Star-Crossed

by Minnie Darke

  “Gemini,” he said, already quite certain that he was right. “The messenger.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  Nick, smugly, held out his hand for the magazine.

  “I’ll read it to you,” Verdi decided, flopping down on the stage next to him. “What sign?”

  “What, you can’t guess?” Nick challenged. “I picked yours.”

  Verdi thought. There was more noisy chewing.

  “Part of me wants to say Aries. But you’re too weird for an Aries. No offense. A-a-nd, part of me wants to say Pisces. But you’re not quite weird enough for that. Which makes me think that you’re probably…Aquarian?”

  Nick blinked, disbelieving.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  Nick said, “Too weird for Aries, and not weird enough for Pisces—that’s how you worked it out?”

  “Yeah, and, well, you know—you’re a bit clueless about emotions. That’s part of it, too.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know,” said Verdi. “You’re kind of oblivious sometimes.”

  “Oblivious?” Nick said. “Oblivious, how? Oblivious, when?”

  “Like with Laura.”

  “What about Laura?” Nick said.

  Verdi made a see what I mean face. “She doesn’t remind you of anyone?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Oh God, you’re hopeless,” Verdi said.

  Nick bristled. But then, Verdi was just a kid. What did she know?

  “I thought you were reading me my stars,” he said, pushing his irritation away.

  “Oh, yeah. I was.”

  Verdi made up a character on the spot—a dreamy, ditsy stargazer with the faintest hint of a lisp—and began to read.

  Nick listened closely, and felt a small uprising of goose bumps on his forearms at the mention of a crossroad of the heart. Leo was urging him to be wary of disingenuous love, and to be certain that he knew his toadstools from his mushrooms.

  “So,” said Verdi, letting the magazine fall closed on her lap and looking at Nick with a glint in her eye, “how much do you know about fungi?”

  Cancer

  JUNE 21–JULY 22

  In late June, as a distant northerly sun hovered over the Tropic of Cancer, the southern hemisphere shivered through the shortest day of the year. Wine mulled quietly on stove tops, smelling of cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg and cloves; fire twirlers warmed up, and candles were lit, as humans in tune with the rhythms of the year sought out flickering flames to warm them through the longest night.

  The sun had long gone from above the rooftop of Evelyn Towers, and Justine—wearing slippers and a house cardigan—was folding a load of laundry that she had dumped on the dining table. From somewhere beneath the mound of crumpled clothing her phone began to chime. It rang several times before she could find it among the socks and underpants, pajama pants and bras, and she only just caught the call in time.

  “Hello?”

  “Turn around,” someone said. Someone male.

  Justine frowned. “Austin? Is that you?”

  It was just the sort of thing her brother would do.

  “Just trust me,” the caller said. It wasn’t her brother, though. Justine was now fairly sure of that. “And turn around.”

  Justine didn’t like to obey the voice; nevertheless, she did.

  She turned around. But all she saw was her living room—cream couch, folded throw rug, cushions angled just so, books on the coffee table, television off.

  “Excellent. Very good. Now walk toward your balcony.”

  “Seriously?” said Justine. “Who is this?”

  “Will you please just walk toward your balcony?”

  Brain: Justine, have you ever seen a horror movie?

  Justine: Yeah, I know. But who do you think it is? Aren’t you dying to know?

  Brain: You know the stupid girl in the diaphanous frock who moves inexorably toward the fluttering curtains? Right now, that’s you.

  Justine: Will you shut up?

  Brain: Only trying to look out for you, my friend…

  “Sorry, who’s this?”

  “Look.”

  Beyond the glass of her French doors, beyond the molded-concrete rim of her balcony, across a narrow gap, and standing on the porch of the apartment opposite her own, was Nick Jordan.

  Justine opened the French doors and stepped out into the cold of the year’s longest night, and when she laughed, the sound easily jumped the span between the two buildings.

  Without thinking, she said, “What man art thou that thus bescreened in night so stumblest on my counsel?”

  Nick, catching on immediately, said, “By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am. My name dear saint, is hateful to myself, because it is an enemy to thee. Had I it written, I would tear the word.”

  He was wearing baggy tracksuit pants, a slouchy jumper and a pair of sheepskin boots, and Justine could imagine him on a couch on a winter Sunday. She could imagine resting her head against his chest, on a couch on a winter Sunday.

  “My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?”

  “Neither, fair maid, if either thee dislike.”

  Justine put her hands on her hips and, no longer just reciting, demanded to know, “How cam’st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?”

  “Well, I live here,” Nick said.

  “You’re my new next-door neighbor?”

  “It would appear so.”

  Justine had known that someone had taken the apartment; over the past weeks, in her occasional glimpses out of the window, she’d seen signs of life. A scant few items of furniture had gathered together in the living room, and a clothes airer had appeared on the porch. Best of all, Justine noted, this new tenant had invested immediately in a shower curtain. But until now, she had never seen anyone at home.

