The shop window had been smashed. Shards of glass sparkled under the streetlight. I stepped carefully over the shrapnel to where Dad was sitting under the neon sign that said NOTHING OVER 1995. Illuminated by the record-cleaning lamp, his skin looked as cracked as a dry dam. Two lines came down from the wings of his nostrils, bracketing his mouth, closing him up.
“What happened?” I asked.
He held up a brick. “Anarchy.”
“Did you call it in?”
“You sound like Gully. Yes, I called it in. The glass guy’s on his way. The cops, too.
“Exciting,” I said. Dad rolled his eyes.
I perched on the second stool. With the glass everywhere and the wind riffling in, the shop looked post-apocalyptic. My eyes traversed the four corners of our kingdom: the listening booth/tardis, the Hall of Fame, the Wall of Woe, and Lifesize Cardboard Stand-up Elvis. He was in his gold suit from 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong and carrying a tray of our custom blank cassettes, each with a little wishing well stamped on the label. They were cute, but they didn’t sell. Not much did.
Gully said if you looked into Cardboard Elvis’s eyes for long enough, you could see the future, but Dad was only interested in the past. He wore all black and smoked Champion Ruby. He’d seen the Boys Next Door at the Seaview Ballroom. His old girlfriends all had Bettie Page bangs and dug hotrods and the Cramps. He lived in share houses where everything was art and statement—they made garlands out of public transport fines and burned the furniture when the electricity got cut off. Dad’s stories about the past made the present look like a painting by a five-year-old with no imagination or glitter glue. But when Dad stopped talking, when the needle came off the record, the past was just the past and the future looked bleak. We couldn’t really afford St. Kilda. Mum owned the shop (but not the flat). She had some agreement with Dad that I never understood—I don’t think he even understood it—but it meant we could live where we lived, on vinyl and tinned spaghetti, as long as luck (or Mum) would allow it.
“One day at a time.” Dad cracked the old AA adage at the same time as he cracked a beer. Ironic.
The police came first. They took a couple of photos, asked Dad a couple of questions, put the offending brick in a plastic Baggie, and then moved on to more exotic crimes. Dad and I waited silently for the glass guy. Over the stereo Neil Young was playing “Cortez the Killer.” His guitar whined; it fell down holes and climbed back out again. He sang about Montezuma, the Aztec god of communication, and I was thinking I could use his help. Dad and I used to be fine, but I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a conversation that didn’t involve directives about Gully.
He creaked to his feet and snagged another beer from the back fridge. “You don’t have to wait up. Go back to bed.”
“I can’t sleep. It’s too hot.”
“Did you try sleeping under a damp sheet?”
“That’s gross. I’d feel like a pupa.”
“A pupa?” His face puckered. “Keep it simple, Skylark.”
“The pupal stage is just before a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, when it’s all covered in goop. It’s the transformative moment.”
“Good name for a band. Pupa. Pew-pah . . .” He mulled it over. “Maybe not.”
I started fiddling, moving papers around the counter. I found a flyer for a rally protesting the demolition of the Paradise, the old theater on the foreshore. Dad’s old stomping ground. Nancy went to club nights there—two generations hitting the same sticky carpet. I scrunched up the flyer and moved on to the next piece of paper. It was a résumé—with a headshot—I realized it belonged to the guy Nancy had hit with the potato. I skim-read his details. His name was Luke Casey. He was eighteen. Not much else.
“Forget it,” I declared. “He doesn’t even list music as a hobby.” I went to turf the page, but Dad’s hand came down like a boom gate. “Too late.”
I stared at him. “What?”
Dad took another long swig.
“You hired him? But we don’t need anyone. I can work in the shop.”
“Christmas is coming. You need to look after Gully.”
“I can do both. You’re supposed to teach me how to buy this summer.” My voice was bordering on whining.
I had no problem serving; I understood the vagaries of the rock alphabet: Van Morrison under M, not V; Steely Dan under S; 10cc before the 1910 Fruitgum Company. But I wanted to buy. Knowing what to pay for vinyl was more than just referencing the record collector’s bible. You needed instinct and experience. I’d seen customers leave, cashed and dazzled, while Dad marked up their past 30 percent. I’d also seen customers storm out swearing, after being told their dollar picture disk was worth less than that. You had to be sensitive with people, Dad said, because music was personal. But you couldn’t be sensitive all the time, because that was bad for business.
