Sharp Shooter (2 page)
The magic words.
A
FTER HANGING UP
, I sat for a bit. What had I just agreed to do, on the faintest sniff of a job? My life felt so out of control at the moment. No one in their late twenties should be as ‘between’ everything as me. Between jobs. Between homes. Between boyfriends. The only thing that seemed to be on track in my life was my psychic abilities. Kooky was flourishing. Oh, joy!
I pulled on some joggers and scrambled around in my sports bag for my basketball. I did my best thinking when I was shooting hoops, so I headed out to the small square of asphalt in the very back corner of my parents’ yard.
Dad had put the hoop up for me years ago. It was an old-style ring with no ‘give’. The clunky, wooden backboard had lost most of its paint, but I still loved it. In my rep days I’d shoot a couple of hundred baskets a day, and practise my post work around the chalk-lined keyway.
The last few years, it had become my meditation place – even when I wasn’t living at home. Some people escape to the water when they need time out, others do the whole yoga thing, or sex, or mind-altering substances, or whatever. For me it’s always been hoops. The day after my last boyfriend, Pascal, cleared off with our housemate, I spent hours right here, doing nothing other than shooting and rebounding.
I chose free throws today, toeing the chalk-worn line for a hundred shots. By the time I’d finished I was sweaty and hungry, so I grabbed a quick shower and went to look in my second-hand fridge. Cheese, chocolate biscuits and some dried-out mandarin segments.
The chocolate biscuits and I retired to my second-hand couch, and I rang Martin Longbok – aka Bok – one of my two best mates. Smitty, my other best friend – Jane Smith-Evans, aka Smitty – would be picking kids up from school right now; her next window to chat wouldn’t fall until after the acid hour when she’d fed the meerkats, and gargled down three quarters of a bottle of wine.
I didn’t wait to do the
rah, rah, rah
pleasantries with Bok, but plunged straight in when he answered. ‘I need a bodyguard. Bets wants me to see some dodgy guy who runs a body language and psychic’s business,’ I told him.
Bok knows everything about me, including my thing with auras. Truth is, though, he isn’t much good as a bodyguard. Bok is a shade heavier than an eating disorder, has a cute button nose and long, silky, straight black hair most girls would kill for. We’ve been friends since prep when he used to sit behind me in class and hit me with his ruler. I put up with it for weeks, and then one day when the teacher stepped out of the room I pushed him off his chair and watched as he fell flat on his skinny, pretty arse.
We could have become lifelong enemies from that moment, but the truth is I liked his aura. I could see auras, even then, and Longbok’s was a fresh and lively aqua-blue colour.
When I put out my hand to pull him up, he took it.
Our
thing
– our pattern – had been in place ever since. Longbok needled and wheedled, and occasionally pushed me too far. When that happened I resorted to physical violence. After that, he’d back off for a while and remain sweet just long enough for me to remember why I liked him, before the process started again.
Even when my parents decided I was exhibiting concerning signs of aggression, and switched me from a snobby nondenominational school to a snobby convent – which is where I met Smitty – Bok and I stayed in touch. He helped me pass my IT subjects, coached me on fashion, and came to watch me play basketball. In return, I kept a few bullies off his back, and regularly told him how gorgeous he was.
Not!
University was the same. We hung out together for mutual benefit and because we filled in each other’s gaps. He could be smooth and effective when I got plain angry and objectionable. He counselled me against dating dropkicks, and I watched his back at clubs when he got hassled by gay-bashers.
Not that Bok was strictly gay. He’d jumped the fence a couple of times: firstly, falling love with his burly ethics tutor, and when that went wrong, casting his net wider to catch a kinky girl who was financing her medical degree by working part-time as an erotic dancer. These days he sat on the fence: bisexual but decidedly undecided.
