by Minnie Darke
Aquarius: Through the ups and downs of the year just gone, water bearers, you have found your way to precisely the place you need to be. Expect good fortune in your career, especially if your job requires you to be in the public eye. And, as the spiritual forces of the universe converge within you, there will emerge a new clarity in which love can blossom. Rest assured that whether or not it is clear to you at this moment, you are on the road to where you need to be.
Since he knew from Daniel Griffin that Justine had been suspended from the Star, and that Daniel himself was now personally overseeing the astrology column, Nick was as certain as he could be that these words had been written by Leo Thornbury himself. Even so, holding the magazine in his hands made him feel a cocktail of different emotions—none of them particularly pleasant.
There was some anger in the mix, though not so very much anymore. He no longer wanted to go over to Justine’s apartment and dangle her off the balcony by her feet until she explained what the fuck she had been thinking.
She had fooled him. Brilliantly. And for months. She had made him into a fool. Because looking back over everything that “Leo” had written, it should have been obvious to him that a ventriloquist had her hand up Leo’s shirt. But what was this little prank of hers really all about? Was it just her way of proving to herself that he was ridiculous to pay attention to his horoscopes? Had she been planning, ever, to reveal this little ruse to him? Or was she just going to keep on laughing at him, privately, forever?
Yes, she had made an idiot of him, but even worse than that, she had taken something from him. She’d spoiled it: his one little sprinkling of magic in an otherwise pragmatic world—a harmless handful of stardust and mystery, once a month, on the page of a magazine.
Now that his anger had subsided, he was left with confusion. He had so many unanswered questions. For example, did it necessarily follow that if you set your course by a false guide, you would end up at the wrong destination? Or, did fate have complicated ways of making sure that you ended up where you were supposed to be, anyway?
For the better part of the year, it had not been Leo Thornbury’s astrological predictions, but Justine Carmichael’s false ones, that Nick had taken for his compass. This was the equivalent of mistaking a satellite for a star, or of typing out a whole page of text before realizing that your fingers were resting on the wrong keys. It was like trying to find your way around London using a map of New York. So, was it the case—as Leo was now suggesting—that Nick had arrived at precisely the place he needed to be? Or was he in the wrong neighborhood altogether?
He was in a place that any number of other people would want to occupy. He had moved in with, and was almost engaged to, an incredibly beautiful woman; he had a new job and was making good money; he was no longer cavorting around a healthy-eating expo in an inflatable capsicum suit, or doing a job that involved wearing a stinking fish costume. He ought, he knew, to be happy. But he was not.
Nick shoved the copy of the Star back into the magazine rack, took out a copy of GQ and set that magazine down on the counter with his roll of pastilles.
“That’ll be eleven thirty-five,” said the young guy behind the counter.
Capricorn
DECEMBER 22–JANUARY 19
The human consensus that the Earth finished its annual lap of the sun on December 31 was nothing more than an accident of history—an arbitrary decision that might just as easily have gone a number of other ways. 364.25 other ways. But it didn’t. It went the way of December 31, which meant that this date became for all time synonymous with the idea of ending, which, of course, cannot be separated from the notion of beginning. For even as we say a gleeful goodbye to the blots and blemishes on the messy page of the outgoing year, we look forward to turning over to its blank and omnipotential flip side. Tomorrow.
Like so many other people, though possibly with more reason than most, Justine Carmichael that year woke on the morning of December 31 with a sense of relief hovering somewhere in the outer reaches of her consciousness. The year was very nearly done. And, come midnight, the whole messy mess of it would be sealed off with the tick of a clock. Done. Dusted. Put down to experience, and filed. In a dark and dusty place.
That year, New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday. Justine woke, early, in her childhood bedroom in Edenvale, and the sun was already beating down vehemently when she stepped out onto the back deck. Shading her eyes, she picked up the shape of her mother, out in the garden, with a bucket. It was Mandy’s habit to keep this bucket at her feet while she was showering. Now, wearing a short cotton dressing gown, she was distributing the collected runoff to her beloved Red Sensation cordylines and her Big Red kangaroo paws.
Justine responded to her mother’s good morning wave, and made a desultory plan to walk Lucy at some point during the day—a day that she otherwise intended to spend running down the clock, sitting on the couch and watching the original Star Wars trilogy in her pajamas.
* * *
In the lead-up to Christmas, Patricia O’Hare had spent rather a lot of time in shopping malls and supermarkets, and her consequent exposure to high-rotation Christmas songs had left her with a snippet of a tune, like a sugary splinter of candy cane, lodged in her brain. Now it was New Year’s Eve, but the embedded tune was showing no signs of dissolving; Patricia found herself humming “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” as she walked the concrete paths of the Dogs Home.
In the traditional post-Christmas rush, the shelter had filled to capacity with expensive Spoodle and Cavoodle puppies who’d made unexpected puddles on even more expensive carpets. This year there were also a good many pug puppies that had seemed a lot cuter before they’d chewed their way through several pairs of shoes. A three-year-old chocolate Labrador had been surrendered after eating the baubles off the Christmas tree, again, and one family had said they’d pick up their aging Alsatian when they got back from Bali, if he was still there.
