Perfections (9 page)

‘There’s not a lot of time, Ryan. There’s still the transportation–’

‘Yeah, I get it. I need to work fast. I can do that.’

‘The paint needs to dry fast, too.’

‘It’ll be dry. Not cured, not sealable, but dry enough to cart across country, you get people who know what they’re doing.’

‘It’s not as though we hire Mini Movers for these jobs, Ryan.’

He rubs at his chin, his eyes fixed on the canvas before them. His jaw clenches, loosens and clenches again. A vein pulses at his temple. Jacqueline takes a step towards him. Places her hand on his shoulder. The light cotton weave of his T-shirt is warm and damp beneath her skin.

‘It’s really good.’ She squeezes, feels his bones shift. ‘I mean it.’

Ryan covers her hand with his own, then lifts it, presses her fingers against his stubble-rough cheek. ‘Thanks.’

Behind them, Zane coughs. Scuffs her sneaker along the floorboards until Ryan turns to face her, Jacqueline’s hand still clutched within his own. ‘Zaney wants to know if you’d like to take a gander at her cases while you’re here. Only she’s too shy to ask for herself.’

‘That’s me,’ the girl retorts. ‘Shrinking fucking violet.’

Jacqueline considers the three suitcases stacked against the wall. One of them is the bright candy pink of Barbie doll boxes, the other two a more sombre charcoal. Vaguely, she recalls the photographs thrust into her hands at Merde. Those, along with the voracious expression the girl wore that night. The same one that’s tightening her face now. ‘I’ve already told you I’m not a commissioning agent for Seventh Circle,’ she says. ‘Dante’s the one you need to talk to.’

‘But you can take a look, right?’ Zane isn’t actually begging, but her tone is probably as close to it as she gets. ‘Come on, you gotta be curious.’

Jacqueline really isn’t. After three years of working with Dante, she knows there’s little chance he’ll give a damn about whatever it is the girl has tucked away inside those cases. Her boss prefers his art adversarial, his gestures grand and overly dramatic and – for preference – flavoured with a not insubstantial dose of testosterone. But she wonders again about the relationship between Zane and Ryan. About whether snubbing the girl would be likely to get the artist offside as well.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘But no promises.’

Wordless, Zane marches over to her suitcases and lines them up side by side on the floor. Snaps them open and lifts their lids before stepping back, hands on hips. ‘They’re sort of a sequence, these three. You need to start from the left and work your way over. Or you don’t
need
to, but it’s better if you–’

‘Stop now.’ Ryan places a hand on the back of Zane’s neck. Squeezes, gentle as a mother cat. ‘How’s about getting us something to drink, eh? Let Jacqueline take her own time with these.’

Zane grins at him. Turns to Jacqueline with barely the scrap of a smile left over. ‘You want Coke? Or juice, I think there’s some left in the fridge.’

‘Juice will be good. Thanks.’

‘Put something extra in mine, little thing.’

Jacqueline waits until she can no longer hear the smack of sneaker on wood before approaching the cases. Hot pink flanked by grey. A wound within necrotic flesh. She crouches before the first one.

Inside, a female figure crouches as well, face tilted upwards. Made from some kind of flesh-coloured compound that looks soft and malleable. Able to be hurt. Silver fish-hooks sink into the figure, golden chains pull in opposite directions. Flesh stretches, skin draws taut. Breast. Hip. Throat. An elbow tugged akimbo. One hook remains unseen, swallowed between the figure’s thighs. The chains seem to float in space, not quite reaching walls which are painted a dark and clotted red. Jacqueline squints. Sees the fishing line deftly strung from the end of each chain to its ultimate anchor point. The entire inner lid of the case is a sheet of mirrored glass. When it’s closed, the figure inside will be forced to stare at herself.

‘She’s young,’ Ryan says. ‘Over-estimates the value of shock.’

The interior of the second case, the pink case, is covered with photos torn from magazines. A roughly equal mixture of pornography and high fashion, Jacqueline guesses. A collage of women, or at least their composite parts. Open mouths modelling lipstick or offering blowjobs. Hard to tell which. The case is filled with doll parts. Barbie dolls, baby dolls, Bratz dolls – all naked, all torn to pieces. Legs, torsos, arms, heads with flat, unblinking eyes but hair still long and glossy and smooth.

