A Pocketful of Eyes (13 page)

There was a tinny explosion of noise and Toby tensed, then broke the kiss and gently slid Bee back onto her own chair. He pulled a mobile from his pocket, glanced at the number and frowned. Bee felt her cheeks growing red, and she turned her chair to face her desk, as though she didn’t care that Toby had interrupted their make-out session for a phone call. The phone rang for another few seconds, then Toby answered it.

‘Hi,’ he said, his voice rather hoarse. ‘Yes . . . Yes I did . . . I am . . . I’m getting more and more convinced every day.’

He moved away from her and lowered his voice. ‘I know it does, but it’s not like I’m making it up . . . This afternoon? Fine. Bye.’

The phone snapped shut. Bee turned around, trying to look unconcerned.

‘Sorry,’ said Toby.

‘Saved by the bell,’ said Bee.

Toby grinned as if nothing had happened. ‘Another reference to cadavers,’ he said. ‘You’re doing well.’

‘I am?’ Bee wanted to smack the smile off his face.

‘In Victorian mortuaries, they had a waiting lounge for the recently deceased, because people had a phobia of being buried alive. Doctors used to go to all sorts of crazy lengths to make sure their patients were really dead.’

Bee considered coldly ignoring him, but decided he probably wouldn’t notice anyway. ‘Do I dare ask?’

‘They’d jam needles beneath toenails, blow bugle fanfares in ears, pour boiling wax on foreheads and warm urine in mouths, put sharp pencils up noses and administer tobacco enemas.’

‘Tobacco enemas?’

‘Yeah. Using a weird contraption that looked a bit like bagpipes. Anyway, after all that they’d leave them for a week just to make
really really really
sure. And they’d put a bell beside each body, so they could ring it if they woke up.’

‘Saved by the bell,’ said Bee.

‘Saved by the bell.’

There was an awkward pause, and Bee wondered if he was going to try and kiss her again. Did she want him to? She made a quick mental list.

1. YES.

2. YES.

3. YES.

4. NO, because he was clearly a playboy and anyway, what phone call was so important that you stopped kissing a cute girl?

5. Unless he didn’t think kissing her was important. Or if he didn’t think she was cute!

6. And why did he fail that exam last year? Why wouldn’t he tell her about it?

7. Actually, Bee didn’t really know anything about Toby. She didn’t even know his surname. She didn’t know how old he was, or whether he had a girlfriend, or where he’d gone to school. All she knew was that he’d failed an exam at uni, was obsessed with cadavers and animal mating rituals and didn’t like beetroot in sandwiches.

8. And he was a good kisser. That was something she knew about him.

9. STOP THINKING ABOUT KISSING HIM.

10. . . .

‘Anyway, I have to go,’ said Toby.

‘What?’ asked Bee. ‘Go? Now? Where?’ She tried to kickstart her brain back into full sentences, but it was still stuck on Toby’s arms and lips.

‘I’ve got a meeting with my anatomy professor.’

‘You have a lot of these meetings,’ said Bee, as her brain finally clicked from kissing-mode to annoyed. ‘It’s surprising you have time to do any work.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll be in early tomorrow.’

Bee snorted. ‘Sure you will,’ she said. ‘I hope you know there’s an exhibition on in four weeks. People are counting on us, and I have to go back to school in a week.’

Toby took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. ‘I know, okay? I know. I promise I’ll be here tomorrow. Just get off my back.’

‘I just think you should be more conscious of your responsibilities.’

‘Really?’ Toby shook his head and put his glasses back on. ‘You didn’t seem very conscious of
your
responsibilities five minutes ago when I had my tongue in your mouth.’

Bee struggled to think up a witty comeback, while simultaneously trying not to cry with anger and experiencing a quite vivid flashback to the feeling of Toby’s tongue in her mouth. But Toby wasn’t waiting. He slid his phone back into his pocket and stalked out the door, slamming it behind him.

BEE KEPT HER PHONE WITH
her all evening. It wasn’t that she thought Toby would call and apologise. It wasn’t even like she cared. If he wanted to run off every time things got complicated, that was just fine with her. His loss. It wasn’t as if Bee should be surprised; it seemed to be a kneejerk instinct with all men. Her father certainly hadn’t stuck around, and Fletch wasn’t even worth thinking about.

