by Minnie Darke
The parlor on the opposite side of the hallway belonged to the editor, but his office was utterly unlike Barbel’s. It resembled rather the living room of a hoarder, with knee-high piles of foreign newspapers and bookshelves crammed with legal textbooks, political biographies, Wisden Almanacks and books of true crime. Jeremy, wearing a shirt that was mostly businesslike but somehow managed to retain the slightest hint of kaftan, was talking on the phone. When Justine ducked in to deliver his soy-milk chai, he held up an open hand to her in a way that meant come back in five minutes. Justine gave an eager smile and nodded.
The next room along the corridor was occupied by the staff writers. At the sound of Justine’s footfall, Roma Sharples turned from her computer screen and peered over the top of her electric blue–framed spectacles. Famous for being crabby and imperious, she had to be pushing seventy, yet she was showing no signs of retiring.
“Thank you,” said Roma, accepting her long black coffee. She peeled a sticky note off the pad on her desk and held it out to Justine. “Give this address to Radoslaw, and tell him we have to be there at eleven sharp. And Justine? Bring the car around to the front, will you?”
Justine set down a quarter-strength latte at the empty workstation beside Roma’s. This desk belonged to Jenna Rae, who had presumably been called out on an assignment, and who—being only in her late thirties—offered Justine virtually no hope at all.
The Star’s sports specialist was Martin Oliver, who was in his fifties and probably Justine’s best prospect, given his personal habits. Martin was on the phone and giving off his usual miasma of booze and nicotine as Justine handed him a heavily sugared double-strength cappuccino. He tapped her on the elbow. On the pad on his desk, he wrote, Paper jam in p/copier. And then, Computer won’t print PDFs again. Get Anwen.
“Yeah, well, the selectors are morons. Wouldn’t know a spin bowler from a bowler hat,” he said into the phone, while underlining the word again so hard that he made a deep gouge in the paper. Justine took up his pen and drew a smiley face beneath his message.
Next along the passageway was a narrow office space that might once have been a closet. Behind the desk sat Natsue Kobayashi, the contributions manager. Natsue was blessed with exquisite taste in clothes and an age-defying complexion that made people surprised to learn that she was old enough to have three grandchildren. Each day, she took precisely forty-five minutes for lunch, and spent the time knitting in luxury yarns—merino, alpaca, possum, camel—for these beloved grandchildren, who lived in Sweden. Natsue also had a preternatural ability to multitask.
Without pausing from transcribing the letter that was clipped to the document holder beside her computer, she said, “Good morning, Justine. Oh, your dress! So cu-u-ute! Kawaii!”
The dress was genuine vintage—it had belonged to Justine’s grandmother.
“One flat white,” Justine announced.
Natsue, still typing, said, “Bless you. And I see you have the mail? I would be grateful if I could have mine just as soon as you have done the sorting.”
“Of course,” Justine said.
Justine found the art room mercifully empty of anyone who could add anything more to her to-do list, so she left the designers a hurried note along with Barbel’s brochure, then made good her escape. Across the corridor in the IT department, the Star’s resident tech angel, Anwen Corbett, appeared to be asleep.
Anwen was partly nocturnal, often coming into the office late at night to tinker with the computers when nobody needed to use them. Now her dreadlocked head, pillowed by a thick computer manual, rested on a desk that was mostly a cluttered disaster of cables, circuit boards and Star Wars action figures.
“Anwen,” Justine said. “An!”
Anwen jolted her head upright, though her eyes remained closed. “Yup, yup. All good. All here.”
“Martin’s computer’s not printing PDFs again. He wants you to take a look,” Justine said.
Anwen let her head fall back to her makeshift pillow and groaned. “Tell him it’s a PICNIC.”
PICNIC was Anwen’s favorite acronym. Problem In Chair Not In Computer.
“I have coffee,” Justine wheedled.
“You do?” Anwen said, blinking with puffy eyelids.
“Long macchiato. Available from my desk just as soon as you’ve taken a look at Martin’s computer.”
“That’s just cruel.”
Justine grinned. “But effective.”
