by Minnie Darke
And then he left the building.
Via the stairs.
* * *
Because it was a blood-temperature night, Justine slept quite comfortably on the back deck under the stars. Peacefully, too, since it was one of the few blessings of the perpetual drought that Edenvale’s night air was free of mosquitoes.
At around 3 a.m., Justine woke to the sounds of her parents arriving home from their party: Mandy making coochie-coo noises to Lucy, while Drew clattered about in the kitchen fixing himself an aspirin. Before long, the house lights were extinguished again, and Justine drifted back to sleep listening to the creaking of insects inside the dry earth of the garden.
Perhaps it got colder in the dark hour just before the dawn, and perhaps that was what woke her. Or perhaps it was a kind of sixth sense that there was somebody close by, watching her as she slept. Whatever it was, Justine opened her eyes to see Nick Jordan sitting a couple of meters away from her in a bloodstained shirt, with a black jacket draped across his lap. She sat up and stared.
“Nick?”
“Question,” he said. “Why did you do it?”
“What are you doing here?”
Nick leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees. “I need to know. Why you did it.”
“But how did you even know I was here?”
From the Galaxy casino, Nick had jogged across town to Evelyn Towers, where Aussie Carmichael had opened the door of Justine’s apartment in a pair of Road Runner boxer shorts and a pungent haze of marijuana smoke.
“Your brother told me,” Nick said.
Justine looked at her watch-less wrist, and then at the moon. “It must be, what?”
“It’s half past four.”
“How the hell did you get here?”
That part had not been easy. By the time Nick knew he was bound for Edenvale, the trains had all stopped for the night. He’d have ridden his bike, if that had been required, but it would have been an eight-hour ride, and he didn’t feel like he had eight hours to spare. He’d have paid for a taxi, if that had been necessary, but on this night he’d already given away a ring worth more money than he’d earned in the past eighteen months, and written a blank check in the name of a damaged, one-eyed mutt.
“The short answer is that I hitched,” he said.
“And the long one?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. But first I want you to tell me. Why you did it.”
Justine bit her lip. “I’m so sorry, Nick. I never meant for—”
Nick shook his head impatiently. “Not an apology. That’s not what I want. I want to understand.”
“You really don’t know?”
“I think I might know, but I don’t want to guess,” Nick said.
She started to say something, and then stopped. Started again. Stopped.
At last, she said, “I did it because I didn’t want you to stop being you. I did it because I didn’t want you to give up everything you are. I still don’t…want you to do that.”
“But that’s not all of it, is it?” Nick pressed. “I mean, why should you care so much? Why would you care enough to risk your job?”
“It was really stupid. And wrong.”
“It was. Both those things, and in spades. But that doesn’t answer my question. Why do you care what I do with my life? What’s it to you?”
Justine’s thick, dark eyebrows drew closer together, and all her features seemed to quiver. “Oh, come on, Nick. You know.”
He could see tears brimming in her lower eyelids. She was swallowing hard, too, in an effort to stop herself from crying. It didn’t work, though. A tear splashed out onto her cheek, and while Nick felt a pang of guilt, he pushed on. “I’m starting to get an idea, but I still want you to say it.”
A second tear landed, this time on Justine’s other cheek.
“I think I might…love you,” she said.
Nick came to sit beside her then. He reached out to cup her jaw with one hand and brushed a thumb gently across her cheek. “Well, that’s all right then.”
“It is?”
“Yes. Because I love you, too.”
“You do?”
“And I am so sorry for being too stupid to know. Until now.”
“Why now?”
“Well, that would be the long answer.”
The sky was still a sparkling black when Nick Jordan began to tell Justine Carmichael the story of his night. He told her about the dog jumping out of the convertible and being hit by a car, and about the actor playing Romeo and the knocked-out tooth lying on the cobblestone stage, and about the vet and how she knew the dog from the Dogs Home, and about the stalled elevator and about Phoebe Wintergreen, who was as conversant in Shakespeare as Justine herself, and who was almost certainly in love with Luke Foster, who was a callow youth and didn’t know what to do about the fact that he almost certainly loved Phoebe just as much, and about Blessed Jones and how the singer looked right into his eyes, and how the song she’d written because of a chance meeting in a bar had been somehow meant for him—Nick—and how he had said goodbye to Laura outside the Galaxy ballroom and how he’d been almost certain that there had been a look of relief in Laura’s eyes, and how he’d thought about her—Justine—in the taxi, even before the dog jumped out of the car, and again when the moment came for him to choose whether to play Romeo or not, and again in the elevator, and he told her that he thought maybe everybody had some hidden shallows inside themselves but how he now knew—and perhaps this was to do with Neptune in Aquarius, and the spiritual forces of the universe converging, just as Leo Thornbury had said—that the shallows weren’t going to be enough. And that was his New Year’s resolution.
By now the sky was no longer black, but a shade that you might have called gray until you looked long enough to notice all of its other dimensions.
“So I got here the long way around,” Nick said. “The very long way around. But now I’m here. And…can you just promise me that if ever you want me to know something, you will say it to me, straight out? Don’t have an astrologer tell me, okay? And don’t pretend to be an astrologer. It’s all too confusing.”
