THE GIRLFRIENDS OF OTIS
THE CROWD HAD CHANGED. All of the color had moved up to the front. The girls with silver scarves hugged the lip of the stage and swayed like tendrils. I counted seven of them. Seven girls in silver scarves. The lights dimmed again. The audience aahed. The curtains parted and a big screen showed slides of abandoned barns, plane wrecks, clouds. The band wandered out wearing animal masks and started up some moody swirl of noise. Otis—the fox—took his mask off. He was in a sharkskin suit and had a silver scarf, same as the girls. The thought hit: the Girlfriends of Otis. I remembered Nancy then and cast around for her, but the images on the screen tumbled down and I felt as though I was tumbling with them.
Otis emitted a series of sobs into his microphone. He had hair like bracken and skin like space dust. His songs were spells that floated up and weaved around the chandeliers and then were swallowed by the crowd. When he smiled, it was like his face fragmented and I didn’t know where to look. It was merge music—there were no sharp edges; it was all meandering and liquid.
After a long time he lifted his hand and the band stopped. The audience seemed to be holding its breath. Otis’s speaking voice was higher than I’d expected. It didn’t completely break the spell, but it woke me up a little.
“It’s the end of an era,” he piped. “The Paradise’s coming down. Take a piece before you go.”
I saw Nancy then. She was on the edge of the stage, half-hidden by the curtain. Her face was flushed and dreamy—almost unrecognizable.
One by one the band members ambled off the stage until it was only Otis left with the hum of the amplifiers. Then: Crash. Shudder. Blink. It was over.
Otis lingered talking to various scarf girls. Nancy inched forward and picked up his fox head. She looked weird standing there, cradling it and staring at him with an expression that wasn’t far from Gully’s dazey-face. Then Otis was talking closely to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. I could hear the scarf girls seething. It was like a hive, the noise.
I called out to Nancy. She saw me, but she didn’t move. I climbed onto the stage, but even when I was standing next to her, she felt far away.
“Hey.” I tugged her sleeve.
“Hey.” Her eyes stayed on Otis. He turned to talk to someone else, and then Nancy was fumbling in her pocket, trying to give me something. Money.
“For the taxi,” she said.
Otis was moving, and she followed after him, somehow wormed her way back under his arm.
I held the note dumbly and watched as they glided to the exit. Nancy’s eyes were straight; her mouth hid her smile. The scarf girls formed two lines to make a kind of bower. They waved their scarves, and if one or two hit Nancy full in the face, she didn’t seem fazed.
Then someone grabbed the song list. Someone else tore down a poster. All around me people were stealing their pieces of the Paradise. I went back to the ladies’ room, where a girl was fashioning lengths of the beaded curtain into necklaces. It was Quinn Bishop. She recognized me and raised her eyebrows. “Skylark. Do your parents know you’re here?”
And just like that, I started crying. It was weird. Embarrassing. The tears kept coming.
Quinn watched me cry. She placed an awkward hand on my shoulder. And then she looped a bead necklace over my head. I splashed water on my face and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t look startled anymore. I looked wretched.
Quinn squeezed my shoulder. “What are you on?”
“My friend gave me something.”
“Good friend?”
I nodded, wiping my eyes.
“You going home? You want to walk with me?”
I was so grateful I had to stop myself from blubbering all over again.
As we walked out of the theater, all I could think of was wreck and plunder. As well as the beads around her neck, Quinn had an SLR camera. She took my picture. Then she snapped the emptying street, the passing cars.
“So you’re into Otis?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s like . . . total catnip.”
Quinn laughed. She looked completely different from in school. Open, friendly. Less bulldog-ish. She paused to snap two guys who’d scaled the sides of the building to lift letters from the marquee. Old Eli Wallace was in his camp chair, watching, his face an etching of despair. Quinn snapped him, too. Finally she lowered the camera. She pointed city-side. “I’m that way.”
I pointed in the other direction. “I’m that way.”
