Disharmony

by Leah Giarratano

‘So you got any money?’ said Birthday Jones.

  Samantha really was hungry now. The sights and smells of the food at the outdoor market always drove her crazy. They walked past a particularly fragrant stall. Mounds of deep-brown, sandy, red and golden-coloured ground spices filled the air with cinnamon, cloves, cumin, paprika. She took a deep breath. She felt like burying her face in one of the bowls.

  ‘You’ve always got money, Birthday,’ said Mirela, smiling up at him. ‘Can’t you buy us something to eat?’

  She blinked lazily, her dark, thick lashes as long as Tamas’s. Samantha laughed. Mirela was only thirteen, but she could make most boys do exactly what she wanted.

  ‘Not right now, I don’t,’ he said.

  ‘But what about Mrs Leather Jacket?’ asked Sam.

  She stopped in front of the glass cabinet of a stall selling fat, sticky chunks of chicken threaded onto skewers with sweet, charred onions.

  ‘I had to give that to Cici,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry about it. Wait here. I’ll be back in a sec.’

  They watched him approach a table of backpackers, all laughing and speaking over one another in a language Samantha couldn’t identify. Under a red, striped umbrella, dressed in singlets and shorts, they drank beer and ate with their fingers and bread from plates and bowls covering almost every inch of the table.

  Samantha watched Birthday, trying to predict his hustle. Backpackers were usually tricky. They kept their cash in their shoes, or strapped tightly around them in zipped belts. Birthday would have to get pretty close to one of them to lift a wallet.

  In the end, he must have agreed – she watched him walk right past the group, his trucker cap low. He passed close to the next stall, selling boots, belts and other leather items.

  ‘Oh man,’ said Mirela. ‘What’s he doing now? Shopping for a key ring?’

  ‘Nope, a wallet,’ said Samantha, grinning, suddenly understanding. ‘Watch this.’

  When he’d cleared the leather goods stall, Birthday Jones cut sharply left and ducked back around behind it. Before they knew it, he was standing at the rowdy table with the backpackers.

  ‘Hey man,’ they heard him say, leaning in over the loudest male in the group. ‘Did you drop this? It was right behind you.’

  The big guy stood, swaying slightly. Blindingly blond in the bright sunshine, he towered over Birthday Jones, who, Samantha realised, had reached almost six foot this summer. The blond giant’s nose was sunburned and appeared to have been broken more than once. He wore a frown and half of his lunch down his white singlet, and he looked to have a good beer buzz going on.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked with a heavy accent.

  Birthday held something up.

  ‘It’s a wallet,’ whispered Mirela. ‘Why doesn’t he bring it over here?’

  ‘You don’t want that one,’ said Samantha. ‘It’s brand new, but empty.’

  ‘Uh ha,’ said Mirela, her smile igniting her ebony eyes.

  ‘I just wondered if one of you dropped this?’ said Birthday. ‘It was on the ground just here. But it’s cool, man. I can go. I don’t want any trouble.’

  Samantha could almost see the man’s sun and beer-addled brain shifting gears. Clunk. Clunk. His friends at the table watched him.

  ‘Oh. My wallet!’ he said, taking it from Birthday. ‘Thank you, my friend! You must drink with us. Come on, sit. Sit.’

  The big man put his arm around Birthday’s shoulders. For just a moment, Birthday turned his face in their direction and gave them a man-he-stinks grimace. Mirela laughed.

  ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ said Birthday, wrangling his body out from under the big blond bear. ‘I’m meeting friends. They’re waiting for me. Thanks though, man.’

  He left the group toasting him and sauntered back to join them. He slipped Mirela a handful of cash.

  ‘Buy us some chicken,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’ll meet you girls over by the fruit stand.’

  ***

  Samantha stretched her tanned legs out on the grass in the park adjacent to the markets. She rested her hands on her belly.

  ‘Oh man,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna die.’

  She leaned back onto her elbows and squinted up through the branches above her. She’d never seen leaves on a tree so still. She searched, but could not spot a single leaf so much as swaying. The sky above the tree was a uniform powder blue, a single, flat stretch of colour that could have been a painted ceiling. No birds ruined the effect, and not a breath of wind blew. For a moment, everything felt unreal. What if she was in a room and the grass underneath her was carpet? She dug her fingers into the dry soil to check.

