Black Glass

by Mundell, Meg;

  All those hands winking back and forth in the light, a sharp whistle cutting the air from the back row, then the sounds dying out as the curtain dropped, and it was over.

  It was almost midnight when they wheeled the black box through the backstreets of the Quarter and into the fluorescent glare of the tunnel walkway. Down below, through the thick plexiglass, cars streamed past in a steady off-key drone. Merlin was a slow walker, and the box was almost half his size, but it was surprisingly light and easy to manoeuvre. Every now and then he pulled out a hipflask and took a dainty sip.

  Two security guards smoking near the walkway entrance nodded as he passed, one shooting a glance at Grace: her stage make-up, her grubby sneakers and jeans, the backpack in which the velvet dress and shiny black heels were now safely tucked away.

  ‘I’ll push,’ she offered as they reached the slight incline that marked the cheap hotel strip of the Interzone’s north, but Merlin shook his head.

  ‘An idle soul shall suffer hunger,’ he’d pronounced, like it was a line from a song.

  Grace fished for a reply. ‘I’m kind of hungry,’ was all she could come up with.

  ‘Proverbs 19:15,’ he said, then fell silent again. Merlin did this, she had noticed: made a dramatic announcement then went quiet. He was always courteous but slightly too formal, and he never asked her questions about herself. Peep did, though: in fact, she thought, Peep could be quite nosy. Yesterday, for example, he’d asked her if her hair colour was real or a dye job.

  Sixty bucks a show, four shows a week, plus sixty for rehearsals. All up, she reckoned, around $300 a week. Rent would burn up the first hundred, but if she was careful, she’d get by. Just. And then what? came the thought. Get by for what? But she quashed it and kept walking, concentrating on the rhythm of her feet.

  The day’s heat was still rising off the footpath, and as they passed a row of terrace houses Merlin paused for breath. Silhouettes moved at red-lit windows; Grace knew this street, made sure she walked right past Tiffany’s without turning her head. A door slammed, heels tapped on cement. And there she was, stepping out: the blonde woman wearing a polka-dot dress — a dark red-wine colour this time, but the same style and cut — walking away from them. Grace recognised her shape immediately: all curves and long lines, a short jacket cut close, like a lady from an old detective film.

  Merlin made a disapproving noise in his throat, but the woman was already gone.

  ‘I’ve seen her before,’ said Grace. ‘She stays at the hotel.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Merlin coolly.

  Grace waited. A taxi pulled up, and two men got out. They bent and spoke quietly into an intercom, then went into one of the red-lit houses. Merlin snorted in disgust, set off again, Grace keeping pace with him.

  ‘You know that lady?’ she asked.

  ‘They call her Macy,’ was all he said. They passed older houses with broken railings, a hot-dog van, a building site, a doorway stinking of urine, before he spoke again. ‘My advice, my dear, is to stay above the line. We’re hovering just above it, you and I. An honourable enough place to be — but sink into sin and you’re done for. Believe me, I’ve seen it happen.’

  But Violet wasn’t listening to the old man. Her mind had wandered back to the tent: the smell of canvas and popcorn, the dust rising in the hot beams of the stage lights. The zing of adrenaline as she waited for her cue to walk onstage, the surging rattle of strangers clapping in the dark. Tomorrow night she would wear the green dress.

  CHAPTER 6:

  BIRDLIFE

  [Notebook entry: Tally]

  In those old films Grace loves, the detective is always a guy. Sits at a desk with a big old dial-up phone in a poky office with a hatstand, glass door with his name painted in black letters. In the drawer there’s some whiskey and a gun for when things get stressful or the bad guys turn up. Which could be anytime, you never know.

  Sometimes he’s got a lady helping him, with her own desk out the front, hair all neat and wavy. She’ll pass on messages, figure out a clue or two with her female intuition. The detective guy would say, Hey, doll-face, you’re one smart cookie, what would I do without ya? But she always stayed in the office and he did all the dangerous stuff. Yeah right. I reckon she’d get pretty bored.