‘Too obvious,’ Jacqueline murmurs. ‘She’s trying too hard.’

‘Yeah,’ Ryan says. ‘I know.’

The third case is painted a dull matte black, inside and out. Dozens of small keys, the kind to fit luggage locks, hang from the lid. More fishing line. Little red beads, suspended like drops of blood. And on the floor, another mirror. Round. Its gilded frame is fancy but old, the gold flaking to base metal. Tilted slightly to reflect the face of the viewer, although Jacqueline isn’t at the right angle.

She sighs. Rubs her forehead, already beading with sweat.

‘Here.’ Ryan reaches out a hand.

Jacqueline takes it, allows him to pull her to her feet.

‘She’s young,’ he says again. ‘She’ll get there, she wants it bad enough.’

‘Not with Dante. This isn’t the kind of thing that grabs him.’

‘Doubt there’s anyone it would grab too hard right now.’ He bends down and runs a finger through the dangling keys. They jingle like coins in a pocket. Like thin brass chimes in a breeze. ‘It’s not there, it’s not nearly there.’

‘So why let her bring these over? Why raise her hopes for nothing?’

‘Not for nothing.’ He frowns. ‘Be honest with her, yeah? Don’t hold back. She’s straight out of high school, some white-bread art program that didn’t teach her squat ’cept how to be teacher’s pet monster. Girl needs a reality check. She needs to hit the ground for once.’

‘That’s cruel.’

‘No, it’s not,’ he says. ‘Zane has something, when she’s not trying so bloody hard, when she just lets it ride her instead of trying to force everything into these clever little schoolgirl shapes. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t give a rat’s arse what she did with herself. So you tell her, yeah? Tell her exactly what you think about these stupid doll coffins.’

‘Why don’t
you
tell her?’

‘That’s not my role. I’m here to pick up the pieces and make sure she doesn’t give up the first time she gets bit.’

‘Leaving me to wear the black hat.’

‘Why not?’ He smiles, brushes her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You’ll be the one riding off into the sunset at the end of it.’

Jacqueline steps from his reach. She feels queasy all of a sudden, stomach rebellious, skin flushed. Pressure builds at her temples. Her ears are filled with a low background hum. She shakes her head. ‘What other
roles
are you playing with that girl, Ryan?’

‘That any kind of concern of yours?’

‘Anything that might distract you, is a concern of mine.’

His smile twists sideways but as he opens his mouth to answer, the sound of footsteps filters down the hall. ‘Not my type of distraction,’ he whispers, then winks and turns towards the door as Zane comes shuffling slowly through, three near-to-brimming glasses in her skinny hands. Ryan takes one and the girl offers a second to Jacqueline, her eyes bright with anticipation.

‘So?’ she asks. ‘What did you think?’

Jacqueline accepts the glass. Her hand shakes and juice spills over onto her fingers, sticky and cold. Ice clanks against the sides. The humming in her head is louder now. White noise like the crash of waves on rocks. ‘I, ah . . .’ She coughs, sips at her drink. Some kind of tropical mix, sweet with pineapple where she expected the tart snap of orange. Her mouth is still dry. ‘They’re not the right kind of work for Seventh Circle.’

Zane falters, but only for a moment. ‘Why not?’

‘They’ve yet to mature. The pieces certainly have potential, but they’re not . . . you’re not . . . I mean . . .’ Jacqueline blinks and colours bloom behind her lids. Mute firecracker flashes that linger even after she opens her eyes again. Her vision distorts. Wavers, flickers. The walls twist and warp, shifting in and out of focus.

She holds her breath. Presses the glass against her forehead.

‘Are you okay?’