The photography department was the next stop along the hallway. Justine leaned on the door frame and said, “Morning, Radoslaw. Roma said to say that she needs you for an eleven o’clock job. Here’s the address.”
Like a prizefighting bantam, the Star’s photographer leaped up from behind his vast computer monitor, a can of Red Bull in his hand, and a short-sleeve checked shirt buttoned high under his tidy black beard. Justine glanced at the wastepaper basket, where there were already two blue-and-white cans, spent.
It was because of Radoslaw’s driving, Justine knew, that Roma had asked her to bring the company car around to the front of the building. Thanks to him, both sides of the Camry were scratched, and white Duco could be found in several places along the side-alley fence. Nevertheless, Radoslaw always insisted that he drive to assignments. Not even Roma had been able to overpower him on this point.
“Well, you can tell Roma to fuck off,” he said, and he made no attempt to keep his voice down. “I’ve got a job at the racetrack with Martin this morning. Can’t they fucken talk to each other? Jesus fucken Christ. They work in the same fucken room. Fuck.”
And since this was a fairly normal way for Radoslaw to respond to a message, it was perhaps fortunate that he had never in his life taken a bad picture.
At last, Justine made it to her desk, which was located in a lean-to at the back of the old home. The room’s walls were unlined, though they had been roughly painted. Propped against one of these walls was a bicycle that Martin Oliver had probably last used about seven months ago, which was also the last time he’d felt moved to get some exercise at lunchtime, rather than head down to the Strumpet and Pickle. From between the wheels of the bike there emerged a stained white furry muzzle, then a pair of weepy, deep-brown eyes. These belonged to a small and shaggy Maltese terrier, who was dragging a leopard-print leash.
“Falafel,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
The dog only wagged his tail, but the answer to Justine’s question was on her desk in the form of a note from the Star’s art director. In his rather overconfident hand, Glynn had written: Don’t suppose you can take F. to the grooming parlor? Due there at 10 a.m. Groomers will have a fit if he’s late again. Thanks! G.
Falafel trotted up to Justine’s ankles and yapped at her impatiently.
“Don’t you start,” she told him.
For a few seconds, Justine stood and breathed, deliberately. There was no point feeling overwhelmed, she told herself. When everyone wanted everything immediately, you simply had to prioritize. She reasoned that even if Jeremy had asked for her in five minutes’ time, and even if he was the boss, he was also a hopeless time fantasist. Five minutes in Jeremy’s world could mean anything from ten minutes to six hours. Therefore, she would sort the mail and deliver Natsue’s at the very least, then duck back to Rafaello’s for Barbel’s biscuits, returning via the grooming parlor where she would drop off Falafel. Then she would fix the paper jam in the photocopier, back the Camry down the driveway and start a fight between Martin and Roma by passing on the general gist, though not the precise wording, of Radoslaw’s message to Roma. Then she—
“Jus-tine!”
Oh, fuck.
It was Jeremy, his voice booming cheerfully down the hallway. “Be good,” she said to Falafel. “Good.”
Just outside Jeremy’s office, Justine slowed and smoothed her dress. Professional, capable, unflappable, she told h
erself, then stepped inside.
“Darl!” said Jeremy. He smiled, and broken capillaries jostled across his cheeks and nose. “Have a seat, have a seat.”
Jeremy was big on the paterfamilias thing, and Justine knew he felt it was his responsibility, as the editor and her self-appointed mentor, to schedule in some regular little chats. He liked to tell her war stories from his glorious and dangerous past, and to orate on subjects such as ethics, due process, jurisprudence and the delicate machinery of the Westminster system.
“Darl,” he said, leaning forward to launch into today’s randomly chosen topic, “what do you know about the separation of powers?”
“Well…” Justine began, and that was a mistake. When conversing with Jeremy, it was foolish to begin with a word of extraneous fill.
