12
We chat about Cello’s floral fish,
designed to match her couch fabric.
About Amy Hilton’s streak, Gold Leaf
induced, at a Buzz Club in Los Angeles.
I take another slice of cake, a little stale
but sweet, the icing thick against my teeth.
Feel sugary and well fed so I’m off-guard
when Cello says
—I don’t know how to say this North, but…
—What?
—I think…
—Shit, Cello, what is it?
Cello hedges sometimes for effect.
—I saw a bloke.
—A bloke? That’s it?
But my stomach does a flip.
My blood begins to tick.
The muscles in my heart tighten.
—Well, rather, I saw Jack. I’m sure of it.
—Cello, it’s been years.
—I know. Weird, isn’t it?
13
At the mention of Jack’s name again
(two times now, in less than a week)
it’s like a blade flicks between my ribs.
I can hardly talk, much less breathe.
—I shouldn’t have told you, Cello says.
Now you’ve gone all funny. Talk to me.
—Where did you see him? I say, faintly.
—In a Ute Flute, driving down Main Street.
I grind my cake into bits and drop them
at Big Cat’s giant feet.
—Hey! says Cello. You’ll make him sick!
But by then her voice is far from me,
drowned out by a cargo ship of tears;
a weight I’ve harboured all these years.
I grab my things. Tell Cello that I have
to leave.
14
At home the past floods me too fast
to combat it. What the sea takes out
it washes in; mottled, gaping, fish-like
things that fall apart as I grasp at them.
Like the creatures Bear brings in half
dead; fluoro foxes and mini-pigs,
the bounty of his hunting trips
that twitch a shuddering leg or wing.
The garden below my flat is filled
with mangled, Bear-caught things
buried beneath rocks and weed.
15
I have jam on toast for tea,
thick slices I eat miserably in bed
and take a dose of Flight Tabs.
Four will send me whizzing
through the galaxy or so the packet
guarantees. But this is a generic brand
bought cheap so all I get is a fuzz
of stars I try to reach by flapping
on small stumps of wings. I wake
with Bear’s nose in my ear. I fone
Waverley and tell her I’ll be late in.
—Okay, she says in a clipped off voice
like someone biting quick through thread.
Something I’ve done? Too bad, I think,
and sink back into sleep.
16
And dream of swimming with Jack
in a leaf-green sea. Beneath us
drift the somnolent beasts
and trees with unfamiliar fruit
like peaches, but that’s not quite it.
Jack looks no more than fifteen
but the hands he runs all over me
are man’s hands. There’s a clay-like
moistness to our skins so it’s hard
to say where I finish and he begins.
I try to swim to the sea’s surface
but can’t and wake, struggling
for breath. I grab Bear’s lead.
Jog fast along the beach.
A good fast run will fix all this.
Part 6: Hair
Angler’s Bay, 2032
Lightly, as after death, I imagine myself in skies past this one,
For there’s no one anyplace who isn’t secretly going away.
Carol Frost
1
Cello got curves early in places
where the rest of us were flat
or just lumpy. A rash of boys
pocked, lanky and raucous
with uncertainty would follow
where she went. For Cello
was languid, arched and sleek,
her legs poured into skins
of gold and blue, the colours
of Angler’s Bay Primary School.
And where her thighs almost
but not quite met, they left
a little sunlit gap boys longed
to poke their fingers in.
And she knew it.
2
There were others like Cello
with enhanced attributes: Dream
Genes children who never seemed
to quite fit in with the local stock
of mongrel kids. The Toby twins
who spent their lunch hours intent
on maths, their heads bent low,
and Casey Jones, whose mastery
of the flute made the world contract
into a ball of sweet and shining notes.
Designer kids clung to their own kind,
except for Cello who drifted, finding
best friends who never lasted.
She still came over most weekends
but we barely talked at school,
as if adhering to an unspoken rule.
3
I too kept precarious company
with girls whose bland aura
afforded me a sense of safety.
We were small fish in a dangerous
sea less lonely than the library.
