. Takes in his inexplicable height, his strangely altered features. The way his fingers close around hers in a manner that asks permission even as the liberty is taken. And there’s something else. An air about him, or perhaps the air about him. Crisp and sharp and new. She has no words to describe it. Knows only that the man standing in front of her is not Paul. Was never Paul.
‘Who are you?’ Her voice is barely a whisper.
‘Come with me,’ he says.
Jacqueline allows him to lead her away from the sink, out of the kitchen. She isn’t afraid – she can never be afraid – not of him. She has no idea where such conviction comes from, only that it fits within her as close and faultless as truth.
Antoinette pours herself more wine, reaches across her sister’s coffee table to top up Loki as well. Jacqueline covers her glass with a flattened palm even though it’s still full, barely a mouthful missing and not worth the addition of anything more. Her sister’s usual trick, the sly and careful nursing of one solitary drink all through the meal, or night out, or whatever the occasion happens to be, and even then it’ll be rare to see the glass emptied. Antoinette doesn’t know why she bothers.
‘I can’t believe you’re so cool with all this,’ she says.
Jacqueline shrugs. ‘He’s here, isn’t he? Hard to refute that.’ She sits with the purple notebook open in her lap, flips each page and runs her fingertips over the lines which themselves hold nothing but those shallow grooves and indentations, braille in reverse, and Antoinette wishes she would leave the bloody thing alone for five minutes.
‘There’s nothing, not a single word left.’
‘Yes.’ Jacqueline says. ‘But I wonder . . .’
‘I didn’t really think you’d believe me.’ Antoinette glances at Loki. ‘Believe us, I mean. Thought I’d have to, you know, prove it somehow, get the two of them together or something, side by side.’
‘But you said he shouldn’t see me,’ Loki says.
‘He shouldn’t,’ Antoinette tells him. ‘I just meant, I didn’t think she would be so easy to convince.’
‘Loki explained it all,’ Jacqueline says, dismissive. ‘I wish we could still see what you wrote. You can’t remember any of it?’
‘Not really. Not the details.’
This is freaking her out all over again. Arriving home from work to find not just Loki but her sister, the two of them sitting side by side on the couch like old friends, like co-conspirators, the murmur of their voices trailing off as she came into the living room. And Jacqueline laughing, rising gracefully to pull her into a hug, words warm as breath in her ear. Close your mouth, Ant, something will fall in. She should be glad, relieved that Loki has already done most of the heavy lifting, because she sure as hell hasn’t been able to think of the right way to explain things. Still, it seems too easy, her sister’s calm acceptance of the situation, of Loki – as if he’s no more than a stray dog dragged home from the pound.
‘I’ve got an idea.’ Jacqueline sets her glass down on the coffee table, tucks the notebook beneath her arm as she rises. ‘Back in a minute.’
Antoinette waits until her sister has left the room before turning to Loki, turning on Loki. ‘What did you tell her? I mean, what did you say, exactly?’
‘The truth.’
‘And she believed you, just like that?’
Loki sips at his wine. ‘She’s very perceptive.’
‘But it’s insane. If she came up to me out of the blue and said, hey look, here’s this guy I somehow made, somehow magicked in
to existence or whatever, I mean . . . it’s insane. I don’t get how she can just believe it.’
‘Hard to argue with what’s right in front of your face.’ He pats his chest, his hand falling over the heart that beats unquestionably beneath that black cotton shirt, beneath skin and muscle and ribcage, and Antoinette finds herself marvelling afresh at the miracle sitting on the couch opposite her. Loki smiles. ‘See?’
She shakes her head. ‘It’s not like you have my name stamped on your arse. Trademark Antoinette Paige, or some shit. You could be just a person for all anyone could really tell.’
‘You don’t think I’m a person?’
It’s a gift, this ability she has of finding precisely the wrong words to say at any given moment. Words that wound with such blind precision, she might have spent months honing their edge.
‘I’m sorry,’ she tells him. ‘That came out wrong.’
‘You sure it didn’t come out exactly right?’
‘Loki, you know I wouldn’t . . .’
His gaze shifts past her, scowl softening to a smile as Jacqueline walks back into the room. Shaking her head, she settles down beside him again with one leg crossed over the other, one stockinged foot rocking gently in his direction.
‘It didn’t work.’ She opens the notebook to a once-white page, holds up the pencil she must have used to colour it a uniform, shimmery grey. ‘I saw it in a film once. I thought we might be able to show up the indentations from the pen, even if the ink itself has . . . evaporated? But no luck.’
Antoinette leans close, squinting as she tries to make out words or letters or anything approaching some kind of sense from the textured stripes of lead. There are markings, sure; swirls and scratches and dots that tantalise and tease, but nothing legible. Nothing to illuminate the shape of her thoughts that night, if thoughts are what they could be called, those vodka-fuelled fantasies from which she had so unwittingly spun the creature – the person – now calling himself Loki.
‘Useless.’ She slumps back in her chair.
‘But worth a try,’ Loki says, touching her sister’s wrist.
‘I don’t think it really matters.’ Jacqueline frowns. ‘What I mean is, the words themselves may not be very important. I know you both think it was a . . . spell? Or some such? But–’
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