Ryan looms in front of her, so sudden that she stumbles backwards. A wave of disorientation crashes over her, through her, and now it’s not the walls that are slipping, but Jacqueline herself.
No
, she says, tries to say, tries to force the word through the closed, dry flesh of her throat.
No
, as she falls, as the glass falls, as juice splashes wet and cold onto her legs.
No
, arms outstretched, lurid pink case, doll parts jutting hard and plastic into her palms, scattering beneath her clumsy weight.

From somewhere too distant to matter, Ryan is calling her name.

But Jacqueline is fixated on her hands. The translucent shiver of skin and flesh, the X-ray delicacy of bone, holding them up to the light that surrounds her now like a caul. Hard, white light she has never known before and would give almost anything to never know again.
No
, she says.
Stop
, and,
please
, as she squeezes her eyes shut. It makes no difference. The light follows, searing, scraping at her flesh. Filling her head with the incoherent hiss of a thousand dying stars.

hold on hold on hold on

Stern and familiar, the voice winds around her, through her, within her.

hold on hold on hold on

And Jacqueline wants to listen, wants desperately to obey those words and cling tight to consciousness, to her own fading, falling self. But the light is so hard and so bright and so cold.

And it wants her more.

— 8 —

An
toinette delivers a second round of cappuccinos to the couple at Table 3, then hurries back to the counter to plate the slice of flourless orange that will go with the latte Jackson is making for the woman at Table 5.

‘That it for coffees?’ he asks, steaming the milk.

‘That’s it.’

‘Traffic kinda slow today, huh?’

Antoinette sprinkles icing sugar over the cake and spoons a dollop of fresh cream onto the side. ‘It’s Tuesday, and the weather doesn’t exactly help.’ A fat summer rain that’s been falling since she woke up this morning, the splatter of water against window the only sound in a flat that was still empty when she left for work. If it wasn’t for the feeling inside her belly, the solid, shifting weight she’s come to think of as the Loki-stone, she could almost imagine that he never–

Jackson nudged her elbow. ‘You hear me?’

‘Sorry, what?’

‘Take a break, I can hold the fort.’

‘You sure?’ There should be three of them front of house this shift, but Steff called in sick at the last moment and Antoinette’s reluctant to leave Jackson out here on his own, no matter how sluggish the punters.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ he says. ‘You look like you need it.’

Which is surely a roundabout way of saying she looks like hell, no matter how sweet the smile he flashes as he slides the plate smoothly from her grasp, and fifteen minutes won’t even begin to make amends on that score. She wipes her hands on her apron and pours herself a glass of water. Normally she’d venture out back to the beer garden, but the rain will sound like marbles on the laserlite roofing, so instead she retrieves her bag from the staff pigeonholes and tucks herself into the desperate little table for one-and-a-half that lurks by the kitchen door.

Three missed calls on her mobile: two from numbers she doesn’t recognise and the third from her mother, the latter followed up by a text demanding that Antoinette call back as soon as possible.
Important!
Everything is always
important
with her mother, though Antoinette wonders if this latest urgency means she has called the flat – called
Paul’s
flat – and been caught up on the not-so-breaking news. If she isn’t planning a celebration dinner right this moment. Antoinette shakes her head. Time enough to deal with her mother later, much later if she can manage it. Certainly after she’s had a chance to talk to Jacqueline, to tell her . . .

What exactly?

Hey, sis, guess what I made in school today?

Whatever, she’ll think of something. Right now she just needs to hear her sister’s voice, calm and cool and definitely-can-do.

Antoinette flips her mobile shut and dumps it onto the tabletop, turns it slowly around and around, an electronic death-watch beetle spinning helpless on its back. Briefly, she considers trying Jacqueline again, but the three texts she’s sent since this morning will be irritation enough and she knows that her sister will call as soon as she gets a free minute. If she gets a free minute. If Mr BrisVegas doesn’t need his hand held and his ego stroked every tick of the damn clock.

If. If. If. Way too many of those in her life right now.

‘Here you go.’ Jackson, sneaking sly beneath her notice, placing a mug of coffee in front of her. ‘Flat white with two, right?’

Antoinette smiles. ‘Thanks.’

