by Minnie Darke
“Who wrote Richard III? Shakespeare wrote Richard III.” Nick was getting excited, as well as actorish in his delivery. “Do you see? You must be able to see.”
“Ah…struggling here.”
“So, I have this choice. There’s a production of Romeo and Juliet coming up. They’ve let me know that if I want it, Romeo’s mine. But the show…it’s not with a big company or anything. It’s not even fully professional. But, then, I’ve never played Romeo. And the director has already lined up a few pretty impressive professional actors for some of the other major roles. There’s so little work around.”
“So, you want to do it?” Justine said.
“Well, it’s a role I’ve always wanted. But the money will be shit. Or nonexistent. The show’s being done on a profit-share basis, which usually means we can afford a cask of wine for the closing-night party.”
There was a small silence. Then Nick said, “Leo’s horoscopes are always spookily accurate. If he’s saying go the Shakespeare, then there will be a good reason. Leo just knows things. Whenever I follow his advice, things go well. Things lead on to…you know…things.”
Justine stared. “This is really how you make important life choices?”
Nick shrugged. “Oftentimes, yes.”
“Wasn’t it also Steinbeck who said something about only wanting advice if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway?” Justine said.
Nick shook his head, disbelieving but impressed. “That’s right, I remember that freaky memory of yours. You are the only person I know who would be able to produce a fact like that out of thin air.”
Justine shrugged away the compliment. “I just think that if you want to play Romeo, you should play Romeo. You don’t have to twist the words of some stargazing nut to give yourself permission.”
“Leo Thornbury is not a stargazing nut. He’s a god.” Suddenly energized, Nick leaped up from the grass; the grassy bank became his stage. “Shakespeare was a Taurus. Earthy, lusty. But Romeo…now he, he was a Pisces.”
“What? Did you just claim to know Romeo’s star sign?”
“I did.”
“And his birth date is mentioned where, precisely, in the text?”
“You can just tell. He’s a dreamer, a beautiful dreamer. And nobody’s more into self-sacrifice than a Pisces.”
“You spent too long in that fish suit today.”
“But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun…”
“Maybe you should play Romeo,” Justine said, and laughed. “Decision making isn’t exactly his strong suit, either.”
“You may mock, but Leo says this is right. Leo says this is what I have to do. And Leo will have his reasons.”
Nick, without warning, sprang up onto the edge of the nearby planter box, placing his feet carefully on the sides so as not to squash any of the cabbages within. With the Star coiled into the silhouette of an unlit torch in his hand, he struck a heroic pose against the sky. Justine shook her head, smiling.
“He, that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail!” Nick called out.
Cusp
Toward the end of March, the sun on its great Monopoly board in the cosmos advanced one square from Pisces to Aries, thus concluding a full pass of the zodiac and without pause beginning another. Just after the clock had struck twelve on the night that separated the fish from the rams, a young woman stepped out the back door of her rented two-bedroom unit into a tiny courtyard garden.
Turning her face to the night sky, she allowed her soul to do a slow 180-degree flip inside her body, so that she felt herself to be hanging from the surface of the Earth: a human chandelier anchored by her feet to a ceiling of ugly interlocking paving bricks that there was, now, no longer any reason to look at. She let her gaze travel among the stars.
Most of the time she was Nicole Pitt—Aquarius, freelance gel nail technician, single mother of two and determined avoider of (any more) shiftless men, and the unimpressed provider for her drug-addicted neighbor’s skinny cat, whom she had to assume was actually named Shithead. Inside the unit, Nicole’s two boys slept on foam mattresses on the floor, their soft little limbs flung out from under their covers.
Her kitchen table—hell, her only table—was strewn with a constellation of crap that neatly mirrored the disparateness and disorganization of her life: her older boy’s ADHD medication, several near-empty bottles of popular shades of nail varnish that had long needed replenishing, splayed astrological almanacs, a boxy old laptop with a cracked screen, and the latest edition of the Alexandria Park Star, lying open at the horoscopes.
But out here, hanging with her head in the stars at this peaceful, stolen hour, she was not Nicole Pitt at all, but Davina Divine—boutique private astrologer, mother to nobody at all, luxury bed linen connoisseur, occupier of a lavish Balinese-inspired home, distant and desultory inamorata to a retinue of charming and occasional beaux. Remote, tranquil and beautifully groomed, she was a trusted tour guide to the many pathways that were dot-to-dotted across the starry sky, a Delphic oracle who knew by instinct as much as training how the swirling forces of the heavens could be expected to push or pull.
As if, she thought.
The truth was that since the day her Diploma of Astrology certificate had arrived in the mail—and this was a few years ago, now—she’d spent vastly more time dreaming about becoming a famous astrologer than she had making any serious attempt to build up a clientele.
In quiet moments of watchfulness, you may recalibrate your understanding of what it is that truly drives you. That’s what Leo Thornbury had written to Aquarians in the pages of the Alexandria Park Star. He’d foretold that, for the water bearers of the zodiac, the coming month would be one of readjustment: a time to contemplate the machinations of the self. And, when it came to Leo, Davina was an unashamed fan-girl.