This was traditionally a tough time of year for the Dogs Home: not only were there more animals than usual, most of the volunteers were on holidays. Although Patricia was considered to be an office specialist, this was no time to be a prima donna. So, in the early afternoon, Patricia and her shit shovel entered the pen of the dog that was perhaps the ugliest in the shelter. He was a street terrier and a Dogs Home recidivist, and the likelihood of him being rehomed was virtually nil. The most recent time that he’d been brought in, he’d been wearing a grubby blue bandanna on which someone had written a name: Brown Houdini-Malarky. This, therefore, was the name he had become known by, and this was the name that was written in chalk on the small blackboard that hung on the wire front of his pen.
“Hey, Brown,” Patricia said.
Brown wagged his scraggy, tassel-topped tail. He knew there was no point being crabby with the help. So he just watched as she scooped up a pile of chocolate-mousse-textured excrement. Then, because he was not by nature a grumpy dog, he added a little howl-harmony to the song she was singing.
“You have a lovely voice, Brown,” Patricia told him, and gave him a scratch between the ears.
Brown would have liked to take credit for what happened next. In fact, he would take credit, he decided. In the future, as he strolled the streets of the city, a street terrier back in his natural habitat, he would tell how it was the irresistibility of his Voo that made the woman hurriedly carry the shit shovel and bucket out of his pen. He’d claim that it was his superior mind powers that had caused her to shut the door carelessly, and dash away in her bright-colored shoes, with her telephone against her ear, without so much as a backward glance.
“Zadie’s what?” Patricia said into the phone. “In labor? Now?”
Brown watched the woman stop and stand still on the path.
You will not look back, you will not look back.
“Have they broken her waters?…Uh-huh.”
You will not look back. You w
ill not look back.
It was working, Brown saw. The woman was not looking back. Instead she had tears in her eyes, and seemed oblivious to her actual surroundings.
“It’s really happening, isn’t it? I’m going to be a grandmother…Okay, okay. I’m on my way.”
After the woman disappeared from Brown’s view, Brown waited a prudent moment or two. Then he nudged at the door to his pen with his snout.
Yes! It swung open easily. Brown put out his head, looked to the right, and then to the left, although his lack of a left eye meant that he had to swivel his head further to get a good look in that direction. Seeing that the pathways were clear, he thanked his lucky stars. When it came to being adopted out, it was a disadvantage to be housed this far back in the compound. But when it came to escape, it was a definite plus to be here in the back blocks where the humans were thinner on the ground.
At a distance down the path, Brown spied a pair of garbage cans pushed up against a span of concrete wall. He judged that because they tapered toward their bases, he’d be able to squeeze into the space behind them. From here it was—for a street terrier of courage and enterprise—only a short dash to the compound’s back gates. All Brown needed to do was hide, and wait.
Brown slipped out of his pen. He’d have liked to be able to say that he resisted the unworthy temptation that came upon him as he ran for the bins, but the truth is that he did not. Passing the pen of a yappy little Pomeranian who’d been getting his goat for months, Brown sprayed a hurried message in piss across the wire. Free at last! I’m Brown Houdini-Malarky, and I’m free at last!
* * *
Caleb Harkness—Sagittarius, weekday landscape architect and weekend underwater hockey captain, unconfirmed bachelor and collector of vinyl records—had not been able to forget the pretty dark-haired woman with the gerbera behind her ear whom he had met at the retro charity shop where he’d also found a mint-condition LP of the Pixies’ Doolittle. Since the day he had met her, he’d been kicking himself for being a dickhead. Not only had he been too shy to ask for her phone number, he’d been too much of a dill even to ask her name, or find out where she worked.
On that fateful day of the Charles and Diana wedding china, there had been ample time and ample opportunity. While those twenty packing boxes full of china had been blocking the shop’s doorway, he could have sought out some kind of useful information. And even once the entrance had been cleared, there had still been plenty of time. Along with the shopgirl, Caleb and the woman with the gerbera behind her ear had opened box after box in an increasingly hysterical mood of incredulity. They’d had to know: just how much Charles and Diana wedding china could one person conceivably own?
During the whole episode, the single fact he had gleaned—and this was only because she had offered it in passing—was that she was a florist. Where? In this city? In which suburb? He hadn’t asked. He was a monumental moron.
True, she was most likely married, to some intense and sophisticated abstract painter, probably, or a playwright with sideburns. Or, for that matter, a playwright with exquisite breasts. But what if she wasn’t? He’d never had much time for the concept of chemistry, but he was pretty sure he’d been atomized by the way she smelled. Like lilacs after rain. She was slender and dark, with a sexy rasp to her voice. She was witty and had a ready laugh, and above all she was somehow familiar, as if he already knew what it might feel like to wake up with her curly head in the curve of his arm. And this was why he had decided to systematically visit every florist in every suburb of the city until he found her.
But who knew there could be so many? She was nowhere to be seen in the glossy, commercial florist near the hospital, which sold pink and blue teddy bears and foil balloons with sparkly messages. Nor had he found her in any of the classier flower boutiques in the city center. He’d had high hopes on the day he’d gone into the Asian-inspired florist—its window invitingly cluttered with orchids and other tropical blooms—that wasn’t far from the charity shop. But she wasn’t there either.