When we entered the workforce, we lost contact for a while. I ran the gamut of boring administrative jobs. An arts degree, private schooling and parental contacts made it easy to step into upmarket legal and finance firms. Bok took his journalism degree and tried to cut it in Sydney in the fashion magazine publishing industry. But all that history eventually drew us back together after Bok decided that fashion was muckier than toe jam, and not half as pretty.
He headed back home to Perth’s warmer climes with a wardrobe full of designer freebies that kept him looking sharp at interviews. With his Sydney credentials, it wasn’t too long before he snagged a job setting up an exciting new glossy magazine. Managing Publisher was his title. It came with a swishy salary, promised bonuses, and a swag of Louis Vuitton luggage. He moved into a refurbished apartment in Swanbourne, a stone’s throw from all the most expensive boutiques.
We ran into each other outside Kimmy Koo’s pizza parlour in Euccy Grove. I was wearing a tube top, shorts and thongs, and had a vegetarian with chorizo in my hands. He was clutching a Johnny Depp movie against his Ben Sherman t-shirt. His artfully distressed jeans were tight and crisp. But despite the immaculate grooming, his beautiful blue aura was shrunken and as pale as bun icing, and I knew straightaway he was miserable, so I asked him over right there and then.
We sat up all night talking, about the old days mostly. The crazy things we’d done and how we’d helped each other out. By the early morning, his aura was bouncing blue again.
Since then it has been business as usual between us.
‘Alright, dahl,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll come to Mr Hara’s weirdo studio with you, but only to make sure he’s not a slave trader. Then I’m out of there. Savvy?’
I
PICKED
B
OK UP
outside his trendy Swanbourne apartment block just on dark. This time he wore a black silk Kujo shirt and Ralph Lauren pants.
I had on a tank top, trackie daks and runners.
He cringed when he saw my clothes but didn’t say anything.
Mr Hara’s house was easy enough to find – a half-duplex right next to the train line. The western suburbs are the wealthiest sector of Perth but they have a dirty vein. Along one section of the train line are pockets of cheaper, less appealing real estate.
State Housing, in its wisdom, had built high-rise flats close to the train station and filled them with pensioners and the obligatory addicts. It made for an interesting mix of lifestyles: billion-dollar properties only a couple of streets from the other kind. There was a fair bit of theft in the rich quarter because of it, but surprisingly less than you’d imagine. I sometimes think that Australians are essentially too lazy for the full-scale gang thing.
I’d never had any problem in Crocker Street, but then it wasn’t a place I hung out in. You could get beaten up there for knocking on the wrong door, yet it was unlikely you’d get shot or knifed for your runners. Well not mine anyway.
Hara’s was right on the railway line a few blocks from Crocker Street.
I knocked on the back door like he’d instructed, and a huge Italian lady with a soup ladle in her hand banged the fly-wire open and looked me up and down.
‘M-Mr Hara h-here?’ I asked.
‘You want see my husband? Why you come to the back door? You think this a chop shop? You think I make love pills in my kitchen? Maybe I use your bones for soup for being so rude.’
‘But, I . . . he –’ Bok shouldered me aside and dipped his finger into her dripping ladle.
‘Aaah,
bella zuppa
,’ he sighed, and the woman’s ferocious glare dissolved into a beaming smile.
‘You Italian?’ she asked.
Bok nodded and put his finger to his lips. ‘But my papa don’t know.’
She laughed and stepped to one side. ‘Come inside. I fix you a bowl.’
Bok gave me a smirk as he waltzed on in. As I went to follow, she stepped in front of me. ‘You go to the front door.
Knock like a decent girl.’
I stomped back through the duplex’s neat little yard, vowing never to take Bok with me anywhere again.
A male face peered around the corner of the front door. ‘Hai?’
‘Mr Hara?’
‘Hai.’
‘I’m Tara Sharp,’ I said. ‘I went to the back door like you said and your . . . wife –’
Mr Hara threw the door open wide and gave a perfect little bow. He was a petite, smooth-skinned Euro-Japanese gentleman of between twenty and eighty. His aura was canary yellow laced with purple flecks. When he straightened, I could see he’d been laughing silently.
