by Lia Weston
I walk Mica out. ‘Thank you. I’ll make it up to you somehow.’
Mica just gives me a long look. ‘I’ll be back at work in a few days. I’ve got holidays owing.’
She leaves in a waiting taxi, her arms tucked inside her leopard-print poncho, and doesn’t look up.
We watch two superhero films – Gen filling me in on every single characters’ backstory in between stuffing her face with pizza – before I tackle the elephant in the room.
‘Want to tell me what happened?’
Her happiness drains as if I’ve turned on a tap. ‘No.’
‘You know you’re going to have to.’
She fusses around in the blankets. Like many people, Gen underestimates my ability to wait out an awkward silence. She finally settles, hair in her eyes, toes peeping out from under the layers. I reach across and pull the quilt over her feet.
‘Mum’s being a total bitch. She’s all weird around Dad. She yells at me about nothing. But if she’s filming she’s all like smiley and super-fake. Sometimes I wish I was just a fan she doesn’t know because then she’d be nice to me even if she didn’t mean it.’ Gen puts her face on the blanket.
‘Is that why you ran away?’
‘Kind of.’ Her shoulders twitch.
‘What else?’
‘I think Dad’s going to leave.’
‘Why?’
‘Dunno. Just get a feeling.’
Interesting. ‘Okay. Anything else going on?’
She shrugs again.
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘That’s okay.’
She sits up. Her chin wobbles. I pull her gently against my side. Her weedy little arms slip around me, the baby koala.
‘Did Mum tell you I got suspended?’ she mumbles into my T-shirt.
‘No. What happened?’
‘I made a smoke bomb.’
‘Really? Your Chem teacher should be happy. That’s applied practical knowledge.’
I can feel her smile. ‘Everyone else was really cross.’
‘You want to stay with me for a while?’
She sniffles into the fabric. ‘Really?’
‘Sure.’ I bonk my chin on the top of her head. ‘But remember, you’re not responsible for Mum and Dad’s issues, okay?’
She rubs her nose on my sleeve. ‘Can I get another hot chocolate? With frothy milk?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll make it. Do you want one? I’m going to buy us some marshmallows tomorrow. It’s much better with marshmallows.’ Gen climbs out from her blanket nest and pads out of the lounge, stopping to hitch up her stripy socks. The clattering in the kitchen begins. Gen is the only person I know who can open the fridge and five cupboards simultaneously.
It’ll be nice to have her here. I left home when she was so young that I’ve missed a lot of her growing up. Besides, this may be as close to being a parent as I ever get. It’ll be kind of fun.
There’s a bang from the kitchen and the smell of burning plastic.
‘Um,’ says Gen, ‘I think I broke your coffee machine.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next day goes from bad to miserable. Mica is still on annual leave. Rohan and Kain are also missing; Felicity tells me they’re ‘working off-site’, which I really hope is code for Rohan shooting Kain out of a cannon into the sun. Ex-girlfriend Isabelle calls to politely ask how her book is going. I can hear a secret in her voice, so I ask her if the timeline has shifted. Yup. She’s pregnant again, no doubt with a super-baby who will grow up to be the president of something. Babies then make me think of Rosie, which automatically shunts my train of thought to Dan, and then my productivity completely derails. I begin and delete several texts to him before shoving my phone in a drawer.
‘Have we changed the Paxton brief?’ says Tarik.
I look up from my wedding portrait where the bridesmaids have been replaced by Avengers. ‘What do you mean?’
He looks at his papers. ‘I thought we were supposed to be putting the client in Star Trek. These pictures are Lord of the Rings.’
I pull up the file I spent all morning on. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
‘Perhaps you need some elevenses,’ says Tarik brightly.
‘Just a gun will be fine.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Nothing.’
Tarik picks up a pile of photos on Mica’s desk, sticks them on the board and heads up the stairs.
