Girl Defective (10 page)

Dad was looking misty; I tried to get his attention back. “Nancy calls you Bill the Patriarch. She thinks you're looking for a surrogate son.”

“Nancy's wrong.”

“She says you want someone to pass your knowledge on to, and you won't pass it on to me because I have a vagina.”

Dad spluttered coffee across the kitchen table. He shook his head and pointed at me.

“You're grounded.”

“What about my birthday? School break, Christmas?”

Dad kept shaking his head. “And I want you to look after Gully. The shop's getting busier—you should keep him occupied.”

“With what?”

Half of Dad's mouth turned upward. “Help him solve the Bricker case.”

“I thought we weren't supposed to encourage him.” I folded my arms on the table and rested my chin on my wristbone. All the talk had made me tired. Maybe I hadn't quite recovered from Friday night; maybe I never would recover. Suddenly I felt weepy. My voice cracked a little. “Why can't we just hang around the shop? Last holidays—”

“That was different.”

“I'll say.” I picked up the Dunlops bottles and clanged them into the recycling bin. Last summer—post-rehab—all Gully and I did was hang around the shop. We played at buying, and Dad spent long hours lying on the back-room floor listening to Can on his oversize headphones. I didn't want to look at Dad now, so I looked around the kitchen instead. Why was it always so messy? The sink was piled with dishes; the day had hardly started, and already an army of ants was trekking over crumbs and jam blobs. My eyes took in evidence of Eve—brown lipstick on a coffee mug, a long red hair atop the bits-and-stuff bowl.

Above our heads the toilet flushed.

Dad lowered his voice. “Grounded. Gully. Boom. That's it.”

He stood up, pushed his chair back. I flinched at the scraping and glared at his retreating back. Then I sank my forehead onto my arms. I flashed on Nancy again. The French had a word for everything: even for that thing you wished you'd said.
L'esprit de l'escalier.
The
wit of the staircase. What I wished I'd said was this:
You can't have been that worried about me Friday night because when Eve brought me home, you were dozing with a reef of empties at your feet and after I went to bed, the pair of you
—
I don't even want to know.
But I couldn't have said that. It was too big. Those were fightin' words, and no one had my back.

T
HE MARKET AGAIN: THE
coffee, the toasties, the boys with bolt earrings and girls in frayed cut-offs, the tourists clapping for koalas, for cupcakes, for white dreadlocked guys playing didgeridoos, the hubbub and hum, and the Martin family looking for all the world like we'd wandered onto the wrong film set and any moment some short guy with a megaphone was going to move us along.

I was acting normal enough, but inside I was freaking. It was because of the Paradise, the gig. Now that I had some distance from it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was like the line between Before and After. A door had opened. As long as I kept thinking about it, the door would stay open. If it shut, I'd be back to my boring self. Through the opera glasses I studied the faces of passersby, looking for black-clad kids, night people. Maybe I was looking for myself.

Dad nicked the glasses, pitched his head at an awkward angle.

“Who are you looking for?” I asked.

“Eve said she might come down.”

Gully gave me the big eyes and turned to Dad. “Are you going to wrestle again?”

Dad's face flamed behind the glasses. I couldn't hide the smirk from my voice.

“You should be thanking me for bringing you together. If I hadn't gone out, she wouldn't have picked me up. . . .”

Dad's look said I should let it lie, but I was feeling defiant. How come Dad got to wrestle a lady cop while I got grounded? What was that all about? And something else rankled. I considered the ways Dad had messed up. He could be a crank and a slipping-down drunk, but Gully and I weathered it and never put any demands on him.

“It's not fair,” I said hotly.

“Skylark.”

Gully blinked, his snout twitching. “What's not fair?”

“Nothing,” Dad and I chorused.

Gully's eyes bounced between us. Then he checked his watch,
chh
ed his fist, and got into character.

“Date: Sunday, December seventh. Time: 0950 hours. Location: O'Donnell Gardens. Preparing for House Meeting. Rolling.”

“Item: Christmas. I want night vision goggles. And Baked Alaska. For Christmas lunch everyone gets to bring someone.” He appealed to Dad. “You bring Eve. . . .”

Dad tried to look cool, but his soft grin gave him away.

Gully turned to me. “Agent Sky. Will you ask Agent Cole, KGB?”

I made a noncommittal noise. I couldn't imagine Nancy at Christmas lunch. I couldn't imagine her doing ordinary things. She had no family, she had no past. It was as if she'd arrived in St. Kilda fully formed like something out of a myth—flaming hair and gladiator sandals—Nancy—
Nana—
she could leave anytime with no consideration for my feelings.

I checked Ray's through the opera glasses. He was in situ; but there was no sign of Nancy.

Gully: “Item: It has come to my attention that
someone
is putting the remote in a variety of places. It should be kept on the coffee table At. All. Times.”

