by Minnie Darke
“Three?” Nick said, peering into the box he had pulled out of the basket. “Three? Three? That’s all I get? After all my travail?”
“There would have been more if you’d known your lines.”
Nick put all the Maltesers into his mouth at once, and around the edges of them he said, “Thanks, by the way.”
“For?”
“Running lines with me.”
Justine smiled and closed the book on her knee. “So, did you make that call?”
“To Alison Tarf?”
Justine nodded.
“I did,” Nick said. “Well, to her assistant, anyway.”
“And?”
“The auditions are being done in a group setting. Lots of improv, apparently. Alison wants to see how people work together, spark off each other, that sort of thing,” Nick said.
“When are they on?”
“Not until September. Which is after Romeo and Juliet closes, so the timing’s—”
“Perfect?” Justine suggested. “Do you have to prepare anything? I could help you rehearse?”
But here, Nick’s enthusiasm seemed to ebb away.
“I don’t know,” he said flatly. “I…well, I shouldn’t.”
“You shouldn’t audition?” Justine asked. “Why?”
“You know. I promised. Laura and I…we went through a rough patch, and split up for a while, but since we got back together, she’s just been great. A lot more relaxed. The promise I made—it’s important to her, and I want to do the right thing. But then, I’m torn. Because this is Alison Tarf we’re talking about. I guess I’ve got some soul-searching to do.”
Hadn’t he read his stars? Justine wondered. Hadn’t “Leo” already indicated to Aquarians which part of their souls ought to be searched? Justine tried to think of a way to delicately tip one or more of Leo’s key words or phrases into their conversation. Earthly things…the hours that are given into your care…
But instead she said, “Auditioning is just auditioning, isn’t it? I mean, if you got a spot in the company, there would be nothing to stop you from turning it down. Don’t you think you should at least…have a go?”
“I don’t know, Jus. Maybe it’s easier this way.”
“Easier?”
Nick dropped his shoulders and sighed. “Maybe it’s easier to walk away from it all without ever finding out that you’re just not quite good enough. Then you can always imagine what might have been, always having the consolation that you were the one that walked away.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Nick gave a wry laugh. “I didn’t think I did. But, well, then I read what Leo had to say…”
Go on, Justine thought. “Yes?” she prompted.
“Well, Leo said that I should be thinking about how I really want to spend my time. My life. And, you know, maybe I’m not using my time in the best possible way. Maybe I’m wasting my time pursuing an acting career. If it turns out that I’m not good enough, after all, then where will all of these months, these years…where will they have gone?”
Ah, thought Justine. So, it was not only a matter of a promise to Laura. It was at least as much a matter of courage and confidence; those old trickster kings.
“But what if you found out that, actually, you were good enough?” Justine said. “Isn’t that at least a possibility?”
“Shit!” Nick said, looking at his watch. “Rehearsals start in half an hour. I’d better get going.”
“Is it really such a scary question that you have to run away from it?” Justine said.
Nick met her gaze, and held it for a moment. “Maybe it is. But I promise I’ll think about it. And I really, truly, do have to go.”
“Then hie you hence,” Justine said.
“Thanks, Nurse,” Nick said.
And though that was not the role that would have been Justine’s first choice, she supposed it was better than not being cast at all.
* * *
Each year, Jeremy Byrne stultified his staff with an event that he called the State of the Nation. If it weren’t for the strong coffee the editor made for the occasion, and the Rafaello pastries he ordered in bulk, there would have been little compensation for the hour and a half of her life that Justine sacrificed annually to Jeremy’s very detailed roundup of circulation figures and financials, the previous year’s successes and his goals for the twelve months ahead.
This year, the State of the Nation was on a Tuesday in early August. During the morning, Justine worked on Lesley-Ann’s gardening column. Its subject was the majesty of peonies, but the handwritten copy had arrived in an envelope that also contained a generous sprinkling of potting mix, and Justine had to spend a good quarter of an hour cleaning her keyboard.
When she had finished—both the keyboard cleaning and the editing of the column—Justine found herself, for perhaps the first time since taking over as contributions manager, with an empty in-box. Finance, food, letters, book reviews and gardening were in the can; Doc was yet to send in his crossword, so there was nothing to do on that front.
She tidied up her computer desktop and went through her emails, answering, deleting, filing. She stared at the fax machine as if she might have the power to spur it into action. But it turned out that she did not.
Justine thought.
She picked up a sheet of scrap paper from her recycling pile.
She selected a pen.
Aquarius, she wrote. But what were the magic words? What was the mysterious combination that would make Nick Jordan believe that it was his destiny to audition for Alison Tarf’s new theater company?
Justine: Brain? Any ideas?
Brain: Well, I think timing is key.
Justine: Oh! The magazine is due to come out right on opening night, isn’t it? So, we catch Nick on a tide of enthusiasm for performance…
Brain: …and validate his choice of profession…
Justine: …by making the horoscope read something like a review! A good review.
Brain: Now you’re thinking.