  Nick said, “At first I thought, wow, that girl looks like Justine. And then I thought, shit, that girl is Justine.”

  “You know, these coincidences…they’re getting a little bit weird,” Justine said, even though she felt she was taking a risk in echoing Leo’s word—“coincidence.” She made a mental note not to say “mushrooms” or “toadstools,” or demonstrate any close knowledge of The Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield.

  “How much of Romeo and Juliet do you know, by the way?” Nick asked.

  “Bits here and there.”

  “That’s rubbish, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” Justine admitted.

  “Do you ever forget anything?”

  “Nothing important,” she said.

  There was a small silence. The moon was somewhere behind the thick city atmosphere, not a definite shape in the sky, but a vague diffusion of light.

  “Hey, great piece on Verdi,” Nick said.

  “You saw it?”

  “Of course. She said you were at the theater when we were doing the promo footage.”

  “I was,” Justine said. She pulled her cardigan tight around herself.

  “But you didn’t come and say hello,” Nick said. “To me.”

  “Well, I…you were busy.”

  “But not too busy, you know,” he said. “For you.”

  Brain: Hey, was that, maybe, just a bit flirty?

  Justine: It couldn’t be. He’s got a girlfriend.

  Brain: Whatever you reckon, but I’m not so sure.

  Not knowing how else to respond, Justine changed the subject. “So, how do you like your view?”

  They both looked sideways down the tunnel of the two buildings in the direction of Alexandria Park. In the narrow gap at the far end was a streetlight, and a tiny section of the park’s wrought-iron fence. Beyond that were some trees w
ith fairy lights twinkling in their bare branches.

  “This flat is expensive enough as it is,” Nick said. “I don’t even want to think about what it would cost to live around on the street side.”

  “There are views, though, and cheap ones, too,” Justine said. “If you know where to look.”

  “And you do know?”

  “I can show you sometime, if you like.”

  At a sudden and familiar sound, Justine looked down at the phone in her hand. It wasn’t hers that was ringing, though, but Nick’s.

  Apologetically, he said, “I should take this.”

  “Of course.”

  “Maybe…I don’t suppose you’d run lines with me sometime?” Nick asked, as his phone continued to chime. “You know, balcony to balcony?”

  “I’d love to,” Justine said. “Any time. You know where I am.”

  “See you around, neighbor.”

  “Good night, good night.”

  But Nick did not say that parting was such sweet sorrow. He just stepped back inside his living room, leaving Justine standing beneath a dismal, city-bound moon.

  * * *

  It took until seven o’clock the following morning for Justine to fully comprehend that there were going to be certain problems with having Nick Jordan as a next-door neighbor. But as she stood in the semidark of her living room, hands on hips, Justine understood that, henceforth, her curtains were going to be an issue.

  The curtains in question, pale green and damask, were a relic of Fleur Carmichael’s occupancy of the Evelyn Towers apartment, and although Justine knew that she should just fling them open—in the normal, careless way that she always did at around this time on a weekday morning—she found that it just wasn’t that simple anymore. What if Nick thought she was looking in on him, or inviting a conversation? Maybe she should wait, until, say, seven thirty?

  Evenings were going to be equally problematic. To close, or not to close? When to close? And then there were the weekends. If she shut her curtains at an unusual time, Nick might think she was doing something weird behind them. But if she didn’t close her curtains, he might think that she wanted him to see whatever she was doing—weird or not. Justine wondered if there was, set out in a reference book somewhere, a standard opening and closing protocol for curtains: some kind of code, the adherence to which would ensure that her curtain behavior could be in no way construed as strange or inappropriate.

  She was still contemplating the curtain problem, midmorning, at work, when Jeremy came to the doorway of her office, looking harassed.

  “Problem,” he announced.

  “What problem?” said Justine, guiltily clicking closed an internet quiz titled Are you a curtain twitcher?

  “You can’t hear that?”

  Once Justine retuned her ears to the world beyond her office, she realized that she could in fact hear something. It was Roma’s voice rising and falling, but more often rising. Although Justine caught only the occasional word with any degree of clarity—“bigot,” for instance, and “ignorant,” “privilege” and “fabric softener”—it was obvious that somebody was copping the fierce side of the formidable Ms. Sharples.

  “Who’s she ranting at?” Justine asked.

  “Young Henry,” Jeremy admitted. “She hates him.”

  “And this was not something you had anticipated?”

  “I thought she would regard him as an ant, or a flea, or some other very small thing beyond her notice or concern,” Jeremy said. “But I’m a little worried about her swatting him with her crutches.”

  “What did he say to her?” Justine said, struggling not to find the situation amusing.

  “It might have been something about the crackdown on welfare overpayments.”

  “Oops.”

  “But, the problem,” Jeremy said, with a deep sigh, “is that he’s supposed to be driving her today. To the Tidepool, for a lunch interview.”

