by Nina D'Aleo
Dad laughed. “Five minutes! You’re off with the fairies.” He did a dance around his palm trees, flapping his hands like little fairy wings. Not my dad’s best look. Mom glared hard at him as he started talking Italian in an unflattering high-pitched voice.
“See you inside,” I called and Dark and I left them to it. An audience tended to spur on Dad’s performances.
We went up to the house—my home—and stepped inside. It looked like it always did: as if we were either just moving in or moving out. Mom was a hoarder, Dad a chucker. One of my earliest clear memories was of sitting on the driveway watching Mom making trips into the house with a bunch of odds and ends she’d picked up at the local charity shop. At the same time, Dad was sneaking out the back door and around the side of the house with armfuls of other random stuff and stowing them in the boot of his car for a stealthy trip to the dump.
I paused in the hallway to let the tension drop from my shoulders. I’d taken my migraine pills in the car and the pain was starting to ease.
A fur tumbleweed drifted across the tiles in front of us, coming to rest beside a toy rat. Dark picked up the squeaky toy and threw it to a cat who was stretched across the hallway. He was a big, pink-nosed, ginger-and-white Turkish water cat we called Mr Foofypants.
“Fetch,” Dark said.
Mr Foofy eyed the toy with sluggish indifference, then started grooming his back as if to say, I feel embarrassed for you.
“What do they do all day?” Dark said as if for the first time. He, like Dad, was more of a dog person. I didn’t reply. He had already heard everything I had to say on the matter many times over.
We headed out into the lounge room, where my brother, Benicio, sat on the couch in front of his laptop. A muted basketball game played on the television beside him. Benny worked as a prosecutor for the government and, like me, couldn’t get a handle on the notion of work/life balance. Maybe we were just victims of our time. He and his wife, Gemma, also lived with my parents, but were actually saving for a house, so they at least had an excuse. Gemma was just over two months pregnant and suffering serious morning sickness. Even the passing notion of food made her throw up. We only glimpsed her these days as she ran through to the toilet.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Dark went over and slouched down beside Benny.
My brother removed his glasses, looked over at Dark and said, “Hell is other people.”
My partner snorted. “Tell me about it.”
“You working on a case?” I asked my brother.
“Yep.”
“How’s Gemma?” I asked.
“Pregnant,” he replied.
“Still sick?”
“Yep.”
“That’s no good.”
“Nope.”
That was a typical conversation for us. I asked, he answered, a teasing glint in his eye. Little sister trying to act like a grown-up. Getting information out of him was like wringing a dry towel for water. He would have made a good C11 agent—better than me. We’d always communicated best through movie quotes.
The bells on the front door jangled and Mom came in, windswept and flustered. “I’m so sorry about us,” she said to Dark.
“Mom,” I warned her.
“Oops, sorry.”
“Mom.” I raised my voice.
She put a hand over her mouth and I heard a muffled ‘Sorry’.
She was a serial sorrier. She said sorry at the beginning of almost every sentence. She said once it was because her father was angry about everything. In truth, her father wasn’t angry, he was a psychopath. The fact she’d come through a childhood with him at all, let alone as healthy and loving as she was, was a miracle. Still, after I caught her saying sorry to a cushion she’d accidentally knocked off the couch, I decided enough was enough. I was myself a recovering apoloholic, so I understood it was a long road.
“Not a problem,” Dark replied.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked him. “There’s juice, water, tea, coffee, decaf, herbal teas, soda, milk, flavored milk, soy …?”
“How about a beer?” Dark teased her. “And a shot of tequila.”
Mom gave an obliging chuckle. She was a teetotaler and there was no alcohol in the house, except for Dad’s vino, which he kept with his own ‘emergency’ stash of chocolate and thought no one knew about. Dark himself never drank, which most people found to be a surprising fact about him. He’d said once that his grandfather had told him not to start something he couldn’t finish.
“Coffee would be great,” he said.
“And how about breakfast—toast, cereal, fruit, yoghurt …?”
