Perfections (11 page)

‘I’ll be careful,’ Loki is saying.

‘It’s too risky. Why do you want the car?’

‘Just some stuff I need to do.’

‘Stuff. Like the stuff you had to do today?’

‘Yeah. Like that.’

‘Bloody hell, Loki, you’ve only been breathing for three bloody days. What sort of
stuff
can you possibly have to do?’

His eyes narrow. ‘You don’t have to yell.’

‘I wasn’t yelling, I . . .’ Except she is, her voice pitched close to
screeching
, as Paul used to call it, that horrible harridan word never failing to stop her in her tracks, push her brusquely on to the back foot, no matter how justified her anger. Antoinette gnaws on her bottom lip. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m just worried.’

‘I told you, there’s no need to worry about me.’

‘But I do, Loki. What if someone sees you? Someone who knows me, who knows Paul?’ She frowns. ‘You probably shouldn’t be going outside at all.’

‘What am I, some kind of pet you need to keep locked up in case the landlord finds out?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Do I get my own litter box at least?’

‘Loki, stop it.’

‘What does it matter if anyone sees me? They’ll think I’m Paul, or someone who looks like him. So what?’

‘It’s not that simple, what if–’

From its perch on the wall, the kitchen phone starts to ring –
Jacqueline, finally
– and Antoinette reaches for the handset.

Loki scowls. ‘They can leave a message, you know.’

‘It’s probably my sister. I’ve been calling her all day.’

He turns his back and sweeps the dishes into the sink, muttering words she can’t quite catch over the clatter of cutlery.

Antoinette sighs and presses the call button. ‘Hello?’

‘Antoinette? What are you doing there?’ A woman’s voice, its syllables sharp and clipped and grating as always. Antoinette’s stomach clenches. Not Jacqueline, no, and how she wishes she’d listened to Loki now. She closes her eyes and forces a smile to her mouth, hoping it will colour her tone with audible cheer.

‘Hi Mum,’ she says. ‘How are you?’

— 9 —

‘Where
’s your sister?’ Sally Paige demands. ‘I’ve been leaving messages for you both all over the place.’

‘Sorry,’ Antoinette says. ‘I was going to call you back after I ate.’

‘And Jacqueline? I suppose she’s avoiding me, too?’

‘No one’s avoiding you, Mum. Jacqueline’s in Brisbane for a few days; I’m house sitting for her.’

‘Brisbane? What’s she doing up there?’

‘It’s a work thing. I’m sure she meant to tell you.’

Her mother makes a sound somewhere between a snort and a sigh. ‘Yes, I’m sure she did.’

‘It was all pretty rushed. She’ll probably give you a call later on tonight, maybe tomorrow. She’s got her hands full up there, from what I gather.’

‘When does she get back?’

‘I don’t think she knows. Whenever the job is done, I guess.’ She mouths an apology to Loki, up to his elbows in suds with a scowl still darkening his features, then carries the handset into the living room.

‘I wanted you both to come over for dinner,’ her mother is saying. ‘But if she’s away . . . can you come tomorrow? I’ll make a roast.’

‘I’m working tomorrow night, Mum. How about we wait until Jacqueline’s back? You don’t need to cook; the two of us can take you out somewhere nice. Somewhere in the city maybe?’

Because the last thing she feels like doing is trekking all the way out to the Dandenongs. More than an hour each way even using EastLink –
if
the traffic is good, which it almost certainly won’t be on the drive down – plus the ill-lit winding road up the mountain to her mother’s place, the draughty old house where she and Jacqueline grew up, the house neither of them could wait to leave.

‘That won’t do,’ her mother insists. ‘There are matters of some importance that I need to discuss with you – with the both of you in fact, but I can’t wait for your sister to decide to grace us with her presence.’

‘She can’t help being sent on a business trip, Mum.’

‘How about you? Are you free on Thursday, or even Friday? You can’t possibly be working all the time.’

Antoinette relents. Sally Paige with a bee in her bonnet isn’t a force to be easily dissuaded. ‘I could maybe do Friday. But I don’t finish until seven, so it’ll be fairly late by the time I get up there.’

‘That will be perfect. I find myself eating later these days, anyway.’

‘Don’t go to any trouble, Mum. If it’s only the two of us, I could just pick up a pizza on the way over. That place in Monbulk is still open, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t eat
cheese
.’ Her mother sounds appalled, as if Antoinette has suggested bringing along a kitten on a spit. ‘I haven’t eaten cheese for over a year. It’s a nightmare for your digestive system. No, I’ll make a roast, and pancakes for breakfast. With that maple syrup you like.’

