by Minnie Darke
“Balcony,” the ad for the flat had said. But it wasn’t really a balcony. It was a concrete ledge with a rusted metal railing, only big enough to hold a planter box full of tomatoes, or the clothes airer that Nick was shortly to buy, but not both. It was hard to know why the architect had even bothered with balconies, if “architect” was the right term for the person who designed the towering toilet block where Nick now lived. The building had been put up so close to the art deco apartments next door that Nick would easily be able to spit a cherry pip through the window opposite his own.
The ad had said the kitchen was “galley-style,” which Nick now knew to be code for ridiculously small. The stove was old and dirty, with solid heating elements that would probably take a century to warm up; the bedroom was tiny, and it was best, Nick decided, not to think about the bathroom, which had been fitted out during the incredibly brief period of human history in which carpet on bathroom floors had seemed like a good idea.
Nick cruised over a junction, dodging around a retinue of dachshunds who were out for a stroll on a Hydra-headed leash. Reaching the far side of the road, he paused his bike for long enough to wedge in his earbuds and dial a number on his phone. Now that Daylight Saving had ended, his folks were once again only two hours behind, and while he was pedaling along the quiet Sunday morning streets was as good a time as any to have the chat he needed to have with his mum.
The phone rang four times. He imagined Jo Jordan picking up her mobile from her kitchen counter on the other side of the country, opening its expensive leather cover. He could smell the salted air, and imagine the view from his parents’ kitchen window, out over the cluttered coastline and the vivid blue of the Indian Ocean.
“Sweetheart!” she said.
“Hey, Mum. Sorry about the wind noise.”
“Where are you?”
“On my bike.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t talk and ride.”
“Mu-u-um.”
“Okay, okay. How’s the new place?”
“Grim. Grimy. Grotty. Many other things starting with G. Speaking of which,” Nick said, taking a breath and preparing to dive in. “Girlfriend.”
“Oh, you’ve met someone,” she said. “How exciting!”
“Actually, I am not so sure you’re going to like this.”
He felt the instant freeze, as if someone had just pumped liquid nitrogen up the phone line. But he went on, “Laura and I are going to give it another shot.”
In the silence that followed, he could perfectly imagine the expression on his mother’s face. He fancied that he could hear her chewing her bottom lip.
“I mean,” he continued, “we’re not moving back in together, not right away. We’re going to take it from the top. From the very beginning. You know, start dating. One step at a time.”
Still, his mother said nothing.
“She’s agreed to ease up on the pressure. And I’ve agreed to have a really good think about my career direction. It’s a compromise thing. I mean, maybe it is time that I started to…I mean, you know, Dad’s always said…even you’ve sometimes said…I never thought acting was going to be easy, but maybe I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. I guess I can’t go on being this broke forever. Mum?”
He could hear her breathing. Thinking.
“Mum?”
“You have to chart your own path, Nicko. Girlfriend, career. All of it. It all has to be what you choose. Not what I choose.”
“She’s—”
“I know, sweetheart. I know. Three years is a long time, and you’ve invested a lot. I can understand you wanting to hold on. But, once a relationship has failed once…I mean, as you grow older, life throws a lot of challenges at you, Nick. You have to be really sure the person you choose is the right one. And every time we’ve spoken over the last few months, you’ve seemed so convinced that it was over for good. What’s happened?”
Now it was Nick’s turn to fall silent.
A sense of rightness and flow, Leo had written, and seemingly coincidental meetings and events. Was it God’s way of remaining anonymous when he put Laura’s face everywhere, so that she was there no matter where Nick looked? It seemed that every time he turned a corner, she was right there, in his face, blown up to mega-proportions on billboards or in shop windows.
She was currently in the window display at Country Road, a great deal larger than life: all racehorse hip bones, smoky makeup and flowing bronze silk. Her long, straight dark hair shone and her expression was…what? He supposed Country Road wanted her to look languorous and untouchable, as if their brand’s clothing were a passport to a place entirely free of the kinds of concerns that could wrinkle your consciousness, your face or your clothes. She wasn’t only the clotheshorse for Country Road, but also the eyes of Ophelia spectacles. There was a picture of her in magenta glasses, her hair slightly curled and drifting out around her shoulders in a carefully orchestrated breeze, which was plastered down the sides of half the city’s buses.
In the Alexandria Park Star itself, one page over from Leo’s horoscopes, was a full-page advertisement for Chance sparkling wines, and in it, posed against a rustic backdrop of wine barrels, wearing jeans that rose over her slender hips to an impossibly narrow waist, was Laura Mitchell. Her rose-colored blouse was demurely buttoned, but very tight. Her pale and perfect lips were curled into a come-hitherish expression, and she held, between manicured fingertips, the stem of a champagne flute. The pale golden liquid in the glass glowed with all the promise of a wedding band, a strategic star of light sparking off its surface. Take a chance, the advertisement had read, in a huge curling font.
When the universe sends you a message in the language of chance, it is wiser to open the door than to close it.
Nick could hear his mother waiting for his answer.
“I just think that this is…right. You know?” he said.