“I can still teach you,” Dad promised.
I stared at him. Doubting, doubting.
A fart sounded. Dad and I looked up to see Gully standing where the window used to be. He had given up waiting for me. He was still in his pajamas and snout, but he’d attached his superdetective’s tool belt. Swinging prominently were the following: magnifying glass, talcum powder, soft brush, rubber gloves, and notebook and pen.
“Don’t touch anything,” Gully ordered. “I have to dust for prints.”
Back upstairs I still couldn’t sleep. I reached under my bed for my box of beautiful people. I flicked through them until I found the actress who looked a little like Nancy. She had perfect skin and a beautiful life. I could tell these things just by looking at her.
I started to wallow, and wallowing felt luxurious. Dark thoughts are like stars, or blackheads—the more you look, the more you find. Nancy was leaving for boys and fun and stamps on her passport; Dad had hired some know-nothing, and I was going to have to spend the summer traipsing after my weirdo brother.
Maybe St. Kilda was just a holiday spot gone wrong. The beach was full of syringes, Luna Park was full of thieves, McDonald’s was full of runaways, and those streets so prettily named after Romantic poets were just thoroughfares for BMX bandit drug pushers and their prostitute girlfriends.
When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed about the girl on the wall, or rather, the poster of her. I reached out to touch her tears, and when I brought my hand back, it was black with paint, like she was crying right in front of me.
THE OLD PUNK DAYS
OVER THE NEXT FEW days Dad didn’t mention the new recruit, and I didn’t bring him up either, but the feeling of him lingered. He was the pith in the orange juice and the burned bits of toast at breakfast. He was the squashed sandwich in the back of my schoolbag and the snot flecks on the tram seat. I wanted to tell Nancy about him, but she’d gone AWOL. She did this from time to time. I tried not to take it personally. I’d send her countless chirpy texts, about boring school and freaky customers, but sending Nancy texts was like sending dogs into space. Nothing came back.
The Wishing Well was always a good distraction. The new window sparkled, revealing lurking scuzz. Gully and I set about cleaning and polishing and de-stickerizing all the solid surfaces. We put zinc cream across Cardboard Elvis’s nose and a lei around his neck and moved him into the window. We surrounded him with summery albums—the Atlantics, the Beach Boys, the B-52s—and then we dragged Dad out to admire our handiwork.
“Pretty spiffy, guys.”
“It’s going to bring people in,” I predicted.
“People!” Dad harrumphed.
“People! People!” Gully could mimic him perfectly.
People did come in but only a few, and what they wanted, we didn’t have. It was the same old story. In anyone else’s hands the Wishing Well would have done a roaring trade, but Dad was stubborn. He refused to stock CDs. He didn’t care about customer service. If not for our regulars, we’d have died in the dust. They drifted in from the outer suburbs: Mystery Train, the sixty-something transport worker with the Dyla
n obsession; Big Head and Ghost, hapless junkies hawking grade-three trash; Kylie Minogue’s Number One Fan (self-proclaimed by hand-painted sign on the back of his wheelchair); two goth hags we nicknamed the Weird Sisters; and the shop favorite, the Fugg. His real name was Ernst Vella, but he was always roiling and swearing—“Fugg this,” “Fugg that.” He scared the tourists with his beer and balladry. He claimed to have slept with June Tabor, who was folk music royalty and had a voice as sad as evening shadows. She looked fierce and beautiful on her records. I couldn’t imagine the Fugg and June Tabor sharing the same air, let alone the backseat of her limo.
Dad priced records, nodding to Lou Reed. Gully decided Elvis wasn’t happy in the window after all and moved him back to the counter. I checked my phone. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
“Dad,” I said.
“Skylark.”
“We should sell things online.”
He brought his pricing gun down hard. Thwack.
“We could set up a shop on Goldmine. It would be easy.”
Thwack.
Thwack.