Antoinette stifles a groan. ‘Mum, I don’t think I’ll be able to stay over. I’m working both nights this weekend and there’s things I need to do here on Saturday.’

‘What things? You’re house sitting; it’s like being on holidays.’

‘Mum–’

‘And I don’t like the idea of you driving home so late. Not all alone.’

‘All right, we’ll see how it goes.’

‘I’ll make up your bed.’

Antoinette clenches her teeth. Better to save the argument for Friday, when she might just be able to grab her keys and slip out the door before her mother manages to turn on the guilt full force.
Matters of some importance
. Sounds suspiciously like another of what passes for a Sally Paige heart-to-heart. A stellar evening of
why haven’t you?
and
why don’t you?
and
what are you planning to do with your life, really?

‘Look, Mum, I have to go. My, ah, my dinner’s getting cold.’

‘But I’ll see you on Friday? You promise?’

Those last words spoken in such an odd, near plaintive tone, a tone so unlike her mother, so
unsuited
to her, that Antoinette pauses, ears pricked to the hiss of dead air over the line like it might hold a subtext.

‘Antoinette? Did you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I promise.’

The storm must have woken her, Jacqueline realises as a flash of lightning illuminates the room. It’s followed almost immediately by a deafening crack and rumble that sounds as though it’s directly above the house. Rain drums almost as loudly onto the roof. Spatters against the window in thick, angry drops. Without the lightning, the room is dark. Night time dark.

‘Damn it, Ryan,’ Jacqueline mutters. She throws off the sheet and slips from the bed. Tucks in her blouse and straightens her skirt. Her throat feels raw, her mouth mossy with sleep. She locates the glass of juice on the bedside table and drinks what remains in two greedy swallows. The liquid is almost warm. Pulp sticks to her teeth. She grimaces, running her tongue around her gums as she shuffles cautiously across to the bedroom door. Once in the hall, Jacqueline can see artificial light shining from the back of the house. Ryan’s studio. Smoothing her hair as best she can with only her fingers, she walks towards it.

The large canvas is still uncovered. Unattended as well, its creator sprawled belly-down and shirtless on the mattress at the far end of the studio. His eyes are closed. His back rises and falls so gently it takes her a moment or two to catch its movement. She’s amazed that anyone can sleep through a tropical storm like the one currently raging beyond the house’s flimsy walls. Another clap of thunder splits open the sky. Ryan doesn’t so much as flinch.

There’s no clock in the studio but outside the sky is black, the world illuminated only by the rain-hazed glow of streetlights. It feels very late. She should call a taxi. Get herself back to the motel and wash away the day’s grime and confusion beneath a hot shower. Tomorrow – she can’t think about tomorrow just yet. She spots her bag over against the wall, near the doorway where Zane’s suitcases had been. Beside it are Jacqueline’s shoes, arranged neatly side by side with her phone perched across their toes. Ryan must have done that, or Zane, after Jacqueline fainted. Maybe even Alice, tidying up while waiting for her patient to awaken.

No, not Alice, because Ryan doesn’t let her inside his studio. Unlike Zane, unlike Jacqueline, unlike however many others to whom he happily swings wide the door. How that must make his sister burn – which is perhaps all the motivation Ryan needs. Jacqueline shakes her head. With a mother like her own, familial power plays are a game she understands only too well.

And she has no intention of joining anyone else’s team.

She picks up her phone and slips into her shoes. Slings her bag over her shoulder. Her phone screen is blank and she wonders if the charge has run out. She switches it on, pleased to see the battery icon displaying half its life. Not so pleased to find that it’s almost one o’clock. As the device searches for a signal, Jacqueline considers the back of Ryan’s painting.

I’m working my arse off out there.

She activates the camera. Dante will need to be shown something.

Taking care not to tread on the myriad tubes of paint that litter the floor, Jacqueline makes her way around to the front of the canvas. Ryan really has been busy. The city is no longer simply abandoned. It’s flooded. The Brisbane River now swollen and stretched, swallowing the foundations of the metropolis it once wound through. The water itself is calm. Settled and still. As though it has always been this way. As though it always will be this way. A tangle of greenery bursts from a glassless window. Vines fall towards the water below, tendrils reaching for its surface.

