by Minnie Darke
Of course, in composing the horoscope for Sagittarius, she had written to herself: It can be difficult to know when enough is enough. When something comes to an end for you this month, archers, you may find this challenging, even though you know that to let go is for the best. Remember that when all else fails, a journey is usually a tonic. Perhaps it’s time for you to get your suitcase out from beneath your bed and take to heart the words of Susan Sontag, which might as well be the Sagittarian mantra: “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”
And what she wrote to Aquarians, to Nick—to her good friend, Nick—was also a kind of farewell, a signing-off: With your Aquarian gaze focused upon the wide world and the future, it can be easy to forget that other source of inspiration and wisdom—yourself. What would happen if, instead of seeking the advice of those around you, and the counsel of those you admire, you were to trust in the murmurings of your own heart? As the great Jane Austen observed: “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
Then she took the Olympus SM9 down to the basement of Evelyn Towers and threw it into the Dumpster. The typewriter hit the metal floor of the Dumpster, hard, and Justine heard sounds of splitting plastic and twisting metal. Something, indeed—Justine thought—was coming to an end.
Cusp
Daniel Griffin—Leo, successful political journalist turned editor of the Alexandria Park Star, named in his high school yearbook as the man most likely to have his picture on the cover of Esquire, and the cowed-but-unbroken whipping boy of a personal trainer called Sadie—looked up when he heard an unexpected knock at his office door early one November Friday.
Standing in the doorway was a courier—a young guy with shaved, muscular legs poking out of his shiny shorts. In his arms he held what appeared to be a bundle of jacquard fabric.
“Daniel Griffin?”
“Yes?”
“This is compliments of Katie Black, the manager at the Orion. She said to tell you that your girlfriend left her coat in the bar. And because Katie recognized you, she put it aside in her office to be sure it got returned to its owner.”
Daniel looked puzzled. “But that was weeks ago.”
“She also wanted you to have this,” the courier admitted, handing over a press release. “Katie said to tell you they’ve just finalized the program for the summer film festival. Also that she looks forward to reading the Star’s coverage, and that she’s available for an interview any time to suit you.”
Daniel gave a wry smile. “Thanks, mate. Tell Katie I appreciate her going to the trouble,” he said. And purely out of the goodness of her heart, too.
Daniel held the coat up by its shoulders, catching a faint whiff of camphor. The fabric was covered with small pink and purple hexagons, the buttons were Bakelite, and the garment had probably last been in fashion in about 1963. Justine did have a bit of a weird, charity-shop thing going on with her fashion sense, but Daniel thought she’d most likely leave that phase behind now that her salary was growing.
The coat was quite small, Daniel noticed. He didn’t think of Justine as being small, but the coat was evidence that she must be. And that made him think that if there was one thing that was consistent in his relationship with Justine, it was that he was perpetually getting her wrong. Relationship? he asked himself. What relationship? If they’d had, or were having, a relationship, then it was almost as if it had been conducted in reverse gear. With every date, things were getting less passionate, not more.
As he hung the coat on a hanger on the back of his office door, Daniel noticed the corner of a folded sheet protruding ever so slightly from one of the pockets. Of course, Daniel knew that the honorable thing to do would be to leave the sheet of paper where it was. But, really, what kind of journalist would he be if he didn’t at least have a look? And, when it came to Justine, wasn’t he looking for clues?
Immediately that he unfolded the page, he knew what it was. And almost as immediately, he wished that he did not know.
“Fuck,” he said.
She’d done it again. Hadn’t she? He’d ticked her off and given her a chance. But she’d done it again.
“Fuck,” he reiterated.
Then, after breathing a few times, he asked himself what kind of journalist he would be, if he didn’t check all the facts. Good journos did not jump to conclusions, he reminded himself.
An hour later, Daniel sat at his desk looking over all the proof that he needed, but wished that he had not found. He felt numb, for it was clear that, this time, Justine had not simply been impulsive. What she had done, she had done with a gobsmacking degree of premeditation. And it wasn’t just Aquarius, either.
The text of the entire horoscope column, as it appeared in the most recent edition of the Star, was different from the text on the fax from Justine’s coat pocket. But, even worse than this, Daniel had found on Henry’s document spike a replacement “original” fax that did match the published text. Under close inspection, he’d been able to see the faint, telltale lines of shadow around Leo’s fax number at the top of the page: evidence that the document had been doctored.
At a quick glance, Justine’s fake fax looked the same as Leo’s, but on careful examination, Daniel had recognized that the typeface on the fake was very slightly different from that of all of Leo’s other “originals.”
“Jesus,” Daniel said, rubbing at his forehead.
Justine was, so far as Daniel had been able to determine, a normal, logical, reasonable and intelligent human being. So why would she go to so much trouble to mess around with horoscopes?
And what did it mean that she had written this for his star sign: The British philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote that real life was, for most people, “a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.” But you are a lion, and lions do not compromise. Whether this applies in the workplace or your home, your romantic life or your friendships, it is the season for you to let go of anything that you wish was ideal, but that you know is merely possible.
