Girl Defective (19 page)

Finally Nancy was tired. We grabbed a booth in the fake tram, and I waved Gully and Luke off to shoot ducks or extract something cheap and flammable by way of the Claw. I pulled a thread out of the stitching of my dress while Nancy filled the water pistol she'd won on the laughing clowns.

“Looks real, doesn't it?”

She pointed it at me and I flinched.

“You're funny.” Nancy blew on the tip, then tucked the pistol in her vest pocket. She rearranged her scarf so that it hung long and loose.

“So what's going on with Luke?” she asked.

“We kissed.”

“You didn't!”

“We did! In the shop.”

“What was it like?”

“It was . . . swift and soft.”

Nancy tossed her hair. “Guys who kiss soft are king.”

“He's acting weird, though.”

“That means he likes you.”

“You think?”

“I
know
.”

Her phone buzzed. She read the text and put her phone back in her bag. “I want to go on the Scenic Railway, and after that it should be Otis time.” I must have looked glum then, because she patted my knee. “It doesn't always have to be just us, you know. It's a big world, monkeyface.”

I looked away. Suddenly I felt like I couldn't breathe. There was a fat man sitting on my chest, having a good laugh while he was at it. Nancy noticed my strangled look.

“You okay?”

“No,” I spluttered.

“Put your head between your legs. Do it now.” She pushed my head down. I took greedy gulps of air. The world smelled rank. After a while my breathing steadied. Slowly I raised my head. I looked out the window. Gully and Luke were standing by the food truck watching the popcorn pop.

“You scared me,” Nancy said. She laughed, but I couldn't bring myself to laugh with her.

T
HE SCENIC RAILWAY WOULD
have qualified as an old St. Kildan. It had been around since the 1930s. Its white wood lattice lassoed the park and made all the other rides with their Day-Glo and bad murals look crass. From the highest point I could see St. Kilda's up-down streets, her patches of green, her apartment blocks like computer monitors stacked on top of each other.

“Let's take the first cart,” Nancy said. “It'll be scarier.”

The man sitting behind us was staring at Nancy. If I could feel it, then she could. He tapped her shoulder and she turned, but only slightly.

“Remember me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Come on. You sure you don't remember me?”

Nancy twisted in her seat and took a good long look.

“I don't know you, Jack.” She turned back, smiled at me.

But seconds later the guy was at her again. “Why don't you come and sit with me?”

“Because I'm sitting with my girl.”

“Are you dykes?”

“Yeah, we're big dykes. We're so dykey it's not funny.” Nancy threw her arm around me and went “Mwah” into my neck. I felt a tiny bomb explode inside.

The man leaned forward between us. “How 'bout both of you come sit with me? I'll be piggy in the middle.” I could smell his breath. Hot dogs.

The attendant lowered the safety bar, and the man was forced to sit back, but the feeling of menace lingered. Then the cart began to climb and anticipation of another kind fluttered in my stomach. Just before the first big dip he said, “You remember me.”

Nancy threw her arms up and screamed.

The cart was clattering, reeling. We jolted with it. Nancy's hair lashed about. Her bangles clashed impressively. She wouldn't grip the bar. My knuckles were white around it. I could see people on the foreshore, the blue sea. Luke and Gully were down at the bottom, over near the carousel with our bags. I waved, but they weren't looking up.

Afterward the attendant lifted the bar, and Nancy and I wobbled down the rickety steps. The guy picked up where he'd left off. On firm ground he was less menacing. His body looked out of proportion. He was short, and he stood like it, stumpy legs spread, chest pushed out. He had a thin mustache and prominent ears. Something about him was familiar—he could
have been a customer. He looked like he'd be into Eric Clapton or Rush. Seventies fallout guy.

“Yours,” Nancy whispered. Nervous laughter erupted from my mouth.

“What do you say, girls?” His tongue darted skinkishly. “I've got my van. We could have a real good time.”

Nancy stopped. She pulled the water pistol from her waistcoat and pointed the pistol at his crotch. “Don't move,” she instructed. The man's eyes shot open. He stepped back and put his hands up.

Nancy squeezed the trigger. The man yelped and looked down. It took him a few seconds to realize he wasn't hurt, that the dark patch blooming on the crotch of his jeans was not blood but water. He almost laughed, and then his voice rasped out, “Fuck you, bitch.” He grabbed for the pistol and knocked it out of Nancy's hand, and then he got her on the ground, and Nancy—Nancy was amazing. She was like Mickey Rourke or something. I could see tendons popping, lines marking her face. Somehow she ended up straddling him—holding his finger. They were both panting. As she held his finger, Nancy looked at me.

“Don't!” I shouted, because I really thought she was going to do it—break that guy's finger—like the blithe psychopath did to the Hare Krishna—and he was going to die from shock in front of the small crowd that had gathered—but she didn't. She let go, got off him, tossed
her hair. The guy stayed on the ground; he looked like he never wanted to get up.