“We thank the French Enlightenment,” he interrupted, “for the concept of the separation of powers, which holds that the three branches of government—the executive, the legislative and the judicial…”
And so, Justine sat across the desk from Jeremy as he monologued for quite some time. Hands in her polka-dot lap, she tried to look as if she were, in fact, listening intently, and learning. And not as if she were thinking of macarons, and the width of the side alley, and Martin’s printing problem, and whether or not Falafel had eaten the packed lunch that was in the bag she’d left, unprotected, near her workstation.
At length, Jeremy’s phone rang and he snatched it up. “Harvey!” he exclaimed. “Hold on just a mo, me old chum.”
He put his hand over the receiver and gave Justine a rueful smile. “To be continued.”
Dismissed, Justine stepped into the hallway. Immediately, from the noise, she could tell that Radoslaw had not waited for Justine to pass his message on to Roma.
Martin was also yelling. “Jus-tine! I need to print something out! This year!”
Justine checked her watch. Falafel was already late for the groomer’s.
Barbel leaned around the door of her office, her beautifully made-up brow creased with anxiety. “Where are my macarons?” she asked, but Justine could offer her nothing more than a weak smile.
It was going to be quite a day.
* * *
By the time Justine finished work that evening, it was half past six. Her hair fell in lank waves around her face, her skin felt gray and—thanks to the glitchy printer—there was a spray of ink down one side of her dress. She was hungry, too, for although Falafel had not precisely eaten her chicken curry wrap, he had toyed with it enough to make it inedible, and there’d been no time to seek out a replacement lunch.
As she passed beneath the mosaic star at the gatepost, she glanced up at it resentfully.
“Inspirational rays,” she muttered, then stepped out onto Rennie Street.
Justine walked three blocks and turned left into Dufrene Street, where the after-work drinkers were spilling out of the Strumpet and Pickle onto the sidewalk. She crossed to the other side of the road, and was just about to pass through the eastern gate of Alexandria Park when she stopped in her tracks, turned around and looked back at the series of glamorized warehouses on the other side of the road that made up the markets.
It’s difficult to know what caused her to do this, precisely at that moment. Perhaps the sun was working an angle on her from its current position in Pisces, or the moon and Venus together were tugging on her consciousness from their love seat in Aquarius. Or maybe Jupiter had sent down some kind of vibe from where it was stomping about in Virgo. Or perhaps it was only that Justine’s subconscious had subtly suggested that there was a way to delay the inevitable moment when she would walk in through the door of her empty apartment, queue up the next episode of the BBC’s latest Emma, think vaguely about calling best-pal Tara, but instead collapse on the couch with a helping of Vegemite toast for dinner.
Justine stood poised, at the very edge of the sidewalk, and considered. Was there time? The markets didn’t close until seven. She checked her watch. Oh, yes, there was time.
She glanced inside the basket-weave bag that she carried in the crook of her arm, and was happy to see that her black Sharpie pen was indeed there, lying in wait, in its own special pocket. She lowered her sunglasses from the top of her head and approached.
Alexandria Park Markets was a place Justine only rarely went to buy food. More often, she entered its cool, high-ceilinged space in the same spirit as she would an art gallery. She liked to check out the strange and exotic blooms that filled the enormous Mason jars at the florist’s, and to pass by the fishmonger’s to admire the gleaming sea creatures on their beds of ice.
She made her way past the florist’s, past the butcher’s and the baker’s, toward the fruit and vegetable corner. She sidled up to a timber crate full of watermelons, lifted her sunglasses and looked over to the display of Hass avocados. And there it was, perched on a plastic stalk above the fruits. The offending sign.
ADVOCADOS.
Would the man never learn? Here was a fruit seller who was clearly competent. No, he was more than competent. He could stack pomegranates so that they looked like the crown jewels of some far-flung, exotic nation. He could select apples of invariable perfection and keep grapes misted with water so that they looked appetizing all day long. It made no sense that he would stubbornly and consistently continue to misspell “avocados.” And yet he did. Week in and week out, Justine corrected his error, and the grocer responded by throwing away the amended signs and replacing them with yet another one for ADVO-bloody-CADOS. It was infuriating. But Justine was determined not to be beaten.
She waited until the assistant behind the counter was distracted, then whipped out her Sharpie. Swiftly, she struck out the extraneous D. AVOCADOS. Ah, yes. This was good.