Justine made a small laugh. “It didn’t even work,” she said. “If you think back over it, almost everything I did backfired. ‘Boldness be my friend! Arm me, audacity.’ Could that have gone down any worse than it did?”
“And yet, here I am. And here we are.”
“Only by luck, though,” Justine said. “Only by…lucky, random chaos. I mean, if you hadn’t seen some stray dog get hit by a car, and if that elevator had never stopped for long enough for that girl to quote Shakespeare at you, what then? There are choices within choices within chances. It’s all so complicated and tangled. How does anything ever go the way it’s supposed to?”
“I don’t know how it works, Jus. I only know that it does.”
“And wind it back further. What if Blessed Jones had never written that song, or if she’d never gone to that pub, or if her heart had never been broken, or—”
“Shhhhh,” Nick said.
Brain: I’m almost certain he’s going to kiss you now.
Justine: I think you’re right.
Brain: So, are we happy?
Justine: I think we might be delirious.
“Happy New Year, Justine,” Nick said.
He did kiss her then. And she kissed him back.
Cusp
On the west coast of the country, New Year’s Day had only just dawned when Joanna Jordan—having seen in the New Year with several glasses of sparkling wine—woke to the sound of the telephone ringing on her bedside table. Heat was already making its way into the bedroom in slices of sunlight at the edges of the blinds; the day was going to be a scorcher.
Mark Jordan, lying in the bed beside his wife, groaned sleepily and opened one eye f
or long enough to register the time.
“It’s five-a-bloody-clock,” he said, and then rolled over, burying his head under a pillow as he did so.
There was no need at this time of year for bedclothes, and little need for nightclothes either. In a flimsy silk slip, Jo sat up in bed and grabbed the phone. The call display showed an east coast number. Feeling a stretching in her maternal elastic, she thought immediately of Nick.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line was a woman’s. “Jo? Is that you?”
“Who’s this?” Jo asked.
“It’s Mandy! Mandy Carmichael. Honey, I know it’s early where you are and I’m so sorry, but I just—”
“Oh my God,” said Jo, loudly enough to elicit another groan from Mark. She swung herself out of bed and padded along the hallway, squinting as she reached the brightness of the living room. “It must have been, what? Ten years? And every New Year, I promise myself that I’m going to track you down, and I never do, but—”
Mandy laughed. It was a familiar, bubbling, infectious laugh.
“I know, I know. I’m exactly the same. But this morning I had to look you up. I already woke up the other M & J Jordans in Perth. Poor bastards. But I couldn’t help it. I had to ring,” she said, sounding delighted. “I had to tell someone. I had to tell you!”
Jo was baffled. “Whoa, whoa. Back up the truck a minute. Tell me what?”
“So, I’m here at Edenvale, in the same old house, and this morning I opened Justine’s bedroom door. I was just going to take her a cup of tea, but bless her heart, if she doesn’t have company.”
“What?”
“Nick’s here. Nick’s here.”
“Are you saying…?” Jo asked.
“Yes!” Mandy squealed.
“Do you really mean…?”
“Yes!”
Jo waved a hand around at the side of her face in an ineffectual gesture that had something to do with feeling too much emotion all at once. She said, “I knew they’d been seeing a bit of each other…but I never thought…I didn’t even dare—” she broke off.
“To hope,” Mandy finished.
And then, for a brief moment, through a miracle of metal and magic that stretched the width of a continent, the voices of two old friends were joined together in high-pitched and slightly tearful squeals of joy.
* * *
Late in the afternoon of New Year’s Day, Daniel Griffin sat under a shady pergola in Jeremy Byrne’s backyard and sipped on a tall glass of Pimm’s while the Editor Emeritus of the Alexandria Park Star read the contents of the manila folder that Daniel had brought to him. Jeremy had been back from a month-long Pacific Island cruise for only a day, and both he and Graeme—who was watering the flower beds—were looking tanned and almost supernaturally relaxed.
Steadily, and with his spectacles perched low on his nose, Jeremy had made his way through the documents in the folder: horoscopes as submitted to the Star by Leo Thornbury, clippings from the Star with Justine’s alterations brightly highlighted. He had now reached the final document: a letter from Leo, written on thick, pale blue paper, that had arrived in a matching envelope, sealed with a blob of silver-gray wax. The letter read:
Dear Daniel,
You will recall that I accepted with reluctance your commission to provide an opinion upon Miss Carmichael’s future with the Star, and it has been with a heaviness of heart that I have carried this responsibility.
It seems to me that Miss Carmichael’s motive in adapting the horoscopes to her own purpose was neither greed nor malice. Oddly enough, her astrological vision was in at least one instance clearer than my own. This has caused me to wonder whether, perchance, my vision grows cloudy with my advanced age. I confess that it is Miss Carmichael’s perspicacity—she correctly identified that this is a month of endings for those born under the sign of the archer—that has led me to the decision that I must now share with you: I have determined to resign as the astrologer for the Star. Though it has been my great pleasure to serve the publication these long years past, it must fall to another to direct your readers in matters of the stars.
