Perfections (13 page)

‘See, now I feel like a right shit.’

‘Is that a step up or a step down from being an arsehole?’

He smiles. ‘Touché.’

‘Just make sure those photos are good ones, all right? Dante needs to be reassured that there’s still a viable show here.’

‘Why don’t you stick around? Pick the shots you want to send to him, and later we’ll go out and have a drink. Tim knows this bar, says they got a tree growing right in the middle of the place. For real.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Nah, it goes up through the roof. There’s a skylight or something.’

‘I mean, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a drink with you.’

‘I knew what you meant.’ He steps closer, places a hand on her shoulder. ‘Just . . . this is gonna sound like a line, but I really don’t want you to go.’

‘Ryan, I–’

He kisses her. She could have dodged. Could, with some grace even, have slipped sideways, moved beyond his reach. Instead, she allows his mouth to find hers. Notes the firm, insistent press of his lips, the scrape of his stubble against her chin. His dreads fall gently against her face, their now familiar scent clear and sharp. Not eucalyptus, she realises at last, but ti-tree oil. A short-lived cure
de jour
from her childhood, their mother dabbing it on scratches and scrapes and mosquito bites for one whole summer before moving on to some other miraculous all-natural alternative.

Ryan slides his hands to her hips, tries to pull her body closer, but Jacqueline steps away. From him, and from the nascent warmth between her thighs. The time for playing that particular game is over; too many complications sit between them now, and she has too little interest in disentanglement.

‘Enough,’ she says, crossing her arms.

‘Really?’ Ryan asks. His eyes gleam. ‘I got the feeling there was maybe a little something going on here.’ He flicks his index finger back and forth between the two of them. ‘Did I get that wrong?’

Jacqueline considers the possible scenarios. The possible outcomes. Leverage. Complications. Consequences. Narrows down the response most likely to flatter and please. Most likely to keep him onside. ‘Perhaps not entirely
wrong
,’ she says. ‘But I still have to leave tomorrow, and you’re still a client. I don’t see too many ways for this not to end in a mess.’

Ryan grins. ‘I like mess.’

‘You like distraction. Procrastination as well, it seems.’

‘No, I like
you
.’ He taps his forehead. ‘I like how you make me think.’

‘Now
that
sounds like a line.’

‘Maybe. Don’t mean it isn’t true.’ His smile softens. ‘Come on, girl, you can’t say you don’t feel something happening here.’

Jacqueline isn’t sure how to respond, so elects to say nothing. Simply stands with lips pressed close together, arms still crossed over her chest. Holding his gaze, unblinking, as the seconds swell long and slow between them.

‘Okay,’ Ryan says at last. ‘But how about this: after the show, when the monkeys have danced and the organ grinders have counted their pennies and packed up their music boxes, how about you let me take you out to dinner?’

‘I don’t–’

‘No expectations, and no more of this
client
bullshit getting in the way. A clean slate, yeah? A do-over, you and me.’

‘Fine,’ Jacqueline tells him,
if that’s what it takes, then fine.
Because she’s exhausted. Because her bones feel like undercooked spaghetti, spongy and brittle all at the same time, and it’s easier to simply agree, then worry about wriggling out of it later. Right now, all she wants to do is wind up this disaster of a trip and crawl back to Melbourne. Face up to whatever fire and brimstone Dante has brewing for her, and hope she can finagle her way back into his good graces.

‘You promise?’ Ryan is asking. His right hand carves the air between them and she pauses only briefly before meeting it with her own. He squeezes her fingers. Circles his thumb slowly over the back of her hand.

‘I promise,’ she lies.

A flash of headlights as she leaves Simpatico, accompanied by the triple staccato beep of a car horn, and Antoinette shades her eyes with one hand, squints at the red hatchback parked in the loading zone. ‘Ant,’ Greta calls, waving a lace-gloved hand from the driver’s side window, ‘Come, please. We need to talk.’ Black-lipped smile, black-bobbed hair flawless as usual, glinting dark beneath the streetlights, and Antoinette sighs, rubs her bare arms as she crosses the street.

‘It’s late, Greta. I’m on my way home.’

‘Ja, ja, but please come in the car. I shall take you.’

The way Greta drives, zipping at speed around corners, running lights even as the amber flashes to scarlet, Antoinette is glad of the late hour, of the traffic moving sparse along the roads. Pausing only to heed the flat, robotic instructions of the GPS unit, Greta rattles on about Paul, Paul, Paul: how
angry
he still is about all of it –
livid, Ant, positively
fuming
– how hurt as well, wounded beyond measure, but how she thought he was beginning to calm down until this last thing, this thing with the coat.

‘I cannot understand.’ Shadowed gaze flicking towards the rear-view mirror, small hands wrenching the steering wheel around another bend. ‘I cannot
understand
why you would
do
such a thing.’

‘Wait. What are you talking about?’

‘His coat, his lovely
leather
coat. Left in so many
shreds
, like some
creature
clawed it to bits and pieces.’

Antoinette frowns. ‘It wasn’t me.’

‘But who else would have a
reason
?’

‘Paul’s not the nicest guy, you know. Maybe he pissed someone off.’

‘But things of
yours
were missing. Who else would
take
them?’

‘Oh, for godsake! Paul was
there
the other night when I came and picked up my stuff. Is he still trying to say I broke in and trashed the place?’

Greta throws her a glance, eyebrows drawn crypto-quizzical. ‘The other
night
? No, no, Ant – I am talking about what happened
today
.’