Sophia in scarlet sneakers. Sophia in a handstand, balancing lightly against a wall. A wayward bra strap, ivory shorts. Midnight blue singlet top, fallen down to reveal the curve of her hip, the edge of her ribcage. Softest tan on her stomach, like the skin on heated milk. I feel I could plunge my hands inside her.
Okay, that’s one good thing that’s happened today.
I wonder if she’s seen my painting yet. She must have.
When I get home, Gen is in the kitchen. She has attempted to tidy up by cramming all of her blankets down the end of the couch and piling DVDs on top. To be fair, it’s fairly close to what I would have done.
‘Want some icecream?’ She stands in the kitchen doorway, mashing ingredients in bowl. Something goes crunch.
‘What’s in it?’
‘M&Ms, jelly snakes, Chico Babies and Twisties.’
‘You know, most people are born with juvenile diabetes instead of developing it on purpose.’ I head for the study and the mindless solitude of cutting out tiny pieces of acetate sheeting. I haven’t painted for ages. I’m getting itchy. ‘If you’re hungry, order takeaway.’
‘What kind?’
‘Whatever you want. Menus are on top of the fridge.’
I shut the study door on her squeal of delight and add the new photo of Sophia to the wall. The pictures lap together like scales now, over and under, Sophia on repeat. I touch her face, just briefly.
Gen shouts from the corridor. ‘Do you want spring rolls?’
‘Don’t care.’
I lay the print on my desk and line up the registration points. Something keeps catching in the back of my mind, a piece of unfinished business. I tape the sheet down and pull out my box of cutters.
The Context payments. I abandon the cutters and go to my computer to pull up the bank statements again.
‘What’s san choy bau?’
‘Google it.’
792191514, 512451813114, 215234514 . . . I scratch the first three reference numbers on the back of an electricity bill and cross-reference them against dates or job numbers. There are six Context payments in total. I know all of our current jobs, plus the last few months’ worth of books that have been handed over. Nothing matches. What the hell are they?
The study door pops open. ‘Red curry or green?’
I swing around. ‘Jesus Christ, Gen, I said I don’t care, okay?’
Her face drops and she disappears back into the corridor.
I face my scribblings again for a minute and then put my pen down.
Gen’s curled up next to the DVDs on the couch, face flushed.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve just got a problem I’m trying to work out.’
She nods without looking at me.
‘Have you ordered anything?’
Gen shakes her head no, still looking at her hands. I realise that she’s been stuck here on her own all day, having to amuse herself while I’m at work.
‘I’m taking you out.’
Gen’s head hasn’t stopped swivelling since we walked in. We’re in a tiny hole-in-the-wall eatery, crammed with more decor than its size will allow. In between the band posters and exhibition flyers, I can just see the edge of one of my early pieces, back from when the cafe was new and looking for art to fill the walls. They reimbursed me in coffee, which at the time was fine by me.
This is one of the problems with art. Everyone wants it, but most people don’t want to pay for it. At least coffee was better than ‘exposure’, which is offered a lot nowadays but contains no ca
ffeine whatsoever and is therefore useless.
Gen’s attention is wrestled from the star-shaped fairy lights by the arrival of her milkshake, which looks like half a supermarket confectionery aisle crammed into a glass. There’s a full minute of silence while she works her way around the chocolate-dipped pretzels that ring the top.
‘Mum phoned,’ she eventually says, crunching. ‘She wants me to talk to someone about my “issues”.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘No.’
‘Then don’t.’
She looks at me contemplatively while siphoning up chocolate milk. ‘Do you have issues?’
‘Everyone does.’
‘You seem pretty together.’ Gen thinks for a moment, then adds, ‘Although you don’t have a girlfriend.’
‘Relationships don’t fix issues. Usually they make them worse.’
Gen, teeth clamped around her straw, lowers her voice. ‘Is that what June did?’
‘Kind of.’
‘She wanted you to grow up but you don’t want to.’
‘You just said I was pretty together.’