“Nicko?”
“Yes, Mum?”
“You do have a little tendency to see only the best in people. And that’s lovely, but…just be careful with that heart of yours.”
“Hey,” Nick said, remembering something else he needed to report to his mum, “you’ll never guess who I ran into. Twice. Justine Carmichael.”
“Justine? Oh my goodness. Really? How’s she going? What’s she doing?”
“She’s working for a magazine.”
“Of course she is,” his mum said with a happy sigh. “It was always going to be something wordy, wasn’t it?”
Nick found himself telling his mother all about the dinner he and Justine had shared in the park, and then how he’d seen her at Cornucopia, and how she wasn’t any different, and he realized that he was blathering on. Maybe even oversharing, as if he’d been bottling up a desire to talk to somebody. About Justine.
“You two were such good friends,” Nick’s mother said. “You know, Mandy and I, we used to have this little dream that you and Justine…well, that was all a long time ago. I do miss Mandy.”
There was a pause.
“I sometimes wonder what our lives would have been like if we’d never left Edenvale,” Jo said wistfully.
Nick had reached the hardware store. “Got to go, Mum.”
“Love you, darling,” she said. “If you see Justine again, be sure to tell her I say hello.”
Gemini
MAY 21–JUNE 20
On a Friday afternoon in late May, Jeremy Byrne assembled the staff of the Alexandria Park Star, at short notice, in the tearoom. He stood at the head of the table, his expression serious.
“What’s this all about?” Justine asked, taking a seat beside Anwen.
“Doesn’t look good,” Anwen said.
“Did someone…do something wrong?” Justine asked, but Anwen only shrugged.
Justine looked around at the faces of her colleagues. Barbel hovered in the d
oorway, and it was clear she was annoyed at the unscheduled interruption to her afternoon. Henry the new copy-runner was perched attentively at Jeremy’s right flank. Justine had privately nicknamed him the Hulk, for although he was small and taut, Justine feared that if his ambition got loose it would turn him to the shade of blue favored by the nation’s political conservatives, then cause him to swell up and split the seams of his Rodd & Gunn shirt.
Jeremy cleared his throat. Roma and Radoslaw, he reported, had gone that morning, in the Camry, on an assignment to the far side of the city, where they had been involved in a car accident.
“What the hell?” Martin Oliver said, clenching his fists like he was planning to punch someone.
Justine watched Jeremy’s face closely, trying not to think the worst. Not, at least, before it was absolutely necessary to do so.
“But are they all right?” Barbel asked, at the same time as Anwen said, “Oh my God.”
They were both in the hospital, Jeremy said, and although the collision had taken place on the highway, and at considerable speed, the injuries to both were relatively—mercifully—minor.
“I have come just now from the hospital, where I was able to see each of them,” Jeremy assured his staff, going on to say that Roma would this afternoon undergo surgery on a badly broken ankle and wrist. Radoslaw, meanwhile, had been treated for whiplash and shock, and would most likely be discharged in the morning.
“Though the bump he has on his forehead is spectacular,” Jeremy added. “He’s looking rather like a beluga whale.”
The driver of an erstwhile Holden Gemini—still on her restricted license—was also mostly unhurt, Jeremy said, though it was possible she had a pair of soiled pants, since Radoslaw had been amped on adrenaline when he’d leaped out of the Camry to give her an unexpurgated opinion of her driving skills. A few knowing glances were exchanged, but although Justine presumed everybody was thinking much the same thing she was, nobody said anything.
“Of course,” Jeremy continued, “this news will unsettle us all. But we are, when push comes to shove, professionals. And our own little show must go on. So, I have already called in Kim Westlake to keep the wheels turning in the photography department. As for Roma’s appointments, we will all need to pitch in.”
Jeremy announced that he, himself, would be taking over Roma’s ongoing coverage of the court case concerning the State Attorney-General and the stand-up comic who was alleged to have defamed her. The other two staff writers were quick to volunteer: Martin Oliver put his hand up for a profile on an award-winning Chilean novelist, and Jenna Rae offered to finish Roma’s piece on the impact of funding cuts to the National Ballet.
“That leaves, ah, one more assignment,” Jeremy said, “a short profile piece on a talented young performer. Verdi, Verdi…Highsmith. Thankfully, Radoslaw already has the images in the can for this one. Ms. Highsmith is just fifteen years old, but I’m reliably informed that she’s a face to watch. She’s been cast in Romeo and Juliet for Alexandria Park Rep.”
Justine thought, Romeo and Juliet? It had to be Nick’s production. Surely.
Martin made a scoffing noise at the back of his throat.
“Yes, I know, I know,” Jeremy said. “Try us as they do with their endless drawing-room comedies, the good folk of the Alexandria Park Rep are our very own neighborhood troubadours, and love them we must. And if Ms. Highsmith does indeed turn out to be the real deal, obviously the Alexandria Park Star wants to be part of her journey from the very beginning. Any takers for the profile piece?”
Brain: He might be there. At the assignment.
Justine: Who?
Brain: Don’t be cute. Just put your hand up.