  Grace and me we’d stay up late watching those old movies. I liked the forensics shows too but she reckons they got no class, zooming in on smashed-in skulls and maggots. Still they got good gadgets, they can track you by your DNA, your eye-print, even air that you’ve breathed out.

  Anyway old or new it always starts with someone dying. Then the guy has to solve a mystery and find someone. People sneak around the streets and peep through curtains. Ladies come to visit, dames he calls them. Some dame was askin’ for ya. They smoke long cigarettes and say stuff that’s maybe true and maybe not, you can’t be too sure with dames.

  So I remember all that — the bars, the clothes, the hats and everything. What I don’t remember so good is how they solved stuff. How’d he figure it all out? Walked around a lot, I guess. Watched people, followed them, kept a low profile. Sat up late frowning, thinking real hard with a drink and a cigarette. Showed photos to bartenders, wrote stuff down on bits of paper then burned it in an ashtray so nobody else could read it. Cos you got to be careful.

  A detective’s gotta have a plan. You got to keep your eyes peeled, find clues, follow leads and sooner or later they all start to join together like a line of footprints left behind — real faint but if you look hard you can see them. Sure you get stuff wrong, make mistakes, even get hurt sometimes but in the end you’d always find what you were looking for. A place or a name or an answer or a person. There’s a special trick to it: the trick is you can’t give up.

  [External msg system: client communication, N-Vision Marketing]

  To: daryl@dreamtimetravel.com

  From: arnoldk@n-vision.com

  Subject: Re: ludicrous bill

  Dear Daryl,

  I understand your frustration at costs incurred in rectifying defacement of your Aim: Hi! billboards. Vandalism hurts the bottom line and nobody wants that.

  But the reality is, Daryl, there’s not much you or I can do about these troublemakers. They hit every company sooner or later and it’s become a cost many clients choose to factor into their business calculations.

  The good news is we’ve secured the best clean-up crew to ensure minimal harm to your brand [Dreamtime] which is I hear a national-soon-to-be-world leader in the social travel game. Basically the sooner we get rid of this graffiti, the less people see it, meaning less negative residue for your brand.

  We also offer insurance to offset the clean-up of vandalism if and when it should strike. Sadly police are not taking much action but N-Vision provides the best contingency plan to fight back against society’s rabble who have nothing better to do but create problems for hardworking legitimate business people like yourself [Daryl].

  So [insert client name] please don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss how to enhance your brand and protect your profit margin. There’s a special package on this month that’s proving very popular.

  Respectfully etc.,

  Arnold Knepp

  Marketing and Accounts Manager

  N-Vision Branding Solutions

  [Condemned building, South Interzone: Tally | Blue | Moz | Pearl | miscellaneous unverified persons]

  It wasn’t a promotion, Blue insisted: they’d be stickering again soon. Whatever Diggy wanted done — posting ad stickers all over town, vandalising billboards, spreading messages or just messing things up — that was what they did. Job promotions didn’t come into it.

  Still, this paid better. Tally shook her spray can, felt the ball bearings swish through paint. Blue had shown her how to do it quietly. ‘Moz is one of Diggy’s deputies and he’s got a real bad temper,’ he�
�d warned. ‘Just do what he says and don’t be a smartarse.’

  Moz, a big chain-smoker with a greasy ponytail, lined all the kids up against one wall of the old building and said to pay attention: they’d only hear this once. ‘Screw up or get caught,’ he said, ‘and you won’t get paid. Plus you’ll have me to deal with.’

  The guy thought he was funny.

  ‘You lot are the ones who learned your ABCs. Guess that makes you top of the bottom-feeders,’ he said. One by one he made them do a spelling test, giving each kid a phrase, evidently made up on the spot. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

  The first kid, a tubby boy with bad skin, got I must not eat pizza. He sprayed the words in orange paint, neat block letters a foot high, then returned to his place against the wall, face impassive. ‘You better speed it up when you get out there, this ain’t art class,’ was all Moz said. ‘Bigger — don’t cramp the letters up,’ he ordered one kid. ‘I before E except after fucken C,’ he told another.