It was time, Leo was telling her, to get real. But how? Well, for one thing, she could enroll in the Advanced Diploma of Astrology, and start advertising for some clients. She could put some flyers on the pinboard at her local supermarket. She could do some free natal charts for friends and family, then ask them to spread the word. Having formed this plan, Davina’s mind began to drift into a fantasy of what it might be like to meet Leo Thornbury in person. But then an alien yowling broke into her thoughts, and it was loud enough to jerk her head out of the stars and force her soul to swivel back to its workaday orientation.
To her disappointment, she found herself standing in a tiny, miserable courtyard whose brick paving sprouted nothing but a cheap rotary clothesline. To her even greater disappointment, she was—once again—nobody else but Nicole Pitt. The yowling was coming from the narrow length of vertebrae and gingery fur that was weaving around her ankles. With a hand whose nails were painted a greenish purple shot-silk shade of varnish called Mermaid Dreams, Nicole scratched the cat between its tatty ears.
“Hey, Shithead,” she said. “I suppose you’re hungry.”
* * *
As Nicole Pitt was spooning out a measure of the cut-price cat food that she’d taken to adding to her supermarket cart each week, Nick Jordan was walking an inner-city street with a duffel bag full of clothes that smelled—like everything in his world seemed currently to smell—of fish.
Nick knew all about the power of the olfactory sense, and how some smells could return you, instantly and reliably, to certain moments of your life. There was a particular brand of shampoo whose scent took him back to the first, thrilling time he’d ever taken a morning-after shower with a girl. And there was an unavoidable link between the whiff of a kerosene lamp and the camping holidays he’d loved as a kid. So he knew that, henceforth, the smell of fish was likely to bring him back to this particular phase of his life: these heartsick but delicately hopeful months that lay in the aftermath of his breakup with Laura Mitchell.
Today had been
Nick’s last in the employ of the fishmonger at the markets. Tomorrow would be his first day at a new job waiting tables for an upmarket Alexandria Park bistro, and it was this fact that had occasioned the late-night date with his laundry.
The laundromat’s tall, empty windows glowed brightly in the dark street, and when Nick stepped through the door he registered with vague disappointment that the place was empty. Although one of the tumble dryers was humming industriously, there were no other customers sitting on the laundromat’s benches, or leafing through its dog-eared magazines: nobody with whom he might strike up a casual conversation that would make this a slightly less depressing place to be.
Nick upended the contents of his duffel bag onto a bench and went through all his pockets, the way his mother always insisted that he should. And a good thing, too, for here—lurking in the back pocket of his best black pants—was a paper napkin of the sort that could easily confetti itself across an entire load of washing.
There was something written on it.
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
The quote was from Tolkien, and Nick had copied it out with a dodgy biro that had bled blobs of blue ink into the napkin’s soft surface. It had been part of Leo Thornbury’s January horoscope for Aquarius: With Venus in the spiritual sign of Pisces, you find yourself contemplating the thorny issue of self-worth. But go quietly, Aquarius. Mercury in retrograde brings with it a spirit of chaos that makes traveling unwise. Use these early weeks of the year to catch up on your sleep and practice your intuition, remembering that, as Tolkien tells us, “Still round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate.”
Of course, Leo had been right. He always was. It had been a bad time to travel, but the trip had been arranged long before January. And so, on New Year’s Day, Nick had gone with Laura to far north Queensland to play the role of handbag while she’d been busy with a shoot for some new perfume. Although the resort where they had stayed had been beautiful, and although the water in the resort pool was a temperature that made it the perfect counterpoint to the humid air and although the piña coladas at the poolside bar were both exquisite and on the house, the trip—for Nick—had been miserable.
“It might be time to face it,” Laura had said, one frangipani-scented night in their hotel room. He didn’t think he would ever forget how beautiful she looked as she spoke, standing there at the foot of the bed with her cream silk robe untied and nothing underneath. “If you haven’t made it by now…well, what I mean to say is, it might be time for Plan B.”
She hadn’t said it unkindly. And she hadn’t said anything that he hadn’t thought for himself. In February, he would be twenty-seven years old, and Hollywood was as far away as it had ever been. Forget Hollywood. Even the local professional theater companies were still in an unreachable stratosphere. Over the previous year, the only significant paying gigs he’d had were a walk-on part in a television soap, a gig at a healthy-eating expo in which he’d played a capsicum in a huge inflatable suit and a role in a rural tour of a puppet show about germs and the importance of washing one’s hands. Nick had operated the puppet called Booger, and brought the house down at several school assembly halls with the superb timing of his nose-picking jokes.
“Especially if,” Laura had added meaningfully, “we’re going to get more serious about each other. Which I hope we are.”
But, Nick had thought to himself, while lying there between the sheets of the resort’s ultra-king-sized bed, Still round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate.
“I’m not ready to give up,” he’d said. To Laura the lovely, Laura the lithe, Laura of the long, long, long legs. Laura Mitchell the Capricorn, who at the age of twenty-six already had several lump-sum deposits, a share portfolio and income protection insurance.
