Star-Crossed

by Minnie Darke

  “I’ve come to you completely empty-handed,” she said. “No wine, no chocolates, no—”

  “Oh, shut up,” he said, entirely good-naturedly. “Come on in. Wine is this way.”

  In the narrow hallway, Justine passed a series of hat stands that were cluttered with an insanely eclectic collection: she caught sight of a Tibetan horseman’s hat, an English bobby’s helmet, a Daniel Boone cap with a genuine raccoon tail and a chef’s toque.

  In the living room, propped on a rudimentary brick-and-plank bookshelf, was Nick’s ukulele collection—one instrument in plain brown, and the others in Hawaiian shades of sunset, warm shallows and guava. Lined up around the base of the walls were posters for plays by Brecht and Chekhov, for The Tempest and As You Like It, Henry IV and Twelfth Night. There were posters for Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and Away, physical theater productions and puppet shows, cabarets and crass-pun pantomimes.

  Humble pie, à la Nick Jordan, turned out to be a creamy chicken and leek filling inside a perfect puff pastry case. Because Nick didn’t yet have an actual pie dish, he’d baked it in a foil tin from the supermarket, but it had turned out beautifully and he’d served it up with tender spears of asparagus.

  Since Nick had nothing resembling a dining suite, they ate with plates on their laps, sitting side by side on the couch that Justine couldn’t help but think of as Laura’s couch. He’d chosen a crisp white wine to celebrate with, but they drank it out of a pair of sunflower-patterned coffee mugs, since wineglasses remained on his list of things to acquire.

  “To you, Lois Lane,” Nick said, holding up his cup.

  Soon, two scraped-clean plates had been set down on the coffee table, and Nick was opening a second bottle that Justine noticed was significantly less pricey than the first had been. Entirely warm and comfortably tipsy, she had taken her shoes off and was sitting with her feet tucked beneath her.

  “Thanks for this, Nick. For dinner…for celebrating with me.”

  “A pleasure,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten, though. Remember, you still have to admit that Leo Thornbury knows everything.”

  “That’s a pretty grand pronouncement,” Justine said.

  “Well, I’m not going to rush you. Whenever you’re ready,” he said, mock magisterially, “I shall hear your admission.”

  Justine laughed. “Okay, then. I suppose now is as good a time as any.”

  She took a sip of her wine and thought, cleared her throat, and made a serious face. “Leo Thornbury seems to be a rather good astrologer.”

  “Pah!” Nick said. “Pathetic. Try again.”

  “Okay, okay. You’re right,” Justine said. “Ah…Leo Thornbury’s columns have, for whatever reason, quite accurately foretold the circumstances of my work life this year.”

  “Those are weasel words,” Nick pronounced. “What’s this ‘for whatever reason’ business? The words you’re looking for are ‘Leo Thornbury knows everything.’ ”

  “Leo Thornbury,” Justine began again, and collapsed into giggles.

  Brain: If only he knew, huh?

  Justine: Did you have to bring that up right now, when I’m having such a good time?

  “Leo Thornbury,” Nick prompted.

  “Has unusually good insight,” Justine finished.

  Brain: Very clever…

  But before Nick could argue any further, Justine was surprised—and she saw that Nick was, too—to hear a key turning in the lock of his front door. Only a few seconds later, Laura Mitchell appeared in the living-room doorway, wearing a shimmery deep green coat that fell almost to the straps of her stupendously high heels. Her hair was fixed in a complicated updo that Justine was fairly certain could only be accomplished by a professional. It was as if Laura had stepped directly off the red carpet, and into a profoundly awkward silence.

  “Hey,” Nick said, getting immediately to his feet. He kissed Laura on the cheek. “Did I know you were coming over?”

  Laura looked from Nick to Justine, and back to Nick. “The advertising thing was at the Westbury, just on the other side of the park,” Laura said, gesturing with her small clutch purse as if to indicate the direction from which she’d come, “so I thought I’d call in on my way home. Say…hello.”