“You’re scared of change.”
Thwack.
“It’s not safe,” Dad said.
“What do you mean ‘not safe’?”
He put the pricing gun down and looked at me. “Say I get you kids fixed up with the Internet. Next thing I know, some pervert from Oslo’s got you on a slab. Or is selling your . . . bits to China. I’m informed. I read the papers.”
I laughed. “You don’t. You read Mojo.”
Dad snapped his fingers. “The cannibal couple. You can’t tell me that would have happened without the Internet.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
Thwack.
Gully was watching our spat through two spy holes he’d cut out of the cover of Record Collector. He lowered the magazine. “No one’s going to eat me.”
“You’re ridiculous too,” I muttered.
A police officer came in. I saw red hair against the blue uniform. Brown lipstick. She approached the counter with a strange smile on her face. Dad’s expression mirrored hers. He tugged his jeans up and patted down his hair. Gully, thrilled to see a law enforcement officer at close range, started hissing into his fist. I adopted an expression of nonchalance, but the lady cop only had eyes for Dad.
Her voice was high with a touch of tease. “Is that Bill Martin?”
“Is that Evil Eve Brennan?” Dad’s cheeks had gone pink.
“Constable Eve Brennan to you.”
They gazed at each other for a beat without speaking, and then Dad opened his mouth. “Fuck me. How long have you—”
“Four years. Crazy, huh?”
“You look good in uniform.”
Constable Eve Brennan glanced from Dad to me and Gully. She didn’t flinch at the pig snout. A good sign.
“Are these your kids?”
“Yes. Skylark and Seagull. Their mother liked birds.”
“How is Gail?”
“Galaxy.”
“Are you still . . . ?”
“NO!” Dad coughed. “No, no. Divorced.”
Evil Eve and Dad worked the smiles, and it was all Gully and I could do to clock the pheromones fizzing like fireflies around us.
“Evie and I used to hang out,” Dad told us. “In the old punk days. She had a mohawk then.”
The lady cop rejigged her hat and set her face to serious. “I heard you had some trouble.” She jerked her head toward the window. “I’m just following up.”
Dad let out a puff of air. “So long ago, I forgot all about it.”
“It was the end of school. Could have been muck-up day antics. Silly season. We’re canvasing traders. Do you remember anything unusual?”
Gully pushed forward. “I dusted for prints,” he reported. “The boys at the lab are flummoxed.”
Evil Eve’s lips wavered. Don’t laugh, I thought. But she didn’t. She just waited. Gully was tracing the air, skywriting. He blurted, “The Bricker was in a white Jeep. Don’t ask me to reveal my sources. It will all be in my memo. I’ll send you a copy.”
“Great.” She smiled again, unruffled. Then she squinted at him. “Do you want to be a police officer?”
Gully was affronted. “I’m already a detective.”
Eve fixed back on Dad. “Do you have any security? Cameras, an alarm?”
“ ’Fraid not.”
“He’s analog,” I said. It came out sounding snarky.
“You can get video cameras, Bill.” The way she said “Bill,” all familiar, made me think, I bet they did more than just hang out.
Evil Eve gave Dad a card. “Call me if anything comes to you.” And then she walked out slowly. Before Gully or I could say anything, Dad turned the key on the till. It made a colossal noise as it spat out the end-of-day strip.
I snatched up her card. “Was she your girlfriend?”
Dad gave me an enigmatic smile.
“She likes you,” I said.
“Affirmative,” Gully chimed in. “She was leaning into you. That’s a tell.”
Gully was big on tells. His most noted body language giveaways included shifty eyes; hands touching face, throat, mouth; fingers tugging on earlobes; scratching neck; excised pronouns; deployment of monotone; delayed physical manifestations of emotion; and adjunct random observations.
“Get away,” Dad grumbled. “Go fix dinner.”
He shooed us out but not before putting on the Sonics, and that was a tell too. Their bam-bam garage punk being exactly what you would play if you didn’t want to think, if your insides were jumping and your synapses were firing all over the place. I went upstairs shaking off the shiver that was my tell. Things were changing. Dad crushing on a cop? Life was about to get another layer.
