by Minnie Darke
“Easy, fella, easy,” Guy said soothingly to Brown, even as he dragged the dog across the railway bridge and up a narrow path to the front office of the Dogs Home.
Brown continued to bark, uselessly, between chokes. Did this idiot human not know how many dogs came to this joint only to get the green dream?
Guy opened the door to the office and a woman stepped out from behind the front counter, broad as a battleship in her khaki tunic. She raised an eyebrow and leaned over just slightly—though Brown could see that she was deliberately keeping her flabby face out of reach of even his most desperate lunging attack.
She smiled, cold as charity, and said, “Well, well. You again. Welcome back.”
* * *
They were having lunch at Medici, and they were getting looks. They always did. And although they studiously ignored the looks they were getting, it could not be denied the two young women had been at least partially deliberate in choosing a table positioned right in front of the restaurant’s large picture window. It framed them beautifully.
Charlotte Juniper, media adviser to Greens Senator Dave Gregson, wore an olive green dress with high, high-heeled boots. Her red hair flowed all around her shoulders, and although a light linen scarf was twisted about her throat, there was still plenty of speckled flesh to be seen between the bottom of the scarf and the plunging neckline of her dress.
Opposite her was her friend Laura Mitchell—Capricorn, law graduate and increasingly successful model, disciplined maintainer of a BMI of twenty, connoisseur of imported cheeses and giver of generous and spectacularly apt birthday gifts. It was hard to avoid the word “raven” when it came to Laura’s dark, gleaming hair. She was wearing it straight today, and loose. And although the black dress she wore was also loose, it still somehow managed to suggest the small, high breasts and narrow yet shapely hips that lay underneath. Her black shoes were low-cut and flat and her long legs were brown, and bare, even though it was August. The poor waiter had no idea where to look.
“Which cheeses do you want on the platter?” he asked.
“Definitely the Fromager d’Affinois,” Laura said.
“And the Leicester,” Charlotte said.
Laura and Charlotte sometimes fantasized about opening their own cheese boutique. This would happen, they agreed, once Laura had retired—a millionaire—from modeling, and after Charlotte had saved the world.
Charlotte and Laura’s friendship was an unusual one, since it transcended politics, taste and even the normal standards of compatibility. The two women really had only a handful of significant things in common: they enjoyed being beautiful, they took pleasure in lovely clothes, they liked cheese and they each had two ex-stepfathers and were on to their third.
In Charlotte’s case, the plethora of stepfathers reflected her mother’s full immersion in a nonpossessive, hippie ethic. In Laura’s, it stemmed from her mother’s openly stated philosophy that a first husband was for genes, a second for money and a third for more money. Laura’s mother’s fourth husband, Laura’s third stepfather, was—Laura’s mother had admitted—surplus to requirement, but he was good company, well connected and had a lovely yacht.
Charlotte and Laura had first met when they were in the second year of their degrees, by which time Charlotte had been elected president of the student union, and Laura had been chosen to appear for the university—capped and gowned—in a nationwide advertising campaign. But their friendship was not cemented until one night, in the fourth year of their studies, when a university ball coincided with a period of work placement for each of them.
Charlotte had requested, and got, her placement in the policy department at Bush Heritage. Laura, on the other hand, had been thrilled to get a spot in the legal division of BHP. To the ball, Charlotte had worn a white silk cheongsam, tight and split to the thigh; Laura had worn a strapless black gown with a ballooning brocade skirt. They had made a fetching pair, standing together in the foyer of one of the city’s fanciest hotels.
“I can never remember,” a hapless, drunk student colleague had said to the pair of them, “which one of you got Bush Heritage and which one of you got BHP?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Charlotte had said. She had gestured first to her gown, and then to Laura’s. “See? Good guys, and…bad guys.”
“Yes, but black doesn’t stain,” said Laura, just before flinging a full glass of cabernet sauvignon all over Charlotte.
Charlotte had stood there for a moment, dripping and in shock, before Laura had been overcome with remorse. She had taken Charlotte into the hotel bathroom and mopped her up as best she could, then paid for a cab to take them both back to her flat where she lent Charlotte another (black) frock to wear. A few weeks later, she’d bought Charlotte a new and very expensive cheongsam in a deep green that Laura thought would suit her redhead’s coloring better than white. They had been friends ever since.
“So,” Laura asked, cutting a wedge of the d’Affinois, “how’s the handsome senator?”
Charlotte sipped her pinot and gave a cat-cream smile. “I’m moving into his apartment.”
“Wonderful news, Lottie,” Laura said. “What about the rest of the staff? Do they all know?”
“I supposed you’d call it an open secret,” Charlotte said.
“And what about his tendency to wander? How are you going to keep him on the straight and narrow?”
“I have my ways and means,” Charlotte said, stabbing a triangle of Leicester. “What about you? How’s Nick?”
Laura paused for effect. “We’re getting married,” she said.
When Charlotte squealed with delight, half the restaurant turned to look at her.
“Not in real life,” Laura added. “And not until next year, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“So, you know the Chance wine campaign?”