  The pause that followed this sentence seemed to stretch, and stretch, and with every passing nanosecond, Justine felt increasingly uncomfortable.

  “This is Justine,” Nick said, all in a rush.

  An expression of perplexity briefly crossed Laura’s face, but then Justine observed how quickly and expertly Laura reorganized her features.

  “Pleased to meet you, Justine,” Laura said, and there was something formal about Laura’s practiced good manners that Justine found both enviable and irritating.

  “My next-door neighbor,” Nick explained.

  “Oh,” said Laura, the pieces of the puzzle visibly coming together in her mind. “You went to school with Nick. You’re the Shakespeare coach, yes?”

  “That’s me,” Justine said, and for some reason her thoughts jumped to the lighthouse keeper’s basket. Did Laura know about it? Did it bother her?

  Laura took off her coat and hung it on the hook of a hat stand.

  “Do you want a glass of wine?” Nick offered.

  “Just water, thank you,” Laura said. When Nick had gone to the kitchen, Laura took a seat next to Justine and asked, “So, how’s he doing with his lines?”

  “Beautifully,” Justine said. “Really well. Just a little bit of work needed around the final soliloquy. I mean, if there’s a part of the play you definitely don’t want to stuff up, it’s the tomb scene. Can you imagine, there in the crypt, and you’ve got Juliet in your arms, and you completely dry up and have to call for a prompt? Talk about destroying the mood!”

  Brain: You’re babbling.

  Justine: I know. And see her face? She’s trying not to, but she’s looking at me like I’m a fuckwit.

  Laura, Justine now understood, was one of those women. With all their poise and reserve, they made Justine nervous, and the effect of this on her behavior was positively Pavlovian. Try as she might, when she was in conversation with women like Laura, she couldn’t stop herself from lapsing into ridiculously vivacious displays of chattiness.

  Justine: What do I do?

  Brain: Put your shoes on, buttercup.

  And so, by the time Nick had returned to the living room, Justine had slipped her feet back into her beloved but decidedly unglamorous clogs and buttoned up the duffel coat that had—on her way out of her own apartment—seemed to exude a kind of streetwise chic, but now seemed only childish.

  “I should go,” she said.

  “There’s no need to rush off on my account,” Laura said, and Justine could see that she was being sincere.

  “No, I really should go,” Justine said. “I had a big day at work.”

  At the door, Nick hugged Justine again, but now there was none of the fizzy excitement she’d felt earlier.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That wasn’t meant to happen.”

  And Justine knew that she’d spend the night half awake wondering what was.

  * * *

  On the day she officially began as a reporter, Justine found herself at the front door of the Star at half past seven in the morning with an Officeworks bag filled with an extravagant selection of black pens, a clutch of classy notebooks, a set of matching desktop containers, some adorable sticky notes, animal-shaped rubber bands, penguin paper clips and novelty erasers.

  Nobody else had yet arrived. Justine punched in the code to the electronic lock, and stepped into the half-lit hush of the empty building. At the door to the staff writers’ room, Justine paused for a moment, taking in the workstation that had belonged to Jenna Rae. Gone were all the postcards and reminder notes that had been pinned to the felt boards ar
ound the computer; the penholder was empty, as was a small bookshelf beside the desk. Justine jiggled the mouse of her new computer in order to wake up the monitor, and found that the computer, too, was invitingly blank, with all of Jenna’s personal files removed, and a generic desktop image reinstalled.

  Moving desks, she thought, was like a small and uncomplicated version of moving house, and it came with the same mixture of excitement and newness, anticipation and the slight sting of goodbye. But she was glad, now, that she had woken so ridiculously early; she was grateful to have this slice of time in which to set up her new desk unhurriedly, make herself a cup of tea, daydream a little…also to duck into her old office to check the fax machine.