‘Hey, you want to do something later on, grab a drink maybe?’ Fiddling with the wide silver ring that he wears on his thumb, twisting it around and around and around, fast enough to leave a groove, and the hope on his face so clear and sweet she feels like a dick for having to crush it.

‘Sorry, Jackson. I can’t.’ She rips open the sugar sachets and stirs them into her coffee. ‘Things with me are a bit, um, complicated right now.’

‘Yeah, I know. Michelle filled me in.’

But of course she did. ‘You don’t know the half of it. Hell,
I
don’t even know the half of it.’

Jackson nods sagely. ‘Getting dumped sucks every kind of arse; been there, done that, got the scars to show for it.’ He slaps a flattened palm to his chest. ‘But you should give yourself a night off from the heavy stuff, you know, get some distance? No pressure, no strings, just a couple of mates out having a drink.’

Which is a nice enough save, and so she lets him have it, never mind what other designs he may have had. ‘I’m okay,’ she says. ‘Really.’

‘’Course you are, but the offer stands anyway.’ He grins, bumps her on the shoulder with a loose-curled fist. ‘You know where to find me.’

She starts to thank him, and maybe to say something else besides, something to put him more firmly off her scent because a new entanglement – even one with
no pressure, no strings
, if ever such beast can be said to exist – is the very last thing she needs right now. But before she can find the words, her Nokia starts to buzz, starts to skitter across the table like it’s making a run for it, and she scoops it into her hands. Frowning at the number on the screen – yet another mystery caller – she flips the phone open and lifts it to her ear.

‘Antoinette? It’s me.’

Only a beat to recognise him above the background hum which sounds like the rush of traffic, or maybe the shunt and shudder of train wheels; only a beat to realise that too-familiar voice does not belong to Paul.

‘Loki? Where are you?’ She mouths an apology to Jackson, makes her
I have to take this call
face, and he smiles and hooks his thumb over his shoulder –
I need to get back to work anyway
– then saunters off to the front of the restaurant.

‘I had some stuff to do,’ Loki is saying. ‘Didn’t want to wake you.’

‘I thought you were . . .’
Gone
, the word on the tip of her tongue but that’s not right, not
gone
. Not with the Loki-stone anchored inside her, its subtle tug and pull a constant reminder of his presence, of his
absence
.

‘What time will you be home tonight?’ Loki asks.

‘Um, seven-thirty, eight o’clock, depending on the trams.’

‘Cool, I’ll take care of dinner.’

‘You will?’ Too late to keep the surprise from her voice, and Loki’s sigh sounds like static in her ear.

‘I’m not
him
, Antoinette. You need to remember that.’

‘I do,’ she says. ‘I mean, I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Look, I gotta go. I’m using some guy’s phone here.’

‘Where
are
you?’ she asks again, but he’s already hung up. No point calling him back, what with the borrowed mobile probably returned to its owner by now and Loki loping off on whatever errands he’s managed to amass for himself in the whole three days of his existence. Instead, she sends another quick text to Jacqueline –
not working tnite, pls call, need to talk
– then leans back against the wall and closes her eyes.

Three days.

Astonishing, how soon the magical becomes mundane.

It takes Jacqueline a few moments to recognise the woman leaning over her. Ryan Jellicoe’s sister – what was her name? Alice? yes, Alice – stooping to press the back of one hand to Jacqueline’s cheek.

‘How you feeling?’ the woman asks.

‘I . . .’ Jacqueline coughs, her throat too dry for words. She’s lying on her back in a strange bed, in a strange room. A sheet is pulled up to her waist. The ceiling is made from wide wooden boards painted the colour of old milk. A fan spins lazily in its centre, stirring the soupy air above her. There’s a window opposite, its Holland blind drawn all the way down. She has no idea where she is.

‘Here, have some of this.’ Alice is holding a glass of orange liquid. She slips a hand beneath Jacqueline’s head and gently lifts. Presses the glass to her lips. ‘Careful, not too much.’

The juice is cold and sweet. It almost hurts to swallow. ‘What happened?’ she whispers. ‘I don’t . . . I remember falling.’

‘What about before that? You remember what you were doing? Anything weird, funny sounds or smells even?’