Bee made herself some toast for dinner, and turned on the TV. Angela and the Celestial Badger had gone out to a trivia night, some kind of fundraising event for an upcoming convention. Bee remembered Angela’s giddy excitement as she’d skipped out the door, all green crushed velvet and lace, and wondered how long it would be before the Celestial Badger took up the inevitable role of masculinity and ditched her.

Bee half-watched a crime TV show that featured a dead prostitute and a highly implausible forensic investigation. She hated most crime TV shows. There was never any real detectiving, the technology was ridiculous and there was never an opportunity for the viewer to solve the mystery. Once she’d finished her toast, she turned it off in disgust and checked her mobile. Nothing. Not that she was expecting anything.

She scrolled through her address book and paused at Maddy’s name. She could tell Maddy all about how infuriating Toby was, and how much she didn’t care if he called her or not. Maddy would be sympathetic and say all the right things and make Bee laugh. Maddy would help Bee forget about work and Toby and Featherstone and Gus. She could just press ‘call’, and Maddy’s phone would ring. It would be easy.

Bee sighed. It was what would happen once Maddy picked up. That wouldn’t be so easy. She plugged her phone into its charger and went to bed.

Bee dreamed that she was in the Red Rotunda. Adrian Featherstone was there too, bent over the glass case containing the horseshoe crab. He prised the case open, cracking the glass.

‘Stop,’ said Bee, but Featherstone just laughed.

He picked up the horseshoe crab, which squirmed and tried to wriggle out of his grasp. But Featherstone dug his nails into the crab’s belly, pulling open its shell and ripping the crab clean in half. Glass eyes spilled out, bouncing on the floor and spinning like marbles. One of them rolled over to Bee’s foot, and she bent and picked it up. It was a reptile eye. She heard a strangled cry and looked up. The black scorpion from the glass case had scrambled up Featherstone’s shirt and stabbed him in the neck with its tail. Featherstone screamed, a bloodcurdling, piercing scream. Bee looked back down at the glass eye in her hand, and saw that it had turned into a real human eye, warm and glistening. She dropped it in horror, and woke up.

Toby wasn’t in early on Tuesday morning like he’d said he would be, but Bee wasn’t surprised. She turned on the lights in the taxidermy lab, glanced at the clock on the wall (8:52), sat at her desk and pulled out the exhibition folder.

At 9:26, the door opened.

‘Hi.’ Toby was standing in the door of the taxidermy lab, a bunch of flowers in his hand. It was a fairly generic posy, the kind sold at the supermarket checkout for five dollars. There was a small white envelope tucked into the top.

Bee stood up, her eyes wide. ‘What are you doing?’ She rushed over and snatched the flowers from him. ‘Are you
crazy
? Did anyone see you come in here?’

‘What?’

Bee dumped the flowers into the bin by her desk, then lifted out the plastic garbage bag and tied it tightly closed. ‘What on
earth
did you think you were doing?’

Without waiting for an answer, she marched out of the lab and up the stairs to the fire exit that led out to the rubbish skips. ‘You can’t bring flowers into the museum,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘They’re full of bugs that get into things and breed and eat away at all the animal fur and skin.’

There was no response from Toby and she turned. He wasn’t there. Why hadn’t he followed her? Bee looked at the rubbish bag in her hand and suddenly felt like an idiot. Toby had thought she’d stormed off because he’d brought her flowers. Not because he’d brought flowers
into the museum
. She swallowed and pulled the white envelope out of the bag. Inside was a card with a cartoon hedgehog holding a balloon. Bee opened the card to see small, cramped spider-writing.

Have I told you about porcupine courtship rituals? The male sings to the female, and then they rear up so their bellies touch. Then the male urinates all over the female. All. Over her. He completely soaks her from head to foot. Sometimes she’s not seduced by this amazing display of sexual prowess, so she yells at him or whacks him with her front paws. But if she’s into it, her spines will go all flat and soft, so they can cuddle without getting spiked.

I thought if I urinated all over you, you might take it the wrong way, so here are flowers instead. I think we’ve been misunderstanding each other and I wanted to apologise.

–Toby

Bee dropped the rubbish bag into the skip, tucked the card into her pocket and tried not to cry. She went back downstairs, hoping that Toby would still be in the lab.

He wasn’t.

One of the half-finished critters Gus had been working on was an antechinus, a tiny marsupial mousey thing with big ears and a pointed snout. It was a fiddly piece of taxidermy, and Bee had been putting off finishing it for a while. But she needed something to concentrate on, so she pulled out the prepared skin, which was no bigger than a handkerchief, and hunted around for a pair of tweezers.