  And there, in the office that was no longer hers, a single white page lay on the machine’s out-tray. Soon, this would all be Henry’s. But the fax was here, now. And Justine was here, now.

  “Timing, Leo,” she whispered, as she picked up the page. “Beautiful timing.”

  Aquarius, she read. This month Mars is flexing its muscles in the power zone of your Eighth House. A powerful house, the eighth concerns itself with the greatest mysteries of life—sex and death—but also with rebirth and transformational experience. The eclipse of 21 August brings both revelation and auspicious conditions for relinquishing those things in life that no longer serve you.

  “Un…helpful, Mr. Thornbury,” Justine whispered.

  Brain: I don’t know. Sex and death seem pretty relevant for someone playing Romeo.

  Justine: Yes, yes. But we don’t want him thinking about “relinquishing,” do we?

  She checked the time; it was still very early, so she slid in behind the desk. If Henry arrived while she was transcribing the stars, she would be able to tell him, quite truthfully, that she was just helping him out. After all, that was what Jeremy had asked: that everybody pitch in to give Henry a hand.

  Justine clipped Leo’s fax to the document holder, logged in to the computer and opened up a new file. Fingers flying over the keys, she transcribed the entries for Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn and…

  Aquarius, she typed. You are on song, water bearers. With Jupiter casting its largesse about in your career sector, you are at last starting to see results for all the many years of hard work you have invested. Enjoy the acknowledgment and acclaim that rightfully come your way. Take a bow, Aquarius!

  Justine had just hit the exclamation point when Daniel Griffin appeared at the office door, making her jump with surprise.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to alarm you.”

  “No, no. It’s all good,” she said. “I didn’t think anyone else—”

  “I thought you’d be next door.”

  “I am next door. I mean, I was,” Justine babbled. “I just came in to get my last few things and while I was here, I thought I would, um…”

  Daniel looked at her directly, steadily, slightly amusedly. This only had the effect of making Justine more nervous. He came to the side of her desk, half sat on the edge of it, and peered at the computer screen.

  “The stars, hm?”

  “Yes.”

  Justine felt her pulse skyrocket. If Daniel were to look closely enough, he would see that there was a mismatch between the words on the screen and the words on the fax that she was supposedly transcribing. But there was no way, right this minute, of either scrolling the screen so that the entry for Aquarius disappeared from view, or removing the fax from the document holder. At least, not without looking profoundly dodgy. But maybe if she was cool, supercool, he wouldn’t notice.

  “It’s surprising, really, how many people are into the stars,” she tried. “Are you? Into the stars?”

  “It’s hard not to be,” he said.

  “Oh? Why so?”

  “Well, when you’re given the best role in the zodiac, it’s hard to turn it down.”

  “Best role?”

  “I’m a Leo,” he said. “The lion. The sun. The king.”

  “I see,” said Justine, trying not to let her eyebrows shoot up into you’ve got to be fucking joking territory.

  “And you?”

  It was working: Daniel was looking at her and not at the screen.

  “Well, I’m not a Leo,” Justine said, perhaps a little too emphatically.

  “Gemini?” he guessed.

  “Are you trying to say I’m two-faced?”

  “Libra?”

  “Looking for a diplomatic option that won’t offend me, are you?”

  “Answering questions with questions? Anyone would think you’re a journalist,” Daniel said. “But I get it. I’m going to have to work you out, right?”

  Justine was not sure this was quite the sort of conversation she wanted to be having with Daniel Griffin on the first day of their new working relationship.

  “Something like that,” she said.

  “Well, why don’t you finish up here, then come and see me for an assignment?” he said. “I’ve got a beauty for you. If I wasn’t the editor, I’d want this one myself.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ever heard of Huck Mowbray?”

  “The Aussie Rules player?”

  “Very good.”

  “He has that terrible mustache.”

  Daniel nodded. “And the micro-shorts. At the moment, he’s the ruck rover for the Lions, but before moving up to Queensland, he played for a couple of the southern clubs.”