  When Tally’s turn came around, he looked her over, dragged on his smoke, indicated a space on the wall. ‘Short people are useless,’ he declared.

  ‘What?’ said Tally, confused.

  ‘Short … people … are … useless,’ he said again, like he was talking to a retard. ‘Write it in capitals.’

  As she pressed the nozzle and formed a perfect S, she imagined the bright red paint hissing into his face.

  It would be night work. The billboards were mostly on railway hoardings, easy enough to reach, but for the higher ones they’d need to do some climbing.

  ‘Watch out for the three Cs,’ Moz warned. ‘Cops, cameras and cunts. If some nosy bastard sees you and goes for his phone, get outta there. Don’t get photoed.’ They were unlikely to come across AirDrones, the cops only used them for big events, but there were cameras mounted everywhere. Half the job was knowing how to duck the cameras; the other half was being fast.

  He told them all to pair up. They’d take it in turns, one slashing the billboard while the other kept a lookout.

  Nine kids paired up meant one left over: a tough-looking girl a little older than Tally, rangy and shifty-eyed, with a fine lacework of sores dotting her neck and arms. ‘Pearl, you work with Blue and the short kid,’ Moz ordered. ‘With them extra hands you lot should be able to cover six spots. The rest of youse can do four.’

  He handed out scraps of paper listing sites and slogans, said to burn them when the job was done. Payday was Friday. ‘Stay clear of the casinos, no mess near the Double Six, or I’ll have bloody Frank on my case. And remember: you get caught, you’re on your own. Mention Diggy or me or anyone else and legs will get broken. Any questions?’ Nobody had any. ‘Right. Vamoose the fuck outta here.’

  The lanky girl walked right up to Blue and jerked her head at Tally.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Tally,’ said Blue. ‘She’s alright. Don’t give her any grief.’

  The girl laughed. Tally tried not to look at the wonky tombstone teeth, the sores speckled up her arms.

  ‘Like ’em underage now, huh? Whatever.’ The girl stared at the lump above Blue’s right eye. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Some dickhead chucked a bottle.’

  She made a snorting sound. ‘Meet you under the clocks just on dark. Don’t be late.’ And she was gone.

  ‘Don’t worry about her,’ Blue said. ‘Just don’t piss her off and you’ll be right.’

  Back at the glass factory, as Blue swept their bedroom clean of grit, Tally couldn’t help asking, ‘How do you know that girl?’

  Blue shrugged. ‘Pearl? We used to hang out. Till she started on the bing.’

  Her breath caught on the word. ‘Bing?’

  ‘Bing, sparkle, glass … whatever you call it. They make it by cooking up speed. My brother died from that shit.’

  A twinge of guilt. ‘Jesus, I mean, sorry, Blue. I didn’t even know you had a brother.’

  He kept sweeping, head down. ‘Pearl used to be real pretty,’ he said. ‘Now she’s a mess, always off on some tweak mission.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Running circles, all jacked up for nothing.’

  ‘Jacked up … Why you talking that way, that funny lingo?’

  ‘That’s just how people talk,’ he replied. ‘Not my fault you don’t get it.’ The floor looked clean, but he didn’t stop sweeping.

  On Friday they’d both collect forty bucks, not bad for three hours’ work. Posting stickers paid only half that. Tally knew about money: like mercury spilled from a smashed thermometer, liable to slip away in an instant if you looked the other way. Every note she and Grace had managed to slide into their secret envelope had been dealt with firmly, as if it were plotting its own escape. She wondered about that money. If it was all gone. And if it was, what her sister would do then.

  Now, with cash starting to trickle in again, Tally could think of nowhere to conceal it but her pockets — not much of a hiding place.

  Yesterday she’d bought a fresh vanilla slice each for her and Blue, but that was a one-off. Next time she went to the bakery, she resolved, their meal would come from out the back. No way would she blow her cash on luxuries. She’d seen it happen with Max: the dollars flowing out as fast as they flowed in. Earn less, tighten the belt; earn more, splash out. It was canned spaghetti, cheese rolls, fish and chips every day for months — then suddenly one night smoked salmon on a huge white plate in a fancy restaurant; candles and waiters and creamy soup and stacks of fruit, more than you could eat.