Satisfied that the world was now restored to rightness, Justine spun around, intending to make a dash for the markets’ Dufrene Street exit. But she had only taken a few paces when she ran into a giant fish.
It was hard to tell what kind of fish it was, exactly. It was silver-gray with lips rimmed in pink satin ribbon. Its eyes were enormous, yellow and convex, like the painted halves of a Ping-Pong ball. A very upright dorsal fin began at the back of the creature’s head and ran in spiked waves down the length of its spine. The fish had large silver gloves for pectorals, and it said, “Should you be doing that?”
She was just about to get argumentative, when she recognized the human face that was framed by a cut-out oval of silvery fish-fabric.
“Nick Jordan?” Justine said, incredulous.
“Bloody hell. Justine?”
“Hello!”
“Hello to you too.”
“Oh my God. You haven’t even changed,” Justine said, stunned and smiling.
Nick made a doubtful face and glanced down at his fish suit. “Thanks, I think.”
“It must have been, what?”
“Years,” Nick agreed, and as he nodded the silver lamé expanse of the suit quivered all over.
“Eleven? Twelve?” Justine offered, as if she were guessing.
“It couldn’t have been that long,” he said.
But it was. It was twelve years, one month, and three weeks. And Justine knew this, precisely.
* * *
Somewhere in a shoe box, or perhaps an album, there existed photographs of Justine Carmichael as a weeks-old baby, pink and tiny as a skinned rabbit, lying on a rug next to ten-month-old Nicholas Jordan, who looked in comparison like a sumo wrestler in a Winnie the Pooh playsuit.
As toddlers, in the sandbox at family day care, Justine and Nick had shared both their Vegemite sandwiches and the traumatic experience of being dethroned by younger siblings. Justine had got off easier than Nick on that front. Her parents had produced a boy—Austin—on their second try, and called it quits. But after having Nick’s younger brother, Jimmy, Jo and Mark had gone back for a third throw of the dice, hopin
g for a girl. And along came Piper.
By the time Justine and Nick graduated to kindergarten at Eden Valley Primary, Nick had been going through a monkey phase and had refused to go to school, even in summer, wearing anything other than a full-length onesie lemur costume. So Justine spent her mornings sitting loyally beside him on the mat while he sucked on his striped tail during story time, and at the end of lunch she would help him to brush the bark chips from the playground out of his fur.
In the early years of primary school, Nick took up the habit of playing soccer during breaks, while Justine climbed trees, or drifted in and out of the imaginative games of the girls, which usually seemed to involve someone lying on the ground, wailing, pretending to be a baby. But outside school, Nick and Justine played together for all of the endless hours that their mothers chatted together over cups of tea or glasses of wine, and the two kids knew that Jo and Mandy’s occasional shouts of “five-minute warning!” could almost always be safely ignored. Justine had known precisely where in the Jordans’ pantry to find the chocolate biscuits, and Nick had his own toothbrush at the Carmichaels’.
There had once been a VHS tape of the two of them as seven-year-olds: Nick wreaking havoc on the nylon strings of an old acoustic guitar, and Justine, in a pair of sunglasses with heart-shaped frames, crooning into the microphone of a Little Mermaid karaoke set. They’d sung “Big Yellow Taxi,” which hadn’t been too bad, and “Yellow Submarine,” which hadn’t been entirely dreadful, but then they’d launched into an innocently raunchy version of Racey’s “Some Girls.” At some point during that song, Justine and Nick had realized that their audience, made up exclusively of their parents, was laughing uncontrollably. At them. It would be quite a few years before Justine would realize precisely what it was, in that song, that some girls did, and some girls didn’t. But on the night of the living-room concert, she didn’t need to know the details in order to know that she was being laughed at.
For Nick, the experience had been exhilarating. Shortly after the night of the concert, he’d entered his first Eden Valley Drama Eisteddfod, only to discover the intoxicating fact that the arts could be a blood sport every bit as competitive as a game of Aussie Rules. Trophies accumulated.