  Roma’s broken ankle meant that she was unable to drive herself. And when Jeremy had arranged for the purchase of the new Corolla to replace the smashed-up Camry, he’d also made the decision that Radoslaw would never again be allowed to assume the driver’s seat in a vehicle owned by the Star.

  “She couldn’t take a taxi?” Justine asked.

  “She could,” Jeremy said. “But since she still has the crutches, I’d rather she had someone with her, to—you know—help.”

  “You’re asking me?” Justine said, suddenly understanding.

  “I know, darl, it’s a job for a copy-runner. And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was serious. I don’t know if I’m more worried about poor Henry being scarred for life, or Roma blowing a head gasket.”

  “The Tidepool, you said?” Justine asked, pulling a face.

  “It has new owners,” Jeremy wheedled. “And excellent chowder. It would also be an opportunity for you to watch Roma in action. Watch and learn, hm? We could chalk it up to professional development. What do you say?”

  “Who’s she interviewing?”

  “Alison Tarf.”

  “The theater director?”

  “The same,” Jeremy confirmed.

  “About what?”

  “Her new theater company.”

  Justine considered, then stood up and reached for her scarf and coat. “Deal,” she said.

  * * *

  The Tidepool was located in a semi-industrial district near the harbor, on the top floor of a low-rise building, squat and circular, with Colosseum-esque arches on the ground floor and a coating of pink-brown plaster. The view from the curved windows was of sheds and bollards, shipping containers and boats, all set against the backdrop of a wintry sea. Lunchtime custom was steady, but far from hectic.

  Alison Tarf was a tall woman of roughly the same age as Roma, with sun-damaged skin and white, flyaway hair that retained a vague hint of the beehive that had been so much a part of her look when she had burst onto the acting scene in the 1960s. Justine knew Alison best—well, pretty much everyone in the world knew Alison best—from her portrayal of Eliza, the feisty young convict woman in the classic Australian shipwreck film Asunder. But it had been many years now since Alison had acted, either on stage or screen, and nor was she likely to accept any roles in the near future. Directing was now her primary passion, she said, and the work of establishing a new theater company was consuming all of her available energy.

  “Sideways Shakespeare?” Roma asked, without warmth. Her plastered wrist looked strangely disembodied where it lay on the table beside her open notebook. “Why call it that?”

  Alison Tarf neatly nipped off a piece of her dinner roll.

  “Because we will come at Shakespeare’s plays from new and unexpected angles,” she said, equally coolly.

  Roma entered a smattering of shorthand in her notebook. “But why more Shakespeare?” she pressed. “He’s been dead for four hundred years. What about the work of new Australian playwrights?”

  These questions were deliberately combative but Justine, wedged between the two women, didn’t know whether they came from any genuine anti-Shakespeare sentiment on Roma’s behalf, or if she was just trying to provoke a response.

  “The production of theater is not a zero-sum game,” Alison said. “Just because a play is staged, it does not follow that it has taken the place of another. Sideways Shakespeare sees itself in the business of growing audiences. Not stealing them.”

  “So, you’re planning to debut this coming December, I see. With which play? A history? A comedy?”

  “We’re starting out with Romeo and Juliet,” Alison said.

  Roma Sharples raised her eyebrows. “It’s my understanding that Alexandria Park Rep already has that covered this year.”

  “Our production would obviously be very different,” Alison said.

  Perhaps it was the resultant tension at t
he table that made Justine do it. Or she may just have taken temporary leave of her senses. Whichever was the case, Justine was as surprised as either Roma or Alison when she heard her own voice saying, “Romeo is a Pisces, apparently.”

  Roma swiveled in her chair and stared at Justine, incredulous.

  “What utter claptrap,” Roma said, and Justine felt herself shrivel with humiliation.

  “Sorry,” Justine murmured. Her cheeks were burning. Not only had she interrupted Roma’s interview, but she had done so with the weirdest, least professional comment that she could possibly have invented.

  “Romeo,” Roma said imperiously, “is a Cancer, if ever there was one.”

  Alison Tarf’s serious expression transformed into something like delight. “Do you know,” she said, “I’ve always thought so too! And, I know this is controversial, but I actually think Juliet is a Cancer as well.”

  “Controversial?” Roma asked, genuinely surprised. “I would have thought it was obvious. Emotional, moody, the pair of them.”

  “Not to mention clingy,” added Alison.

  Justine was stunned. Was this really happening?

  It was.

  “But loyal,” Roma went on. “We Cancerians are nothing if not loyal.”

  Alison grinned, and gestured to Roma’s plaster. “You’re even wearing your shell. Foolishly, I left mine at home.”

  Roma’s eyes sparkled. “When are you?”

  “Third of July,” Alison said.

  “But so am I!” Roma said.

  The two women laughed, lifted their glasses and clinked them together above the tabletop. Then they were off, reminiscing about a third of July, long ago, when snow—which was rare to nonexistent in this part of the world—had settled in the streets of the city.