“Mom.” I stopped her before she listed the entire contents of the fridge. “We don’t really have time to eat.” I checked my watch. “We’re on double shift.”
“But you haven’t slept.” Worry overtook her face.
I shrugged. “I’ll catch up tomorrow.”
My family thought we still worked in federal law and were not allowed, under legislation, to talk about our cases. That was as close to the truth as they would get.
“She may not have time to eat,” Dark said. “But I definitely do. Give me the usual.”
Mom beamed at him. I knew she secretly hoped Dark and I would end up a couple.
Dad wandered into the room and said, “Five and a half million this Tuesday.” He rubbed his hands together. My father’s two greatest dreams were to go to space and to win lotto. He always spoke about winning as if it was inevitable and not a virtual statistical impossibility. Benicio, Dad and Dark started debating which sports car they’d buy with the money, so I escaped the conversation and took the chance to go upstairs to my room to change. As I passed the bathroom I heard my sister-in-law hurling into the toilet and cringed in sympathy. Getting pregnant may be a gift, but being pregnant sounded like hell. Still I secretly wished it were me—more than I ever let on.
I went into my room and locked the door behind me. I stood for a moment breathing in the familiar and safe—touching sight with all my ‘things’—my desk, my bed, my bookcase. Everything was animal patterned. Dark said it made the room look like a poor man’s brothel, but I wasn’t about to take fashion advice from a man who thought underwear wasn’t dirty until you’d worn it inside-out as well. The bookcase was jammed packed with books, mostly classics Mom had passed on to me from her literature degree days. I’d only read a fraction of them, but I had good intentions and they made me at least appear well read. Mom had also given me her vast collection of Men and Women Relationship Self-Help books, of which I’d read exactly zero. Judging by her relationship, they didn’t work.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I dragged it out and saw a message from one of the other girls from my group of friends—Gloria (Codename: the Terminator). She was into body-building and close-combat fighting styles. She was a tough, make-no-excuses sort of person, but if a man with an accent, particularly French or Irish, spoke to her, she melted on the spot. The message said, Hey luv. How was the night? We missed you!
I smiled and wrote back, then threw the phone onto the bed and crossed to my favorite part of the room, an obscenely large walk-in wardrobe. (Another big reason I’d moved back home.) I slid open the glass doors and looked around at all the clothes and shoes, color coded and gorgeous. Many were unworn, seeing as I spent most of my waking hours in blacks for work, but still the sight made me happy. Because of what I was, I couldn’t talk about everything that was bothering me, so I attended retail therapy instead—mostly over the net, which was horribly addictive, but it made me smile. I walked to the back of the robe. I keyed the passcode into my cell phone, wirelessly disabling the wall-safe’s security. The fake wall panel slid up and lights flashed on around the various weapons and agency gear I had in my stash. I pulled the TRANQ gun off my belt and pushed in into its mold. It was probably better if I rested it until I was off probation. I replaced the TRANQ with a standard, live-ammo weapon and re-stocked my duty belt. I undid my body armor and lifted it over my
head with a groan of pain, then inspected the damage. Despite the protection of a medium-weight ballistic vest I had light bruising across my ribs. I shook my head. That walt had been a real fighter. I started wondering if he was home by now, but stopped myself, instead focusing on grabbing a shower and changing my clothes and armor.
When I went back downstairs, the guys were still talking cars, and the conversation had gotten loud and animated—as though their opinions on the matter actually made a difference to anything. Mom was cooking in the kitchen, humming along to her blaring stereo, zoning out to Mozart. I decided to do the same. I dragged one of the cats off her favorite sunflower cushion and inconvenienced her with a cuddle. I sat down and switched off for a few precious seconds as the smell of toast and pancakes wafted through the air.
9
“She could have just left. She could have said, ‘This isn’t working—I’m sick of you—it’s over—I’m leaving—goodbye.’ She could have. The fact that she chose to completely trash my entire life first and not even face me. I just can’t get over that,” Dark called out to me.