It’s not finished, but she can see how it will be.

Jacqueline steps back a couple of paces. Raises her phone and tries to frame as much of the painting as she can within the small camera window. Then almost drops it as the device start to shrill, vibrating unexpectedly in her hands. Text messages, several of them, tumbling in on top of each other now a signal has been found. Antoinette, her mother, Dante – of course,
Dante
– and even a couple of voicemail alerts advising, no doubt, of messages left by the same.

She groans. Tomorrow looms too close for any sort of comfort.

‘What do you reckon, then?’

Jacqueline peers around the side of the canvas. Ryan’s eyes are open and serious. Yawning, he pushes himself up from the mattress.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ she tells him. ‘I was just calling a taxi.’

‘In this weather? An ark might be better.’

There’s a tattoo on the left side of his chest. A tree, stylised and vaguely Celtic. Black ink fading to blue beneath the skin. She watches its movement over his muscles as he crosses the room to join her.

‘There’s still a lot to do,’ he says.

She nods. ‘The river is a dramatic change.’

‘Yeah, but it feels right. The city was too passive before, you know?’

‘Passive?’

‘I’d left the possibility of choice, that we left because we wanted to, not because we had to. Not because we were pushed.’

‘Repelled.’

‘
Ex
pelled.’ He frowns. ‘Expulsion, maybe that should be the title.’

‘Of the painting?’

‘Of the show.’

Jacqueline hesitates. ‘Ryan . . . the show’s already being promoted.
Null and Void.
You can’t change the name at this stage.’ She braces herself for resistance, for further argument, but Ryan only smiles.

‘Okay,’ he says.

‘Okay?’

‘What’s a bloody name matter, anyway?’ He nudges her arm with his elbow. ‘Besides, I owe you, girl. You did this, you opened this for me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘The stuff you were saying before, when you were still kinda out of it. Delirious, Alice said, but what would she know about it?’

Her stomach clenches. ‘What . . . stuff?’

‘Don’t worry, nothing incriminating. A lot of talk about floating, about drowning. And not being able to find your way back.’

‘My way back? To where?’

Ryan shrugs. ‘You weren’t making too much sense. But it set me thinking, about the floods we had up here, and some dots got themselves joined. I was never gonna do anything with the floods – it felt too cynical, too exploitative – but the reference is powerful here, don’t you reckon? It’s an anchor. It makes this possibility real, more real than a Brisbane left to rot for unimagined reasons.’

‘It is powerful,’ Jacqueline agrees. Privately, she wonders if
unimagined
reasons would be even more so. ‘But it’s late and I really need to go, Ryan. We can talk more about this tomorrow.’

‘Mmm.’ His face seems distant as he studies the painting. Tanned fingers scratch at his stomach. Circle his navel and pluck at the hair that grows in a scraggily line below it. A thoughtless gesture. And far too intimate.

Jacqueline clears her throat. ‘Would you mind if I took a couple of photos before I go? To send to Dante in the morning.’

‘What?’ He turns away from the painting. Glares at the device in her hand as though she is offering him something poisonous. ‘No, no way. This isn’t something you can capture with a bloody phone.’

‘Ryan, this is important. I need to show him
something
.’

He sighs. Rattles his dreads with his hand. ‘Yeah, look, I got this mate, pretty handy with a camera. I’ll give him a bell tomorrow and get him over here, get him to take some shots with his proper kit. Good ones, high res. That be okay?’

‘And you’ll email them to Dante?’

‘Sure.’ He crosses a hand over his chest. Over the tree. ‘Promise.’

Which is probably not worth much, but she’s too tired to argue any longer. She flicks through her contacts. Retrieves the number of the taxi company.

‘You’re not really going?’ Ryan asks.

‘It’s late.’

‘So, stay the rest of the night.’

Jacqueline looks up at him. Considers the sly quirk of his mouth. His bare, lean-muscled torso. His skin the colour of perfectly toasted bread. She could stay. Split herself beneath him, fall back and allow her flesh to lead the way. Not the sort of release her razors could deliver, but still.

But still. Ryan seems the type to confuse sex too easily with significance. With the sort of power she’s not about to relinquish. Not when she can feel the balance of the game shifting. Control returning to her hands. Tomorrow, she’ll ring Dante, make her apologies, give him the good news. Ring Ant as well and perhaps even their mother, find out what the state of emergency is back home.