Laura had been doing advertisements for Chance for a few years now, and the campaign was developing into something of a narrative about how the Chance girl was growing up, moving through the stages of her life.
“Well,” Laura went on, “it seems that this spring, the Chance girl is going to meet a man. Walk through the grape alleys with him, that sort of thing. And next spring, ta da! Wedding bells! The year after that, the couple are strolling through the vineyard with a babe in arms. Then comes the handsome dark-haired toddler…you get the idea. You would not believe what they’re willing to pay us for a five-year contract.”
“Wow. But I thought Nick hated modeling,” Charlotte said.
“He says he hates it, but he’s never really tried it. I mean, as I always tell him, modeling is just acting with a salary. And without all those lines. I think he’ll jump at it when he finds out how much they’re offering. The people at Chance, the people at the agency—they love his look. They agree we’re perfect together. And Nick…I think he’s starting to realize that acting’s never really going to bring home the bacon.”
“How was Romeo and Juliet?”
“Oh, you know,” Laura said, waving a hand about. “Shakespeare-y.”
“Heathen.”
“I’m not a heathen. I am merely honest.”
“So, you’ve told Nick, then? About the Chance thing?” Charlotte probed.
“Not…quite.”
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “Not quite? What about Chance? And the agency? You haven’t already told them Nick’s definitely on board for the campaign. Have you?”
“Look, he’s going to say yes,” Laura said. “I know he is. It’s more money than he’s earned in his entire working life so far. It will totally set him up. He’ll see that. I just have to present it to him at the right moment.”
“Are you thinking leverage before sex?” suggested Charlotte. “Or gratitude after?”
“Oh, stop being such a lawyer. It’s really not like that. He’ll say yes. I know h
e will.”
“So, when is this ‘right moment’?”
“I don’t know exactly. Some time after Romeo and Juliet finishes.”
“Because?”
“Nick’s always a little down at the end of a production. He just gets a bit despondent, and doubtful. Opening night, he’s always high as a kite. Next stop, Hollywood! But a week or two after closing night, he always comes back down to earth and wonders if he’s ever going to get another job. And there I’ll be, with just the thing to cheer him up.”
“Well, I’ll drink to that,” Charlotte said, and the two women drained their wineglasses. Almost immediately, their waiter rematerialized.
“Another wine, ladies?” he said. “Perhaps I could recommend the Chance merlot to you?”
Laura let loose a peal of laughter. “Chance? Oh God, I wouldn’t drink that shit if you paid me!”
* * *
On the far, far side of town from the restaurant where Charlotte and Laura were finishing up their lunch date, Davina Divine sat at her kitchen table and drummed her nails—painted a shade called Midnight Forest—on the tabletop. It was already two o’clock, which meant that it was nearly time to set off to collect the boys from school. Only forty-five precious minutes remained of her designated astrology day; tomorrow she would be back in the gel nail business, and everybody she met would think of her not as the amazingly prescient Davina Divine, but as perky little Nicole Pitt.
Davina sighed. Well, she thought, at least she was on her way to her destiny. She had passed her Advanced Diploma of Astrology with flying colors, and, what was more, she had secured some real, live clients. It was true that there were only two, so far, and equally true that she had spent so long on each client’s natal chart that her fee had ended up at a fraction of the minimum hourly wage. Everyone had to start somewhere, didn’t they? Not even Leo Thornbury had been born an astrologer.
But what, in heaven’s name, Davina asked the star chart that was spread out across the table, was happening with Leo Thornbury and Aquarius? She knew she was only a beginner, and that Leo must be able to calculate forces and angles that her developing vision was yet to comprehend, but for the past few months, she’d been unable to find even the smallest hint of Leo’s Aquarian predictions in the charts. In June, Leo’s copy had been all about wariness in love, when Davina had seen Aquarians cruising quite happily through the romantic waters. In July, Leo had made antimaterialism his theme, but the stars Davina saw urged cautious accumulation in financial affairs. And now, in August, Leo was giving Aquarians permission to bask in the sunshine of hard-earned glory, when her reading of the stars was that the water bearers really ought to be hunkering down under a winter-weight Doona while they wrestled with the difficult choices that always arose when Mars came thundering through the Eighth House. What on earth was going on? What, Davina puzzled, was she missing?
Virgo
AUGUST 23–SEPTEMBER 22
The early days of Justine’s reporting career slipped by with alarming speed. She felt as if she were living inside a playback of a sequence of time-lapse photography; no sooner was she getting out of her bed in the morning than she was getting back into it at night, too tired to read more than a few pages before switching off the light.
At the office, she settled into her new desk, pinning up her own selection of postcards and aphorisms on the felt-covered boards around the computer. After her first few days in the staff writers’ room, Justine knew she was going to have to teach herself to tune out Martin’s swearing and his almost incessant running commentary on his thought processes, but to surreptitiously listen in to Roma’s carefully constructed phone interviews, with their elegant, chessboard questioning.
One Friday morning, Justine arrived at the Star to find Daniel Griffin at the gatepost beneath the yellow peril, in earnest conversation with a young woman. She wore a pale blue skirt, a beige cardigan and flat shoes, and was doing a lot of nodding and smiling. She also seemed to be trying—by means of dropping one shoulder and bending the opposite knee—not to be any taller than the editor himself.