This had to be a message for him, personally. Daniel paced his office floor. He thought, and he thought. Then he noticed someone standing in the hallway outside his office, looking rather lost. He was wearing a Where the Wild Things Are T-shirt that looked like it had seen better days, and holding a bike helmet as if it were a bowl. Inside it was what appeared to be, mostly, a bunch of weeds. It was Justine’s friend. Romeo. The blue moon. Nick. That was it.
“G’day, Nick,” Daniel said.
“Yeah. Um…Dan?” Nick said.
Daniel did not especially like being called Dan, but he let it ride.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Nick said. “I just called in to see Justine, but I don’t know which office is hers.”
“That one, just there,” Daniel said, indicating the door to the staff writers’ room. “But I’m pretty sure she’s not in yet. Which is odd. She’s quite the early bird, usually.”
“Oh, right,” said Nick. “Okay if I leave these on her desk?”
He held up the bike helmet full of plant material. Daniel saw a few dandelions poking out of an arrangement of grasses and stinging nettles, sow thistles and dock, very freshly picked. In the other hand, Nick held a couple of slices of wholemeal bread wrapped in cling film.
“It’s her birthday,” Nick explained.
“And you’ve brought her…a bunch of weeds? And a sandwich?”
“Vegemite,” Nick elaborated.
“Because?”
Nick looked as if he were about to say something, and then thought better of it. He settled for saying, “It’s kind of a joke.”
“Right,” Daniel said.
“So, I’ll just—”
“Nick, are you actually sure her birthday is today?”
“Yeah. It’s today.”
“You’re
certain?”
“We’ve known each other since we were born. And as far as I know, she hasn’t changed it by deed poll or anything.”
“But, right now, we’re not in Aquarius. Are we?”
Nick looked puzzled. “No, that’s February. Give or take a few days in late January.”
“Hey, can you…?” Daniel said, stepping back into his office and gesturing for Nick to follow. “Look, you’ve known her forever—maybe you can tell me what I need to know. Would you mind having a look at something?”
And so Daniel showed Nick the evidence that was spread out across his desk. From April through to September, Daniel explained, Justine had changed the horoscopes for Aquarius, but spiked Leo’s original faxes. But now, and even after Daniel had confronted Justine with this fact in October, she had taken things to a whole new level in November, replacing Leo’s actual fax with a fraudulent one, with the text for all of the star signs completely rewritten.
“She promised me she’d stop doing it. But not only has she kept going, she’s ramped it up. I suppose I should be furious, but I’m really more bewildered than anything. And disappointed,” Daniel admitted. “I suppose this seems pretty funny to you. You’re probably thinking, ‘It’s only the stars—what’s the big deal?’ ”
Nick put down on Daniel’s desk the Vegemite sandwich and the bike helmet full of daisies and weeds, and as he started to look through the documents one at a time, carefully, Daniel noticed that Nick did not look even slightly amused. After a while, Daniel began to feel unsettled by the attention Nick was paying to the documents, and by the stony look on his face.
“I probably shouldn’t have shared any of this with you. Or with anyone. But I don’t understand her. I need some perspective here, because I’m at a complete loss,” Daniel said. “Why would she do it? It’s bloody disrespectful to Leo. It’s unethical in the extreme. It’s just plain…stupid. And Justine is anything but stupid. So, why would she do it? She told me she was an Aquarius. That she was trying to change her own fate or something. No, hang on. That’s not totally accurate. What actually happened is that I suggested all of that to her. But she allowed me to believe it. Even though it wasn’t true. Was it?”
Nick shook his head.
“So, what’s with the Aquarius thing?” Daniel continued, feeling increasingly agitated as he spoke. “What’s with Justine and Aquarius? There must be an Aquarian in her life. But who? Do you know?”
“Yep,” said Nick. “I do.”
“Well?” said Daniel.
Nick ran a hand through his hair. “It’s me.”
Sagittarius
NOVEMBER 22–DECEMBER 21
At precisely 7:15 a.m. on Friday, November 24, Justine Carmichael flung open her living-room curtains. She’d not had any particular expectation that Nick Jordan would be standing on his balcony with a party hat perched on his head, and a fistful of helium balloons. Nor had she anticipated that a gift, or even a card, would be nestling in their lighthouse keeper’s basket. But when she saw the basket was empty, and that it was over on Nick’s side of the divide, and when she observed that there didn’t seem to be anyone at home in the next-door apartment, Justine did feel just a little disappointed.
Before long, though, birthday texts and phone calls began to arrive. Mandy called during her drive to work, and yelled the way she seemed to think a person had to if they were talking through a car’s speaker phone. Then there came a call from Justine’s father, who was somewhere out in the bush chasing brumbies off an airstrip; he sounded out of breath, but cheerful. Justine laughed at the crass joke that arrived via text from her brother, and smiled at the far more civilized text that came from Tara, who promised to phone later in the day for a proper chat.
