“Is this guy one of your clients or something?”
“He’s . . .” Imogen’s explanation trailed off.
“All right, I’m going. I’m sorry. You look beautiful. Enjoy your date.”
“It’s not a fucking date.”
“It
is
a date.” Curtis puffed his chest out. “What the fuck, Imogen?”
“Maybe the problem with me knowing this is a date,” I paused on the edge of my chair, on the edge of my own hilarity, held my breath to stifle the laugh, “is that she’s dressed like a fucking fox and you’re wearing a denim jacket with a fur trim.”
Curtis stared at me.
“I mean you should have looked in the front windows at her and binned that thing before she ever saw it, mate.”
“Wow.” The ape glared at Imogen. She licked her lips. Looked at me. At the ceiling. Then laughed, just once. Then she swallowed it. Pushed at me so that I got out of the chair.
“Go away.”
“That jacket looks like someone killed a ginger cat.” I wobbled on the edge of my chair. “And then stapled it to the eighties.”
Imogen lost control of her laughter. The Neanderthal got up. I got up. Let him push me. There were ten or fifteen young Lebanese men watching from the balcony of the third floor. Ready. So ready.
“Calm down, sunshine. I’m only having a laugh.”
“Fuck. Off.”
“All right. I’m fucking off,” I saluted. “Here I go. Fucking off now. Fucking off sequence initiated.”
“He one of your psycho clients or something?”
I didn’t stick around to hear her answer. Went to the bar and ordered a scotch. Stood drinking it, laughing to myself about the cat joke. Most jokes involving cats are pretty hilarious. I felt a wave of sadness pass over me, of longing for my cat, Martina’s cat, annoying, food-obsessed, self-obsessed little jerk. The Neanderthal brushed me roughly as he passed, heading out the doors. Imogen was close behind him, draining the end of her glass of wine, pulling on her long red coat.
“Hey,” I grabbed her when she got within reach, “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“What can I say?” I asked. “What can I do?”
“Nothing. It’s over. He’s gone.”
“Jesus.”
“Look, actually, without meaning to, you managed to rescue me from something really awful. I’d been trying to end it for an hour and a half but the guy likes the sound of his own voice.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Doesn’t make you any less of an annoying fuck.”
“Yes, no, you’re right, of course, annoying fuck.”
“Frank.”
“So that
was
a date.”
“It was.”
“Where do you even find a half-monkey, half-man? I thought they had to grow those types in laboratories.”
“It was an online thing.” She smoothed down her hair. “I’m not really in the mood for an exhaustive breakdown of it.”
“You? You date from the Internet?
You
?”
“Yes. I date men I find on the Internet.”
“
Why?”
“It’s almost like you’re trying to make me angry.”
“All right, I’ll stop. I’m sorry, I’m drunk. Let me get you a cab.”
“I’m walking.”
“No, you’re not, it’s pissing with rain.”
“I live three blocks from here, and I have an umbrella. I won’t die.”
“I’m walking you. Just to make sure. If you died I wouldn’t have anyone to bully and judge me. Invade my life. Stalk me to my apartment.”
“You’re not walking me anywhere.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not,” she laughed.
“I’ll put you under arrest.”
“Wouldn’t you just love that?”
I grabbed her bicep and held it, gave it a squeeze. She rolled her eyes at me.
S
he was like a weather system, inexplicably predictable, something that changed the air and brought electricity to the earth before she arrived, made things tremble. Eadie was starting to believe she knew that Skye was coming for her even before the girl herself had made the decision, and by the time she heard the patter of Ugg boots across the dirt she’d already be feeling that half-smile creep across her face. It was right at sunset and the girl’s silhouette cut into the orange light, her boots as pink as the horizon. Eadie said nothing, continued tightening the shoelaces of her runners.
“What are you doing?” the girl said.
“Going for a bit of a run.”
“A run? Are you nuts? Haven’t you worked all day?”
“Best time for a run.” Eadie squinted in the painted day, held a hand up against the glowing red ball caught in the girl’s dry blond hair. “Loosen me up.”
“It’s about to be dark.
Neighbors
is on in, like, twenty minutes.”
“It’ll keep. It’s only Thursday. The good stuff’ll be tomorrow night.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I’m not walking. I’m running.”