“I’ll do it,” Justine said.
“Excellent notion. Thank you, Justine,” Jeremy said. “And with that, we are all…covered. Good work, troops.”
“Um, Jeremy? When’s the interview?” Justine asked.
The editor looked at his notes. “Three o’clock. At the Gaiety.”
“Today?”
Jeremy checked his notes. “Indeed. Today.”
It was already half past two.
* * *
Justine arrived at the Gaiety with a new ballpoint pen in one pocket of her coat, a fresh notebook in the other, and two minutes to spare. She wouldn’t have been able to say when was the last time she had been to the Gaiety, a fussy, old-fashioned little theater that was the pride and joy of the Alexandria Park Heritage Society. But as soon as she stepped into the foyer, her nostrils filled with a distinctive musty smell that took her immediately back to being eight years old, wearing her best overcoat and too-tight patent leather shoes. She recalled Christmastime Nutcracker Suites, twee Alexandria Park Youth Theater productions of Peter Pan and never-ending performances of Lady Windermere’s Fan.
In the foyer was a young man, very kempt, in a fashionably floral shirt and exaggeratedly pointed shoes. He introduced himself as the theater’s manager, though Justine knew this was code for “the theater’s only permanent employee.”
Justine said, “I’m Justine Carmichael, reporter for the Star.” Although she had not quite known that she was going to say this, she liked the sound of it.
“They’re running a little over time, but let me take you up to the dress circle. They shouldn’t be too much longer. Verdi will join you when they break,” the manager said, briskly leading the way to a red-carpeted staircase. “As you know, the production doesn’t move into the theater for quite some time yet. Today is just to grab some moving images for promotion and so on.”
In the upstairs lobby was a tiny, ornate bar and a pair of double doors that opened into the comparative gloom of the dress circle. The manager put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture, then ushered Justine inside.
Once her eyes had adjusted, she saw that if the theater’s velvet seats had been reupholstered since her childhood, then it was in the very same shade of red. The walls were unchanged, too—still a murky duck-egg blue—and the Grecian figures in the murals around the proscenium hadn’t moved an inch. Above the seating banks, dust motes swirled in the shafts of light that poured from the ceiling rig onto the chalky blackness of the undressed stage. Cameramen stood behind tripods near the wings, and a third photographer roamed in bare feet.
Center stage, in a pool of limelight, there stood a young woman in dusty blacks, script in hand. Her hair was a rich chestnut, shaped into an elegant pixie cut. As her wide, flawless face caught the full impact of the light, Justine was momentarily stunned.
“What man art thou that thus bescreened in night so stumblest on my counsel?” the girl said, and her warm, slightly husky voice effortlessly filled the theater.
Oh, thought Justine, recognizing the words immediately as part of the balcony scene. Into the light there stepped a second actor, script in hand, also wearing black. “By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am,” he said. “My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word.”
It was Nick. And his face, too, under the lights, was smoothed to its most important elements. His eyes looked larger than ever, his mouth more sensuous. His cheeks were slightly hollowed in a way that suited a tortured young lover.
“I’ll leave you now,” said the manager. “Enjoy.”
“Thank you,” Justine whispered, and on the stage the girl who must be Verdi Highsmith went on, “My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words of thy tongue stuttering—”
And with that, the spell was broken. Verdi giggled, and suddenly she was a regular fifteen-year-old girl. Juliet had left the building.
“Tongue’s uttering. Not tongue stuttering,” she said. “Tongue’s uttering, tongue’s uttering, tongue’s uttering.” She giggled again, and made a crazy face to the roaming cameraman.
“Just keep going,” Nick suggested.
; Verdi closed her eyes, breathed in through her nose, and…Juliet was back.
“Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?”
“Neither, fair maid,” Nick said tenderly, “if either thee dislike.”
Justine slid quietly into one of the red velvet chairs at the back of the dress circle, where she hoped she would remain out of sight.
The actors were reading from scripts, still getting their mouths around the Shakespearean diction, and there wasn’t a shred of costume or scenery to be seen. And yet something was being created—a spell was being woven from word and gesture and intention.
As Nick and Verdi spoke their lines, they moved. This wasn’t the scene as the director would block it. The actors were just circling each other slowly, letting their own bodies dictate their movements. It was as if, Justine thought, they were making the stage into a whirlpool, and the swirling dust was gathering charge with each new line. Watching Nick on stage, Justine remembered, had always been like watching a seal plunge into water: an ungainly animal suddenly making sense. The stage was Nick Jordan’s element.
“With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls,” said Nick. “For stony limits cannot hold love out…”
Justine, in the stuffy, velvety air of the dress circle, realized that she could hardly remember what it felt like to be inside those early days of falling in love and having that love returned. In fact, right at this moment it seemed almost inconceivable that it would ever happen to her again. Because love like this wasn’t something you could make happen. It was a magic spark, and you just had to hope that somehow, somewhere, sometime, you would be there when the match struck the flint.
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow,” said Verdi, and when the scene came to an end, Justine sat quite still, not wanting the world of the play to disappear.