“I know,” she said. “The record shop, right?”
We smiled at each other like we shared a secret and then forked off.
DESPERATE ANIMALS
I WENT FROM GLOOM to rushing. I felt jittery, alive. I half ran, half skipped with one hand on my new necklace, my heart pounding. The night was all things coming together and breaking apart, like kaleidoscope patterns, like kisses. The lights of McDonald’s pulsed. The traffic was a steady throb. The clown face of Luna Park looked sinister in the half dark. I slipped onto the park path, into shadows, and heard movement by the iron siding, a scraping noise. Behind the bushes someone was pasting up a poster—a poster of Mia Casey.
“Hey!” My voice broke the quiet. The guy turned around, startled, and he was Luke.
“It’s you,” I said, but that was all I could manage before lights swamped us and a voice commanded: “Stay where you are.”
Luke pushed past me, knocking me down. In that moment I heard something fall. I crouched and my fingers found Luke’s glasses. I clutched them and stood up again, and blinked into the torch of a big-faced policeman. There was another officer with him. She stepped out of the shadows, and I saw she was Constable Eve Brennan. My mind whirled on the smallness of St. Kilda and the bigness of my fuck-up.
“You’re Bill’s kid, right?”
I nodded.
“What are you doing?”
I found my voice. “Going home.”
“Who was with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know him.”
“Where have you been?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Eve exchanged a weary look with her partner. “Come on.”
The police car smelled like warm leatherette and antiseptic. I was in the backseat but not cuffed or anything. I pictured the cell, bread and water, skeleton keys. I played out scenarios—the stuff of Gully’s dreams: being printed and interrogated under a bare, swinging bulb. The station loomed, all matte black and windows. Eve’s eyes met mine in her mirror. She gave me a firm smile. “I’ll take you home.”
I nodded. She was giving me something and I was grateful. I hoped I didn’t look stoned, or that if I did, Dad would be too pissed to notice.
Eve came up with me. Up our skinny stairs into the too-bright light of the living room, where Dad was dozing in front of an old movie. She clocked the empties but didn’t mention them. When Dad saw her, his face was like the picture for HAPPY on Gully’s chart. When he saw me, it changed to CONFUSED, and then ANGRY.
“Where the hell have you been?”
I still had Luke’s glasses in my hand. I moved them behind my back. “The movie finished early, so we went to a party. It’s okay. I’m okay. Nothing happened.”
Dad ran his hand through his hair and then brought it down quickly to cover his beer belly. He was in his friendlies: a Cosmic Psychos T-shirt and football shorts that showed way too much leg. I looked at our flat the way Eve would see it: the unwashed dishes, the Pee-wee Herman poster, the bills skewered on the antlers Mum had found at a garage sale a lifetime ago.
“She was walking home by herself,” Eve reported.
Dad stared at me. “Where’s Nancy?”
I smiled a stupid involuntary smile, and Dad’s face just crumpled.
“Are you drunk?”
I ran then, out of the room and up the stairs, heading off the next wave of tears. I locked my door and took off Nancy’s top and pressed my face into it. It smelled of her. My whole room still had the air
of her, of promise and adventure. I wished I’d never left it. My record player was still turning, playing nothing, the belt squealing faintly with each revolution like a tiny, desperate animal. I stood close to it and watched it spinning around and around. And then I turned it off and went to bed.
In my dream Mia Casey and I were sitting on St. Kilda Pier, our toes just touching the surface of the water. We were eating icy poles and talking about the future.
Mia said, “I want to work with kids. Like, maybe I’ll do face painting.”
“I’m going to work in the shop,” I told her. “Forever.”
Nancy was there. She was sitting nearby, but she wouldn’t look at us. She hung her head, and her hair was a curtain. I could see her face reflected on the water, but it appeared dark and distorted.
“Sky,” Mia said. “The water’s really fucking cold.”