At lunch, my sister paced the yard
or trailing after, called
—Northy, come on! Play with me!
I tried hard not to hear until
the invisible cord that stretched
between us grew too taut and thin.
I agreed then to inspect whatever
she held out to me, returning
way too late to mend the fracture
in the bone of schoolgirl chatter
Finn had made, unwittingly.
4
That was the year when Devil Flu
struck Tasmania, killing wombats
and wallabies too. No animals live
there now unless they’re immune.
Meanwhile we were almost teens,
too big for primary but stuck with it.
That winter at our swimming comp
we shivered in our thermal treads,
goose-bumped in the hectic din.
Finn won her heats but I never did.
The start gun held an unspecified dread.
I’d just as soon watch from the bench.
5
Finn was against Cello in the final race
and a lap ahead, piercing the water
like a laser needle. Cello was fast
but beside my sister she was slow,
as if held back by the undertow.
Finn reached the pool’s far end
and fish-slick she was off again,
winning her race too easily.
Cello sat down, sleek and wet.
She glanced at no one, right nor left,
just dried her long and supple legs.
But casually, as if she didn’t care.
>
6
In the change rooms Finn wore
a gap-toothed grin as she sat naked
on the bench, untangling knickers,
socks and skins. Most of us were caught
up by then with dressing behind towels
or in cubicles, to conceal the fuzz of hair
we liked to pretend just was not there.
Then Cello stepped out of the shower
to reveal the pelt between her legs;
soft and black, luxuriant. Someone
giggled. All of us stared. Monstrous,
she was, as she stood there,
this perfect girl with too much hair.
7
Finn needed water like the rest of us
need air. Without it her skin tore easily.
At dinner she drained the jug empty.
Our mum despaired.
—You can’t live on water!
—But Finny can! my sister said.
Neighbours found her in their pools,
this white-haired girl who brokeall the rules our parents set.
Dad built higher fences, installed
locked gates so even our dog Rosie
couldn’t escape to pilfer the Shale Road
rubbish bins.
—Wherever you go, North, Finn goes too,
my mother said to me regularly.
—Bullshit! said Cello when I told her this.
—Bullshit, I said, but silently.
I wished Finn could be made ordinary
or didn’t exist, then felt the guilt of it
tumbling in.
8
Cello, Finn and me: a triangle taut,
tight-seamed, with Finn at the apex
tugging me. That summer the siren
went off heaps. The UV index hit
twenty and the beach was closed.
Our mother had banned us from
using screens until Finn stopped
talking with an American accent.
So we had to seek other pursuits:
chalked worlds of flying, skimming,
whizzing things in the veranda’s
concrete shade. But when Finn
broke our chalk into little bits,
Cello and I left her to it.
—Finny play too, my sister said,
one hand on the door knob, rattling.
—Don’t! I hissed. Stop it! Mum! Finn’s
wrecking everything!
—I’m going home, said Cello bluntly.
—Take me! Take me! my sister said,
and grabbed her wrist with a limpet
clamp that Cello peeled off artlessly.
9
—North, said our mother, I know it’s hard…
—But Mum, she’s always following me!
That night I waited up, angry,
until the rest of the family was in bed
and stole my mother’s sewing scissors.
My sister’s braids between the blades
crunched sweetly. She murmured,
stirred, but kept sleeping, her pale
eyelids fish-flickering. I whispered
a prayer of thanksgiving and then
I stuffed her plaits in the kitchen bin.
10
In the morning Finn woke early.
—Look Northy, lookit! I got new hair!
The stubble on her head was white
as frost on a paddock in the spring.
—Your hair! said Mum, slow with sleep.
Oh no…Richard! Look what Finn’s done!
—I didn’t do it, but Northy did.
Dad raised his ginger head, rubbed his eyes
with a freckled hand and, frowning, said
—North! Something to do with Cello, yes?
—I guess, I said and braced myself
for some dark punishment. But somehow
the punishment never came. Only a sharp
edged silence like the kind my mother made
when she sliced a loaf into neat squares
to make our lunch for school.
