by Maddy Hunter
“What is it with you two and Guy?” I looked from one to the other. “He’s a very nice man, but don’t you think the photography thing is turning into a bit of an obsession?”
Duncan raised an eyebrow at Etienne. “You haven’t told her yet?”
“Told me what?”
Etienne’s face flooded with color. “Madelyn wants to branch out into fashion photography, so he’s putting a portfolio together. His photos of Lazarus and me have apparently turned out so well that he’s planning to submit them to several high-fashion magazines.”
“No kidding?” Where was the justice? Guy’s photos of me end up in cyber trash; his photos of Etienne and Duncan end up in GQ. “So that’s why he’s been monopolizing the daylights out of you. Congratulations on being so photogenic! Wow. Does this mean the two of you could be responsible for making him even more famous than he is now?”
“This is where it gets a little tricky,” Duncan hedged. “He thinks that once he submits the photos, Miceli and I are going to become the famous ones. He’s expecting us to create the same kind of sensation that Burt Reynolds caused when he posed in the altogether for that centerfold in Cosmo years ago, only we’ll have clothes on.”
“Oh, my God! The two of you are going to become glitterati?”
“NO!” they replied in unison.
“We’re not models,” Etienne scoffed.
“Or girly boys,” Duncan added.
“Do we look as if we could exercise judgment that poor?” Etienne asked. “Papparazzi? Crazed fans? Entertainment Tonight?”
“You don’t want to be famous?”
“NO!” they replied again.
“Have you told Guy?”
“YES!”
Boy, they had the unison thing down to a science.
“We’ve told him to submit the photos if they can further his career, but not to meddle in ours,” Duncan said, glancing back toward Main Street. “We want to remain anonymous.”
“We’ve also told him no more photos,” Etienne added, “but he’s having a difficult time keeping his finger off the shutter button. He’s a half step shy of stalking us.”
“Hey, guys, I have good news. You don’t have to worry about him pestering you the rest of the afternoon because he volunteered to keep Bernice occu—”
“He’s headed our way,” Duncan warned. “Come on, Miceli. We’re outta here.”
“Sorry, bella.” Etienne blew me a kiss.
“But—” They were gone before I could finish. “Can’t you just tell him to bugger off?”
I sighed. Men. They simply had no idea how to say it tactfully. Guess I’d have to show them how it was done. Dealing with Bernice had turned me into a master of tact.
I stepped out of the alleyway, prepared to confront Guy, but the street was deserted. I jaunted up to Main Street and looked both ways, but I still couldn’t see him.
Huh. That was funny. Or was it?
Either Duncan’s eyes were playing tricks on him or he and Etienne were playing a game much different than Survivor.
They were playing keep away.
Chapter 8
Alone once more, I decided to “power tour” Sovereign Hill before breaking for lunch. In the space of an hour I hiked to the far end of Main Street to sign up for a gold mine tour, watched a bald guy melt a bar of gold into liquid that could be poured like orange juice, listened to the far-off report of musket fire, bought a lace doily for my mom at David Jones Criterion Store, took a few pictures of a supply wagon whose cargo of canvas bales rose higher than the roofs of most buildings, then bypassed the Victorian dining experience offered at the United States Hotel and New York Bakery in favor of something more my style: The Refreshment Kiosk.
The kiosk offered cafeteria-style dining, so I paid the cashier at the end of the food line for my hot dog, chips, and soft drink, then scoped out the picnic tables in the overcrowded dining area for an available seat.
Henry walked toward me, carrying an empty tray. “You can have my seat if you hurry. Table in the lift corner, nixt to the wall. Some other tour blokes are there to keep you company.”
“Thanks!” Gee, that was lucky. It was only after I arrived at the table that I wished I’d taken the elegant dining option. There were nine people at the table and only one seat available, right between Diana Squires and everyone’s favorite fear monger, Jake Silverthorn. Damn.
“Hi, there, Miss Emily.” Guy Madelyn stabbed his fork at the empty space. “Feel free to join us if you can handle the tight squeeze.”