She jumped then and I couldn’t see her after that. It was as if she’d never been there. No ripples formed. The water stayed flat, silver and shiny as a coin.
PART
TWO
A LEVEL OF DISCOMFORT
THE MIND IS A funny thing. It takes all those images that rush you every second of every day and mixes them up with your memories until you can’t remember what’s yours and what’s complete fiction. When I woke up on Saturday morning with a desert mouth and a disco head, the first thing I thought of was Mia Casey. On the floor by my bed lay the following:
—Nancy’s clothes
—the bead necklace from the Paradise
—the article about Mia Casey
—Luke Casey’s glasses
I picked up the article and stared at it. “What happened to you?” I asked her image.
I’m trying to tell you, her eyes replied.
I pressed the page against my forehead and closed my eyes again. My head felt drum-tight. I lay still for a long time, listening to the cars and the birds and my breathing. I tried to sort the jumble of images crashing through my mind: chandeliers, cocktails, clouds, scarf girls. I relived Quinn’s small kindness, Luke and Mia in the park in the dark. My bottom lip felt sore. I touched it and thought about the drug dealer kissing me, walking me backward into the wall. Whoosh! My stomach felt like a lift that had just dropped two floors. I almost enjoyed the feeling, but then I flashed on Nancy going off with Otis. Her groupie glaze, the way she’d given me taxi money as if it could make up for deserting me. But then, I reasoned, Nancy wasn’t used to looking after someone. Just because I did it for Gully didn’t mean other people had to do it for me.
I lifted the window and inhaled the warm air, then climbed out of bed and started to put things in order. I folded Nancy’s clothes. I put Mia back in my wallet and the bead necklace around my neck. I didn’t know what to do with Luke’s glasses. I tried them on, smiling at my blurred reflection. He was only a little bit blind.
There was a knock on my door.
“Sky, Sky, Sky.”
“Gully, Gully, Gully.” I let him in. He was in full snout and tool belt, carrying a tray of tea and toast.
“Dad said you were sick. So I made you this.”
“Thanks.” I crunched into the toast while Gully studied me.
“Why are your eyes all black?”
“It’s makeup.”
Gully was standing very straight. His eyes darted about. He let out a groaning noise, fiddled with his snout, and then spoke from behind his hand in a clipped staccato.
“I have intel.”
“What?”
“I woke up in the middle of the night and I was hearing funny noises, so I went downstairs. . . .”
I hurried him along by waving my hand.
“And I saw Dad and the police officer. Remember Constable Eve Brennan? They were . . .” He stopped and blinked forcefully. “Wrestling, I think.”
“Just wipe it from your mind,” I suggested.
Gully nodded. Then: “The new operative is downstairs.”
“Huh?”
“Luke Casey.”
My stomach dipped. I tried to keep a straight face, blowing coolly on my tea. “What’s he like?”
“Tall. Doesn’t say much. He smokes Peter Stuyvesants and carries a sketchbook. He has a muscular twitch.” Gully brought a finger to his cheek. “Here. Indicates a level of discomfort.”
“Good,” I said. “We wouldn’t want him to be too comfortable.”
Gully chhed his fist. Then he relaxed his pose, jiggling his shoulders. He could never stay completely still. “Come down? It’s too different.”
“Um. Half a tick.”
I was not interested in Luke Casey. I was not going to jump him or fall for his hot and tragic combo. I told myself this as I changed out of my pj’s into the green dress that Nancy said made me look like an ingenue. I went to the bathroom and washed my face. My hair was cowlicky. No amount of wet would suppress the bumps. At the last minute I remembered Luke’s glasses and put them in my bag.
“How are you going to play it?” Nancy had asked. “I say, do it on the down-low, act like you don’t even see him.” But that was before last night.
