Queen of the Night (2 page)

I can tell straightaway I’m

dealing with a high-maintenance customer. Strolling the aisles in click-clack heels, picking at the clothes with a look on her face that says none of it’s good enough for her. I busy myself with Dulcie the mannequin, struggling to pull a ski suit off her armless body.

There’s a delicate cough behind me. I ignore it, and concentrate on pulling a blouse over Dulcie without snagging any sequins. Coughing in my ear doesn’t exactly equal asking for help. It’s amazing how many people don’t realise that.

‘I’m going to leave my bags here, okay?’ the girl says belatedly, after she has already dumped her twenty billion shopping bags on an armchair.

I nod. She’s obviously been on an all-day shopping frenzy. She’s around my age, so god knows how she can afford all that stuff.

‘Have you got anything in smaller sizes?’

I sigh and abandon Dulcie, who looks pissed off that I’ve left her with one plastic boob out and no arms. ‘That whole rack at the end is Japanese vintage. You’ll find most of it is pretty small.’

I leave her to browse and peer over the edge of the balcony. Ruth is dusting the record shelves downstairs. It must be nearly closing time. She’s dressed head to toe in autumn colours to match her red hair. She sees me and waves me down with a Chux. I try to mime to her that I have a customer upstairs.

‘What?’ she yells. ‘You have a pet moose?’

I make a pair of antlers out of my fists and position them on either side of my head. Then I grab Dulcie’s loose arms and slap them together in front of my body, making my best walrus sounds.

‘Where’s your change room?’ asks Miss High Maintenance behind me.

I point to the far corner of the mezzanine with a plastic arm, refusing to lose my dignity. The girl hauls an armful of clothes into the cubicle. ‘Can you watch my bags?’

As if I don’t have anything better to do. I decide to leave Dulcie au naturel overnight, and instead straighten
the racks near the change room. I’m just wondering if I can peek inside Miss High Maintenance’s designer bags, when she struggles from behind the curtain. I have to swallow a gasp.

She’s wearing the Japanese Princess Dress.

The JPD has hung, unwanted, on the racks for the entire time I’ve worked here, which must be four months now. No one has ever looked at it, except to laugh at how OTT it is. It’s a riot of salmon taffeta, with a high neck, puffy sleeves and a waist that makes a deep V. There are ruffles on the skirt hem, lace windows at the collarbone, and the whole thing is scattered with seed pearls and crystals.

‘You don’t have a mirror?’

I drag the standing mirror out into the open. I’m enjoying the sight too much to take offence at her demanding tone. To my surprise she swivels in front of the mirror, gazing at her reflection approvingly. I bite my lip to keep from smiling. The colour is terrible on her. She could have been dead for ten days. In the water.

‘I don’t know…’ she says. ‘I love it, but I don’t normally wear skirts this full.’

‘It’s all in the accessorising,’ I tell her, snatching up a nearby belt and looping it around her. ‘You have a tiny waist so you should pull it in tight, like this. You look great. Not many people can pull off this look.’

The girl nods. I should change my job title to Retail
Psychologist and get some impressive letters after my name. And a pay-rise. The not-many-people-can-work-this-look thing gets them every single time, not to mention the word ‘tiny’ in relation to any body part except boobs. The girl tears herself away from her reflection, her mind made up.

‘I’ll take it.’

‘Excellent choice.’

I carry her bags down the stairs. On the ground floor Helen struggles with a late delivery, signing the invoice, counting the boxes and trying to get the storeroom door open all at the same time.

I ring up the dress. ‘Seventy dollars.’ I subdue the JPD enough to fit it into a carry bag. Ruth slides behind me and puts the duster back underneath the counter.

The girl hands me a gold credit card. Out of a lingering habit I’m trying really, really hard to break, I check the bank name on the front of the card, even though I haven’t seen another FutureBank card since that night in Shyness. But it’s just a regular old credit card for a runof-the-mill rich girl.

I staple the receipts together and drop them in with the dress. ‘Enjoy.’

‘Thanks,’ the girl says, finally, and smiles, happy with her purchase. She looks almost sweet.

Ruth leans on the counter next to me, and we watch the girl struggle out of the shop with her billion-and-one bags.

‘Turn that sign over!’ Helen calls from the depths of the storeroom. ‘I want to get out of here on time. I haven’t even cashed up yet.’

‘She bought the Princess Dress.’ Ruth sounds like she’s seen Jesus burnt into a piece of toast.

‘Uh-huh.’ I try not to sound smug. I sound extremely smug.

‘That’s exactly why I hired this girl.’ Helen backs out of the storeroom and squeezes my shoulder. ‘No retail experience, but I could tell straightaway she’s got the Midas touch. You two take off now. I’m nearly done here.’