  “And?”

  “Well, he’s coming home. To launch a book of poetry. His own book of poetry.”

  “Huck Mowbray, the footy player, is a poet? Are you serious?”

  “Justine, Justine. One should not stereotype. Just because he looks like a grunt doesn’t mean he isn’t sensitive.”

  Carefully, while Daniel was speaking, Justine—casually, casually—unclipped Leo’s fax from the document holder and folded it—absentmindedly, apparently—in half.

  “No need to worry about the deadline. This month’s edition’s pretty much locked down, and we’ll want to keep the Huck Mowbray for the September edition, to coincide with the AFL finals. So, you’ve got plenty of time. What do you think? You up for it?”

  “Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?” Justine said. Then blushed, and crossed her arms across her own chest, realizing that she had just made a tit joke to her new boss.

  Daniel smiled. “I had a press gallery friend who used to say, does Gough Whitlam think it’s time?”

  “Very Australian,” Justine said, chastened.

  “Oh, there’s more where that came from. Do koala farts smell of cough drops? Does a Tasmanian have two heads? Is Bob Brown?”

  Justine would have liked to chime back in, but since the only rhetorical affirmation she had left was “Does a rocking horse have a wooden dick?,” she said nothing.

  “Right,” Daniel said, straightening up. “When you’re ready, come by my office and I’ll give you all the details.”

  Once he was gone, Justine leaned back in the office chair and let relief flow through her. That had been a bit too close for comfort.

  Justine picked up Leo’s fax. Normally, she would have speared it directly onto the document spike. But today she did something different. She tugged off a handful of other documents, skewered Leo’s stars, then replaced the other pages on top, burying the fax deep in the pile.

  She submitted the stars for layout and logged out of the computer that was, as of today, Henry’s. Before she left the office, Justine gave the small white fax machine a friendly little pat.

  “Thanks, Leo, old friend. It’s been fun,” she whispered. “But it’s over now.”

  * * *

  On the Friday of Romeo and Juliet’s opening night, Justine strategically commandeered the office bathroom on the stroke of 4:40 p.m. Behind the locked door, she too
k off her cute cherry-red Mary Janes and replaced them with a pair of black platform-heeled boots that were both stunning to look at and horribly uncomfortable to walk in.

  Over the blank canvas of her little black dress, Justine put on a black evening coat with a deep ruffle at the hem and a frill at the neckline.

  At 4:45 p.m., there came a sugary voice from outside the door. “Will you be long, darling?”

  “Not long, Barbel,” Justine said, and she took out her makeup purse.

  Face done, that left only her hair. She couldn’t bring herself to go so far as hairspray. It made her sneeze. So she settled for scrunching her light brown waves in her hands and slipping in a sparkly clip at her temple. She surveyed herself in the mirror.

  Justine: So, will I do?

  Brain: Very nicely indeed.

  The blocks between the office and the Alexandria Park Markets were tough going in the magnificent boots, and this confirmed in Justine’s mind that it would be sensible to take a taxi the rest of the way to the theater. But there was first of all an essential errand to be accomplished at the markets. And, this night, it had nothing to do with advocados.

  The florist’s stall at the markets was called Hello Petal, and the woman behind the counter, wearing an apron of vintage ticking, looked like she’d had a long day. Her mascara was smudged beneath her eyelids and her hair seemed tired. Nevertheless, she managed to dredge up a smile for Justine.

  “What can I get for you?” she asked.

  “I need two bouquets, please,” Justine said. “They should match, but one should be a little younger and girlier. The other should be a little older and more masculine.”

  The florist looked intrigued. She thought for a moment before she began to move around her flower buckets picking one stem here, another there, in what looked like a kind of waltz.

  “And, if you wouldn’t mind, can you find a way to wrap the second one together with this?” She handed the florist a copy of the new edition of the Star, hot off the press.

  “Curiouser and curiouser!” said the florist.