“I can run.” A child’s indignation. Hands on hips.
“Better hurry up then. I’m leaving today.”
The girl sprinted off, and Eadie pulled her heels into her backside, feeling the warmth of a day’s labor pulse in her quads, groan in her back. Skye returned with nothing about her outfit changed but a pair of worn sneakers—her denim skirt stained with motor grease on the right-hand hem, the pink tank top over the ill-fitting bra. Eadie guessed the girl would learn. Eadie watched her gathering her hair into a bun, not quite able to catch it all, leaving strands at the nape of her neck that if touched would make her shiver. “Go slow,” the child frowned.
“Go quick.”
“I’ll die, Eadie. Go slow, will you?”
“All right, Nanna.”
They set off toward the stables, between them, and passed the pigs, the croaking and groaning beasts lying down to sleep. Eadie tasted them in the air. Skylar’s face was rigid, the temples pulsating, blood shocked at how fast it was moving and chemicals pouring through veins, trying to calm things down.
“Slow down.”
“We’re crawling.”
“Just. Slow. Down.”
“All right,” Eadie laughed.
They bounced through the back gates and found themselves in the bush. It was treacherous here. Recent rains had slicked the walking tracks with clay, left rocks disturbed, ready to shift under wayward feet. If the girl turned an ankle, who would care for her, Eadie wondered. Would Jackie cook dinner if she couldn’t get around their tiny kitchen? Would he change the DVD? Would he help her hop over to take a piss in the annex next to the bed? Eadie huffed, found a rhythm finally, a slow one but a good one, her fists loose in front of her, gripping air handles, pulling herself forward, dancing. Who did Skye think was going to care for her when she got old? Did the girl see herself and Jackie growing old together? Did she love the man? Did she know what love was?
“Hey! Slow down.”
Eadie laughed, slowed again. The girl came up beside her, gripping a stitch.
“I’m gonna. Die. Out here.”
“Chat to me. It’ll take your mind off it.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. Open your mouth. Lift your head up. You run like an elephant.”
“I am. An elephant.”
“Do the boys come out here?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. They hunt. Roos.”
“Roo meat’s good for you.”
“It’s gross. Too tough.”
“They probably overcook it.” Eadie took a long breath, sucked in the moist air before it began to give way to the desert again. The trees thinned before them, revealing lantana, sand. “They should watch more
Master Chef
.”
“Mostly they don’t. Cook them. No one. Likes them much. And there’s so much. Pig. Anyway.”
“So what do they do with them then? If they don’t cook them?” Eadie frowned.
“They just.”
Eadie looked over. The girl was uncomfortable. Shrugged. Her breasts lifting, catching the red light with their film of sweat.
“They just kill them.”
“So it’s just sport?”
“I guess. I don’t know. I’m not allowed to go. Only the boys go.”
Eadie licked her lips, savored the salt she tasted. She wasn’t a betting woman, but she would wager money that Jackie and his team were doing more to the kangaroos out here than simply snuffing their lives out. A bunch of drunk men, a shed full of cutting, grinding, mashing, slicing implements, the dark barren land, and a bunch of helpless animals. It was a recipe for pain. “I’m gonna. I can’t. Let’s go back.”
“Keep going.” Eadie was shocked by the callousness in her voice. Softened it. “You can do it. Keep talking. What’s down there?”
“Cliffs.”
“Come on. Let’s look.”
“I’ve seen them. They’re boring.”
“Come on, I want to see.”
The trees thinned to brush, and then without warning a gaping crack in the earth, running in a curve out of eyesight. A dry riverbed. Eadie turned and led Skye along its edge, ducking forward now and then to look into the dark below without slowing the pace.
“Let’s stop.”
“No. Let’s keep going. It’s nice though.”
“Yeah sometimes. There’s water. Down there.”
Eadie let the girl go ahead, jogged at barely a pace above walking, more bouncing than moving forward. She spied a lump of blackness on a rock ledge and doubled back, circled before the girl could see, and squinted. Clothes. Burned and blackened. A pair of jeans maybe. Eadie felt her mouth grow dry, looked for some landmark that would remind her where she’d seen the discarded clothes. Just a line of bush. A sweep of desert. A fence etched into the mauve sky like the fine pencil lines of an artist. It was growing dark. Eadie chewed her lip, remembered the camera hanging in the pendant around her neck. So easy to forget.