Ruth leaves to meet her boyfriend Duncan while I switch off the lights.

‘Oh, Nia, before you go.’ Helen is out of breath from moving the heavy boxes, her long dark hair mussed. ‘There’s a special customer coming in tomorrow, but I’m not sure what time. I’ve kept aside some things for her in this tub, okay?’

‘What does she specialise in?’

‘Anything black and funereal. She drops in every few months. Nice woman.’

‘Gotcha,’ I say.

The sun is sinking by the time I walk down Mayfield Street. It’s the nicest part of the day when I finish, when the light is turning golden and soft, and the temperature has dropped enough to walk without sweating up a storm.
I put my headphones in as I reach the station, relying on my music to keep the world at bay.

The train rattles through the tunnel under the river and then shoots through the industrial zone towards Plexus. The Emporium is miles from my house. All up, it takes me about forty-five minutes one-way. Everyone in the carriage looks crumpled and tired and sweaty. A little kid starts to whine. I turn the volume higher, until guitars and synths fill my ears.

I first heard Dreamer rock in this crazy underground club in Shyness, on the night I met Wolfboy. I still can’t think of him as Jethro. A couple of months ago curiosity got the better of me, and I hunted for some Dreamer rock, not even sure if it existed outside Shyness. Turns out there’s a whole world of it out there, online. Turns out I actually don’t mind the stuff. I downloaded the perfect soundtrack for the long commute. One good thing to come out of that night.

I thought there would be more. I wouldn’t have said that about an ordinary one-night hook-up, but nothing about that night was ordinary. Not meeting Wolfboy, not getting mugged by the Kidds, not breaking into Orphanville to get his brother’s lighter back, not the rooftop showdown with the creepy Doctor Gregory. Not the feeling that we were just two stars in the endless night sky, as dazzling and dwarfed and stupendous and insignificant
as that made us. I let my guard down with Wolfboy, and I think he did the same with me. I like to think that I’m a good judge of people, but I guess I’m not.

At first Dreamer rock reminded me too much of Shyness, but I’m over that now. Now the music is only a tool to take me someplace else. I’ve trained my brain not to think about things that are not worth thinking about.

We express through Southside Station and, as always, I hold my breath as we pass my old school and look the other way, out over terracotta roof tiles and other people’s backyards. That school and those mean girls are in the past, along with so many other things from that time. I thought I’d have to wait until I finished school and moved out to change my life, but then I decided to start changing it immediately.

My job at the Emporium has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. A far cry from the days of slimy Neil and the call centre. But my final year of school starts next week and Mum has ordered me to cut down on my shifts, even though I know she’s grateful for the extra money I bring in. I haven’t spoken to Helen about it yet. I’m scared she’ll tell me she can’t fit me on the roster at all if I can’t do weekdays.

The train has emptied by the time we reach Plexus. The ugly towers of the Commons stick up above the skyline. Lights are beginning to ping on through the grounds.

I pull my earbuds out when I go through the gate and skirt the crowded basketball court.

‘Baby!’ yells someone from the knot of players, provoking a wave of shouted suggestions, some coming from kids too young to even know what they’re suggesting. I flip them the finger and watch them turn.

‘Bitch!’ screeches a boy, clinging to the wire fence.

I move to the fence so he can see I’m not scared. ‘Make up your mind,’ I say through the wire. ‘Am I your bitch or your baby?’ I throw an imaginary ball at his face, and laugh when he drops backwards off the fence. I walk fast, not too fast, to my building.

Mum is in the kitchen gathering together her handbag, her textbooks, and trying to tie her hair back.

‘Shouldn’t you have left already?’

‘I know, I know. I got held up making soup for you.’

‘I told you, I can feed myself.’

Mum kisses me on the cheek. She smells of this disgusting peach perfume I’ve been trying to wean her off for years. ‘I just want to do things properly, darling. Message me before you go to bed.’

Sometimes I don’t recognise this new mum, who cooks dinner and goes to night classes at TAFE and checks up on me constantly. She even looks like a student in the new jeans I helped her pick out. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be on the couch all night with my Lit reading.’

‘Good. Don’t stay up too late.’

I hand her a mandarin from the fruit bowl. She stops at the front door. ‘Oh, I checked the train times today. You’ll have to meet me at Central Station straight after school on Wednesday.’

‘Ma, I wasn’t joking when I said I’m not going to skip school in the first week. Go on your own to Fish Creek.’

‘But you never see your aunt. And what about your cousins?’

I feel like banging my head against the wall. She always springs this stuff on me just as she’s leaving the house. ‘First you carry on about marks and homework and university, then you try to pull me out of school for two days. The only reason you want me to come is because you’re scared you and Aunt Shell will wind up throttling each other as usual.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is true.’ I push her out the door before she starts going on about the
sacrifices she’s made.
‘You’re late. Go to class.’