She’d said, “I don’t want to lose you, Nick. But if we’re going to be together, it’s time for you to be more…well, you have to realize that you’re not a teenager anymore. You can’t eat two-minute noodles and ride a bicycle forever.”
“What if I don’t mind the bicycle? And the two-minute noodles?”
“Then we’ve got a problem,” Laura said sadly.
Breaking up with Laura hadn’t been easy. Not at all. But Nick had done it, and Laura had been poised and dignified in response. For the whole flight home, Nick had wanted nothing more than to soothe her, to soothe himself. Still round the corner there may wait a new road or a secret gate, he had told himself, and that had been enough to help him to hold the line.
Nick shoved his clothes into the washing machine, fed some coins into the slot and calculated that he was nearing the four-month mark of his post-Laura life. He was still in a provisional phase, not yet having found a home of his own. For the time being, he was housesitting for an artist who’d gone to Cuba seeking inspiration for a new exhibition. The artist’s apartment was groovy, if comfortless. It had few appliances, the bed was a futon that may well have been stuffed with concrete, and every wall in the place was densely hung with the artist’s own canvases, many of which featured animals being decapitated. Some mornings Nick found it hard to eat his Weetabix for all the spurting carotid arteries.
Every day of the last few months, for Nick, had been a walk along a tightrope. On one side was the knowledge that Laura was right—that it was time to grow up, give up, get a real job. But on the other side there remained the tingling possibility that his dream future still existed.
The director of Romeo and Juliet had been gratifyingly thrilled when Nick had phoned to accept the lead role. It was hard to imagine that the Alexandria Park Repertory Theater production would be attended by any theatrical luminaries who might, after seeing Nick perform, feel compelled to provide him with the break he so desperately needed. But Nick had learned to trust Leo Thornbury. If he followed the astrologer’s advice, things worked out.
It had been the director who, pleased with Nick’s decision to play Romeo, had tipped him off about the job opening at Cornucopia, a bistro that was conveniently close to the Alexandria Park Repertory’s rehearsal rooms, and notable for paying higher-than-average wages. But there was something else in the mix that had Nick puzzled. The bistro was owned by Dermot Hampshire, the food writer at the Alexandria Park Star, where Justine Carmichael worked. First, he’d run into her at the markets; now this. What did it mean? he wondered.
In the twelve years since he’d seen her, she’d hardly changed at all. Her body was still slight, her hazel eyes still full of mischief. She was whip-smart as ever, too, in a way that made him think about—perhaps even overthink—every word he said. And those eyebrows: they hadn’t changed either. Although thick and straight, they were capable of all kinds of dexterous maneuvers that made him wonder if she was privately mocking him.
For the whole evening in Alexandria Park, Nick had waited for an opening, for an invitation to reminisce about that night they’d spent, as fourteen-year-olds, on a South Australian beach. They talked about plenty of other things: about her work and their families, about astrology and Shakespeare. When he’d asked for her phone number, she’d given it to him willingly enough, but he’d been a little taken aback when she hadn’t asked for his in return. Neither had she given him even the slightest hint that she wanted to talk about that long-ago night.
He’d thought perhaps they’d be able to laugh together about how the pair of them had slipped away from their parents and found a bottle shop on a street bordering the amusement park. And how Justine—who’d been very obviously younger than eighteen—had hovered nervously outside while Nick, who was tall for his age and could do a persuasively deep voice, had gone inside and managed to procure a bottle of Stone’s Green Ginger Wine. They’d shared the better part of the bottle as they talked, gradually loosening up to the point where Nick was showing off all the accents he could mimic, and Justine was reciting poetry.
Nick blushed to think about what kind of gormless dickhead he’d been, back then. So young and so inexperienced. When they’d kissed, he’d probably mauled her half to death without knowing any better. It was no wonder she’d hidden away the next morning and refused to come out to say goodbye. He’d tried several times, once he was back at home, to write to her. But every sentiment he’d managed to get down on the page sounded stupid. Plus, he’d been terrified of misspelling a word.
Seeing Justine again had unsettled him. It’d had the effect of joining him up, circling him back, to a much younger version of himself—and while it had felt good to be reminded of all the energy and confidence of that younger self, it had also felt uncomfortable, as if she’d caught him out for failing to live up to the promise and potential of that self. She had reminded him of parts of himself that were, what…receding?
Nick took out his phone, and wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that the screen wasn’t showing any more missed calls from Laura. In recent weeks, she’d phoned several times, and left messages saying that she wanted to talk. To see if there was any room for compromise. But Nick kept reminding himself that, for Laura, compromise really meant him being convinced to change his mind to match hers.
Nick scrolled through his contacts until he reached “Justine Carmichael” and tapped on the screen so that the letters of her name glowed, large and clear. Then he paused. It was very late; too late to call. But it wasn’t out of the question to send her a text.
Great to see you the other night…he began, then deleted the words.
“Boring,” he muttered.
Justine was someone who could effortlessly pull entire poems out of her mind, who remembered quotes from Steinbeck as if they were song lyrics. If he was going to write to her, he’d have to write something that was at least half interesting.
I was just thinking about…he began again. Deleted every word. Sighed.