And so, my advice to you regarding Miss Carmichael is to err on the side of generosity and forgiveness. I confess that the romantic in me wishes that, all for the love of me, a woman might have been moved to such rash conduct.
Warmly,
Leo Thornbury
Jeremy returned the letter to the folder, which he allowed to fall closed on his lap, and Daniel waited for the Editor Emeritus to look up with the kind of grave expression that he reserved for instances of serious misconduct. Instead, Daniel was surprised to see, when Jeremy lifted his head, that his eyes were full of laughter.
“Let me tell you a little tale,” he said. “Back in the dim, dark, distant past when I was working at a daily newspaper, I was rather enamored of a young man. A musician, as it happened. Double bass, you know. Very talented. Shortly after I first met him, the newspaper ran a competition where the prize was a case of extremely classy champagne.”
Jeremy paused to nibble on a mint leaf from his Pimm’s.
“Go on,” Daniel prompted.
“Well, you must remember that this is all a long time ago. Things were not so, ah, regulated, as they are today. When the competition entries arrived, I was simply given a sack full of envelopes with instructions to pluck one out. As I recall, I withdrew the entry of one Mrs. J. Phipps. Odd, isn’t it, the things that stick in your head? Mrs. J. Phipps was the, ah, original winner. But, strangely enough, when the results of the competition appeared in print, the name of the winner was that of”—Jeremy gave an ostentatious wink—“a young double bass player from Alexandria Park.”
Daniel was stunned. “But—”
“Of course, he may never even have entered the competition. But he was hardly likely to turn down a case of champagne,” Jeremy said. “And somebody was going to have to phone him up to arrange for delivery of the prize.”
“So, did you…and he…?”
“Yes, yes. My little ruse was successful. For all the good it did me. The whole relationship was a disaster from start to finish! But after it was over, I took a little holiday to mend my bruised and battered heart. And next to whom, on the plane, should I be sitting?”
Jeremy looked over to where Graeme was showering water on the leaves of a thriving hydrangea bush.
Daniel stared at Jeremy. “You don’t think what you did was…wrong?”
“From a certain perspective, yes, of course. But, in the broader scheme of things, Daniel, it’s very hard to judge such matters. Maybe, in missing out on the prize, Mrs. Phipps was deprived of a night or two of bubble and romance. Or perhaps our Mrs. Phipps was a hopeless alcoholic and the champagne would only have served to hasten her death by cirrhosis of the liver. Perhaps I did her a kindness. Who knows?”
Daniel sighed. “So, what do you think I should do?”
“About Justine?” Jeremy asked.
Daniel nodded.
Jeremy smiled indulgently. “Give her another chance, Daniel. I don’t think you’ll be sorry.”
Aquarius
JANUARY 20–FEBRUARY 18
Margie McGee woke at first light on a sea of leaves, her boat a small timber platform hammered sixty meters above the ground into the trunk of a giant swamp gum. The date was February 14 and this was the 136th day of her tree-sit.
She crawled out of her sleeping bag and into a down-filled jacket, then set to work making herself a cup of tea. Although her nose was numb with cold, and her back stiff from the night on her thin mattress, Margie smiled at the joyful sound of the dawn chorus. As she poured water over the tea leaves at the bottom of her small enamel pot, a haiku suggested itself to her.
pale mist of morning
lifted higher by the notes
of pink
robin’s song
Margie sat, swinging her feet off the edge of the platform so they dangled into the forest as if into water. No one was going to pave this paradise. Not on her watch.
* * *
Charlotte Juniper rode the rush-hour flow of humanity from the inner suburbs to the city, then walked the last few blocks to the office of Greens Senator Dave Gregson. Dave himself arrived half an hour later, and went immediately into the office’s small kitchenette to make coffee.
Although they lived together, Dave and Charlotte thought it would be best if they arrived at work separately, left work at different times, and in every other way enabled the rest of the office’s staff to maintain the flimsy fiction that Charlotte and Dave’s relationship was a strictly professional one. But this morning, every other staff member was either out on errands, away on holidays or off sick. It was, Charlotte knew, a rare opportunity.
She slipped stealthily into the kitchenette and locked the door behind her. Though the sound of the latch alerted Dave to Charlotte’s presence, she was too quick for him. He was still standing at the counter holding the coffee tin and a spoon when her hand shot between his legs, from behind, as accurate as a striking snake.
Dave could feel—through the fabric of his trousers—her fingernails on his scrotum.
“I just want you to know, Dave Gregson,” she said, “that if you are ever unfaithful to me, the first thing I will do is apply to your bollocks one of those little green rings that farmers use for making wethers. It will only hurt for a little while, and then your balls will just shrivel up, and drop…off.”
“And the second thing?” he asked.
“Is,” said Charlotte, “that I will start wearing underpants to work.”
* * *
Early in the afternoon, Fern Emerson, having left Hello Petal in Bridie’s capable hands, carried a heavy cardboard carton into Rafaello’s Dufrene Street cafe. She set the carton on a vacant table and unfolded its flaps. There was a momentary flurry of bubble wrap.