Girl Defective (20 page)

In my dream Nancy was in the back of the Ugly Mug's van. I was standing in front of it, trying to ignore the rocking. Tourists stopped and stared. I said, “It's not what it looks like,” but Nancy was making terrible noises. I tried to open the door. I pulled and pulled on it. I slammed my palms against the tinted windows. “Stop it!” I yelled. “Stop hurting her.” But then the door slid open, and Nancy hopped out with blood on her hands. She said, “Yours.”

The dream changed to the beach at night: surrealistic sand dunes and waves like wild white horses. Nancy was wearing Gully's snout and running along the shoreline. There was a soundtrack, like a sullen bell clanging, and Nancy was getting farther and farther away until she was just a black dot in the distance.

I didn't know she could run like that.

Memo from Agent Seagull Martin

Date:
Monday, December 15

Agent:
Seagull Martin

Address:
34 Blessington St., St. Kilda, upstairs

POINT THE FIRST:

On December 14 at approximately 2042 two males accosted the victim outside the Crazy House at Luna Park.

Point the second:

Male 1 pushed the victim to the ground, and Male 2 yanked off the victim's snout. He said, “Sorry, little pig-dude,” but his face did not match his words. Male 1 was wearing a hoodie with a skeleton on it. Both wore jeans and black sneakers. They ran in the direction of the Ghost Train, whooping and snorting.

POINT THE THIRD:

Due to the severity of the shove, the victim did not get a good look at the aggressors. But his detective's nous tells him the following:

–They were between sixteen and twenty-five.

–They were of similar height and build. Height around five nine. Build: stocky.

POINT THE FOURTH:

Prior to the Snouting, the victim observed at least four instances of young people wearing animal heads/masks.

POINT THE FIFTH:

At the time of the Snouting, “Hold the Line” by Toto could be heard over the PA. This may or may not be significant.

IN SUMMATION

Security at Luna Park is inadequate. The Snouters could well be associated with the Bricker. They share similar sociopathic bent, reckless behavior pattern, and lack of empathy. I suspect they were drug abusers, due to their hyenic laughter, erratic running form, and deployment of the term “little pig-dude.”

ACTION

Create identikits to match the attackers' likeness.

Team with SKPD on stopping the rot.

A
FTER THE SNOUTING, GULLY
stopped talking. I never knew silence could be so loud or so contagious. Dad was the next to go. He spoke to me only in terse monosyllables and acted like my name had been erased from his lexicon. So I stayed quiet too—what could I say? Gully had been hurt on my watch. The greater dangers of the world—what had once been Gully's spy fodder—had come that little bit closer.

Gully looked different without the snout. He looked younger, more vulnerable. I could see him trying to make his face like a mask. He kept his mouth set like a button and his eyes cast low. It was funny—I never imagined I would miss the snout. I thought about all the times Dad and I had sighed about it. Now it was gone, but we weren't happy. We were breaking apart.

I spent Monday in a fog. At library lunchtime I went through the motions. On Mum's website I typed:
It's all your fault.
But it didn't make me feel any better. Quinn picked up on my mood but didn't press me for an explanation. We stared at our screens, side by side. The world was not hostile, just indifferent, and I saw how it
could be—I could drift through it, bumping bodies but never connecting with anyone.

After school Gully was waiting in the usual place. He fell into step beside me. He held his arms straight at his sides, his shoulders squared, and only his hands moved, catching invisible fireflies. I tried faking it.

“Agent Seagull, how was your day?”

Gully's response was to tread faster until he'd overtaken me, and then the sight of his head bent down—minus the snout strap, his schoolbag bouncing on his back, made me feel hopeless and helpless.

When we reached the shop, Gully went straight upstairs. I waited for a moment before pushing open the door. Dad was playing some head-wrecking drone. He was haloed by the record light, his mouth drawn down. He already had a beer cracked. He took a sip and looked at me with solemn, unblinking eyes.

“Where's your brother?”

“He went straight up.”

“Has he said anything yet?”

“Nope.”

“Right.”

That look. I felt so guilty. As if I'd ripped the snout off myself. Dad allowed a puff of air out of his nostrils. The shop sat in quiet disarray. It looked as if he hadn't moved from his stool all day.

“Where's Luke?” I asked.

“He didn't come in.”

“Oh.” I felt my face heating up and tried to deflect. “Maybe he's sick.”

“Well, he picked a great time.”

Dad took a long swig from his beer to finish it. He cricked a dent in the can and dropped it below the counter. Then he lumbered off to get a fresh one. I stood still for one, two, three beats; then I lammed and left him to it.

The flat rang with quiet. Sunlight streamed through the window, bouncing off everything and made me feel dizzy. Something was different about the scene. The TV was quiet. Gully was not on the couch; instead he was sitting at the kitchen table. He had found my box of beautiful people and was going through it, scissors in hand, and making little piles of lips and noses and eyes and helmet haircuts.