Then came a call from Auntie Julie, Mandy’s sister, who’d never once, not ever, forgotten to call Justine on the morning of her birthday. And surprisingly, right on the dot of 8 a.m., there was a text from Tom. It was lukewarm, even for an ex’s text. Best wishes and many happy returns of the day, it said, and Justine wondered if Tom had installed some kind of phone app that sent out automatic and standardized birthday messages to everyone on a list, and according to a designated time zone.
Once this little flurry of calls and texts was over, the silence of Justine’s empty apartment settled, uncomfortably, all around her. As she put two and a half Weetabix in a bowl, she thought about having no presents to open. As she poured on the milk, she dwelled upon the fact that she had nobody to share a birthday breakfast with. As she ate her cereal, Justine knew that she had not been forgotten by the people who loved her. But, she equally knew that she was not anyone’s best beloved.
* * *
Birthdays had felt different when she was a child, Justine mused as she walked through Alexandria Park on her way to work. When she was turning seven, eight, nine, she had woken up on the morning of her birthday already knowing that the day was special, that it was hers. And the day had kept its specialness all the way through, right until Justine was back in bed at night. Back then, November 24 had been brighter, sharper, sparklier, zingier, than any other day of the year.
Then there had come a period of time, through her teens and early twenties, when Justine experienced her birthday feeling only in occasional waves. November the twenty-fourth would feel mostly normal, except when Justine remembered, out of the blue, that it was in fact her birthday. Then the birthday feeling would fizz up in all the colors of a packet of Fruit Tingles at once. But now that she was turning twenty-seven, all she could feel was the ghost of that hard, bright joyfulness, and she was sad to think that it might yet fade more and more, until one day birthdays might feel like nothing out of the ordinary at all.
To cheer herself up from this gloomy thinking, Justine decided to cut through the markets on her way to work, and strike a blow for the textual dignity of the avocado. Approaching the greengrocer’s, Justine caught sight of a gorgeous display of summertime fruits. There were strawberries and raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, red currants and black currants, and a small tub of early cherries, all of them gleaming like clusters of precious gems. It was enough to make Justine think wistfully of the summer puddings and fruit-laden Pavlovas that her mother had made for her childhood birthday parties, and almost enough to make her overlook the extra D in the sign above the avocado stack.
But not quite.
Sharpie at the ready, Justine peeked around a stack of cantaloupes. She looked left, and right, and left again, before striding up to the offending sign and putting a thick, satisfying X through the superfluous consonant.
Perhaps Justine had that day been careless in her reconnaissance, or perhaps she was simply unlucky, but before she could recap her felt pen, she felt a heavy hand land on her shoulder.
The greengrocer was only a little taller than Justine, but he was substantially wider. He had an undershot jaw and prominent canines, and even on a good day these features gave him the look of a bulldog. Right now, though, he looked like an enraged and salivating bulldog. He grabbed the hand of Justine’s that was still holding the uncapped pen. He squeezed it until her fingers hurt, and black ink was smearing against her palm. He was so close to Justine that she could see the white mortarlike fill between his teeth, which suggested he hadn’t flossed for the longest time. Or, perhaps, ever.
“Get. Out,” he said, and though he was not exactly shouting, he was not far off it. “And do not come back here. And do not touch my signs ever again, or so help me.”
“But I was only trying to c—”
“Out! Get out!” Now he was shouting.
“But it’s ‘avocado,’ not ‘ad’—”
“You are a filthy vandal. Out!”
Shoppers and staff alike watched after Justine as she fled, her cheeks hot with embarrassment and fear. Shaken and flushed, Justine made her way along Dufrene Street in the direction of the Star. She was several blocks a
way from the markets before she realized that she had dropped her Sharpie. Although, for all the good it did her, she still held its lid in one trembling hand.
* * *
Rafaello himself was at the counter when Justine swerved in through the open door of his cafe, her cheeks scorching and her hands still shaking. Was it possible, she wondered, that the grocer’s angry glare had inflicted some kind of flash burn?
“Ah, just the girl,” Rafaello said. “Today, your cafe latte and almond croissant are on the house. And here”—Rafaello put down on the counter a sheet of paper, and a nicely sharpened pencil—“is everything you need to scribble all over my new summer menu. I figured I’d get you to do it now. That way, there’ll be no excuse for you to scribble on them once they come back from the printer. Yes?”
Justine gave Raf a weak smile. “Can I just pay for my coffee and croissant?”
Raf reeled backward. “A golden opportunity to proof my menu, and the Apostrophe Queen says no?”
“I promise I won’t scribble on your menu,” she said earnestly.
“Not even if my twice-baked soufflés are unhyphenated?”
“Not even then.”
“Not even if my raspberries are missing a ‘p’?”
Justine considered. “Well…”
“Ha! You see?”
“I could come by and do it tomorrow? It’s just that I’m a little…weirded out.”
“Okay, lady,” Raf said, withdrawing the paper and pencil. “Tomorrow it is.”
Justine took a seat in a secluded corner of the cafe, out of sight of the window. It was past nine o’clock, which made her, technically speaking, late for work. But she needed a coffee, and some time for the color in her face to subside.