“My money says she’ll pass,” Jake said, rolling his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Looks too skittish to abide small spaces.”
Lola sat at the end of the bench, directly opposite Heath and Nora. She stared at me, her eyes issuing a challenge. “Bite ya bum, Jake. Make room for the lady. I’m sure there’s nothin’ she’d like bitter than to cuddle up nixt to you while she’s eating her weinah. Isn’t that right, Imily?”
I wasn’t sure what kind of game these two were playing, but if they thought they could scare me—
Well, they were scaring me, but Jake’s plate was empty. Chances were, he’d be leaving soon.
“Come right over here and set your keister down beside me,” Diana said. She nudged Bernice, who anchored the bench on her right, “Would you mind sliding over?”
“WHAT?” Bernice shouted.
Guy held up his hand in apology. “You’ll have to forgive her. The musket-firing demonstration seems to have short-circuited the hearing aid in her one ear and deafened her in the other. But it’s nothing to worry about. They tell me this happens to people all the time and the effects are only temporary.”
“WHAT?”
Oh, God.
“SLIDE DOWN, BERNICE!” Lucille Rassmuson gesticulated wildly from across the table. “MAKE ROOM FOR EMILY.”
In an effort to prevent us all from going deaf, I set my tray on the table and squeezed nimbly between Jake and Diana. “Well, would you look at that? I have room and then some, so you can tell Bernice to stay right where she is.”
“You tell her,” Lucille fussed. “Your vocal cords are younger.”
Nora Acres stared at me with her too-blue eyes. “If you don’t live in the orphanage,” she asked in her sandpaper voice, “where do you live?”
“I live in the United States, in the middle of the country, not too far from the city of Chicago. Have you heard of Chicago?”
“Is that near the Big Apple?”
“West of the Big Apple.”
“I live near the Big Winch.”
Heath draped his arm around his mother’s shoulder. “Coober Pedy’s most famous tourist attraction is the Big Winch.”
“Winch or wench?” asked Roger. “If it’s wench, you’ve got my attention.”
“It’s a gigantic bucket hanging from a crosspiece that has a crank on each ind,” said Heath. “A winch. All that’s missing is a will.”
“I’ve seen the Big Banana,” Nora muttered.
“The concrete thing at Coffs Harbour?” asked Lola. She dismissed it with a flick of her wrist. “Too cheesy for words. But Jake loooved the theme park, didn’t you, Jakey?”
Jake fell into the kind of silence that usually precedes volcanic eruptions. I shoved half my hot dog bun into my mouth and chewed furiously, hoping to get out of here before the ash began to fly.
Roger Piccolo caught Heath’s eye. “This is pure speculation, but would I be right to assume that Coober Pedy is intensely hot throughout the year?”
“Coober Pedy’s so hot, the divil moved out a few years back,” Heath teased.
“Wreaks havoc on the skin, doesn’t it?”
Heath arched an eyebrow. “We’re not a town of beauty queens, mate.”
“I’ve visited the Big Oyster,” said Nora. “It has searchlights for eyes.”
Roger pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “What I’m trying to ask without sounding too insensitive is, do most of the peopl
e end up looking like your mother?”
Heath’s expression grew hard. “You’d bitter mind what you’re saying.”
“I’m trying to help! I’m a researcher for a company called GenerX Technologies, and I’d like to work with your mother to freshen her complexion. I can reverse sun damage and any visible signs of aging without scalpels or harsh chemicals and have her looking decades younger in a matter of months. Wouldn’t you like to see her lose the wrinkles? She could become the poster child for the nonsurgical face-lift. We could feature her on infomercials and follow up with a documentary that would go directly to DVD.”
“All the tables in the room, and I have to pick the one with the resident con artist,” Diana Squires groaned. She jabbed a cautionary finger at Heath. “Don’t believe a word he’s telling you. He’ll take you to the cleaners and leave your mom with the same number of wrinkles she has now. That garbage he sells might even give her a few more.”
Roger’s flabby cheeks puffed with indignation. “Well, well, well. I heard the competition walked among us. So, you’re the Infinity maggot. Kee-reist, I knew the stench in here was coming from more than just the boiled hot dogs.”