Justine’s page began to fill with scribbled words and phrases: applause, acclaim, take a bow, encore. She had just jotted down the phrase con brio when she became aware of someone standing at the door of her office.
He was in his early or midthirties, and his shirtsleeves were pushed up to the elbows, revealing arms that were either naturally olive-skinned or unseasonably tanned. His tarnished-gold tie was loose at his collar and he wore his dark blond hair slightly long. After a second, she remembered.
It was Daniel Griffin. He was not quite as tall as she recalled, she observed now, but there was a sense of solidity in the set of his shoulders, and in the way his chest comfortably took up all the available space inside his shirt. Gym junkie, Justine diagnosed.
“Justine?”
“Daniel?” she asked, looking unsure, though she wasn’t in the least.
“That’s right.”
Daniel took a few steps into the room, which made Justine instinctively lift the page she’d been writing on and flip it facedown on the desk. Crap, she thought; that had probably made her look really shifty.
“You’ve come for the State of the Nation?” she asked.
He inclined his head slightly. “I have.”
“Wow. That’s dedication to duty.”
“I’m nothing if not devoted,” he said, hand on his heart. “Hey, that piece you wrote on the young actress? It was good. Very good, actually. You ought to be writing more often. Jeremy’s wasting you in this job.”
There was a quality of jest to his manner. Was he teasing? She couldn’t decide.
“Well, you know what it’s like around here. Hard to get an opening when nobody ever resigns,” she said. “Or dies.”
Daniel twitched his eyebrows upward. “I’ll watch my b
ack.”
“Wise,” Justine said, deadpan.
“See you at the big event, then.” And he left her office. Backward.
* * *
Arriving at the tearoom—where the catering platters had already been set out amid the usual scattering of newspapers, magazines, photocopied union bulletins, and someone’s kid’s fund-raising chocolate box, long ago emptied—Justine noticed that Jeremy seemed tense as he plunged a mighty brew of coffee.
Daniel Griffin, meanwhile, was leaning against the counter in a manner that Justine first thought was perhaps a bit too relaxed. But after observing him for a moment, she realized that he was absolutely alert, and watching everyone.
“He is rather nice to look at, isn’t he?” Anwen said, bumping her shoulder against Justine’s.
But before Justine was forced to respond, Jeremy cleared his throat.
“Thank you. Thank you, ah, everyone. Thank you, for, er, coming along today. And thank you, Daniel, most especially for traveling in order to, ah, be with us today.”
In the exhaustive presentation that followed, Jeremy found six different ways of telling his staff that while circulation was just a smidge down from where it had been at the same time the previous year, advertising revenue was holding comfortingly steady. The last of the morning slipped slowly around the clock face and most of the staff were half asleep by the time the editor said, “And so we come to the very final item of business for this, ah, State of the Nation bulletin.”
Jeremy paused then, and Justine knew—from the faint wobble that she detected at the corner of her boss’s mouth, and from the barely perceptible sheen of tears in his blue eyes—that what was coming next was going to be anything but business as usual.
Justine glanced at Daniel, who was studiously looking at nothing at all, and holding his relaxed pose just a little too precisely. And she realized that he knew what was coming too—that he was, in fact, entirely prepared for this moment. He had come here to be part of something very particular. An abdication. And a succession. The first in the Star’s entire history.
Roma, too, had worked it out. Shocked, she put her plastered wrist to her chest, and this proved to be a domino-toppling gesture that sent a wave of understanding radiating across the tearoom, just slightly ahead of Jeremy’s actual words.
“There have been those who’ve offered the opinion that the only way I was ever going to leave the Star was in a box. But I have decided that—despite all the Star has meant to me, and all that it has given to me—I am going to write a different ending for, ah, myself. I have decided…that is, I am, ah…today I am stepping…well, not down. And not up, either, as it happens. Let’s just say that I have voted myself the title of Editor Emeritus, a role I propose to conduct largely off-site. Under these new arrangements, I hope to do much more reading, although I know my beloved husband has plans for me to do a great deal more, ah, gardening. In any case, I will be doing a great deal less of the day-to-day, um, grind, as it were.
“Yes, yes, I do see the looks on all your faces, and while I am, of course, gratified by the sentiments I see reflected there, this is, I hasten to add, a day of, ah, celebration. For today, we welcome home from Canberra Daniel Griffin, who has done fine service as our chief political correspondent, and who will be taking over the reins here at the Star. As editor. Effective, er, immediately.”
Jeremy began to clap. And the sound, for a moment—until his shocked staff took their cue to join in—was too loud, too much. Daniel did not move, only accepted the eventual applause with a casual nod, as if nothing in the world was more natural than for him to be stepping into the shoes of Jeremy Byrne.
As soon as it was practicable to do so, and seemingly from a desire to outpace the rising tide of his own emotions, Jeremy hurried on. “Our darling Jenna Rae has agreed to take over from Daniel, and I am certain that you will all join me in wishing her every success in the nation’s capital.”
There was more applause, during which Jenna tried to keep her face arranged into a stony mask of professionalism, though everyone could see the delight in her eyes.