  ‘Dress up nice, girls, enjoy the high life,’ Max would say on these rare occasions. Then he’d laugh. ‘Just don’t get used to it.’ He’d shave, put on his blue suit, pocket his wallet, call whichever woman he was seeing at the time and tell her the same thing. At dinner he’d get drunk on mispronounced wine (‘Aha … you mean the so-vee-nyon blonn, sir?’) and brag about the exploits of people they’d never met, while Sharon or Rayleen or Alison made small talk with the girls. Tally remembered a glass being lifted to a lipstick-frosted smile; spidery mascara, false nails, dangly earrings. But even if she shut her eyes and concentrated, she couldn’t recall a single face.

  [Platform 8, Flinders Street Station, Civic Zone: Milk | unidentified commuter]

  ‘Excuse me, miss — did you just drop this?’

  ‘Ah … no, don’t think so … Let me check.’

  ‘Cos it looked like you dropped it.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s mine. My wallet’s in my bag.’

  ‘Maybe it fell out of your pocket?’

  ‘Er, maybe.’

  ‘I really think it’s yours.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know …’

  ‘It’s only five bucks. Seriously, I saw it kind of flutter down behind you.’

  ‘Okay, well, maybe it is mine. I’m a bit absent-minded today.’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  [—]

  ‘When do you reckon this train is coming?’

  ‘Who knows. They’re just hopeless, this privatised lot.’

  ‘Yeah. Couldn’t organise their way out of a paper bag. There are worse platforms, though.’

  ‘True. Have they painted it recently, do you know?’

  ‘You think it looks different?’

  ‘Well … something’s changed. Normally it’s quite depressing, all the old chewing gum and pigeon doo-da, everybody grumpy about the wait. Seems like it’s been spruced up. Sort of fresher … brighter.’

  ‘Long overdue, I reckon. At least no one’s getting cranky. How long have you been waiting?’

  ‘No idea. To tell you the truth I’ve just been daydreaming. It’s so nice here in the sun. Completely lost track …’

  ‘Nothing wrong with daydreaming.’

 
‘True. Makes time fly, they say.’

  ‘Sure does. Hey, whaddaya know. Here comes our train.’

  [Legends Hotel, North Interzone: Grace | Macy]

  The bulb in her room blew so often that Grace bought some candles to stash in a tin beside her bed. ‘Don’t burn the place down,’ was all the desk clerk said, sliding another home-brand bulb and pack of matches across the counter. His name was Kev, and he didn’t talk much.

  To avoid the empty hours, she was forcing the days into some kind of routine: wake around eleven, make toast and instant coffee in the tiny first-floor kitchen — basically a sink, a whining bar fridge, two hotplates and a stained plastic kettle.

  Most days she then rehearsed, either in the cool of the basement with Merlin, or standing barefoot on the foam mattress in her room, practising stage gestures and handling the props. She’d found an old full-length mirror and leaned it against the far wall, which was closer than it should have been. Facing the mirror with arms outstretched Grace could almost touch the walls on either side of her. When you opened the door halfway it bumped up against the mattress. She needed to find somewhere else to run through her routines.

  It was hot and airless in her room, but at least there was a fan. The walls were yellow, a pale creamy colour she’d always liked, and there were nails to hang up her two dresses. No furniture, no bedside drawer with a bible in it, not in this hotel. Merlin had given her an old cigar box to keep her things in: room key, money, cigarettes, notebook, the silver pencil sharpened with Kev’s pocket knife, and a $5 stage lipstick called Pandora Rose. There was a plastic lily in a green vase she’d rescued from a pile of stuff Kev was throwing out, a tin ashtray from a cruise ship, and a wooden mahjong set she’d found on the street. The ceiling was a long way up and split neatly in two by a jagged diagonal crack that led onto darkness. She’d done what she could with the place, but unless you were sleeping, there was only so long you could spend in a room that small with no windows.