And he wasn’t wrong. Seven years on and he was still talking about the break-up like it was yesterday fresh. He didn’t know what was harder to believe—that he had spent five years of his life with someone and never really understood her, or that she had changed so much seemingly overnight. He would never admit to it, but I suspected that this heartbreak had more to do with why Dark never wanted another serious relationship than did the constraints of our job or whatever macho bravado of Chosen Singledom he put on.
“She even took the bulbs out of the sockets so that when I arrived home I couldn’t turn on the lights. Who the hell does that? Can you tell me who?”
I stared out the apartment window and drifted. Replies were unnecessary. Sometimes Dark just got into a rant and needed to see it out. His ex had ended it with a very low blow: she’d left without telling him, taking every single thing they owned with her, even his clothes—even the light bulbs, but he hadn’t exactly been the dream boyfriend either. He’d taken her for granted, spent excess time working on his cars and going out with his friends, he’d forgotten all their special occasions and flirted with other girls. Basically he’d continued to live a single life while reaping all the benefits of having a relationship. What had he really expected would happen? These were the things I thought, but never said aloud. I loved Dark too much to tell him the truth.
I leaned my head against the windowpane and waited for him to finish changing. Dark’s apartment building stood right beside the river, several blocks from work. Six bridges, in various places, joined the CBD with other parts of the city, including the arty south bank. Ferries crisscrossed the river transporting passengers up and down to various terminals along its length. An early sun warmed the backs of people strolling, jogging and bike-riding along the boardwalk. In a few more hours the place would be packed with tourists enjoying the sights and sounds. A thought occurred to me. If I could see two hundred people now from this kitchen window, sixty of them were guaranteed walts, and that meant those sixty were not only in my sight, but under the constant eye of C11—on the streets, at work, at school, in their homes—everywhere, everyday, men, women, children. Disquiet slithered down my spine. It was necessary, but still a privacy invasion of epic proportion.
A smell like some kind of organic rot disrupted my thoughts. I peeked into a pizza box sitting on the bench, then gagged and slammed the lid back down. Pizza à la fur. The stench complemented Dark’s current décor theme: mess layered on mess with a shade of mess. He had clothes everywhere, so many it was a wonder he wasn’t running around naked. A dirty-dish Leaning Tower of Pisa stood in the sink, the soda-can Coliseum on the coffee table. Ice-cream sticks, corn-chip packs, newspapers and (ewww) condom wrappers littered the floor. I needed to go to the bathroom, but I didn’t dare brave the sight of his toilet. I wasn’t a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination, but this place was giving me palpitations.
My eyes settled on the only clean spot—the cabinet Dark’s grandfather—‘Nonno’ in Italian—had made for him. It was now a shrine to the old guy. Framed photos of him and Dark’s grandmother sat on top with an ever-burning candle lamp beside them, along with a small collection of personal items he’d kept—rosary beads, the gold cross and chain, an old bible, a cloth map of Sicily.
I knew my partner could come across as shallow, but there were other deeper, well-hidden sides to him. I seemed to spend a lot of my time trying to convince other people of this, but they didn’t know about Dark’s childhood, about what he had suffered at the hands of people who should have been protecting him from all the dangers in the world. That had left scars beyond anything physical, beyond anything explainable or fixable.
He never spoke of it, but his grandfather had told me some things that had haunted me ever since and made me a lot more understanding of Dark’s mood swings and blunt ways. As soon as the grandfather had realized what was happening, he’d stepped in and taken Dark—and had never let his mother or her boyfriend near him again. I’d known Nonno as a little old man, but in the nineteen-thirties he’d been a champion boxer in his native Palermo, and there was something else about his eyes that, old man or not, you just didn’t want to mess with him. He’d become Dark’s protector, his parent, his mentor and guide, his best friend. Who knew what sort of person my partner would have become without him, or if he’d even have survived childhood? I didn’t know where the mother or boyfriend were now, but part of me really wanted to track them down and make them suffer. Maybe one day I would.