He began his search with total optimism, but reached the end of his list without any joy. Now it was New Year’s Eve, and it was on Caleb’s mind to add “forget pretty florist” to his list of resolutions, which also included “stop wasting whole evenings browsing for records on eBay,” “get a better filing system for tax receipts” and “save money by packing weekday lunches.”
On this day, the last of the year, Caleb’s uber-organized younger sister was hosting a family dinner, and since this sister did not consider her brother capable of making a sufficiently impressive salad or a dessert, she had allocated him the job of bringing the prawns. All he had to do, she’d said, was pick up a couple of kilos on the way.
So there he was, in the Alexandria Park Markets at around 4 p.m. on New Year’s Eve holding a paper-wrapped parcel of raw prawns that were never going to make it to his sister’s dinner table. For just across the way was a florist’s stall that had not been on his list. It was called Hello Petal and behind the counter, with a bright orange gerbera behind her ear, was his pretty florist. Caleb didn’t stop to think. He walked toward her. And by the time he realized that he had no plan for what he was going to say, he was standing less than a meter away from her.
She wore an apron of embroidered gingham and pinned to the strap was a hand-stitched calico name tag. Fern. Her name was Fern. It suited her perfectly. Caleb felt his hands start to sweat as he watched her set a tray of velvety potted pansies onto the counter. She lifted her gaze. And saw him.
He could see that she recognized him.
“Hello again,” she said.
He could see that she was pleased.
“Hi,” he said. “I’ve been looking for…”
He searched nervously about him for a noun to insert. Roses? Boring. Obvious. Lilies? Funereal. The gap in his sentence was going on for too long. Caleb blinked. Fern widened her smile. She knew what he was looking for. She was bloody lovely. He might as well just tell the truth.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.
* * *
It was from inside the lip of a culvert at the side of a busy highway that Brown Houdini-Malarky saw the last of the day’s light—which was also the last of the year—ebb from the sky. He had spent several hot, thirsty hours wedged behind those garbage cans, waiting for someone to open the back gate, and toward the end of the working day he had begun to think that it was never going to happen. But at last someone did come, and in a spectacular piece of luck, it was a volunteer with rickety knees and lousy vision; Brown had slipped by him unseen, even though the spaniel that the man held on a leash had barked like crazy.
Now that night had fallen, Brown trotted along the shoulder of the highway until he came to the bright lights and foody smells of a roadhouse. Out the front of the roadhouse’s diner was a garbage bin overflowing with delights. Already on the ground were the scraps of a mostly eaten burger. Brown scoffed these down, and then, reaching up and resting his paws on the side of the bin, he used his snout to overbalance a milkshake cup that had been wedged into the mouth. Yellow, banana-flavored milk dribbled down the side of the bin and Brown lapped at it gratefully. This was his first meal in months that wasn’t kibble or Pal.
Brown retreated to a safe spot in the shadows and sat on his haunches to watch the road-trains come and go. As a mode of transportation, these trucks were imperfect. Brown knew from experience that they usually skirted the edges of the city, only rarely going smack through the middle. However, road-train drivers were often lonely, which made them a good deal more likely than car drivers to give a lift to a small fellow traveler. If Brown could hitch a lift in a road-train, it would get him at least part of the way back to the streets he knew so well.
The first truckie Brown saw was of the wrong sort. He had a sharp face, a businesslike manner and a gleaming rig, which meant he would almost certainly be intolerant of dog fur. The
second truckie looked more accommodating, but he was heading away from town, not toward it. Third time’s a charm, Brown thought, spying a corpulent, untidy-looking truck driver coming out of the diner with an armload of greasy food and sugary drinks. By the time the driver reached his road-train, Brown was sitting on the ground beside the cab, wagging his tail in a friendly, but not overexuberant, manner.
The truckie saw the small ugly dog and immediately experienced a sequence of very clear thoughts. I will open the door of my rig, he thought. I will let this cute little fella hop in, and I will take him for a ride. Also, I will open the passenger window wide for him, so he can put his head out and smell the breeze.
Moments later, Brown Houdini-Malarky was speeding toward the city with the wind in his fur and one eye open for his next opportunity.
* * *
Laura Mitchell wore a knee-length black sheath dress with a subtle lace detail at the neck and hem, and strappy black heels. Her hair fell in carefully constructed waves around her shoulders and while her makeup was not precisely subtle, neither was it in any way over the top.
“You look amazing,” Nick said, who—at Laura’s insistence—had donned his tux.
They were out the front of their apartment block, waiting for the taxi that would take them to the Galaxy casino. There, they would meet up with two of Laura’s colleagues, Eve and Sergei, who had suggested eating at Capretto, the flashiest of the casino’s restaurants, where the meals were tiny and the kitchen didn’t close until very late. After dinner, the four planned to head up to the ballroom on the top floor for Galaxy’s traditional New Year’s Eve concert, headlined this year by one of Nick’s favorite artists, Blessed Jones.
Laura flashed Nick an exquisite smile. “This will be a night to remember, won’t it?”
