Girl Defective (13 page)

Out on the street Gully was in full dazey-face.

“White Jeep, four unknowns, LOVE LIVE LOCAL . . . What can it mean?”

“I don't know.”

“I'll do a poll—canvas customers.”

I was only half listening because something had occurred to me.

“Wait here,” I said, ducking back into the building.

“Something else?” Granny asked.

“I wanted to ask if you knew someone.”

“That's personal information.” She cracked a smile.

I took out my wallet, the photo of Mia.

“She's the one who drowned,” Granny said. “But that's all I know about her.”

Gully tapped on the window, mugging. When I turned back to Granny, she wasn't smiling. Her voice gave me a chill. “If you go turning rocks over, don't be surprised if you find something slimy.”

Her words reverberated all the way back to the shop.

L
UKE WAS ALONE BEHIND
the counter. He was sketching something, biting his lip in concentration while some head-wrecking drone swirled in the air. He flushed when he saw us and squirreled the sketchbook into the pocket of his jacket that was strewn across the stool. He looked up, a little guilty.

“Hi!” I beamed, then regretted it. It was because he looked familiar there, but this was only because I'd watched him on the CCTV. Suddenly I felt like he knew. My heart beat hard and fast, rattling my ribcage.

“Where's Agent Bill?” Gully asked.

“He went out.” Luke touched his temple as if to nudge the intel out. “He said Eve's coming for dinner. He needs you to close up and clean up.”

“Roger that.” Gully did a swift 360 and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” I hollered at his back.

“I have work to do!” Gully yelled.

Luke flexed and then folded his hands as if they were in the way somehow. He didn't look at me. We had an hour until close. We worked silently in tandem.
He cleaned records, and I graded and organized them according to condition. At one point his elbow brushed mine and I felt a spark. In my mind it grew into a forest fire. I wanted to close my eyes and indulge it, let the branches crackle and pop. Luke was inches away from me. I could see the worn patches on his knees, his hand circling the vinyl. The bright record light was supposed to pick up flaws, but it worked the other way on Luke. He had fine hairs on his arm; the light made them golden. I thought of beaches, salt spray, warm dunes.

He went outside for a smoke. I stared straight ahead, but my hand was creeping across to his stool, his jacket pocket. My fingers felt the spiral binding of his notebook. Quickly, I pulled it out and flipped it open on the stool. My hands felt clumsy; I couldn't turn the pages. I felt like I was reading his soul. There were more pictures than words, street scenes, St. Kilda, and then faces, details of faces. I saw Mia, and then I saw myself. In Luke's sketch I was sitting on the back counter and my eyes were narrowed, a speech bubble said: “Having no taste is worse than having bad taste.” Instinct made me look up. Luke was putting out his cigarette, running his hands through his hair. I shoved his sketchbook back into his pocket and rubbed my hands fast on my thighs. Luke came back in and I tried not to look transformed, but I was. This was the thing: Luke had drawn me pretty.

He was back on the stool next to me; his hand was
pale resting on his thigh. I couldn't stop staring at it. It still had paint on it. His fingernails were all raggedy. I looked at his hand and thought about holding it.

Customers came and went. There was nothing I wanted to say to Luke that could pass for casual conversation. After twenty minutes with barely a word between us, Luke turned to me. He looked me right in the eye, and there was the hint of a smile playing on his lips.

He said, “Your dad's weird and your brother's intense.”

I laughed a little. “Gully has social problems.”

“What's with the mask?”

“He thinks people can read his facial expressions. You ever heard of the Facial Active Coding System?”

Luke shook his head.

“You will.”

Luke put his arm up to scratch the back of his neck. I could see the muscles under his skin. Again, I felt like touching him. I imagined I was the kind of girl who could do that.

“Sky?” It was the first time I'd heard him say my name. “I get the feeling you don't want me here.”

“It's not personal. Besides, I think I'm changing my mind.”

Luke smiled down at the record he was cleaning. And I couldn't stop myself from smiling too. What we had here was a ziplock moment of certainty, of like
and like. Outside, shoppers shopped and schoolkids idled, but Luke and I were in one of those bubbles he'd talked about in Gully's profile.

The door burst open, and the Fugg rolled in with his signature scent of beer and sun-dried urine. Even in the heat the Fugg still wore his fur. Under it was a frayed St. Kilda jumper and football shorts. He had scabs on his legs. Also food in his beard, but at least that meant he'd eaten. Most people meeting the Fugg at close range flinched. Not Luke. He jerked his head dude-ishly. “Can I help you?”

I reached behind the counter for the Fugg's stash bag.

“We keep Ernst's stuff here.”

I hefted it over. The Fugg picked through, settled on a record, and carried it off to the listening booth/tardis.

Luke and I watched him, the silence between us like a moat. I decided Luke was either shy or disinclined. How hard could a conversation be? But then I couldn't seem to start one either.

“Cool phone booth,” Luke said. And I was so grateful, that I couldn't stop the babble flow. I told him how Dad had found the tardis in the
Trading Post
for a hundred dollars and retrofitted it with a stool and record player and headphones. I told him that most record shops limited their listening facilities so you could only hear what they wanted you to hear, but Dad
thought that was against the Whole Vinyl Experience. I told him how the Fugg stayed in there for hours and after he left, we had to use air freshener.

“I've seen him on the street,” Luke said. “And at the park.”

“He's a poet.”

I stared at the Fugg through the glass. “I like watching people's faces when they listen to music. I like how it's private. Even at a gig if you're all hearing the same thing, you're really all hearing something different.”

