I was acting normal enough, but inside I was freaking. It was because of the Paradise, the gig. Now that I had some distance from it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was like the line between Before and After. A door had opened. As long as I kept thinking about it, the door would stay open. If it shut, I’d be back to my boring self. Through the opera glasses I studied the faces of passersby, looking for black-clad kids, night people. Maybe I was looking for myself.
Dad nicked the glasses, pitched his head at an awkward angle.
“Who are you looking for?” I asked.
“Eve said she might come down.”
Gully gave me the big eyes and turned to Dad. “Are you going to wrestle again?”
Dad’s face flamed behind the glasses. I couldn’t hide the smirk from my voice.
“You should be thanking me for bringing you together. If I hadn’t gone out, she wouldn’t have picked me up. . . .”
Dad’s look said I should let it lie, but I was feeling defiant. How come Dad got to wrestle a lady cop while I got grounded? What was that all about? And something else rankled. I considered the ways Dad had messed up. He could be a crank and a slipping-down drunk, but Gully and I weathered it and never put any demands on him.
“It’s not fair,” I said hotly.
“Skylark.”
Gully blinked, his snout twitching. “What’s not fair?”
“Nothing,” Dad and I chorused.
Gully’s eyes bounced between us. Then he checked his watch, chhed his fist, and got into character.
“Date: Sunday, December seventh. Time: 0950 hours. Location: O’Donnell Gardens. Preparing for House Meeting. Rolling.”
“Item: Christmas. I want night vision goggles. And Baked Alaska. For Christmas lunch everyone gets to bring someone.” He appealed to Dad. “You bring Eve. . . .”
Dad tried to look cool, but his soft grin gave him away.
Gully turned to me. “Agent Sky. Will you ask Agent Cole, KGB?”
I made a noncommittal noise. I couldn’t imagine Nancy at Christmas lunch. I couldn’t imagine her doing ordinary things. She had no family, she had no past. It was as if she’d arrived in St. Kilda fully formed like something out of a myth—flaming hair and gladiator sandals—Nancy—Nana—she could leave anytime with no consideration for my feelings.
I checked Ray’s through the opera glasses. He was in situ; but there was no sign of Nancy.
Gully: “Item: It has come to my attention that someone is putting the remote in a variety of places. It should be kept on the coffee table At. All. Times.”
“Roger that.” Dad elbowed me, trying to jostle a smile. He cut in, mimicking Gully. “Item: When does school break start?”
“Not next week but the week after,” I droned.
“What will I do with you two?”
“There’s always buying lessons. . . .”
“There’s more to life than the shop, Skylark.”
“I know that.” I looked at him. His tone was a tell. “How’s the shop doing, anyway?”
“You leave me to worry about that.”
“You think Boy Wonder’s going to bring you luck?”
“Don’t be catty—it doesn’t suit you.”
“I like Luke Casey,” Gully declared. “He’s stout.”
“How do you know?” I was surprised. Gully never liked the new recruits.
“I looked in his sketchbook. I analyzed his handwriting. He’s stout. Trustworthy. I can tell.” Gully put his hand on Dad’s shoulder and fixed him with his superdetective’s you-will-cooperate stare. “Is Agent Luke working today?”
“Agent Luke!” I snorted in mild disgust.
“I’m going to profile him.” Gully flexed his fingers and snapped his snout back into place.
“This should be fun,” Dad murmured. He was trying to catch my eye, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
A beardy, bug-eyed customer stopped at Dad’s feet and forced an elaborate fist bump.
“Bill, my man.”
“Hey, Ed, what gives?” Dad asked mildly.
“They’re paving paradise, baby.” The man shone his rubbery smile on our blank faces. “She’s coming down. I’ll save you a seat.”
Dad, Gully, and I hesitated for a stark second, then scrambled to our feet.