Light, she remembers that, and colours. There was something terrible about the light. Something horrible and frightening that she really doesn’t want to consider right now. Or ever. ‘I was looking at the painting,’ she tells Alice. ‘No, I was looking at the suitcases. I remember feeling hot, and then dizzy.’
And lost
. She shakes her head. ‘Sorry, it’s all a bit fuzzy.’

Alice puts the glass down on the beside table. Ice clanks against the sides. ‘My brother says you fainted. You ever have anything like this happen before?’

Jacqueline swallows hard. ‘No.’

‘How about your family, any history of seizures? Epilepsy, anything like that?’

‘No, nothing. Why are you–’

‘Hey there.’ Ryan appears in the doorway, silhouetted against the light from the hall outside. ‘Thought I heard voices.’ He crosses the room and sits himself on the end of the bed. The oily scent of turpentine slicks the air.

Jacqueline pushes herself up on her elbows. ‘Can someone please tell me what’s going on?’

‘You passed out,’ Ryan says. ‘Might’ve been the heat, I dunno. One minute you were fine and then you started acting kinda woozy, and – bam – you’re down. I tried to stop you, catch you, whatever, but it was all too quick.’ His gaze drops to his hands. ‘Sorry if you’ve got some bumps and bruises; my reactions aren’t so hot these days.’

‘Bruises might be the least of it.’ Alice grasps Jacqueline by the chin and stares into her eyes. ‘How’s your sight? Any blurriness or double-vision? You have a headache? Feel like you’re gonna be sick?’

Concussion, Jacqueline realises. The woman is worried she has concussion. ‘Did I hit my head?’

‘No,’ Ryan says. He glares at his sister. ‘I already told you, she fell on her arms, kinda onto her chest, into a pile of plastic dolls. Her head didn’t hit anything hard. I was there, I saw it. She’s fine, she just fainted.’

‘People don’t take four hours to come out of a
faint
,’ Alice says.

‘Wait.’ Jacqueline is sure she couldn’t have heard correctly. She glances at her wrist, at the bare spot where her watch would be sitting if she hadn’t left it back at the motel when Zane rushed her out of the door that morning. ‘Four hours?’

‘Give or take,’ Alice says. ‘You sure you don’t have a headache?’

‘No.’ It’s not really a lie. The woolly sensation isn’t something she would define as an
ache
precisely. It feels more like she’s floating. Not free, but tethered to the earth by the most tenuous of lines.

Alice frowns. ‘I still say she should see a doctor.’

‘No!’ Her voice is too loud, tinged with alarm.

Ryan gives his sister a told-you-so look. ‘It’s okay. No doctors, no hospitals. Don’t worry, I keep my promises.’

‘Promises?’ Jacqueline shakes her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You’ve been drifting in and out,’ Ryan says. ‘Mostly out. I was talking to Zane about driving you to hospital, maybe even calling the ambos, and then you kinda freaked out. Grabbed my arm, wouldn’t calm down till I promised not to take you anywhere.’ He rubs his wrist and grins. ‘You’ve got some grip on you, girl. I might be the one ending up with bruises.’

Jacqueline tries to return his smile but it feels wrong on her mouth.

‘Zane helped me bring you in here. Thought you’d be more comfortable in a bed than out there on the floor at any rate.’

‘Is she still here? Zane?’ Jacqueline looks over his shoulder towards the door, half expecting the girl to pop into sight at the sound of her name. Possibly still brandishing a suitcase or two.

‘Nah, she, um, she had to leave. Busy little thing, you know.’ Ryan’s eyes flicker away for a second she wonders what it is he’s keeping to himself. ‘Anyways, I called Alice. She’s got her first aid certificate.’

His sister nods. ‘Did a refresher just last month.’

‘Well, ah, thanks for taking care of me.’ Jacqueline tries to sit up, wondering what time it is exactly. Where her shoes are. Her bag. But Alice’s hands are on her shoulders before she’s even halfway to vertical, pushing her back down into the pillow. The expression on the woman’s face is even more forceful.

‘You’re not going nowhere.’