Perfections (28 page)

Antoinette wipes her nose. ‘But Charlie’s been . . . gone for years.’ Her hands are shaking and she doesn’t, really does not, want to talk about any of this. Not Loki, not Charlie, not either of them.

runstopbadrunstopbad

Her stomach clenches and rolls. Bile burns at the back of her throat.

‘Who knows exactly what damage is done when they’re made,’ her mother is saying. ‘How long it takes for the rot to set in. I didn’t think about any of that when I made the twins. Or maybe I did and just decided it didn’t matter, that children would be different, less of a drain. Which, actually, they were. But, with you, we’re not talking about a couple of little babies.’

‘You – you said that was the best case scenario. What’s the worst?’

Her mother shrugs. ‘You slip into a coma, become nothing more than a life support system for them until your body finally gives up and dies. Then they die too, of course, and you tell me what the point was in all of that.’

She can’t breathe. She literally can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but the weight of the Loki-stone inside her, and oh god, she can’t just surrender him, she can’t just let him die, can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t–

‘Calm down.’ Sally Paige standing right in front of her now, claws digging into her shoulders and no sympathy in those fish-flat eyes, only disgust and something that might be envy or pity or spite. ‘Stop it, calm down.’ And Antoinette breathes at last, sucks air deep into her lungs and throws her arms around the woman who is the only mother she will ever know, god help them both, and squeezes her tight. For maybe a minute they stand there, with Sally Paige rubbing her daughter’s back and Antoinette waiting for the words she knows will never come.

I love you. Everything will be all right.

And in that silence, her stupid, hopeful heart breaks a little more.

Finally, her mother disentangles herself. Leads Antoinette over to the couch and sits her down. ‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘But you need to make a choice. It’s your sister, or it’s that boy. You can’t keep them both.’

Becca taps on the office door. Pokes her head around. ‘There’s some guy downstairs, wants to see you. He’s a bit, um, weird.’

Lina flips to the second page of the catering quote and frowns. Expensive. Too expensive. She’ll need to do some trimming to get it past Dante. And there’s still the alcohol to consider. ‘Does weird guy have a name?’

‘He didn’t want to give it. But he said it was important.’

‘Really?’ Lina arches an eyebrow.

‘I told him you were busy, but he said he could wait. That he
would
wait.’ The girl fiddles with the string of red plastic beads around her neck. ‘He’s, um, kinda creeping me out, Jacqueline.’

Lina sighs. ‘All right. Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.’

She’s halfway down the stairs before she sees him. Loki. In the back corner, looking at the cyborg portraits. Lina grins. Then feels bad. She hopes he hasn’t come to take her to lunch because she simply doesn’t have the time. Not today. Not for the next couple of weeks. Until Ryan’s opening night is well and truly behind her, she’ll be sending Becca out for sushi and eating it at her desk.

‘This is a surprise,’ she calls.

Loki turns and – she falters. Not Loki, no. Not with those scowling, mud-dark eyes. Not with that arrogant, fuck-you sneer.

‘Where is she?’ Paul asks, stalking across the gallery floor to meet her. ‘I know some friend of yours hooked her up with a place in St Kilda.’

Lina narrows her eyes. ‘If you say so.’

‘I just need to have a few words, that’s all.’

She pauses two steps from the ground. All the better to look down at him. ‘Why are you asking me, Paul? Just call her.’

‘Thanks, I didn’t think of that.’ He sucks air through his teeth. She’s always hated the way he does that. ‘I’ve been calling her. The phone’s always off and she doesn’t ring back, doesn’t reply to my texts. Fuck knows if she even checks her email. I dropped by Simpatico but that sour-faced bitch – what’s her name, Melissa? Melinda? – said she isn’t working there anymore. That true?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lina says carefully. ‘I’m not my sister’s keeper.’

‘Yeah, right. Like Ant doesn’t wipe her arse without telling you.’

‘If she doesn’t want to talk to you, Paul, then
she doesn’t want to talk to you
. What makes you think I would be on your side?’

‘I’m not asking you to be on my side. I just need to see her.’

‘I can’t help you with that. Sorry.’

‘Fuck you, Jacqueline.’ He thumps the railing. Hard. ‘Tell me where she is. I’m not mucking about here.’

Over his shoulder, she can see Becca standing behind the sales counter. The girl looks even more nervous than she did upstairs. Her hand hovers near the phone. ‘Is everything okay, Jacqueline?’

‘It’s fine,’ Lina tells her. She takes one step down. Eye level. Leans in close to a face which is so like, and yet so clearly not, the one she loves. ‘Fuck
you
, Paul,’ she whispers. ‘If and when my sister has anything to say to you, she knows where to go looking. Not that you should hold your breath – I don’t hear her crying herself to sleep each night.’

He glares at her, teeth clenched. The muscles on either side of his jaw twitch. She remembers Ant’s account of the night they broke up. The violence etched raw into his face and how her sister feared he might strike her. How he took his anger out on her laptop instead, smashing it to pieces. Lina suspects he would like to do much the same to her right now.

‘You should go,’ she tells him. Becca has picked up the phone now. Her eyes ask the question. Lina shakes her head. ‘It’s all right,’ she says in a loud, clear voice. ‘He’s leaving now.’

Paul follows her gaze. Steps back with his hands lifted. A mocking surrender, that same old sneer curling his mouth. ‘I’m going, I’m going. No need to call in the cavalry,
ladies
.’ But as the glass doors slide open before him, he stops and turns back around. ‘She’s still crashing with you, isn’t she? There is no place in St Kilda.’

Lina crosses her arms.