‘Doesn’t mean you’re a grown-up.’ She finally takes the straw out of her mouth. ‘I don’t mean that as a bad thing. But you’re kind of how you’ve always been. Same place, same clothes, same hobbies. And if you were a proper grown-up, you’d be married and have kids and stuff.’ She crams in another pretzel. ‘Do you ever want to get married?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
Gen makes a face. ‘I don’t.’
‘You might find a guy who changes your mind.’
‘Doubt it,’ says Gen. ‘Anyway, if you get married, I can’t stay with you and hang out.’
‘You can always hang out with me, okay? Don’t ever think that you can’t. And that includes calling me if stuff’s happening at home, not just bailing and scaring the crap out of everyone. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
We solemnly shake hands, Gen chewing on her straw again.
‘You could marry Mica,’ she says.
‘I don’t think Mica would have me.’
Gen nods solemnly. Easy come, easy go.
The waitress deposits two burgers on the table. Gen doesn’t know what to look at first – the waitress’s wolf tattoo, the mountain of sweet potato fries or the cheese that’s melting onto the plate like a Dali painting. I watch her choose a fry and inspect it carefully before shoving it into her mouth.
‘Oh my God, so gooood.’ More fries go in face.
The payments are still ticking in the back of my mind. I fish out the list of numbers I tore off the bill and look at them again, as if they may have translated themselves when I wasn’t looking.
‘What’s that?’
‘A puzzle,’ I say.
Gen sits up straighter, chewing. ‘I like puzzles.’
I push the paper in her direction. ‘If you can work out what those mean, I’ll . . . do something awesome for you, I don’t know what.’
She pulls it towards her and hovers over the sequences, lips moving silently. I finish my beer and am about to signal for another when Gen speaks.
‘Give me a pen.’
I borrow one from the waitress, and watch as Gen rapidly jots letters around the numbers. She finally pushes the paper back to me. ‘They’re names.’
GIBSON
ELDERMAN
BOWDEN
And, unsurprisingly, PYNE.
I stare at her. ‘How did you do that?’
Gen, clearly thrilled and trying to hide it, shrugs and eats another fry. ‘S’easy.’
‘Do you know what you are, Genevieve Lash?’
‘What?’
‘You are a fucking genius.’
‘Can I have another milkshake?’ Gen bounces in place.
‘You can have fifty.’ I look at the list again. ‘Just don’t tell Mum.’
We don’t walk back to the apartment so much as hop back – me because I still can’t walk properly, Gen because her blood sugar isn’t giving her a choice.
Three beers on no food has left me lightheaded; I spent the rest of dinner texting Alex to see if he could find a connection between the names, and Gen ended up eating my burger when I wasn’t paying attention.
Out of nowhere, the fox comes running along the edge of the car park wall, keeping one eye on us. Gen stops dead, clasping her hands together under her scarf.
‘Does it live here?’
‘Somewhere nearby, I guess. Come on.’ I nudge her up the stairs. She keeps running a few steps down to see if the fox is still by the wall, then back up again.
‘Hot chocolate, hot chocolate!’ She bounces into the kitchen.
‘Jesus, really?’ A decade and a half of Mum’s careful no-sugar training is being undone in less than a week. If Mica doesn’t kill me, my mother’s going to.
Mica is at her desk as if nothing has happened. ‘Good morning,’ is the greeting I get, which is civil, though different to her usual, ‘Fucking hell, it’s only Thursday.’
‘Thanks for helping me with Gen,’ I say.
‘You’ve already thanked me. It’s fine.’ She smiles politely.
Mica never smiles politely. Things are worse than I thought.
No word from Alex about the list of names. I tap my stylus on the pad and pretend to draw for a full four minutes, wondering if I’m about to lose my mind. Dad and Amity. Mum and Rohan. Mica and Sophia. Kain and . . . just Kain. Everything’s bleeding together. Have any more images been sucked out of the archive? Do we need a firewall? What the hell is a firewall? Why didn’t I learn IT or something useful instead of art?
‘A problem shared is a problem halved,’ says Tarik, who has been working on an album of inspirational quotes for one of our stupider clients.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘What do you guys know about artificial intelligence?’