I’ve just hit the steep part

of Oleander Crescent when I see the dog under the only working street light. Its back curves in a bony arc as it fusses over something on the ground.

It turns to me with silvery eyes and flattened ears, before taking the thing in its mouth.

‘What have you got there, boy?’

The dog shakes its head so fast I can’t see what’s clamped between its teeth.

I creep closer. ‘Drop it.’

The dog turns its back to me and steps out of the light. I try another tack.

‘Fetch!’ I throw my apple core past the streetlight, onto
the verge. The dog thinks for a few seconds. Eventually he leaves his prize and walks over to sniff the apple core.

I swoop in.

It’s a dead tarsier, curled up on the ground, hind legs sticking out at an unnatural angle. I prod it with my foot. The dog must have chanced upon it, because it looks intact. No blood or innards in sight. What could have killed it?

There’s a lawnmower rumble to my right, a long gravelly warning. The dog stalks towards me, eyes flashing, hackles raised. I bare my teeth and let loose my own growl. To my surprise I have no problem coming up with the goods. My rumbling throat feels good. Mine. My dead tarsier.

The dog pauses for an endless moment, while the tension builds. Then it suddenly drops its tail between its legs and whines. I stare it down until it slinks away. When I can no longer see it I turn back to the body.

The fur is surprisingly soft. It looks coarse and wiry, but feels like cotton wool. A mottled mixture of brown and grey. I scoop the animal up, its body still warm.

The house is dark and quiet when I let myself in. Paul isn’t in his room, and Thom hasn’t arrived. That’d be right. The sun will rise over Shyness before they show up on time for rehearsal. It never used to bother me. But since I’ve been hanging out with Ortie and Diana I’ve grown used to being somewhere when I said I would.

Even though there’s no sound of amps being dragged over the upstairs floor, the house doesn’t have the ringing emptiness it used to.

‘Blake!’

‘Back here.’

I leave the tarsier on the kitchen bench and poke my head around her door. Blake never closes it. I can’t imagine she had much privacy in Orphanville, when she was messed up on sugar and running with the Kidds, and she still doesn’t seem to need it. At the same time she rarely ventures upstairs, where my bedroom is. I was worried at first, what it would be like living with a fourteen-year-old girl, but so far it’s been no problem at all. Blake is not your typical teenager anyway.

Her room bursts with warm candlelight. The mattress—dragged from Mum and Dad’s old room— takes up at least two-thirds of the floor space. Down the spare wall are bookshelves we made out of planks of wood and bricks. Blake sits on her bed, surrounded by books and notebooks and pillows.

‘Power off again?’ The house is powered from an illegal tap so I don’t have to pay bills.

‘Patchy,’ she says. ‘I was getting sick of it going on and off so I decided to stick with candles.’

‘What are you working on this week?’

‘Fireflies.’

Blake brushes her hair out of her face, and holds up a tatty book.
Nocturnal Insects.
A sketchbook lies open on her bed, filled with drawings of insects. They’re pretty good. I keep encouraging Blake to show Ortie her sketches, but she’s too shy.

I slide between the bed and the bookshelves, leaning down to scan the hundreds of books.

‘Have you got anything about tarsier?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Tell me again where you got so many books from?’ Some of the books look old and valuable. I can’t imagine her precious library stored in Orphanville. The Kidds are such pyromaniacs you could never be sure they wouldn’t add the books to a bonfire.

Blake doesn’t answer. She squints at her shelves. ‘I could get you something about them if you’re interested.’

‘Don’t worry too much about it,’ I say. ‘Come and see this.’

In the kitchen I show her the tarsier. It lies there, still soft, maybe even still slightly warm, looking more asleep than dead, except for its staring eyes. A monkey less than half the size of a possum.

Blake blinks down at it. She pushes her glasses onto the top of her head. ‘Oh.’ Her breath escapes. ‘What happened to it?’

‘I don’t know. I found it on the street. I can’t see
anything wrong with it. I thought you might know.’

Blake gently rolls the tarsier over in her hands. She came in close contact with them all the time when she was with the Kidds. The tarsier are more like colleagues than pets to them. Just as likely as the Kidds to steal, or jump out at you in a dark alley. The perfect nocturnal sidekicks.

Sympathy and scientific interest battle it out on her face. I can see her dissecting the animal with her mind, trying to see what’s wrong. If Blake hadn’t dropped out of school so young she might have had a chance to study science or zoology at university.

‘It looks healthy,’ she says.

‘Apart from the fact that it’s dead.’

‘It’s underweight. I can feel its ribs.’

‘I couldn’t think of anyone who could tell us what happened to it.’