My hot dog was boiled? I stared cross-eyed at the uneaten portion sticking out of my mouth. Euw. I hated boiled hot dogs.
“What you’re smelling is success,” Diana shot back. “Considering the pathetic results GenerX has had with its product, I can understand why the scent is foreign to you.”
“I don’t know how industry maggots acquire their information,” Roger challenged, “but yours is all wrong. Your company would kill for GenerX’s market share, but it ain’t ever gonna happen because your product is crap.”
“I’ve visited the Big Bull,” said Nora. “It’s got bollocks wot swing in the breeze.”
Jake sailed a scrap of paper across the table at Roger. “What’s that?” Roger snapped, salvaging it from the clutter on his tray.
“Business card. For a small fee, I can take care of maggots for you. Jake Silverthorn. Bug Be Gone. No pist is too tough for me to tackle. Ants, roaches, spidehs, snakes, and”—he looked from Roger to Diana—“the occasional maggot.”
Diana sucked in her breath and stared at him, aghast. “Are you threatening me?”
“What is it with you people?” Lucille hollered. “Can’t you see some of us are trying to eat? Maggots. Ants. Enough with the bug talk already!” She shot menacing looks at Jake and Roger before shoving a forkful of macaroni and cheese into her mouth.
“What’s your problem?” Jake taunted in an oily voice. “Bugs make you squeamish?”
She slammed her fist down so hard, our trays jumped. “Listen, spider man, before my Dick passed away, he operated the largest pest control company in Windsor City, Iowa. Our retirement fund was built on the backs of dead bugs, so don’t accuse me of being squeamish.”
“I bit your Iowa bugs can’t kill you.”
“Maybe not,” Lucille conceded, looking Cheshire Cat smug, “but our bugs are a damned sight uglier than the ones you’ve got here! So there.”
Way to one-up the guy. Tell him we have uglier bugs.
“I’ve seen the Big Prawn,” said Nora.
“Mrs. Acres,” Diana implored, “the man sitting beside you is a fraud. You mustn’t listen to him. I’m the only person at this table who can make promises and follow through with results. I can make you younger, more beautiful. And when the world sees what we’ve done, your face will become the most celebrated image in the world.”
Nora nodded vacantly. “The Big Lawn Mower. The Big Koala. The koala didn’t have bollocks ’cause it was a girl. The Big Merino—”
“If you’re a prime example of what she can expect, let’s hope she does the smart thing and runs like hell,” Roger interrupted. “What’s buried under all that facial cement you’re wearing? Jimmy Hoffa?”
“You’ve niveh seen ugly ’til you’ve seen a three-horned dung beetle,” Jake drawled. “A prehistoric body encased in indestructible black armor with horns that can pierce—”
“European corn borer!” Lucille yelled. “The grossest, ugliest—TV stations had to stop showing it in commercials over the dinner hour because it was making folks sick.”
“Pimple-faced bush cricket.”
“Rootworm. Cutworm.” She added a pinch of horror movie vibrato to her voice. “Alfaaaaalfa weevil.”
“Topless cannibal ant!”
Back home we put our ants in farms; here, they put them in strip joints. Cool.
“Would you all stay where you are so I can get a group photo?” Guy asked as he muscled himself off the bench.
“Emily warned us to stay away from you,” Lucille raved at Jake. “I never listen to her ’cause she’s usually wrong about everything, but she was right about you!”
“Is that so?” Jake spat out his toothpick like a dart from a blowgun. It whistled onto his plate, spearing a half-eaten fuscilli noodle.
Whoa! Anyone who could spit with that degree of accuracy shouldn’t be killing bugs. He should be playing major league baseball.
He angled around to face me. “What exactly has Imily been saying about me?”
“Go ahead, Emily,” Lucille prodded. “Tell him.”
Tell him to his face that he was a threat to humanity? Right. Why didn’t I just paint a target on my chest and hand him an Uzi? “Umm…just out of curiosity, do you have professional baseball in Australia?”