‘Narrow or strong?’ says Mica.
I put my stylus down. ‘God, does everyone know about that except me?’
‘Artificial intelligence is the way of the future,’ says Tarik, a gleam coming into his eye akin to multilevel marketers or the newly religious. ‘Did you know they use it on the stock market?’
‘Is it called InvestBot?’ says Mica.
‘CrashBot,’ I say.
‘I have also been watching a series of videos where they can alter people’s faces. In live time!’ Tarik starts tapping his keyboard. ‘Look. Watch.’
Mica and I dutifully get up, walking on opposite sides of the room to meet behind Tarik’s chair. The video shows a programmer in front of a camera, talking. Behind him, unnervingly, the President of the United States is mirroring his facial expressions, down to every eyebrow twitch.
‘You can even swap faces,’ says Tarik.
The President winks at us.
‘If IF had this kind of technology . . .’ Mica begins, then stops. She drags her gaze up to meet mine.
‘. . . it wouldn’t need us any more,’ I say.
And finally, horribly, Kain and Rohan’s emails make sense.
‘Where’s Rohan?’
‘He’s been at a photo shoot all afternoon,’ says Felicity. ‘For Entrepreneur magazine.’ She quirks an eyebrow. ‘Quite a coup.’
There are two meanings to that word, but I leave it alone. ‘What about Kain?’
‘Kain is attending to a personal matter.’ So, not dead, which is a shame. ‘They’ll both be coming tonight, though,’ she adds.
‘Tonight?’
‘My birthday drinks.’ Felicity is so professional, she doesn’t even sound surprised that I’ve forgotten. ‘At Harry & Squire.’
I usually avoid Harry & Squire because I usually avoid any pub that sells artisanal chips. ‘Of course. Happy birthday, by the way.’
Felicity smiles and goes back to her screen.
Downstairs, Tarik is packing up his things. Mica’s still working.
I order Felicity a giant bouquet of calla lillies – I know she’ll like their restrained kind of beauty – and
then call Gen. ‘I have to go out after work but I won’t be long.’
‘Can I come?’
‘It’s work drinks, boring stuff.’
‘Will Mica be there?’
I glance over at Mica as she switches between composites. Even in profile, her top lip is slightly drawn down. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, please, can I come anyway? Please? I’m so bored, I’ve done all my homework, there’s nothing to watch, your DVDs are all boring and you don’t have Netflix, please, please, please.’
I scratch my forehead with the phone. She’s still pleading. ‘Right, fine, you can come.’
Gen squeals. I know she’s bouncing up and down like Tigger.
‘But no wandering off. And no smoke bombs.’
‘I only use those,’ Gen says with a sniff, ‘on special occasions.’
Halfway up the stairs, I ask Mica a question. ‘Do you know of any companies called Context?’
Mica glances at me, but keeps working. ‘ConText is an image bank.’
‘As in they buy images?’
‘As the description would suggest.’ She stops her stylus. ‘Why?’
I feel physically ill. ‘Just heard someone talking about it.’
Mica hesitates, then goes back to her screen. I limp up the last few steps.
I want to shout or scream or break something, but not yet.
Save it for later.
Harry & Squire’s interior has subway tiles, Edison globes and chalk-lettered signs. It’s an unsettling cross between a railway station bathroom and the children’s section of IKEA.
I steer Gen to the bar and order a Coketail. The woman serving us looks as if she’s knitted her own clothes.
‘I need you to do me a favour. I need you to babysit someone for me.’
‘Uuugh.’ Gen slumps. ‘Why?’
‘I have to talk to Rohan without any interruptions.’
Gen is still protesting when the bartender puts down an enormous glass of brown fizz. Gen immediately stops whining.
‘Payment in advance,’ I say.
‘Show me the baby,’ says Gen, already nose deep in foam.
We weave through the crowd to a nearby table.
‘Kain, hello.’ I plonk Gen next to IF’s wad of A4 paper in human form. ‘You met my sister Genevieve?’