“Roger that.” Dad elbowed me, trying to jostle a smile. He cut in, mimicking Gully. “Item: When does school break start?”

“Not next week but the week after,” I droned.

“What will I
do
with you two?”

“There's always buying lessons. . . .”

“There's more to life than the shop, Skylark.”

“I know that.” I looked at him. His tone was a tell. “How's the shop doing, anyway?”

“You leave me to worry about that.”

“You think Boy Wonder's going to bring you luck?”

“Don't be catty—it doesn't suit you.”

“I like Luke Casey,” Gully declared. “He's stout.”

“How do you know?” I was surprised. Gully never liked the new recruits.

“I looked in his sketchbook. I analyzed his handwriting. He's stout. Trustworthy. I can tell.” Gully put his hand on Dad's shoulder and fixed him with his superdetective's you-will-cooperate stare. “Is Agent Luke working today?”

“
Agent
Luke!” I snorted in mild disgust.

“I'm going to profile him.” Gully flexed his fingers and snapped his snout back into place.

“This should be fun,” Dad murmured. He was trying to catch my eye, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

A beardy, bug-eyed customer stopped at Dad's feet and forced an elaborate fist bump.

“Bill, my man.”

“Hey, Ed, what gives?” Dad asked mildly.

“They're paving paradise, baby.” The man shone his rubbery smile on our blank faces. “She's coming down. I'll save you a seat.”

Dad, Gully, and I hesitated for a stark second, then scrambled to our feet.

Down on the Lower Esplanade cranes moved like metal dinosaurs. We, the Martin family, milled on the fringe of protestors. Eli Wallace was still in his chair, still with the sign. Gully jumped to ask him about the
Bricker—did he remember seeing a white Jeep doing the rounds?—but Eli couldn't comprehend, and then came the first of a series of crashes that stunned the crowd and stilled the air. The machines made quick work. The landscape looked all wrong—too much sky and too much sea. Forty-eight hours ago I'd been inside. The Paradise had been alive then; now it was rubble. Dad looked a little green. He said, “A hundred years she's been standing and she's down in half an hour.”

“That's it.” Eli stared straight ahead, smacking his lips as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. Around us the protestors shifted and murmured their dissent.

A car cruised beyond the cordoned-off area, a white Mercedes, old, license plate
ZAZEN
. Steve Sharp stepped out. The passenger door opened and Otis joined him. He was looking casual enough in his jeans and flip-flops, but his sunglasses were Gucci. He stood listless as his father talked to a guy in a hard hat.

“Bastard!” a protestor shouted.

Louder voices followed:

“Pig!”

“Scumbag!”

Eli Wallace had a bag of oranges by his side. He took one out and hurled it at Steve Sharp. He was a great shot. More and more hands reached in, and then Steve Sharp was getting pelted. Otis, too. The ex–rock star's son looked feeble. He looked like he was about to cry. And then he was crying. My first reaction was to
laugh because here was this guy, this
god
in Nancy's eyes, and he was falling apart from a few pieces of fruit. But then something in Otis's expression reminded me of Gully, and after that I couldn't laugh. Steve Sharp shielded Otis from the barrage. He bundled him back into his car and then drove off, stone-faced. I glimpsed Otis in the passenger seat, head buried in his hands.

Gully was confused and a little bit delighted at the happenings. He wanted to throw an orange too, but the target had gone and hard-hat guy was heading over with his fists clenched. As we scarpered, Eli Wallace was crowing. “What are you gonna do—hit an old man?”

“Dad, why were they throwing oranges at Steve Sharp?” Gully asked.

“Because he's greedy. His company's called Urban Renewal. They buy up the old properties and turn them into apartments. You can't do that without pissing off a few people. You know he's bought the yoga center. He wants the whole corner. We're the last man standing. He doesn't think about where people have to go.”

I remembered the forgotten flyer on the counter. “If you're so upset about it, why didn't you go to the protest?”

Dad frowned. “Because sometimes you have to accept the inevitable.”

I stopped walking. “Dad, that's so depressing.” I
watched him open the shop with his head lowered. Even Gully looked thoughtful as he followed him in.

Dad played Nick Cave for old time's sake, closing his eyes because his life, too, was like a river all sucked into the ground. I thought about the Paradise, and what could happen to the space where a place used to be—the ghosts of gigs past. Maybe Dad was thinking about that too. He was quieter than usual. After a while I stopped thinking about the Paradise and started thinking about Luke Casey. I pretended I wasn't waiting for him. And when he rolled in, damp hair and soap shine and an almost smile, I pretended I wasn't remotely interested. I said, “Hi” like, whatever, and moved away. I put records out; I sorted stock; I sat on the back counter and read
Record Collector
. Dad walked Luke through Cleaning Vinyl 101. Gully hovered in case his expertise—or entertainment—was required. I tried to maintain a hard edge, but I was weak. Intermittently, Luke looked at me and intermittently I let him.