“Justine, I’d like you to meet Cecilia Triffett.”
“Hi, Cecilia,” Justine said.
Cecilia’s handshake was limp and bony. Her hair, Justine observed, was sleek and light brown, and looked like it would be slippery to manage. Her face was narrow and her lips thin, but her eyes—behind rimless glasses—were a very pretty blue, and her lashes were long and dark.
“Cecilia is our new copy-runner,” Daniel explained, and the look on his face suggested to Justine that he was a little amused by Ms. Triffett. “She starts in earnest on Monday, but she wanted to come in today to…acclimatize. Justine’s a journalist here, but she did her time in your job. I’ve been telling Cecilia about the history of our magnificent star here, and about how Jeremy brought me out on my first day and stood me underneath it and told me all about the—”
“Inspirational rays,” Justine finished, miming their descent.
“He did that for you, too?” Daniel asked.
Justine nodded. “You have to love the yellow peril. It’s very…unique.”
“Well, no,” Cecilia said, without pause.
“Sorry?” Justine said.
“You know. Something is either unique, or it’s not,” Cecilia explained. “It can’t be very unique.”
Justine did know. In fact, this was just the sort of thing that Justine herself would point out to the broadcasters who burbled through the speakers of her kitchen radio. It was exactly the sort of thing she’d chop out, while tut-tutting, from a contributor’s column. But just now she had not been writing, nor speaking on radio. She had just been, bloody hell, talking. Talking casually enough that she’d said “very unique,” and this girl, whose oversized front teeth didn’t fit inside her mouth when she closed it, had nitpicked her about it.
“Touché,” said Daniel, looking just a little too amused for Justine’s liking.
“Cecilia,” Justine said, “are you by any chance a Virgo?”
Cecilia seemed both pleased and surprised. “How did you know?”
Justine smiled in what she hoped was an enigmatic way. “Welcome to the Star, Cecilia. I can see that you’re going to fit right in.”
* * *
“I’ve been wondering if, perhaps, it takes one to know one,” Daniel said to Justine.
It was midafternoon, in the tearoom, and Justine was hunting through the fridge for a carton of milk that was on the right side of its use-by date, when Daniel arrived to fix himself a fresh plunger of coffee.
“Sorry?”
“Maybe it takes one to know one. I’m going to say that you gave yourself away out the front this morning, with Cecilia. Because you’re a Virgo, aren’t you?”
“Well,” she said, and she stretched out the moment by adding milk to her tea. Stirring. “I’m Virgo rising. Apparently. So, you’re close. But so far as sun signs go, still no cigar.”
“Virgo rising. Shit. I really thought I had it this time.”
“Well, take heart. There are only twelve signs. You’ll have to get there eventually.”
Daniel spooned three sugars into his coffee, shrugged in response to Justine’s raised eyebrows and took an experimental sip.
“How was your interview with Huck Mowbray?” he asked. “Is he really as big as he looks on the telly?”
Justine had met with the colossal footballer in the bookshop where his collection of poetry had been launched, mostly to the media, although Justine had recognized in the crowd a handful of off-duty and unshaven AFL players. They had all seemed out of scale to their surroundings, standing about in their twos and threes, arms crossed or hands in pockets, not quite sure what they were supposed to do with themselves.
“Actually, if anything he was even bigger,” Justine said.
“And the poetry?”
“Mostly
free verse. A few sonnets. A villanelle—called ‘The Coliseum,’ ” Justine reported. “Only a handful of the poems are actually about football, but that’s one of them.”
“Are they any good?”
Justine felt her eyebrows shoot up into piss-taking territory. “I quite liked ‘Hermes at Full Forward,’ but ‘Grass Warrior’ is maybe a little self-consciously heroic.”
“And, when he’s not writing about football?”
“Then it’s love, mostly. Or possibly conquests. I think we can safely read ‘The Aftermath of Velvet’ as erotica. And ‘Victory at Dawn.’ ”
Daniel made a worried face. “ ‘Victory at Dawn’?”
“I’m afraid so,” Justine said. “But, get this. Apparently, instead of trash-talking his opponents when he’s on the field, he quotes poetry.”
“His own?”
“Not usually, he says. He prefers Yeats, Eliot, Cummings, Hughes,” Justine said.
“The big boys, hey?”
“He insists that he’s no sexist,” Justine said. “He told me Plath and Sexton were particularly potent around the stoppages.”
Daniel laughed. “Is that a direct quote?”
“It is.”
“Please tell me you’ve put it in your story.”
“What was it your friend used to say: Does Gough Whitlam think it’s time?”
Daniel nodded approvingly. “How long’s your piece? If it’s good—and it sounds like it is—we can let it run.”
“Even so, it’s way too long at the minute. It was just that I got so much good stuff. The coach gave me some amazing quotes. And the ex-wife? Let’s just say she didn’t hold back, and also that the velvet probably wasn’t hers. I dropped in at the poetry class, as well. The one where young Huck hurled together his first few couplets. The teacher is a real character. He—”