  ‘Well, you ate more than even I did, superstar,’ said Birthday. ‘No wonder your stomach hurts.’

  ‘Why do you keep calling me that?’ she said, flicking dirt from under her fingernails.

  Birthday rolled over onto his side. He propped his chin in his hand and watched her. His trucker cap lay in the grass next to him, and his curls seemed alive, as though they grew like vines and might at any time reclaim his amber eyes.

  ‘Well, you’re the Gaje Princess, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Favourite of the king?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ Mirela lazily stirred a raspberry ice with a thick straw, watching it melt.

  Samantha sat up. Why would Birthday know about yesterday? The whole thing felt like a dream to her, and it had all ended so abruptly. She’d been completely exhausted when their visitors had left straight after the reading. She’d gone into the caravan to pack away her cards, intending to find Lala and quiz her about what she’d felt in there, but it had been so hot, and so still. The next thing she’d woken with a stiff neck and the camp was sleeping. She hadn’t even heard the men arrive home from the horse fair. And when she’d tried to find Lala before they left this morning, she’d seemed always to just miss her.

  ‘Everyone knows the king went out to visit you,’ said Birthday. ‘You know how word gets around out here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mirela. ‘From your crew.’

  ‘For real,’ said Birthday Jones. ‘But not everyone knows everything. There’s a little bit more to tell.’

  ‘Spill,’ said Samantha.

  ‘You first,’ he said.

  So Samantha told her friend about yesterday’s events. Mirela interjected periodically until Samantha reached the moment they’d entered the caravan, and then Mirela and Birthday listened silently as she took them through her reading for the gypsy king.

  ‘You are a freak, Sam,’ said Mirela when she stopped speaking. ‘Just so you know.’

  ‘A super-freak,’ said Birthday Jones. ‘Give me a sip of that drink, Mimi.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Samantha. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘Okay, get this,’ said Birthday. ‘You know how my Aunt Crina has a job in the palace?’ He took a big noisy slurp from Mirela’s cup.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mirela, snatching back her drink.

  Samantha said nothing. Technically, Birthday Jones didn’t know any of his real relatives, but he’d adopted his own family of sorts, just as she had.

  ‘Well, Crina was working in the kitchen when the king got home from your little enchanted picnic,’ said Birthday. ‘And he was not a happy fatty.’

  Samantha bit her lip. Why couldn’t she just have done the reading the way Lala had taught her? What was going to happen now?

  ‘Is he mad at me?’ she asked.

  ‘Mad at you? Ah, no. The king loves you, superstar. He was mad at everyone else, though. Came in screaming about how he had to have you, and how Boldo the bodyguard had better get on it and make it happen. The kitchens got a call that he was on his way home and hungry, so they had a spread laid on, but Crina reckons he took the first dish she brought him and threw it – smash – straight into the wall.’

  ‘What do you mean, he wants me?’ said Samantha.

  Birthday twisted his lips. ‘Um, you’re a big girl now, Sam,’ he said. ‘I think you can figure that out.’
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  ‘Oh my God, Sam!’ Mirela sat bolt upright in the grass. ‘First of all – yuuuck – and second, what are we gonna do? Lala will send you away before she’ll let that pig take you.’

  Samantha shook her head. Memories of the tarot reading snaked through her mind like the incense smoke in the darkened van.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t there for that reason.’

  ‘Tamas thought he was,’ said Mirela with a half smile. ‘He was pretty jealous.’

  ‘He was?’ said Samantha. ‘What did he say?’ She pushed herself up from the grass. ‘You tell me right now, Mimi.’

  Birthday sat up too. ‘Um, it’s been real,’ he said. ‘But if you’re gonna sit here and girl-talk about Tamas, I’m out.’

  ‘No, wait,’ said Samantha. ‘Sorry, Birthday. We have to talk this out a bit more. Tamas said this guy used to be a criminal, and his driver came along with a gun. I don’t want to bring trouble to the camp. I want to figure out what he wants with me.’