Down on the Lower Esplanade cranes moved like metal dinosaurs. We, the Martin family, milled on the fringe of protestors. Eli Wallace was still in his chair, still with the sign. Gully jumped to ask him about the Bricker—did he remember seeing a white Jeep doing the rounds?—but Eli couldn’t comprehend, and then came the first of a series of crashes that stunned the crowd and stilled the air. The machines made quick work. The landscape looked all wrong—too much sky and too much sea. Forty-eight hours ago I’d been inside. The Paradise had been alive then; now it was rubble. Dad looked a little green. He said, “A hundred years she’s been standing and she’s down in half an hour.”
“That’s it.” Eli stared straight ahead, smacking his lips as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. Around us the protestors shifted and murmured their dissent.
A car cruised beyond the cordoned-off area, a white Mercedes, old, license plate ZAZEN. Steve Sharp stepped out. The passenger door opened and Otis joined him. He was looking casual enough in his jeans and flip-flops, but his sunglasses were Gucci. He stood listless as his father talked to a guy in a hard hat.
“Bastard!” a protestor shouted.
Louder voices followed:
“Pig!”
“Scumbag!”
Eli Wallace had a bag of oranges by his side. He took one out and hurled it at Steve Sharp. He was a great shot. More and more hands reached in, and then Steve Sharp was getting pelted. Otis, too. The ex–rock star’s son looked feeble. He looked like he was about to cry. And then he was crying. My first reaction was to laugh because here was this guy, this god in Nancy’s eyes, and he was falling apart from a few pieces of fruit. But then something in Otis’s expression reminded me of Gully, and after that I couldn’t laugh. Steve Sharp shielded Otis from the barrage. He bundled him back into his car and then drove off, stone-faced. I glimpsed Otis in the passenger seat, head buried in his hands.
Gully was confused and a little bit delighted at the happenings. He wanted to throw an orange too, but the target had gone and hard-hat guy was heading over with his fists clenched. As we scarpered, Eli Wallace was crowing. “What are you gonna do—hit an old man?”
“Dad, why were they throwing oranges at Steve Sharp?” Gully asked.
“Because he’s greedy. His company’s called Urban Renewal. They buy up the old properties and turn them into apartments. You can’t do that without pissing off a few people. You know he’s bought the yoga center. He wants the whole corner. We’re the last man standing. He doesn’t think about where people have to go.”
I remembered the forgotten flyer on the counter. “If you’re so upset about it, why didn’t you go to the protest?”
Dad frowned. “Because sometimes you have to accept the inevitable.”
I stopped walking. “Dad, that’s so depressing.” I watched him open the shop with his head lowered. Even Gully looked thoughtful as he followed him in.
Dad played Nick Cave for old time’s sake, closing his eyes because his life, too, was like a river all sucked into the ground. I thought about the Paradise, and what could happen to the space where a place used to be—the ghosts of gigs past. Maybe Dad was thinking about that too. He was quieter than usual. After a while I stopped thinking about the Paradise and started thinking about Luke Casey. I pretended I wasn’t waiting for him. And when he rolled in, damp hair and soap shine and an almost smile, I pretended I wasn’t remotely interested. I said, “Hi” like, whatever, and moved away. I put records out; I sorted stock; I sat on the back counter and read Record Collector. Dad walked Luke through Cleaning Vinyl 101. Gully hovered in case his expertise—or entertainment—was required. I tried to maintain a hard edge, but I was weak. Intermittently,
Luke looked at me and intermittently I let him.
That night, I stayed up late listening to records and sorting my box of beautiful people. I tried not to feel pathetic as I did this. I smoothed out my Nancy doll and teamed her up with a hot guy who could have been Otis if his hair was longer. I found a Luke-a-like with soft hair and spectacles and a pixie-faced starlet who could have been me if I succumbed to surgery. I took the picture of Mia out of my wallet and invited her to the party, moving us around into different configurations. We were a gang of great friends. We laughed at each other’s jokes. We knew each other’s secrets. We were young and hot, and no grandstanding grown-ups were going to tell us what to do.
At one a.m. I went up to the roof. I sunk homebrew and peered over the palm trees and clouds and shingles. The sky was infinite and starry, and I felt like I was in a movie. I played Them doing “Gloria.” The world was all black heat and a badass riff. Nancy’s stories roiled inside my head: bikers and club kids and vampires and red lipstick and visible tan lines and five-o’clock shadows and surprise couplings on fire exits.