“And I’m sure you all understand what that means,” Jeremy said, and Justine was discomfited to discover that everyone in the room was looking in her direction. She felt a bright flush creeping up both sides of her neck.
“It means that there will be a desk free, here at HQ. And, as part of what is turning into quite the cabinet reshuffle, our dear Justine, who has so very patiently delivered your letters and your lattes, will now be able to take up the reporter’s slot that, I hasten to add, she has already unofficially embarked upon, in rather spectacular style, with last month’s cover story, no less. I do know, Justine, that this day has been a long time coming. But, come it has! And now we expect great things of you.”
There was another burst of clapping as Justine began to register the consequences of Jeremy’s announcement. The career she had imagined, planned for, studied for, dogsbodied for, was about to be properly hers. She would move into Jenna’s place in the staff writers’ room along with Roma and Martin. Her byline would appear in the magazine, not as a fluke, but as a matter of course. She was truly on her way.
Jeremy at this point lurched into a digression about the proposal for the heritage listing of the yellow peril, and Justine used the cover to thumb out a swift text message. Jeremy has resigned. Daniel Griffin taking the helm. I have my reporting job! She sent it to her mother, and to Tara. And then, impulsively, to Nick Jordan. Three replies arrived in as many minutes. Her mother wrote: Wonderful darling clever you must be time to go shopping ill buy you something nice to wear. This made Justine smile, but she also made a mental note to show her mother, again, how to capitalize letters in text messages, and how to find the punctuation menu. Tara responded: AWESOMEBALLS! Nick’s reply, the last to arrive, said: I will bake you some humble pie to celebrate, and while we eat, I will hear your admission that Leo Thornbury does know everything.
Justine tuned back in to the events in the tearoom just in time to hear Jeremy say, “Which brings us to, ah, Henry.”
Henry was blushing so acutely that his whole head seemed in danger of becoming a blood blister. Justine furrowed her eyebrows. Jeremy wouldn’t do it, surely. He wouldn’t just promote Henry, after only a few months of his being appointed as a copy-runner? What kind of apprenticeship was that? It was nothing! It wouldn’t be fair. Justine had grown two years older while carrying the mail and fetching the coffee. It wasn’t possible that Henry was going to get out of it after a handful of weeks.
“After a relatively short time here at the Star,” Jeremy continued, “dear Henry is being promoted to the position of contributions manager, and although this will represent a, ah, steep learning curve, I am sure we will all assist him in whatever way we can as he learns the ropes.”
Shit, Justine thought, imagining Henry sitting in her lovely little office, editing the book reviews that she had commissioned. Worse, he would have the task of selecting the Letters to the Editor. Henry! With his conservative take on the universe. And…was he really up to the task of checking Doc’s cryptic crossword clues? Justine knew that she would have to impress upon him the seriousness of that responsibility.
Another small wave of excitement washed over her. She had her reporting job! She was going to be a writer, a real writer. Implausibly and for a second time, Justine thought, Leo Thornbury had been right on the money about her career success. And hot on the heels of this thought came the realization that it would from now on be Henry’s job to transcribe Leo Thornbury’s horoscopes; the stars would no longer be hers to command.
Justine’s feelings jostled and conflicted, and she wished that she were alone, or at the very least invisible, so that she could sort them out privately. But she was not invisible. She was in the tearoom, in plain sight, and when she looked up from her tangle of thoughts, she became aware that Daniel Griffin’s hazel eyes we
re fixed on her: steady, intelligent and interrogative.
* * *
Leaving work that evening, Justine reached the far end of the lavender-lined pathway and paused. After making sure that nobody was behind her to see what she was about to do, she stood right beneath the mosaic star, which hung bright and yellow and shining crazily against the backdrop of the dark and overcast sky. For a moment, Justine allowed herself to feel the warm glow of its inspirational rays raining down—at last—onto her upturned face. Then, smiling at her own stupidity, she swung out through the gate into Rennie Street.
When she was halfway home, her phone chimed the arrival of a text message. From Nick.
So, what time am I expecting you for humble pie?
Justine, slightly flummoxed, responded: Oh. I had thought the pie to be purely metaphorical.
Well, Nick responded, your metaphor is currently in my oven. 7:30?
I’ll be there, Justine wrote, and as she continued on her way, she wondered if it were actually possible that the stars had wheeled themselves into some kind of curiously wonderful alignment.
* * *
Justine had never set foot in the brown-brick apartment complex that stood next door to Evelyn Towers. But if she’d ever tried to imagine what the building was like on the inside, she’d have been absolutely correct. The walls and floors of the ground-floor lobby were grimy, and the stairwell was filled with the unmistakable whiff of household refuse.
The smell of Nick’s apartment was a relief, for although there was a faintly detectable bass note of mildew, it was mostly smothered by top notes of hot pie and recently sprayed Axe deodorant.
“Congratulations!” said Nick, standing in the doorway wearing a pair of pale jeans and a striped shirt, his arms wide open. When he hugged Justine, it made her feel somewhat short, but also a little bit light-headed.