‘Mrs Hara is as gentle as a kitty, but you are frightened of her. You did not read her properly, unlike your friend who is eating my dinner. Perhaps he is the one with the abilities. Hai?’
I felt myself blushing and my competitive streak reared.
‘Or perhaps Mrs Hara prefers men to women,’ I replied tartly.
His expression became very still, blank almost, and I wondered if I’d just ended our very short acquaintance.
We stood there in silence for much
much
longer than I was comfortable with, before he finally spoke.
‘You are quite right. Mrs Hara does prefer men, especially those who like her cooking,’ he said, then gave another bow and gestured for me to enter.
I felt a wave of relief. But as I turned to walk down the common-wall corridor of the Hara’s half-duplex, his aura produced more purple speckles, and a little voice in my head started chattering. Had Mr Hara just cleverly manipulated me through my competitive nature?
A headache nibbled at my temples and I stopped mid stride.
Mr Hara bumped into me. ‘Missy? What?’
I grappled with a moment of panic. This type of second-guessing people’s motives because their auras were changing was exactly what was making me nuts.
I had to do something
about it.
I took a decisive step forward into Hara’s tiny sitting room.
T
HE SITTING ROOM
was only sparsely furnished – two old armchairs and an expensive LCD TV perched on a sideboard – apart from shelves and
shelves
of ghastly, luminously glazed china. I could just imagine my mother’s reaction, and it made me want to giggle. The Queen of Wedgewood and Royal Doulton would be appalled.
Mr Hara jogged my elbow. ‘You like Wembley Ware?’ he asked.
I opened my mouth and shut it again. How could anyone like anything so kitsch? How could anyone
ask
anyone if they liked anything so kitsch?
‘Very nice,’ I squeaked.
Mr Hara walked along the shelves telling me about the collection of lurid frogs, gross open-mouthed fish, toadstools complete with gnomes, tomatoes and lettuce leaves, reclining kangaroos and a sinister black cat’s head . . .
‘Have you been collecting long?’ I asked politely, hoping my aura wasn’t showing my distaste.
‘Not me. Mrs Hara. I buy her one for every birthday. Still many, many pieces to go,’ he said. He grinned at me, like he knew what I was thinking. ‘You want to get on her good side? You find the marron or the platypus plate.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ I said, dumping it straight into my mental rubbish bin.
Mr Hara finished his loop of the shelves and pointed me to a chair before settling into the other one. ‘You bad liar, Missy Sharp. Now you tell me what you see. What colour am I?’
His question surprised me but I answered it without thinking. ‘Your aura is yellow with some purple specks through it. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘What else?’
‘What do you mean “what else”?’
‘Eliz’beth not send you to me for no reason.’
It took me a moment to realise he was talking about Bets. ‘I . . . err . . . read too much into things. I see into conversations. See energy between people – I mean really
see
it.’ I hung my head. It sounded too kooky to say ‘psychic’.
Before he could reply, Mrs Hara bustled into the room with soup on a tray, which she placed on her husband’s lap before tucking a napkin under his chin. She left without giving me a glance.
Mr Hara picked up the spoon and slurped down a mouthful. ‘So, Missy. What you see then?’
‘Your wife brought you soup and ignored me.’
He blew on the spoonful. ‘What you
really
see? What colour her aura?’
‘It’s mottled,’ I said. ‘Purple and grey.’
‘What else?’
I mused on the way Mrs Hara walked, the way she’d put the tray down. ‘She loves you, but . . .’
Mr Hara leaned forward. ‘Yes?’
I blushed. I didn’t want to say what I’d really seen. I hesitated, trying to think of a way to put it. ‘But she treats you more like a child. Not a husband.’
I waited for his face to crease in annoyance, or for him to throw his soup at me. Instead he said, ‘You not a psychic, Missy. But you got BIG empathy. Off the scale. You come learn with me here. Maybe you use it, instead of it use you.’