‘You’re still over in Port Melbourne, yeah?’

‘She’s not there, Paul.’

He chuckles. It’s not a nice sound. ‘You never did know how to lie.’

‘I’m not lying. She had something to do today. She won’t be there.’

‘That’s okay,’ he says. ‘I can wait.’

After he leaves, Becca scurries to her side. ‘Who was that jerk?’

‘My sister’s ex-boyfriend. He’s having trouble adjusting.’

‘Sounds like she’s better off without him.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Lina says, then excuses herself and hastens back upstairs to the office. To her phone, waiting on the desk. The home number is picked up by the answering machine and she waits impatiently for her own voice to finish its greeting. ‘Ant? Loki? If either of you are there, can you please–’

‘Lina? What’s wrong?’

‘Loki.’ His voice sounds odd over the phone. Too high-pitched. Too nasally. Too much like the man who just stormed out of the gallery. ‘Is my sister home? We might have a bit of a problem.’

‘No, she . . .’ A pause. ‘I think she’s still up at your mother’s. Why?’

Your mother’s.
Lina winces. Pushes the words aside. Because that’s good, that’s fine. ‘Loki, listen, I think Paul is on his way over to you.’ Silence. Stiff-spined and bristled. ‘Don’t do anything rash, all right? In fact, don’t even answer the door. Just pretend no one’s home.’

‘What does he want?’

‘He’s looking for Ant. I told him she wasn’t there but he didn’t believe me.’

‘I don’t want him here. This is
my
home, he can’t be here.’

‘I know, and I’m going to ring Ant right now. See if she can call him, head him off at the pass.’ All too clearly, she can picture the scowl on Loki’s face. His knuckles whitening around the handset. ‘Just don’t do anything stupid. Please?’

‘He can’t be here,’ Loki says again.

Before she can reply, the phone clicks in her ear. Lina swears and tries to call her sister. The old number bounces straight to voicemail. The new one rings and rings and rings before finally inviting her to press hash to leave a callback number. She scrolls through her contacts.
Sally Paige
. Hesitates, then presses call.

‘Hello?’ The voice is hoarse, rough as sandpaper. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s – it’s me. I need to speak to my sister.’

‘She left a while ago, dear.’

Dear.
Lina will be happy if she never hears that word again. Certainly not from lips as mocking and loveless as Sally Paige’s. ‘Jacqueline.’ The woman coughs. Clears her throat. ‘I realise that–’

Lina hangs up. Battles the urge to throw her phone at the wall. Stamp it to pieces beneath her foot. Instead, she drops the thing into her bag and wipes her hands on her skirt. Perhaps later it will feel less soiled. For now, she needs to worry about Loki. And what he might do when Paul comes knocking at his door.

He can’t be here.

Lina grabs a couple of CabCharge vouchers from Dante’s drawer and hurries back downstairs. Becca looks up at the sound of her heels. Lina tells herself that it’s merely concern, and not some species of schadenfreude, that glitters so brightly in her widening eyes. ‘Is everything okay?’ the girl asks.

‘A minor emergency.’ Lina drops the gallery’s spare keyring on the counter. ‘I shouldn’t be too long, but I’ll leave you with this in case I’m held up. Will you be all right to close?’

Becca nods. ‘Your sister, is she okay?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Oh, I just thought . . . with her ex-boyfriend coming in here like that.’

‘Most likely it’s nothing,’ Lina says.

‘That’s good, I hope so.’ The girl’s smile is too lean. Too shallow. It doesn’t quite mask her disappointment. ‘No offence to your sister, but that guy really creeped me out. Like, big time. I’d hate to get on his bad side.’

When Antoinette lets herself into the apartment, Loki is right there in the hall, as close to the door as he can get without being hit in the face when it swings open, and she jumps back, makes a sound like a cat drowning in a sack, some stupid girlie squeal that she swallows before it grows up to become a scream.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ She thumps him in the chest with both hands, so hard he rocks back on his feet a little. ‘You scared the life out of me.’

‘Sorry.’ He looks over her shoulder. ‘Did Lina call you?’

‘Yeah, a while ago, but I was driving.’ No kind of a lie in that, although she wouldn’t have answered even if she’d been sitting flat on her arse by the side of the road. No way could she talk to Jacqueline just then. Not with her mother’s words still rattling around in her head like poisoned barbs. She needed time to think. ‘I was going to call her back once I – hey!’

Loki grabs her by the wrist and yanks her all the way inside. ‘So you haven’t talked to him?’ He slams the door, leans past her to check the peephole.

‘Haven’t talked to who?’ Antoinette dumps her bag onto the hall table, tosses her keys into the small wooden bowl her sister keeps just for that purpose. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Paul.’ He says the name like it tastes bad.

‘Why would I have talked to Paul?’

And he tells her about the phone call from Jacqueline, what she actually said as well as what he picked up from the tremor in her voice, and no, he’s not saying that Paul threatened her explicitly, only that she sounded shaken up. She sounded scared – his Lina,
scared
– and if the gutless bastard dares to show his face around here, Loki’s going to teach him what that word really means.

‘Stop,’ Antoinette says. ‘Please. He can’t know about you. How do I even start to explain?’

‘Why do you care?’

That look she knows, and how it frightens to see it on
this
face as well. The curl of his lip, the brutal gleam in his eye like he wants to take someone’s neck and snap it in his hands, like it might not even matter if that neck is hers –
Was that important to you, Ant? As important as me?
– and she moves away from him, two useless steps before her back meets the wall, and she doesn’t even realise that she’s raised her right hand, fingers curled to a loose and trembling fist, until he reaches out and closes it gently within his own.