Luke didn't say anything for a moment, just watched the Fugg. Then he half turned toward me. My hair had fallen across my eyes, and he moved a finger to lift it. “You do that too. I mean, your face changes.”

He stopped suddenly and looked away, but I had a warm feeling growing inside, spreading from toe to tip.

The Fugg came out, his cheeks damp with tears. He put the record back in his bag. He stared at Luke and rumpled and unrumpled his mouth. He bent his creaky body to bow low and when he came back up, he said, “I'm sorry for your loss.” And he shuffled off out into the fading sunlight.

Luke sat as if stunned. His face was like a mask. The telltale muscle pulsed on his cheek.

“I know about your sister,” I blurted. “It must have been terrible. If anything happened to Gully, I . . . Dad said I wasn't supposed to talk to you about it, but it's
hard because I keep thinking about it. I'm sorry. I know that's weird.”

Luke was silent.

I bit my lip. “The posters . . . You must miss her.”

Still nothing. Seconds passed like exam hours. I didn't know what to say. I'd done exactly what Dad had warned me about, and now Mia was in the shop with us and the feeling of her was growing with every second. I thought about my dreams, and what Ray had said, and even Granny saying the thing about turning over stones.

“I feel like I knew her,” I said.

Luke's eyes were like carnival glass; they changed color depending where the light hit. First they were blue and swimmy with sadness, and in the next second they had clouded over.

He looked at me blankly. “You didn't know her. I didn't even know her.” He stood then and shrugged his jacket on. “I have to go,” he said without looking at me. When he closed the door, it felt like he'd taken all the air out with him.

B
ILL THE PATRIARCH WAS
no monk. He'd had girlfriends since Mum, but apart from Vesna they'd been mostly doggerel. We'd seen a lot of stonewash over the years. Every so often one of his ladies would come into the Wishing Well feigning interest in, say, an Allman Brothers album. When this happened, Dad would hide out in the back until the coast was clear.

It was different with Eve. Dad was nervous. Drinking nervous. He looked like he'd stopped for a few after the chicken shop. His eyes were shiny, his gait was clumsy, and he was boom-talking all over the place.

“Dad,” I said. “Take it easy. Have a glass of water.”

He chugged one and then breathed into his cupped hands to determine whether or not his breath smelled. He rushed up to brush his teeth for the third time in twenty minutes.

Eve looked pretty out of uniform. She wore tight jeans and a red cowboy shirt, her hair curled nicely. I liked the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled; and the way her front two teeth crooked into each other, like
they were having a conversation. Eve must have seen Dad was tipsy, but she didn't comment on it. She drank too, but I noticed she had water between wines, and she didn't touch the Dunlops. She was easy with me and Gully. And she'd brought some photos of Dad we'd never seen before.

“Dad, why are you all dressed up funny?” Gully asked.

“I'm not dressed up. That's just what I wore back then.”

“How'd you get your hair to stay up like that?”

“I used to use honey,” Eve answered. “Creamed honey.”

I turned the photos over in my hand. The last picture was of Dad and Eve in psychobilly threads with matching Mohawks. Dad's arm was slung around Eve's shoulder. His head was turned. Eve was looking directly at the camera. The expression on her face was almost demure—it looked odd against what they were wearing, how they presented.

“So did you guys go out, or what?” I asked.

Eve looked at Dad. “Not reeeeeallly. I mean, we were all friends then. There was a gang of us who used to hang out.”

“I had a crush on you,” Dad admitted. He had his elbow on the table, his palm cupping his chin, his expression dreamy.

“Eve used to walk up to straights in the street and
force them into conversation. She could talk about the cricket, or how to get red wine out of white plush-pile. She could talk about the Dow, whatever the bloody Dow is . . .”

Dad was talking to me and Gully, but his eyes were on Eve and then it was like they were in their own bubble and there was nothing we could do to pop it.

Eve said, “Did you hear about the Berlin Bar reunion party?”

Dad nodded. “They sent me an invite. Are you going?”

Eve gave a tiny shrug. “I'm not working.”

“You should go together!” I said, clapping my hands.

Dad eyeballed me—he had his finger near his throat, indicating I should cut it out—but I was having too much fun.

He busied himself with his glass and mumbled, “Maybe. I mean, would you want to go?”

It was like watching a couple of teenagers.

Eve teased, “Are you going to dance?”

“If they play Iggy.” Dad held his glass like a microphone and growled into it, “
I am the passenger . . .
”

Gully and I groaned and laughed. With the lights soft and everyone's faces all shiny-happy, I felt flooded with warmth—it was like we'd been infected with a buzzing, shaggy loveliness that I guessed meant the best kind of family. Eve tidied our plates. She did it so fast I barely noticed, and then she was filling the sink
and boiling the kettle. “Sky, have you got a coffeepot?” She didn't look at Dad as she said this, but I could tell she was trying to sober him up, keep him sweet.

I found the coffeepot. Under cover of dishes' clatter I felt the need to explain, “Dad's nervous.”

Eve just smiled and touched my arm. “I know, honey.”

After ice cream Gully pulled his notebook out. “Agent Eve? Can I ask you some questions for my profile?”

Her mouth twitched. “Go for it.”

“Why did they call you Evil Eve?”

“It was just a nickname. People thought it was funny.”

“I don't think it's funny. I don't think you're evil.”

I poked his shoulder. “It's not supposed to be literal, Gully.”

“I still don't like it.” His mouth crooked under his snout. “Why did you become a police officer?”

“I got headhunted. I was in Queensland, doing community work and teaching martial arts to women and children, and someone made me an offer.”

“What's your greatest regret?”