“Burned clothes,” she said aloud, grabbed the pendant and held it near her lips. “I’m seeing burned clothes on the riverbed east of the property. I don’t see any landmarks to tell you where. I want these checked out.”
“I’m gonna stop if you don’t catch up.”
Eadie caught the girl in a few strides and sprinted back through the wire fence onto Jackie’s property. The kill sheds were ahead of her, absorbing the dying light in their gaping doors. She ran to the front double doors, stopped, and stretched her limbs. The girl came bobbing toward her, stopped, and hobbled when she got within speaking distance.
“Let’s never do that again.”
“Do it every day. It gets easier. I’ll go with you,” Eadie smiled.
“Maybe. I want to lose weight. Jackie says I’ve got flabby arms.”
“You don’t have flabby arms.”
“Yes, I do.”
They walked into the sheds together. Stood in the fading light. Eadie could make out a long steel trough, a conveyer belt of hooks parallel to it, within a tall man’s reach. Four large stalls, enough to hold twenty pigs each, were swept and hosed bare. These would be hard surfaces to keep clean. The first thing animals do when they see or hear their kind being slaughtered is shit themselves, attack the beasts around them. There’d be blood in the grout too deep to remove.
“They hang them here,” Skye pointed. “Upside down. Gut them. This whole thing gets filled with guts. All the way to the end there. Guys stand here with their blades out. Sharp as a razor. Slash, slash, slash. From there, the bolt in the head, to there, the tagging line, it’s about ten minutes. Jackie says sometimes they’re still twitching.”
The girl gave a little wiggle, limp hands flapping.
“Gross,” Eadie said.
“Yeah, real gross.”
“You ever been in here when it’s on?”
“Nuh.” Skye wrinkled her nose, stood with her hands on her hips. “I couldn’t do it. I like pigs. They’re cute.”
“I’ll bet you like bacon, too, though.”
“Everybody likes bacon.”
Skye stood looking up at the hundreds of hooks, each pointing the same way and aligned like an infinite row of question marks. Then she shivered, and Eadie felt the same shiver run through her, though she couldn’t understand why.
“Let’s get outta here, man,” the girl said and grabbed Eadie’s hand.
“Yeah.” Eadie felt the girl squeeze her fingers. “Time for
Neighbors
.”
When Vicky knocked on the door to the attic room, she received no response. This didn’t surprise her. Often Heinrich lost himself in his thoughts so completely that no amount of noise could bring him out of the complex network of plans being webbed together by tiny spiders in his mind. She entered the darkened room and saw him sitting by the window, a figure shaped like a crone with the same sad, labored movements, lost in his thick brown overcoat, fiddling with things on the table. Sometimes the boy didn’t let any light into the attic room, but today a slice of sunset had snuck in and struck the side of his head pink, gold in his unwashed hair.
“There’s a girl here for you,” Vicky said. She took a couple of steps forward and tried to see what the boy was doing. Another of his creations. After the first year in the room Heinrich had started building things, first from whatever he found lying around, paper folded dozens of different ways into the shapes of reindeer and dragons, fitted together to make intricate boxes that sprung open at the touch. Then he had started meddling with things the girls brought him, coils of copper that he weaved into the intricate scales of a life-sized cobra. He strung beads together and pulled them impossibly tight, made colorful fish that from across the room looked like they would flitter through the air, dart beneath the desk. The girls marveled at his work but it seemed to bring him no joy.
“Heinrich?”
“What girl?”
“She’s calling herself Sunday.”
The boy said nothing. Vicky tried to see what he was working on. It seemed to involve strips of wire being twisted around fragments of colored glass. She leaned back into the hall and nodded to the girl, who came walking forward and took the door from Vicky’s hand as though she feared it would slam shut on her. She was a beautiful thing. All square and taut, robotic almost, like the whirring, mixing, dancing things rich women were putting in their kitchens, shiny and full of joints. She went to the middle of the room, stood looking at the boy. Heinrich’s eyes never left his work.
Sunday filled her lungs with air. Let it go as the older woman clicked the door closed behind her.
“I thought you were dead.”
“That was the plan.”
