Perfections (26 page)

. . . the old witch can do to her. Lina stands before the hand basin in the Seventh Circle toilet. Waits for the dizziness and nausea to pass. It’s the second time this week she’s had to lock herself in here. Will herself to remain conscious. The episodes – the
attacks
– have something to do with Sally Paige, she knows that now. She feels it. Is the dying old witch trying to claw back some of the life she gave all those years ago? Trying to suck it right out of Lina like marrow from bone?

Let her try. See how far she gets. Jacqueline Paige doesn’t live here anymore. There is no good daughter to draw from.

Lina gargles and spits. The taste of iron is still strong in her mouth. She freshens her lipstick then heads back out to the gallery floor.

‘Someone you ate?’ Becca asks. Her tone is saccharine.

Lina all but bares her teeth.

‘Whatever.’ The girl returns to her copy of
Art Monthly
. Licks her finger and flips a couple of pages. ‘I think Dante might have been looking for you.’

Ryan Jellicoe has sent through the final show list. Titles and measurements, with and without framing. High-res images that Lina quickly scrolls through on Dante’s laptop. Her boss watches from behind his desk. He’s obviously unhappy.

‘But this is good,’ she says. ‘We have a show finally.’

‘Oh, do we?’ he scoffs. Pointing out that it might be
a
show but it’s not a
Seventh Circle
show. This gallery has made its name specialising in the flipside. The underbelly. Work that interrogates the mainstream. Art that isn’t afraid of the dark. He stabs a finger towards the screen. ‘All of which this is
not
.’

Lina smiles to herself. Ryan has titled the massive canvas
Expulsion
, after all. Brisbane as verdant floodplain. It’ll be framed in recycled timber, the notes say. As will all the paintings.

‘Glad you find it so amusing, Jacks. This hippy-trippy bullshit’s gonna be the
only
stuff hanging on our walls for three fucking weeks. We’re gonna have to hand out anti-nausea tabs at the door.’

She swivels the chair to face him. ‘Stop being an idiot.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘All right, it’s not entirely what you expected. But so what? This is good work, this is
excellent
work, actually. Ryan Jellicoe is going to be a major name one day and then you’ll be able to crow to all and sundry about how you discovered him way back when. That ought to be enough to satisfy even your ego, surely?’

Dante glares at her. ‘Here’s an idea,’ he snarls. ‘How about I just handball the entire mess over to you?’ No really, he continues, seeing how she’s so smitten with the soon-to-be-deified Ryan Jellicoe,
she
can wrangle his show from this point on. Dante is washing his hands of the whole thing. Which means, of course, that Jacqueline gets to explain to their Fearless Leader and Holder of the Purse Strings how her take-no-prisoners dystopia became a dreadlocked greenie lovefest in less time than it would take to raze a rainforest.

‘Susan Keyes commissioned this show?’ Lina asks. ‘I thought you–’

‘There’s not a thing that happens here, Susan doesn’t approve. I can’t even buy toilet paper without her signing off on the brand.’ He sighs. Pulls his laptop back across the desk. Turns it around to face him. ‘You know what? I’m serious.’ His fingers jab at the keyboard. ‘I’m sending all this to your email. The show’s yours.’

‘Dante–’

‘You gonna manage this place once I’m gone, you better learn to
manage
.’

Lina blinks. ‘Me?’

‘Providing Susan signs off on it. Things go to plan, Segue opens in September and then I’m over there full-time. She could source management for Seventh Circle elsewhere, but better the devil you know, right? Beside, if I recommend you for the position . . .’ And he smiles at her. Actually
smiles
, an expression more genuine than she would have thought him capable of producing. ‘You picked the perfect time to grow yourself a backbone, Jacks.’

She smiles back at him, cautiously. ‘The show will be fine. You’ll see.’

‘I better. Now call Jellicoe and find out how long that bloody framing’s gonna take to happen. Remind him we’re on a schedule, yeah?’ Dante snorts. ‘Recycled timber. Jesus.’

Lina descends the stairs with care, one hand skimming the rail. She’s still somewhat off kilter from earlier and the last thing she wants to do is fall and break her soon-to-be-promoted neck. Another five, six months and she could be
running
Seventh Circle. On her own. The relief, the anticipation is intoxicating. She can’t wait to tell Ant. She can’t wait to tell . . .