Out there Luke was pasting up pictures of his sister, and bad things were happening to young girls.
Out there there were no rules, and Nancy was doing more than I could dream of.
Memo from Agent Seagull Martin
Profile: Luke Casey
New Operative, Bill’s Wishing Well—Effective December 6
Date: Sunday, December 7
Agent: Seagull Martin
The subject says he doesn’t know his height, but I would pick him at six feet. He is Caucasian, has dark hair that could use a cut, and wears square, black-rimmed glasses. A casual dresser, he was born and educated in Adelaide, the city of churches and serial killers. When he was little, he wanted to be a firefighter. His worst memory of primary school is being forced to fight a kid he knew he couldn’t beat. He couldn’t ask his dad about fighting because his dad is a minister and doesn’t believe in violence, so he would sneak into movies in Chinatown to study chops. But when he tried to use said chops on the kid, he found they didn’t work, and he ended up with a shiner so big, he had to look at everything sideways. He is in favor of Monkey. In high school the subject enjoyed art and English. He has been studying graphic design, but he decided he wanted to do something radical and so came here. He wears a size-thirteen shoe and a leather wristband. He is a smoker and does not believe in the afterlife. He is scared of heights and seaweed. When I asked him what his greatest regret was, he looked blank—and refused to answer. His favorite food is sausages and mash, but he won’t eat kidneys. He suffers from insomnia, wears SPF 30 every day. He likes St. Kilda because the sky seems bigger here. Says he looks at the sky and imagines it as a hemisphere floating in some unrecognizable space, encased in a bubble. His best spy trait is that he works well alone. His role model is Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. He has no plans for Christmas.
ACTION
Recommend we invite the subject to Christmas lunch.
RECON #1: COUNCIL OFFICES
THERE’S THIS EPISODE OF The Twilight Zone that never failed to remind me of Gully. It’s about a six-year-old boy with godlike powers. He can read minds and control the weather, and if he doesn’t like someone, he simply wishes them away to a mysterious cornfield. Everyone is scared of him—even his parents—they’re careful to tell him only good things, but in the end the community cracks under pressure. I’m not saying Dad and I were scared of Gully—he didn’t have magic powers—but he didn’t hear “no” very often.
Monday after school he was waiting at the gate with his snout on, drinking coffee as all real detectives do. When he saw me, he hiked his eyebrows and chucked the dregs, tough-guy style, before placing his mug gently on the grass. He chhed his fist and gave me the specs. “Date: Monday, December eighth. Time: 1535 hours. Location: Mercer High School front entrance. Operation Council Jeep Discovery preparing now.”
I started laughing. Sometimes Gully was good value—and it had been a dull, dull day. I’d been preparing for Quinn, making assumptions. I’d even worn the bead necklace, which earned me more than the usual weird looks. At lunchtime I was at the library computer, ready, but she never showed. I didn’t expect her absence to make me feel so hollow.
The afternoon was neon-bright. Gully swing-walked and issued directives.
“As per my memo, we go to the council and get the names of all the people who have registered white Jeeps in St. Kilda.”
“Gully, there’s no way they’ll tell you.”
“Oh yeah? What if I show them . . . this?” He flashed a detective badge. It was paper, painstakingly traced. Just looking at it made my hand cramp.
“Come on!” he yelled.
A feeling came over me—something like surrendering the remote control. I thought of Dad. I would follow Gully on all his ridiculous schemes. This was my penance.
And so we trooped on down to the town hall. We took a number and planted ourselves on the plaid chairs for forty minutes. I didn’t even try to convince Gully to take his mask off. When we were called, he lurched into the booth, his eyes like flints, his snout close to making contact. The anemic-looking clerk couldn’t hide his irritation. He was lucky there was a pane of plexiglass between us.
“You want me to give you the addresses of people with white Jeeps registered in the Port Phillip ordinance? Impossible. There are privacy laws.”
Gully rocked back and forth. He flicked his snout with his little finger and wrote something in the sky. “So, is it classified information?”