I tried to meet his eyes. “What are you doing?”

He kept cutting, calmly, silently.

“Talk to me, Gully,” I pleaded. “Tell me what's wrong.”

I lurked and lingered; I studied the contents of the fridge. “Do you want shish kebabs tonight?”

No response. I slammed the fridge door and rattled out to the living room. I drifted from room to room, feeling melancholy and future homesick. Our building was designed by an Edwardian dwarf; it was all wonky stairs and architraves you could press the flat of your hand upon. Soon all of it would be gone, blasted, the
way of the Paradise, replaced with something heartless and architecturally sound.

Gully's bedroom door was open. I pushed it and stepped in. His mess was far worse than mine. His sheets smelled like boy sweat. The floor was a sea of chocolate-bar wrappers and Coke cans, overdue library books on spycraft, and a paper trail of intel in his spiky seismograph handwriting. On the wall Gully had drawn a neat map of St. Kilda, including significant landmarks and a path that marked the Bricker's “Reign of Destruction.” He'd identified the shop, the 7-Eleven, Vale and Greeves, Ada's Cakes, and Bernard Levon, Tax Accountant. He'd also noted our stakeout locations for the great white Jeep hunt—each Polaroid was linked to the site with a length of red wool. The end result was like a madman's evidence board. Looking at it made my heart hurt.

I crossed into my room and took in the newly bare walls and Mum's bagged-up tchotchkes. The box from my secret record buy seemed to be announcing itself, so I sat on the floor and started going through it. At the bottom of the pile of records lay a boxed set I hadn't bothered to check at the time—it was opera, and opera didn't sell—but now I juggled the inner case. There in my hands was not the promised seven discs of opera greats but a batch of 45s in their original sleeves. I recognized the labels. They were vintage and they were
nice
; I flipped through the titles, feeling a little pleasure
glow. At the last single my fingers froze.

It was “Wishing Well” by the Millionaires, Decca, 1966.

Dad's Holy Grail.

The disk was pristine, so shiny I could practically see my face in it. I carried the record like it was a bomb or a beating heart and placed it gently on my record player. I dropped the needle and held my breath. The song crackled to life, and it was as sweet and deranged as I'd always known it to be. Emotion welled up inside me. It made me feel full and numb at the same time. I fought the urge to run downstairs and present the record to Dad. Only for a second did I allow myself to imagine how his face would transform, how joy would be restored.

You'll see, kids, everything comes in eventually.

But this was a sneaked buy, and now it dawned on me I hadn't even paid for it properly. “Wishing Well” alone was probably worth more than what I'd paid for the whole box. Then again, Rocky hadn't pulled me up on it—was it my fault if he didn't know the value of his own stuff?

The song ended. I played it again. All through dinner and the long hours after, “Wishing Well” stayed in my ear. It felt like the answer to a question I didn't know how to ask, or a present I didn't know how to use.

Q
UINN WOULD HELP ME.
On the second day of Gully's silence she dumped her bag by my computer and waved her hand in front of my face. My eyes followed five chipped aquamarine nails. “What the hell, Martin? Who died?”

I looked at her face. It was open, waiting, friendly. She looked nothing like a bulldog—how could I have thought that? As the air conditioner groaned above us, I told her about Sunday night. I left out the bit about Nancy and the Ugly Mug. I still wasn't ready to explore that particular patch on my crazy quilt.

“And so now Gully's not talking and Dad blames me, and I blame me, and I don't know if it's going to get better.”

Quinn played with her beads. “Does your brother see a psych?”

I shook my head. “He had a behavioral guy for a while, but he's pretty low-maintenance usually.”

“All the same. You should get your dad to take him.”

“I'm so mad at my dad.” My confession sounded puny and plaintive, but Quinn wasn't going anywhere,
and then I was able to tell her the rest, about how the amazing Galaxy Strobe had sold us down the river, and Dad hadn't said shit, and the shop was going to hell in a handbasket.

“Maybe he's got a good reason for not telling you,” Quinn suggested. “He doesn't know you know, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Maybe he's too proud.”

“Mum says he's in denial.”

She nodded slowly. “Maybe you need an independent assessment.”

Fast-forward three hours, I presented my dad to Quinn. Or was it the other way around? The shop was quiet. A little tingle told me that Luke hadn't turned up, but I still craned my head, looking for his shadow by the back-room door. Quinn was rocking mechanics overalls and metal dimples. First she asked if he had anything by Throbbing Gristle. Then she told Dad how she could revolutionize his business. “Obviously you need a website. You need a platform. I could help you.”

Dad looked at her as if she was speaking Swahili.