‘Today? I’ve been at work all day.’

‘Really?’ Doubtful now, aggression veering towards uncertainty. ‘But,
all day
? When you have only now just finished?’

‘That’s right,’ Antoinette says. ‘
All day
.’ Echoing the other woman’s emphasis, lunch
and
dinner, thanks very much for asking, a bloody never-ending nightmare of a double shift that Greta is more than welcome to verify with the restaurant tomorrow if she cares to – if Antoinette’s word isn’t enough, and there’s no reason to think that it will be, not so long as Paul has a tongue to counter it.

‘That is not fair, Ant. I am your friend as well–’

‘Yeah right. You’d
live
inside his arse if you could.’ Turning to stare out of the window, prickly silence broken only by toneless machine directions and the overly dramatic sighs of Greta as she speeds them through the streets. Why the woman even bothered to come is beyond Antoinette. Greta should be glad of the split, delighted to have Paul all to herself once again. And maybe she was, maybe all this shit was down to her after all: Greta with her spare key and the pocket knife she carries to cut the tips off her thin black cigars, the knife or maybe just a pair of kitchen scissors clutched in a black-taloned hand, silver blades slicing through leather and blame laid where it could never be forgiven.

Greta, sowing salt on fields already razed. Just to be sure.

But then, why is she here?

Question is, girlie-girl, why do you care?

She doesn’t. Whatever happened at Paul’s place, whoever tore up his precious jacket, it has absolutely
nothing
to do with her. Managing to hold onto this conviction right up until they pull over outside the apartment block, most of the windows dark at this time of night, but the ones to her sister’s living room still bright-lit and only partially curtained, the glass door open and there on the balcony, a tall and slim-shouldered silhouette, standing motionless in the still air.

Why do you want the car?

Just some stuff I need to do.

She opens the car door, the interior light flickering yellow and wan, and above her the balcony figure raises a hand, waves it, quick side-to-side gesture like a metronome, like Paul–

‘Ant,
truly
, I am sorry.’ Greta, reaching to grasp Antoinette by the arm, lace-cold fingers squeezing tight. ‘Paul thought – and I . . . well. It is a
puzzle
then, a little mystery for us, ja?’

Antoinette pulls away, muttering her thanks as she exits the car – for the lift, for the apology even, because the woman does look contrite,
truly
, gnawing waxy black from her bottom lip to reveal the pink glistening beneath, wet and oddly vulnerable – and by the time she looks up again, the balcony is empty, the door closed and curtained against the night.

‘I shall talk to Paul,’ Greta insists. ‘I can do that, at the least.’

‘Just leave it. Seriously, we’re over. We’re
done
.’

At that Greta narrows her eyes, narrows her mouth to a thin line, turning frontwards with both hands clamped to the steering wheel, and Antoinette sighs –
why are you here, Greta? what could you possibly want?
– the car door heavy in her exhausted fingers, slipping as she moves to close it and slamming hard. In darkness and silence, the sound echoes, sharp and clear as a slap across the face.

Loki, a glass of red wine in each hand, smiling wide as she stalks into the kitchen and slings her bag onto the bench. ‘Hey–’

‘Give me back my car key,’ she says, holding out a flattened palm.

He puts one of the glasses down onto the bench, takes a slow and deliberate sip from the other before digging into the pocket of his jeans. ‘I needed it.’ He drops the key into her hand. ‘I told you.’

‘And I told you it was way too risky.’

‘Nothing happened, everything’s fine.’

‘Oh yeah, everything’s just peachy.’

‘What do you–’

‘I know you went to the flat today. What the hell were you thinking?’

‘I was
thinking
you might like the rest of your things.’

‘God, Loki, I could have gotten them anytime. What if Paul had been there, what if he’d seen you?’

‘I’m not stupid.’ Wounded, his glare, but sharp-edged all the same. Relating how he watched, waited for Paul to leave the flat, library-bound no doubt with laptop bag slung over his shoulder and a scowl on his face. Waiting out a further ten minutes, just to be certain, before letting himself in with the key Antoinette buried in the garden all those years ago.

‘Wait,’ she says, startled. ‘How did you know about that?’ The
spare
spare key –
For Emergency Use Only
– tucked safe inside an empty mustard jar and dug into the ground beneath the geranium that grew rampant and pink beside their front gate. Her mother’s trick, interring keys; safer than tucking them beneath doormats or windowsills or potted plants, though Antoinette had all but forgotten about the one she’d buried, had never even told Paul for fear he would think it childish.

Loki taps his forehead. ‘What you know, I know.’

‘Really?’ News to her, and troubling. ‘I didn’t realise it worked like that.’

‘It’s not like I can read your mind or anything.’

‘But you know . . . what, exactly?’

He shrugs. ‘If it’s about Paul, about you and Paul, then it’s in my head. Only . . . it feels vague somehow, like it’s not really mine to have.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘And you think I do?’ he says. ‘I have all these memories, all this stuff that I know – or
think
that I know – only none of it’s for real. I haven’t done any of it myself, haven’t learned anything directly. It’s all just . . . here.’

Free hand holding his head now, fingers caged around his temple, flexing slightly as he tries to explain how it feels: not
wrong
exactly, but off kilter, out of sync with whatever slim sense of self he’s managed to so far patch together. Too many recollections, flattened like photographs, like leaves pressed dry between pages in his mind, and Loki impelled to revisit – no, to
visit
, for the
first
time – as much as he can, to overlay abstraction with solid experience and, finally, make his mind his own.