. . . Loki pads into the kitchen while Antoinette is still eating breakfast, pushes a glossy black smartphone across the bench towards her. ‘What’s that?’ she asks, swallowing a mouthful of cornflakes. ‘
Whose
is that?’

‘Yours. Thought you might be missing your mobile.’

She hasn’t been, actually. Has found it bloody refreshing to be at no one’s beck and call, but all good things must come to some kind of an end, and so she picks up the phone and switches it on. Black wallpaper bleeds scarlet, drops that slide slowly down the screen to pool at the bottom, and she laughs, tells him that’s cool, tells him that’s goth as fuck, her Queen of the Night voice a little rusty but still camp enough to make him grin.

‘Thought you’d like that. It’s a pre-paid but the phone’s unlocked. You should be able to put your old simcard straight in there.’

Antoinette frowns. ‘Where’d you get the cash? These things aren’t cheap.’

‘I didn’t have to pay for it.’

‘Loki . . .’

Really, he insists, it just happens. He’s nice to people, that’s all, and sometimes he asks them for things, or for favours, and sometimes – most of the time – they say yes. Lina says he
charms
people, that Antoinette made him
charming
in some real sense of the word, and maybe that’s true. And the way he’s looking at her right now, those grey eyes huge and puppyish and pleading, she can almost believe it.

‘So, what, you just rock up and ask someone to hand over a brand new phone or a leather jacket, or whatever, and they say, sure, no problem, would you like me to wrap that up for you, sir? Hell, why don’t we just march you down to the bank and be done with it?’ She holds out her hands, palms joining to form a shallow bowl. ‘Small denominations, if you don’t mind, thanks ever so much.’

Loki shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t . . . they have to be
willing
, on some level. If it’s too big, if it’s something they really don’t want to do, or are too afraid to do . . . I can’t
force
them.’

He scowls, portrait of an adolescent thwarted, and Antoinette wonders again just what Loki does with his days.
Nothing special
, his vague response whenever she asks, or else
catching up with stuff
– having lived in the world less time than he remembers, there is apparently a lot of
catching up
to do – and it reminds her too painfully of how she and Jacqueline used to talk to their mother back in high school, and even later, and how
nothing
meant anything but.

Nothing we want you to know about.

Nothing we would expect you to understand.

Antoinette reaches for Loki’s hand but he pulls away, steps away. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Please don’t touch me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘I can’t . . .’ He swallows, shoves both hands deep inside his pockets. ‘Most of the time, I can keep it at a distance, keep it locked up. But I still love you, no matter how stupid and pointless it is. And when you touch me, even when you just look at me a certain way, it hurts. It physically hurts.’

‘But I thought, I mean, now you’re with Jacqueline–’

‘I’m not
with
Jacqueline.’

‘Loki, come on, you’ve been sleeping together for–’

‘That’s all we’ve been doing,’ he says. ‘
Sleeping
.’

Antoinette stares at him. ‘I don’t follow.’

And so he explains. Halting and reluctant, like he’s searching for words which simply aren’t there to be found, but she gets enough of the gist from those he does manage to dredge up and drag back. The unseen chains that bind his heart to hers, that bind his body as well, and the pain that grips him, a terror vast and visceral and absolute, should he attempt to betray her with either. Telling her all this without resentment, without anger or recrimination – it’s simply how it is, it’s how
he
is – and to Antoinette this makes it all the more vile.

Makes
her
all the more vile.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Loki, no, that’s not what I want. That’s not why I–’

‘Really?’ His smile is sad and fleeting. ‘What if it had all worked out, and you did still love me? Wouldn’t I be exactly what you wanted – a man who could never hurt you, never leave you? If you
loved
me, wouldn’t I be just
perfect
?’

This is the curse. This, right here, the knowledge of her own monstrosity. Because her crime is not her failure to love him. Her crime is that she created him in the first place – so thoughtlessly, so selfishly – this beautiful boy who is now forced to love her, who has no
choice
but to love her, who will be made to suffer for anything less.

And she thinks of her mother, thinks of Sally Paige with two perfected children and a third pulled bloody from her womb, and not one them enough to fill the void, to restore even a scrap of maternal feeling to her dried and desiccated heart. But raising her daughters regardless, joining mothers groups and devouring every childcare book she could get her hands on – faking it, if never making it – and at least she tried. She tried for twenty-seven years.