“Would everyone on Emily’s side of the table squeeze in a little tighter?” asked Guy. He looked through his viewfinder. “Bernice and Lola are still out of frame.”
“WHAT?” yelled Bernice.
“Ouch!” I shifted position as Jake pressed against me, driving something hard and intractable into my thigh. I stared down at the lump in the hip pocket of his shorts. “What are you packing? A lunch pail?”
He wriggled his hand into his pocket and removed a clear plastic cube that he slammed onto his tray.
“Hold that pose,” Guy instructed as he pressed the shutter.
“What have you got inside there?” Roger asked, scrutinizing the container. “Some kind of carpenter ant?”
“Spideh,” said Jake as he yanked off the lid.
Holy shit. I shot off the bench like a Jack-in-the-
Box, elbows and legs flying. Roger burst out in raucous laughter. “Calm down, Emily. It’s not a tarantula.” He leaned across the table for a better look. “It’s pretty good-looking as far as spiders go. No hair. Compact. Nice glossy exterior. Looks like a garden-variety arthropod. What’s so special about it?”
Diana shrieked as the creature landed on her nose.
“It’s a jumpeh,” said Jake.
“EHHHHH!” Diana swatted it off.
“Oh, my God!” I cried, as it leaped onto the table. “Is it poisonous?”
Jake’s mouth slid into a lazy sneer. “What do you think?”
“Run!” Diana screamed.
“WHAT?” yelled Bernice.
Lucille hoisted herself to her feet. “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
The terror in Lucille’s voice started a buzz that prompted rubbernecking, uncertainty, foot shuffling, and a chaotic stampede out the doors. Jake grinned at the disorder, while Heath stood over his mother, tugging on her elbow.
“C’mon, luvy. We need to go.”
“Leave me be.” She shooed him away. “I’m not through eating.”
“Could you use some help?” I asked, running around the table to them.
Heath nodded his thanks. “Up you go, Mum. Imily will carry your tray outside for you.”
Jake snatched up his plastic container and stalked the table. “All right ladies and gints, where’s the little buggeh hiding?”
I screeched as it leaped onto Nora’s tray.
“Mum! It’s not safe to sit here!”
Nora smashed her fist on top of it, smiling serenely. “It is now.”
“It wasn’t poisonous after all?” said Guy, as we descended the long flight of st
airs leading to the gold mine. Bernice had taken one look at the stairs and said she’d rather shop, so it was just the two of us.
“Nope. Henry made Jake fess up. It was just a harmless jumping spider, which was a good thing for Nora. Henry said there are some insects so deadly, you can get poisoned simply by touching them.”
“Do you think she knew what she was doing?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure she’s operating on all cylinders. She’s apparently been on a decades-long quest to find her twin sister Beverly, and I think the stress has taken its toll. But Heath has found some new leads on the internet, and he’s hoping to locate Beverly within a few weeks. Maybe that’ll give Nora’s mental health a boost.”
“Any repercussions for Jake?”
“Big-time. Henry confiscated his plastic container and warned him that if he instigated any more bug incidents, he and Lola would be sent packing. Lola complained that she had nothing to do with the incident and resented both the threat of punishment and Jake’s moronic smirk. So she cussed them both out, vowed to get even with Jake for causing her so much embarrassment, and stormed off for destinations unknown.”
“What was Henry’s reaction to her theatrics?”
“He gave Jake his email address. In his off-hours, Henry apparently does a little moonlighting as an online marriage counselor.”
Arriving at the bottom of the stairs, we headed uphill toward a weathered clapboard shelter that appeared to be the waiting area for the gold mine tour. Sheer cliffs flanked us on the right. Scrubby trees flanked our left. Mining cart tracks led to nowhere. Wooden planks shored up the cliff wall and framed an entryway that tunneled deep into the mountainside. I skidded on some loose pebbles and yelped as my legs gave way beneath me.
“Easy there.” Guy grabbed my arm, righting me. “No twisted ankles allowed.”
“Thanks.” I regarded the gritty terrain with a bit more respect. “I guess I need training wheels, or a keeper.”
“I thought you already had one. Or is it two?”