She wondered what piece of bizarre antechinus trivia Toby would produce if he were there. For a moment she had a scratchy little urge to look up the antechinus on Wikipedia to learn its secrets for herself, but she frowned and forced herself to concentrate on its tiny paws. She didn’t need Toby’s stupid trivia in order to do her job. She’d done just fine before he’d arrived. And what with his dramatic hissyfit storm-out, it wasn’t as if
he
was going to do any work, so it was up to Bee to get the exhibition ready.

She plumped up the antechinus’s body with cottonwool, and inserted wire into its left leg with the tweezers, being extra careful not to puncture the skin.

Why was she even bothering to think about Toby, anyway? She should be thinking about
Featherstone
. Adrian Featherstone was a much more interesting and fruitful line of thought.

Bee was
sure
he was involved in Gus’s death. He had to be. Was Toby right? Was Featherstone trying to steal Cranston’s research again?

She was itching to confront Featherstone. But was it a good idea? He was clearly a corrupt man – who knew what lengths he’d go to when put under pressure? And if he
was
the murderer . . . Bee stared at the antechinus, who stared back unhelpfully. Bee tried to predict what might happen if she confronted Featherstone.

1. He would crumble under her razor-sharp questioning and confess his guilt.

2. He would crumble and confess
something
that would be the key to solving the mystery.

3. He would go crazy, lock Bee in his office and reveal something incriminating.

4. He would go crazy, lock Bee in his office and threaten her.

5. He would go crazy, lock Bee in his office, threaten her,
then
carry out the threats.

6. Things could go very badly for Bee.

She should wait until Toby got back. He’d probably only sulk for the rest of the day, then he’d return and say something flippant and Bee would pretend to be annoyed, and then he would win her back with his charm and everything’d be okay again. He was immature and clearly flaky, but Bee knew he’d come back. He needed his extra credit, after all. She should just wait. Featherstone wasn’t going anywhere. They could talk to him tomorrow.

The antechinus seemed to think this was an excellent idea.

Bee worked solidly through the day, stopping only to grab a chicken salad sandwich from the café. Thoughts of Featherstone and Toby whirled around in her head as she methodically twisted wire, inserted cottonwool and made tiny stitches. At 5:39 pm, a grating, buzzing noise erupted from her phone. Bee jumped and nearly tore the antechinus in half.

Heart hammering, she put down the tweezers and picked up her phone. It was a text message. Bee tried very hard not to hope that it was from Toby.

Hey sry it didnt wk out can we B frenz I still reckn UR cool.

That was
it
? Nearly two months after Fletch had run off with her best friend and not had the guts to break up with Bee first, and all she got was a barely decipherable text message? Saying
Sorry it didn’t work out
? What about being sorry for
cheating on her with her best friend
?

Bee wondered if she was supposed to feel sad or angry. She didn’t feel either emotion. In fact, she didn’t feel much at all. And she never had, when it came to Fletch. She tried to remember why she’d agreed to go out with Fletch in the first place. Was it just because he’d asked and she’d been flattered by the attention? Was it because Maddy had encouraged her?
Do it, Bee. He’s sooo cute. I’d totally go out with him.
That had been a warning sign she’d missed. Or had she dated Fletch because she didn’t have to
think
or
feel
anything when she was with him?

Bee felt like she’d woken up from a long, featureless dream. Suddenly the world felt
real
again. Fletch hadn’t challenged her or argued with her or asked her a question she didn’t want to answer or bought her flowers. Not like Toby. Toby was infuriating and difficult and mysterious, but he made her feel alive.

Bee re-read the text message, trying to see if there was some subtext that she’d missed. There wasn’t. There was barely text. She laughed, and wondered if it was the hysterical, upset kind of laughter that turned into tears. It didn’t seem to be. The message was just funny. Stupid.

She put down her phone. Maddy was welcome to him. It was time for Bee to stop sleepwalking through life. She pushed aside thoughts of Fletch and Maddy, picked up her tweezers and turned her mind back to Adrian Featherstone.

She should wait for Toby.

Really.

It would be much more sensible to go with backup.

Bee put down the tweezers, scribbled
Gone to see Featherstone
across an index card, and propped it up against the half-finished antechinus, who looked a bit offended.