—New hair, said Finn, on my fancy head.
11
In September, along with other sales
and deals, Star Jet raffled off flights
in space that cost no more than a trip
to Perth. On iTV we watched, transfixed,
as Sharon from Epping and Bindy’s kids
floated at zero gravity in silver suits.
And in the hubbub of that afternoon,
Cello got hold of a few Skin Tabs
we took at my place with orange juice.
Cello chose purple. I chose green.
Finn took the half I offered her,
and swallowed it without question.
Cello rolled her eyes.
—You idiot, she said. You’re wasting it.
But I was getting tired of this.
12
By evening, Cello’s skin was purple,
ours were green. Finn, transfixed
by Quad Squad on 3DV, said nothing
until her show finished and then
she only said one thing.
—Northy, North! We’re jumping beans!
When Mum called us for dinner,
she let out a shriek.
Relax, I said to her. It’s only skin.
—Relax? North, you’re emerald green!
Cello, go home please. I’m calling your
mother right this minute.
—It’ll fade, said Cello, nonchalant.
And so it did, to the palest sheen;
colour of frogs and corpses, retro
décor, lettuce leaves.
Part 7: Boat
Angler’s Bay, 2050
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Rainer Maria Rilke
1
The seaside jog stirs my endorphins
from a slovenly sleep. A mild gratitude
settles in for dogs, sand, surf and sea.
I drive to work about ten-thirty
– we’re diving later, I’ll need the Flute.
I’m wondering what’s up with Waverley.
When I foned her earlier, she was clipped
and curt. At the lab she’s looking delicate,
in an old brown jumper with holes in it.
Her scarlet hair’s in a scrappy knot.
When I come in she doesn’t look up,
just keeps an eye on the hydroscope.
I watch her fingers swivel the lens.
Waverley has beautiful hands; slender,
bone-white, except for the spots
that Gallopers leave. Beside them,
mine look like lumps of meat. I place
a hand across her own but she just
keeps on working.
2
It’s weird in the lab without Waverley’s
dingbat chatter. We locate a few tomato
genes in a flounder sprouting a leaf-like fin.
There’s been lots of weird fish in the last
five years since a tsunami hit Gen Corp’s
laboratories and washed its experiments
into the Tasman Sea. Midday, my skinfone
zings. The scan reads: no number/no ID.
I thump my wrist on the lab’s hard bench
to get more detail. Sometimes this works,
but n
ot today.
3
Mid-arvo, my skinfone transmits
just as I’m finishing an autopsy
on another flounder clogged
with seeds. The fone chirrups.
I sync it quick, absorbed by work
and not thinking. This time it reads:
— north, fone me please.
I request the caller’s origin.
Melways map 2567.
Potter’s Hill. Refer 8X.
4
Just then, there’s a thump at the door
downstairs. I stiffen. Waverley checks
the flexi screen and swipes at tears.
—The blokes from the footy team, she says,
bleakly. Come to collect a star fish kit.
I almost hug her with relief.
Two big blokes clomp in.
But something about the youngest
unnerves me. The way his nose inclines,
the ash-blonde hair, the goatee beard.
I shrug off the thought like a half-formed
track. Today every dickhead looks just
like Jack.
5
—The Little Green Star Fish, says Waverley
and doles out a spiel about cloned starfish.
Waverley, I think. Put some life into it!
We’re trying to sell these things.
I steer her to the store room, tenderly.
—Stars have to be monitored and fed, I say.
But they heal wounds quicker than anything.
I peel a star from the tank’s glass wall,
fluorescent green with pink tendrils,
extract fluid from the clone’s five points,
make an incision in a sea slug’s skin
and insert the fluid into it. The slug’s
wound vanishes.
—Spooky! says the guy with flaxen hair.
The boys at the club will just love this!
6
At five p.m. I flick off the screens.
Waverley packs the diving gear.
The Sunlit Zone Page 5