  Birthday gave her that look again.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I seriously did not get that feeling from him. You know how I’m good at kind of knowing how people feel? If anything, I think maybe he might have felt that way about his driver.’

  ‘Well, I have heard that,’ said Birthday.

  ‘You see?’ said Samantha. ‘No, when he was with me he was much more excited about the cards. But there was also something more than that.’

  She chewed a thumbnail, pensive.

  ‘What?’ said Mirela.

  ‘Just say it,’ said Birthday.

  Samantha looked away. ‘Well, it felt like there was more than just me, him and Lala in the trailer,’ she said.

  ‘What, like someone was spying?’ said Mirela.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Samantha. ‘From inside his mind.’

  ‘You think that someone was spying on you from inside the gypsy king’s head?’ said Birthday.

  She just looked at him.

  ‘You know, Sam,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you weren’t gonna go down this way. You know the gypsy fortune-telling bullcrap is all just a show for the Gaje.’

  ‘It’s not bullcrap,’ said Mirela. ‘And you’re Gaje, in case you’d forgotten.’

  ‘I’m not Gaje,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you’re not Roma,’ said Mirela loudly.

  ‘Neither is she,’ said Birthday, pointing his chin at Samantha.

  ‘Would you two cut it out?’ said Samantha.

  Suddenly, she reached into the grass for her sandals. ‘Don’t look now, boys and girls,’ she said. ‘Birthday, isn’t that your new bestie on his way over here with some friends for us to play with?’

  She scrambled to her feet, sandals in hand. Birthday Jones snapped his head around. Running full-pelt from the market into the park, the blond giant and his Nordic clones were going to crash their party in seconds.

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he said, leaping to his feet.

  Mirela and Samantha sprinted after him.

  The park led into a laneway and then a side street wide enough only for foot traffic. Birthday Jones ducked past a display stand on the sidewalk, but Mirela collected it, and brochures and magazines flew like birds into Samantha’s face. Her feet became entangled in the wire frame and she was suddenly airborne. But not for long. She crashed down into the gutter, palms first, chin next. She bit her tongue and tasted blood.

  ‘Ouch,’ she said miserably to Birthday, who was already standing over her, hands reaching down. She got the dimples.

  ‘Come on!’ yelled Mirela.

  The shopkeeper raced out of his store pelting stale bread rolls and screaming like a steam train. While Birthday pulled Samantha to her feet, Mirela picked the rolls up from the laneway and, laughing, pegged them back at the enraged store owner.

  Shouts from behind them sounded much too close. Samantha’s head pounded and her hands were on fire.

  ‘Seriously, Birthday,’ Mirela yelled as they began running again. ‘Why’d ya have to pick jocks as your marks? Couldn’t you have targeted a little old lady?’

  ‘That’s hardly fair, is it?’ he said. ‘This way.’

  Skidding into the next street, Birthday abruptly jerked around a corner and into an enclave. ‘Up here,’ he shouted, running through a darkened doorway opening onto a set of concrete stairs.

  ‘Eww,’ said Mirela, halting at the foot of the stairs, her nose wrinkled. ‘It smells like somebody pissed in here.’

  ‘That’s because people do,’ Birthday called down to her. ‘A lot.’

  He took the stairs two at a time, Mirela right behind him. Samantha managed them one by one, limping now, a hand on the rail for support. Birthday Jones disappeared into a room at the top and Mirela again paused at the threshold, hands on hips, sucking air.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ she called down. ‘I’m not going in there without you.’

  ‘Hold up,’ Sam managed. Drums played at the back of her head and it felt like her jaw wouldn’t close properly.

  ‘You don’t look so good,’ said Mirela when she cleared the last step.

  Samantha gave her a look. She wanted to say, Why don’t you look where you’re going next time? What she actually said was, ‘My head hurts.’

  ‘Well, you’re not gonna like it in there,’ said Mirela. ‘On account of how it stinks much worse than the stairs.’

  Samantha could smell it already: solvent and fuel oil. Oh God. ‘Is this a -’ she began.

  Mirela stepped aside. ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘A squat.’