Antoinette can’t hold it together for even a month.

‘I have to head off,’ Loki is saying. ‘There’s this thing . . .’

‘Wait.’ Uncertain if anything she does from this point on can make a difference, but she has to try, she has to fucking
try
. ‘I don’t care about you and my sister. No, that’s not true, I do care, I care a lot. I’ve seen the way you look at her and I’ve seen how she . . . how different she is when she’s around you. How
happy
she is. I mean, hell, she’s wearing colours. Colours that aren’t
beige
.’

‘Antoinette, this doesn’t–’

‘No, listen. Please.’ She takes his hand in both of hers. He flinches but doesn’t pull away. ‘The two of you are good together, seriously, blind Freddy could see that. So if you love her, if you think you might love her, then go for it. You won’t be hurting me, you’ll be the
opposite
of hurting me, I swear.’

He lowers his gaze. ‘It’s not like I can stop feeling–’

‘Then love us both,’ she pleads. ‘But be with her,
love
her, if that’s what you want.’ Antoinette leans forward, presses her forehead against his. ‘I promise you, Loki, it’s what I want too.’

For maybe a minute, they stand like that, before Loki steps back and untangles his hand. ‘I, um, I have to . . .’ His eyes are glazed and distant, the eyes of a wild animal, long-caged and grieving for the woods. ‘There’s this thing.’

After he leaves, Antoinette stares into her milk-sodden cornflakes and thinks some more about her mother, and about responsibility and avoidance and guilt. Then she picks up the phone Loki brought her and taps the screen into life. The contacts list is empty of course – she’ll need to resurrect her old simcard at some stage – but it doesn’t matter. One number she’s known by heart since the age of seven at least, and she dials it now, holds the phone to her ear and waits for . . .

. . . Loki to say something instead of simply standing there. Motionless, scarcely two steps inside the bedroom. Watching as she sorts through more of her clothes. That weird new expression on his face, as though Lina is an exotic insect that might equally sting him or flitter away should he move any closer.

‘What?’ she demands. ‘You’ve been looking at me like that all night.’

He nods at the scarlet blouse in her hands. ‘That suits you.’

‘I bought it today.’ The blouse goes into the wardrobe with the other items she has decided to keep. There isn’t a huge amount of them. She takes out a well-worn skirt. Tailored, knee-length. A comfortable wool-blend the colour of weak and milky tea. Unquestionably a Jacqueline skirt. Lina unclips it from the hanger and tosses it into the charity bag. Better.

Behind her, footsteps approach.

She turns and Loki is there. He is right there, his eyes searching her face, his hands reaching for her hips. She opens her mouth but whatever words she intended to speak are lost when he kisses her. Gentle, cautious, brief. Too brief.

‘What was that?’ she asks.

‘I still love her,’ he says.

‘All right.’

‘I will always love her. It’s part of what I am.’

‘I know this,’ Lina says, irritated. ‘You don’t have to–’

He kisses her again. Harder. His tongue pushing into her mouth, finding hers, thrusting against it. This time, when he draws away, his breath is ragged and torn. As is her own. ‘I love you,’ Loki whispers. ‘I love you as well.’

She thinks about this. Not in the way Jacqueline would have, with her too careful weighing of
shoulds
against
should nots
. Her meticulous concern for presentation and the playing of roles. Lina thinks about how she feels. What she feels.

And she smiles. ‘All right.’

At some point, as they kiss and strip each other of clothing, as she pushes him onto the bed and he pulls her down beside him, it occurs to her that Loki must, technically at least, be a virgin. For all the off-the-rack memories that jostle within his skull, the body that now moves against hers is untouched. Unclaimed. Unexplored. Lina finds she likes the idea of that. She likes it very much.

He kisses her throat, catching her skin lightly between his teeth. Strong hands roam the curves of her back and hip and thigh. She supposes that this is how her sister likes to be touched. That this is what she would have wanted Loki to do, had she still wanted him to do anything. She ponders that for a moment. Decides it doesn’t matter. What is
she
but an amalgam of previous experience? Of techniques and tricks picked up from earlier lovers? What matters is now. Loki and Lina, here together. Learning how to be with each other.