The boy looked old. His hands looked old as they pulled the wire, clipped the ends, and placed the offcuts in a little bowl like shiny noodles. Sunday wanted to see his gray eyes but they were hidden, so she took a few steps closer and stopped when she saw the muscles in the boy’s neck twitch. It hurt to be apart from him. She had been so used to touching him whenever they were together, from those years they slept together as children, his back rising and falling against her cheek, his ankle brushing hers.
“People been talking. This morning Caesar held a meeting with some of his top guys at Mickey Cousins’s place down on the water.” Sunday picked at her nails. “That Burgmann guy was there. The customs guy. Some others. They were all talking on the balcony and when they got up to leave Mickey’s kid, the one they arrested last year, he goes and gets Caesar’s coat from the back of the couch in the living room and hands it to him.”
Heinrich was examining a piece of glass in the light of the window, an almost perfect triangle of royal blue that threw a sky-blue beam onto the wall behind him. “So as he’s handing over the coat the kid makes a noise, like a yelp, and he swears out loud, and he takes the coat back and pulls a thorn from the inside of the collar. Like a rose thorn. It’s pricked his finger, made a little black dot, and it kills, he says, but no one cares. Caesar puts the coat on and goes to leave. He doesn’t get halfway out the door before the Cousins kid’s dead on the floor like a stone.”
Heinrich lifted his eyes from the thing in his hands for an instant, looked at Sunday’s face, just long enough to give her a flash of his cold, hard eyes.
“It wasn’t a rose.”
“Caesar’s going to figure out it’s you.” Sunday felt a shiver run through her. Rubbed her arms. “I figured out it was you pretty damn fast. Soon as people started saying they’d seen your ghost I knew you’d made it somehow. You better stop with the near misses and do what you’re planning to do, or he’s gonna send someone round here.”
“I’m doing what I’m planning to do,” Heinrich said. “And no one’s coming round here.”
He finished what he was putting together, and when his hands let the sculpture stand on its own she saw a small bird fashioned from glass in a hundred different shades of blue and green, the dark green of beer bottles and the pale sickly blue of church windows, the lime green of cottage doors and the royal blue of medicine jars. The tail feathers were daggers of a deep purple, the glass from where she couldn’t guess. The thing’s wings were spread and feathered with the sharpest splinters, so to look at it was to feel the ache of beauty but to touch it might have torn a careless hand to shreds.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?” She swallowed. Squeezed her fists to draw the hurt down from her throat so that she could speak. “I’ve been alone.”
He was out of his chair before her eyes could follow him, but his hand on her throat was familiar, the way it crushed her windpipe made her remember that night on the couch, the way he’d wanted to squeeze her, to possess her, to bend her bones. She felt his breath on her face and the wall against the back of her head but she knew better to raise her hands to his.
“You have no idea what alone is like,” he said. “I was alone in that house when they found me. Surrounded by dead men and women and girls.”
“Caesar and Savet, they—”
“One minute you were there,” Heinrich snarled. She felt his spit on her face. “In my arms. And then I wake up and you’re gone and they’re coming down on me.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Into the night like fucking smoke.”
“I didn’t know!” she screamed, felt her throat flex against his stone hand. “I loved that man. You know I loved Bear like my very own father. Don’t you tell me that you don’t.”
She was crying in his hands. He loosened his fingers from around her neck.
“I ran from you because of what we did, I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t understand it. I wanted it but I was afraid. I hurt everything that comes near me, Heinrich, and I needed to keep you from that.” She put her hands on his shoulders and was relieved to feel the warmth of them beneath the old coat, the smooth flesh of his neck, the curls at the back of his ears. He stood rigid and she hung herself from him, pulled his face down into her hair. She could feel his heart beating against her cheek.
“You’re going to start a fucking war,” she trembled.
“It was started a long time ago.”
“You can’t get him back. Bear is gone. You don’t know what they can do to you. This is what they do, Heinrich. They were born to do this.”
He laughed. “You can learn with the right teacher.”
“Come away with me. Let’s go up north. Like we said when we were kids.”
“No. We’re not kids anymore. Look at you. Look at what you’ve done to yourself.” He had her wrists in his hands, her impossibly thin wrists. He took her face and shoved her, tried to back away, but she yanked him to her. He pushed her into the wood, pulled her hair, exposed her jaw to his mouth. She didn’t fight.