There’s someone for everything in Shyness. If you want house paint or minigolf or a massage, that’s easy. But I can’t think of a single doctor or vet, not just here, but even in Panwood. Well, apart from the obvious doctor. And chances are he bought his bogus title on the internet.

‘Should we bury it?’ Blake asks.

‘I suppose. We could find a spot in the backyard.’

‘I might pop it in the fridge for a while first. I could take it to my friend and see what she thinks.’

‘What friend?’

She shakes her head, then fetches the cling wrap from a drawer and lays a piece out next to the tarsier. I didn’t even realise we had cling wrap. It must have been there since Mum bought it. Even now, three years after they left, the ghost of my parents’ presence in the house gives me a shiver.

‘Why all the secrecy?’

She doesn’t answer.

I don’t really care. I’m glad Blake has a friend besides me. She should get out more often than she does. I turn away from her wrapping up the corpse. The sight of fur pressed tightly against the clear plastic wrap makes me queasy. I check the fridge. There’s not much in there: a bottle of tomato sauce and an onion. I suppose a dead tarsier won’t hurt.

‘Seen Paul? We’re supposed to have rehearsal.’

‘Nope.’

I’m not surprised. While Paul has technically been living here since Thom kicked him out of the cottage to make way for his girlfriend, lately it seems as if he’s never home. I thought we’d be better friends than ever, living in the same house, but it hasn’t turned out that way.

I leave Blake in the kitchen and wander upstairs to call Thom. It sounds as if I woke him up, but Thom always sounds like he just woke up.

‘‘Sup?’

‘Rehearsal. It’s Thursday night. Rehearsal’s what’s up.’

‘Haven’t you spoken to Paul? Rehearsal’s off.’

‘I haven’t seen him for days. Speaking to me isn’t high on his agenda. It’s nice to know he keeps in touch with you, though.’ I push open my bedroom window for air. The band is the only thread keeping us three connected. If we lose that, I don’t know what’s left.

‘Nah, it’s not like that. I ran into him on the street, totally random. He said he couldn’t make it to rehearsal.’

‘Where?’

‘Near Umbra. We went to this cool, uh, I guess it was a house party where everyone had to bring something they didn’t want anymore, and then you could take home anything you wanted. I got an awesome set of headphones. You should have come.’

Yeah, I might have been up for that if I’d been invited. Before the fact, and not after. I’ve hung out with Thom and his girlfriend Maggie enough times to know that I’m the appendix of the situation. I look out the window and across darkened rooftops. A long plume of smoke trails from the top of an Orphanville tower. It looks more serious than bonfire smoke. The Darkness is broken along the horizon, a mosaic of black clouds. It’s hard to tell if it’s light bleed from the city, or the reflection of a larger fire.

I don’t like admitting my paranoia to Thom but I have to ask. ‘Is he mad at me about something?’

‘No, Paul’s not mad at you. Why are you asking such dumb-arse questions, Jethro?’

I regret thinking that Thom would be a good person to discuss this with. Maybe I’m paranoid, but it feels as if Paul doesn’t look me in the eye anymore on the rare occasions when we do talk.

‘Because we’ve got a show in two days,’ I white lie. ‘And it’d be nice if we didn’t sound like shit for a change.’

‘Relax. We don’t sound shit.’

‘Don’t tell me to relax.’

‘You never used to care. You’ll be awesome. All you’ve got to do is get your howl on and you sound great.’

‘You used to care. Now you just sit on your fat arse with your girlfriend watching DVDs.’

Thom sighs. In the past he would have hung up on me for less than that. ‘You need to get some, Jethro.’ He sounds sorry for me. ‘You should have called that girl.’

My eyes shoot over to Wildgirl’s letter blu-tacked to the wall below my favourite Long Blinks poster. Thom doesn’t even need to say who he means. How could there be anyone else? I never told Thom and Paul that I did try to call her, the one time.

Thom speaks again. ‘I know you’ve been busy with Ortolan and Diana, but, dude, you’re not that busy.’

I hear a muffled voice over the drone of Thom’s TV. Someone else offering their unsolicited opinion.

‘Is Maggie listening to this?’

‘Ah…no.’

I grit my teeth. Thom sighs again. ‘Jethro, you sound knackered. Get some sleep and quit worrying about Paul.’

‘See you Saturday.’ I hang up. My throat itches. Moonbeams want to drag me out the window, but I won’t let them. I look more closely at Wildgirl’s letter stuck to my bedroom wall.
Nia xx
scrawled at the bottom. Her real name. I know it by heart. I can’t call her now. It’s been too long.

I pick up my acoustic guitar because that’s what I do when there’s nothing else to do. I sit on my bed and strum. The chords stream faster as I warm up. I used to call on the Darkness when I played the guitar. But now I close my eyes and the notes are black ribbons spooling from my fingertips, reminding me of Wildgirl’s hair.