I stood on the pavement looking through the shop window. Dad and Luke were behind the counter, their heads bent together like dark, punk flowers. They had similar angular frames and unkempt hair. I took Luke’s glasses out of my bag and put them on. I didn’t smile or move my head. I just stood there, bespectacled. It was the kind of move that Nancy would pull. I was slightly proud of myself until I realized he was shortsighted and probably couldn’t see me. Then I took his glasses off and entered the shop as nonchalantly as my speedy heart would allow. As I walked toward him, I was thinking this: Nancy was right, Luke was pretty. I considered his cheekbones, the soft set of his mouth, and suddenly it was like I was standing in front of him, waiting to be remembered.
DON’T ENGAGE
DAD WAS PLAYING LOVE’S Da Capo, which meant he was in a good mood despite my infraction. He was moony, lovestruck even. He waited until “Orange Skies” had floated off on little pop clouds before paying me any attention.
“How’s your head?”
“How’s yours?”
Dad ignored that and made the introductions. “Skylark, this is Luke. Luke, Skylark.”
Luke had been sitting on my stool. He stood and offered his hand. He had paint around his fingernails, a mist of black that looked gangrenous. We shook hands. I looked into his eyes and saw that he recognized me. He didn’t smile; he swallowed. He’s nervous, I thought. And that made me nervous. When I brought my hand back, it felt limp and like it didn’t belong to me. The rest of me was messy too. My stomach felt like it had slipped its moorings.
Dad was in impressive-boss mode. “Now that you’ve decided to grace us with your presence, I have to see a man about some records. I’ll take Gully.”
I felt panic snapping at me. I might have even clutched Dad’s arm. “Wait”—I lowered my voice—“You’re going to leave us alone?”
Dad looked from me to Luke. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Give Luke the grand tour.”
“How long are you going to be?”
“Not long.”
Dad shuffled off with Gully in tow. I slipped onto his stool. Then it was me and Luke sitting side by side while sweet psychedelic pop sparkled around us. I took Luke’s glasses out of my pocket and put them on the counter. He waited for a few seconds, then put them on. “Thanks,” he said, not looking at me.
“Don’t mention it.” Side one ended and then it was so silent that I could hear the migration of dust motes.
It was a typical Saturday. St. Kilda throbbed, but the Wishing Well was as sedate as a gentleman caller. The sun slanted in the window, highlighting acne pits, shiny pates, and dandruff. Wishing Well customers were mostly old and male and nerdy. They could tell you why Paul McCartney was barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road, but they couldn’t manage basic hygiene. I wondered if Luke had noticed the smell yet. Memories and mildew.
“So,” I started, “the grand tour.”
Luke sat up and took his sketchbook from his pocket. He flipped to a clean page, primed a black fine-liner. His props were like Gully’s; they made me soften toward him. I tried to toughen up again.
“Have you ever worked in a record shop?”
“I worked in a pub,” he offered.
“That’s good. That means you’re used to crazies.”
“You get crazies here?”
“Oh yeah.”
“What kind of crazies?”
“Like you might get a customer trying to explain how the alignment of the stars affected the recording process of Rick Wakeman’s The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth. . . . Dad’s rule is this: don’t engage.”
“That’s a good rule.”
I pointed to the till. “This is the till, for the purposes of storing money. Behind there is the record file for dupes and raries.” I pulled out five copies of Paul Mauriat’s Blooming Hits. “Dupes.” Then a near-mint On the Beach. “Rarey.”
Luke nodded. “Dupes and raries.”
I pointed to the medieval ledger chained to the counter. “This is the Buys Book for the purposes of buying. When someone sells something in, we write it down. We have to take ID in case it turns out to be stolen.”
I flicked back through the pages. It was all in there: the decline and fall. Looking at the Buys Book depressed me. It was already starting to resemble a relic.
“We used to buy a lot more, but these days most people put their records online.”
“But not your dad,” Luke noted.
“He’s analog. He’s like a caveman. No CDs. Don’t even think about downloads. He’s even scared of karaoke.”
“Fair enough,” Luke said. “Karaoke’s pretty terrifying.”
Girl Defective Page 5