  The room was even darker than the stairwell and at first Samantha could only make out formless shapes a few shades darker than the general gloom. She felt despair, sorrow and emptiness wash over her before her eyes adjusted to reveal maybe six or seven kids. Some sat around, others were flat on their backs, and at least four of them held paper bags over their mouths, heaving in and out, as though the bags were external lungs. They were breathing in glue or petrol: the cheapest drugs in Romania. Grief clutched at her throat.

  ‘Over here.’

  She could hear Birthday calling them, but it took another couple of seconds to spot him by a wall. She grabbed for Mirela’s hand and they crossed the room, stepping over mounds of clothing, discarded food containers, and a boy who had passed out with vomit on his chin.

  When they reached Birthday, she realised that he stood next to a row of newspaper-covered windows.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  Samantha held her hands out, the wounds red raw and weeping.

  ‘Poor baby superstar,’ he said, touching a finger, feather-light, to her bottom lip. She felt it still swelling.

  ‘Anyway, check it,’ he said. He turned and lifted a corner of one of the newspapers and a shaft of sunlight streamed in. Dust motes held a dance party in the glow from the window.

  Samantha peered through the chink in the paper. She blinked in the daylight from the street. Tourists shopped and ate, Birthday’s crew begged and stole, and in the middle of them, flushed and furious, the Nordic jocks scanned the sidewalks, searching everywhere for them. She stepped aside to let Mirela have a look.

  ‘This place is charming, by the way,’ Mirela said quietly, as she elbowed past Birthday to reach the window. She peered through. ‘They’re gonna get themselves whiplash, looking around like that,’ she said.

  She and Birthday laughed. Samantha smiled.

  ‘Ouch,’ she said, holding her jaw. ‘I hate you both.’

  ***

  Samantha wanted to go home. She wanted to wash her hands and face and lie down. She also wanted to have a long talk with Lala – she didn’t know what was going on with the gypsy king, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t over. Most of all, she wanted to get Mirela out of here. Esmeralda would have a stroke if she knew her daughter was in a squat.

  A dark-skinned, wiry boy, maybe a regular-sized nineyear-old, or a wizened eleven, moved from the shadows to join them at the window. Samantha didn’t recog
nise him and she hadn’t spotted him in the room before. She suddenly wondered how many other people were actually in here. The boy wore a man-sized black T-shirt and cut-off pants that didn’t reach his knobbly knees; he carried a paper bag in his hand.

  ‘What are you doing here, B?’ the boy said to Birthday Jones.

  ‘Hey, Fonso,’ said Birthday, giving the boy the super-fast, complicated handshake of the streets. ‘We’re just staying out of someone’s way. You?’ Birthday looked down pointedly at the paper bag.

  ‘Oh well, you know. This and that,’ said the boy.

  ‘Yeah, I can see. It looks like mostly that,’ said Birthday, making a swipe for the bag.

  Birthday moved fast, but the kid was quicker. ‘Hey, B. Don’t go all parental on me, dude,’ he said, now safely an arm’s length from Birthday Jones. He reminded Samantha of the cats who mooched around the campsite every night. They purred and pranced for food, but come almost-just within touching distance and they were suddenly ten feet away again.

  ‘What do you do that crap for, anyway?’ said Birthday. ‘You don’t need it, man.’

  The kid raised the bag to his face, inhaled and exhaled. ‘Maybe you don’t need it, but maybe you got less than me to forget about every day, you know?’ Fonso raised his bag again. ‘This here’s good for the memory, man. Makes it all go away.’

  For the first time he looked over at Samantha and Mirela. ‘I see you got the Gaje Princess with you,’ he said. ‘I guess you got away from them ninja freaks, then?’

  ‘From who now?’ said Birthday.

  Samantha’s heart ratcheted up another notch or two.

  Fonso breathed into his bag again. His eyes were a glass doll’s. When he wasn’t speaking or breathing into the bag, his bottom jaw dropped open, as though he’d forgotten how to close his mouth. Samantha could barely feel him – he was far, far away. But how did he know who she was?

  ‘It’s just that this here’s prolly not a good place to hide from them,’ said Fonso. ‘On account of how they’ve already been here twice today that I know of.’

  Birthday Jones whipped his eyes around the room.

  To Samantha everything seemed the same as when they’d first entered. But suddenly Birthday reached up and tore a thick wad of newspaper from the closest window.