“It is,” the clerk replied with a sarcastic smile.
Gully wavered. He didn’t seem to know what to do next. I imagined in his mind this was as far as his fantasy went, this asking of the question. He skywrote a little faster and started to hum. The clerk was getting crabby and that made me crabby. That made me want to stand there until sundown. And then I saw Ray, rolling in with files in hand. His work clothes made him look like an extra from a 1970s documentary about white-collar criminals. He had flapped his tie over his shoulder, and one of his shirt buttons was missing; white orca flesh glinted underneath.
I banged my palm on the glass. “RAY!”
The crabby clerk rose from his chair. “Excuse me!”
Ray shambled over, pacified the clerk. He appeared baffled by Gully’s snout; I guess it was seeing us out of context, but then he clicked his fingers.
“Nancy’s friend, right?”
“Sky. Hey, can you help us?”
Gully got to ask his question all over again. Ray wheezed and listened. His forehead was sweaty. He patted it with a handkerchief. Then he winked.
“You kids go wait for me out front.”
I parked on the stone steps and stared out at the street. Gully was flapping like crazy and making groaning noises, competing with the peak-hour traffic.
Ray surfaced, a blobby mirage. He pulled a rolled-up piece of paper from his slacks. Gully wanted it but looked well aware that the paper had been nestled near Ray’s tackle. Curiosity won. He grasped for it, but Ray held on. “Tell no one.”
Gully nodded solemnly.
Ray couldn’t be serious. He had to be messing with us. As if he would risk his job for a boy in a pig snout. But then he turned to me and his eyes were greedy. He took my hand in his clammy meat hook.
“Does Nancy talk about me?” He pressed my hand and let out a little puffing sigh. “What I mean is, does she like me?”
I felt slightly sick, and I also felt like laughing. I managed to hold it in. I looked him in the eye. “Sure. She likes you.”
Ray dropped my hand and hugged himself. Another button threatened to pop. “She’s got that classic beauty. Like Rita Hayworth.” His face shifted, a subtle tell I couldn’t decipher. Gully would have known what it meant, but Gully had taken his intel behind a tree and was reading it covertly.
“Do you know where she is?” Ray asked.
“I saw her Saturday.”
“You’re doing better than me
, then.”
He puffed again. Looked back at the glass door. But he didn’t leave. He took some gum out of his pocket and offered me a stick. I shook my head. And then it was like I’d caught Gully’s disease. The question came out. Boom. Like that.
“How did you know Mia Casey?”
It would have been better if Ray had looked taken aback. I didn’t believe his sorrowful expression or his answer. “A fallen robin. I only met her in passing.”
I wanted to ask him about the party girl thing. Instead this came out: “How long has Nancy lived with you?”
Ray’s eyes searched the sky. “Five months?”
“She ever tell you where she’s from?”
“I never asked. This is St. Kilda. Everyone’s from somewhere else.”
“I’m not.”
Ray laughed. “Honey, you’re from another time.”
I looked down at my school dress and the palms of my hands. I wanted a fast retort, but I wasn’t even sure if he was insulting me.
“Etymology,” Ray said, propping his finger like a professor. “There’s another St. Kilda in the Hebrides. You can only get there by boat. It’s uninhabited now, but people lived there right up until the late 1800s. They spoke old Norse mixed with Gaelic, and lived off vegetables and traded the oil from the seabirds that gathered on their crazy rocks. But they were doomed. Ask me why.”
“Why?” I asked dutifully.
“The Industrial Age killed them. They were murdered by progress. The last St. Kildans had to be evacuated. A handful came to Melbourne and found their way here . . . at least that’s what they say.” Ray smiled. “To be a true St. Kildan, you have to admit to isolation, to weirdness, to loser-dom.”
Seconds and trams and cars passed. The world was turning on a spit, and I still couldn’t tell if Ray was insulting me.
“Well,” I said. “Thanks for helping my brother.”
“You can pay me back in sexual favors.”
“I’m fifteen, Ray.”
He pinched my shoulder. “You girls are so touchy.”
Girl Defective Page 7