Memo #1
Memo from Agent Seagull Martin
Date: Saturday, November 29
Agent: Seagull Martin
Address: 34 Blessington St., St. Kilda, upstairs
POINT THE FIRST:
On Thursday, November 27, at approximately 0400 hours an unknown vandal—code name Bricker—threw a brick through the window of esteemed record shop Bill’s Wishing Well, 34 Blessington St., St. Kilda (est. 1999).
POINT THE SECOND:
Bricks were also thrown through the windows of Ada’s Cakes and Bernard Levon, Tax Accountant.
POINT THE THIRD:
Asif Patel, proprietor, 7-Eleven, and Ernst Vella, street poet and luminary, both observed a white Jeep doing “blocks.”
POSSIBLY RELATED FROM "PORT PHILLIP LEADER" NEWSPAPER:
– Two women egged on Vale St.
– Police concern over increase in muck-up day antics
– Eli Wallace, 78, camping outside the Paradise Theater, protesting its imminent demolition
PROFILE
The Bricker is under twenty—most likely male and in a high socioeconomic bracket. He has sociopathic tendencies and a nihilistic, destructive attitude. He is possibly a high school graduate or friends of a high school graduate.
ACTION
Crime scene dusted.
Contact council for list of Jeeps registered to local area.
Research CCTV unit for shop (video).
Info-share with SKPD via Constable Eve Brennan.
FAMILY STICKS TOGETHER
THIS IS HOW IT was with Dad: I knew he loved me, but Gully was the true star of his heart. Sometimes I’d see Dad look at my brother and feel the acid tang of jealousy in the back of my mouth. I’d flash on Gully at four saying, “I’m a boy and Dad’s a boy, but Sky is a girl.” And I’d feel cursed and isolated and defective.
Gully’s weirdness had always been there. I’d lost count of the times he’d come home from school with a “retard” sign stuck to the back of his jumper. Last year Derek Digby, the scourge of grade six, had a mission to make Gully crack. Because Gully refused to. Despite head flushings, stolen lunches, and sucker punches, Gully just acted like Derek was a bump in the rug he had to step over. One day Gully came h
ome with a spectacular bruise on his cheek. It was my job to walk Gully to and from school. The one day I didn’t was the day they got him. I could tell by his uneven footfall that something was wrong. Dad was in the kitchen making spaghetti. When he saw Gully’s face, he dropped the pot. The water scalded his bare feet, but he didn’t even register this because all his feeling had gone to my brother.
That night Gully wrote his first memo. He documented everything he remembered about the attack:
POINT THE FIRST: The attackers had calamari breath.
POINT THE SECOND: One of them was wheezy and kept puffing on an inhaler.
POINT THE THIRD: Another didn’t want to kick me—his friends called him a pussy.
POINT THE FOURTH: They all had skateboards.
The next day Dad and Tony Trucker, a regular who loved Merle Haggard and was built like a Hummer, went down to the chip shop and found Derek and two of his “boys” eating calamari rings and kicking their boards around. I don’t know what Dad and Tony did, but Derek never bothered Gully again.
“We’re Family,” Dad said. “And Family sticks together.”
After the spectacular bruise, we had a visit from a social worker. Paul Bean had a kind face but defeated eyes. He said no to the beer (it was ten thirty in the morning) and delicately moved the festy stacks of Mojo and Record Collector so that he could sit in the broken seat of the wicker chair. He asked halting questions about health and family history. He gave Dad information sheets and a speech about how the “functional family unit” thrives on “routine” and “structure” and “support networks.”
Dad had Sgt. Pepper’s on the record player. He must have seen the glint in Paul’s eye, because he cranked it up and by the time “She’s Leaving Home” had made us all choky, we knew that Paul Bean the Social Worker had been named after Paul McCartney the Beatle. That in 1964 Paul Bean’s mother had snuck into the Southern Cross Hotel, where the Beatles were staying on their first Australian tour. That she had stood in the lift with Paul McCartney and never fully recovered. Dad put Sgt. Pepper’s (near mint, Australian pressing) back in its cover and into Paul Bean’s hand, and we never saw him again.
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