I went closer to the cabinet and leaned down to look at the shelves where Dark kept a collection of rocks he’d chiseled to look like animals, a couple of terrible vases I’d made in my attempt at pottery class and, at the very back, hidden behind a framed photo of me and Dark, a small photograph of his daughter. She was seven now and they’d never met. He kept tabs from a distance, mostly checking she was okay, but that was the line for him. He’d never said it, but I knew he thought he’d be a bad father. It was funny how we’d been partners for so long and still thought we could hide things from each other.
“What?” Dark had come out of his room and seen me thinking.
I gestured to the sty around us. “How can you live like this?”
He looked around. “What?”
“What do you mean what?” I said. “Your whole place looks like a fourteen-year-old boy lives here.”
“My cleaner’s on vacation,” he said defensively. “What am I supposed to do?”
The man was an expert in armed combat and espionage but the concept of a vacuum cleaner and a bin baffled him? Whatever he paid his cleaner, it wasn’t enough.
“Hey, perfect opportunity for you to practice,” he said, handing me a broom and patting me heavily on the back.
“Not in a million years,” I replied, handing it back.
I checked my watch and my partner raised an eyebrow. He thought I had an unhealthy obsession with checking the time. I disagreed—I thought my time checking was well within the normal range. I couldn’t help that we lived to such strict schedules.
“Are you ready?” I asked him.
He fastened his shoulder holster and duty belt, shrugged into his leather jacket and said, “Let’s go.”
10
The night before the gods of pro wrestling and gratuitous nudity had smiled on Dark; today, however, belonged to me. Our first assignment for the shift landed us just west of central Toran-R—at the expansively green and irresistibly romantic botanical gardens. It was one of my favorite places to be: a peaceful oasis in the heart of the concrete jungle. It was especially beautiful now with the new sun’s rays streaming through the leafy treetops and glistening silver across the pond, where ducks and swans swam, glided, in the still quiet. The air was chilled but fresh, perfect for relaxing in the sun. I sat beside Dark on the park bench where we could observe the garden’s entrance, the walking tracks all around the pond and halfway up t
he hill to the lookout.
It was ten-sixteen am and the first wave of early Saturday brides, arriving for their photographic sessions, had just rolled in. A relatively calm few. Come one o’clock, just past the more popular wedding times, and there would be a bridal stampede for the most romantic spots, with impatient jostling and the frantic camera clicks of self-proclaimed creative geniuses. I watched the arriving limos, and the disembarking groups, fascinated by the bridal dresses, the bridesmaids’ colors and hair-dos, and the inter-group dynamics playing out like mini soap operas. The men in general looked the same—insert Guy In Suit here. Some grooms had taken a different angle—one was wearing a bright yellow tux. His bride wore black, so collectively they looked like a very large bee.
Some of the brides appeared ultra relaxed, chatting, strolling, glass of champers in one hand, their heels in the other, train dragging along the ground. Others were uptight and jittery, forcing smiles, checking flowers and veils, constantly reapplying lip-gloss and powder. And yet another group—the sergeant-major brides—came through at a march, barking orders, death-staring bridesmaids who weren’t keeping up with their train-holding duties, and God help anyone who stopped for a bathroom break or tried to take off her heels. I guessed everyone handled the stress in a different way and big family events tended to bring out the best and the worst.
I had a flash of memory of my uncle’s wedding. Dad was the best man and over the course of the day had become staggering, slurring drunk, and with my dad, being that drunk inevitably meant dancing—enthusiastic, uncoordinated, sweaty dancing. He was hopping and bopping all over the dance floor, sending all the female guests running for cover. He proceeded to initiate a two-person conga line with the bride, only to knock her over and trample her tiara. He continued doing the twist, oblivious, grinning lopsided, suit in disarray, hair disheveled. One of the bride’s older relatives had asked me and mom if we knew that man, to which we’d replied in unison, “Never seen him before.”