Nancy grinned at me. “I told you it was bullshit.”

She stalked off—this beautiful tank—and I hobbled after her, trying to catch up and catch my breath. Somewhere in the back of my mind, pitched way back, the guy's face waited. Where had I seen him before?

I remembered Gully and Luke. We looked where they'd been standing, but they were no longer there. By now the audience was swelling. It was hard to get through them. I felt stricken. I wheeled around, searching for Gully. I heard Nancy's voice above the whirr of panic. “Is that him?”

We started slow and then we were running.

A small crowd surrounded two figures on a bench. Luke and Gully.

Gully sat very still, his feet just hanging in space.

“Gully?” I squeezed his knee. He didn't move.

“What's wrong with him? What happened?”

“I don't know,” Luke said. “We were standing where you left us, he said something about the Jeep, and I turned around and he was gone. I looked for him, and when I found him, he was on the ground. I didn't know he was going to run off.”

It was only then that I realized I could see Gully's face. No pig snout, just skin, white and vulnerable. Gully stared glassy-eyed at nothing. Nancy had her
hand on her hip. She turned to Luke accusingly. “Where were you?”

“I didn't know he'd run off.” Luke looked sick. And he was still staring at Nancy like she'd done something to him.

“What?” she snapped.

Luke reached up. His fingers touched the end of her long silver scarf. He tugged and it came off in his hands, and he gripped it.

“How did you get my sister's scarf?” His voice sounded broken.

No one moved. Gully because he was traumatized, me because I was spellbound, Nancy because she was disarmed.

“Give it back,” she demanded.

Luke must have seen them all then, like a
Where's Waldo?
of scarf girls. He didn't look at me or Gully or Nancy. He just left, walking fast, merging with the crowd, and he took Nancy's scarf with him.

We had to go to the office and fill out a form. I held Gully's hand. He walked stiffly, hanging his head the way he always did when some unspecified badness had happened at school. In the office a man in a maroon staff shirt asked questions. Did we want to call our father? Did we want to call the police?

“No,” I said. “No. Can we just go?”

The man gave Gully a free T-shirt. Nancy steered
us to Acland Street past toxic-tanned girls and money-boys in polo shirts with the collars turned up and European ladies of a certain age, gold chains settling in their creasy necks.

“What about that Luke Casey?” Nancy clicked her tongue. “What a freak!”

I thought about Luke, had flashes of his sad eyes, his dead sister, the card he'd drawn. I saw him standing outside us with his hands in his pockets. I thought of the way he was with Gully: soft, protective. None of this was his fault. I was the one who was supposed to be looking after Gully. Luke didn't know what he was like, not really. I was thinking, hoping, expecting that Nancy would help me face Dad. But when we were two steps shy of the shop, she stopped.

“Aren't you coming in?”

“Sorry, kid.” Nancy put her hands on Gully's shoulders. “Courage, Agent Martin. This is just a temporary setback.”

She was going back to Otis and the crank of feedback. I watched her go. Part of me wanted to run with her, to fall into step beside her and laugh like Joan Crawford, because my hair was perfect and the world was just a bauble I could carry in a clutch purse. I looked down at Gully, then up at the light from the flat window. Shit. This was not good.

D
AD WAS IN HIS
shorts again, drunkish and dithering around to Fleetwood Mac's
Rumours
. He'd been smiling until he clocked Gully's pale and snoutless face.

He looked at me. “What happened?”

“I don't know.”

“Is he—are you all right, champ?”

“He lost his snout.”

“Where were you?”

“I was with Nancy on the Scenic Railway. Luke said Gully ran off. I don't know what happened. He won't talk.”

Stevie Nicks's warbling was getting out of control. Dad silenced her. He grabbed the phone.

“Who are you calling?” I asked. “We already filled out a form.”

“Well, it's not good enough.”

Half an hour later we were down at the station with Constable Eve Brennan. Gully wouldn't talk at all. She checked him out for bruises.

“Did someone hurt you?” she asked gently.

Gully gulped and nodded.

“Can you tell me?”

He shook his head slowly. And then he started to heave awful wracking sobs. This went on for a while. I couldn't look at him, so I looked around the room. It was like every police station I'd ever seen on TV. Cubicles and computers. Bulletin boards. Ugly mugs.

Ugly mugs! Recognition flashed white-hot. The guy who had hassled Nancy was one of the Ugly Mugs. I'd seen him on the wall at Streetwise and now again on the cop shop pin board. I stared at his face, his whelk ears and skink tongue, his eyes like tiny tar pits, and felt cold spiking my skin.

“Should I take him to the hospital?” Dad worried in a low voice. “He looks like he's in shock. Gully?”

Gully was shaking his head vehemently.

Dad clutched his keys, but Eve put her hand over his. “I'll take you home,” she said. “You've had enough, Bill.” She meant drink. Dad didn't argue.

Back at the flat Eve made coffee. She rubbed my arm when she passed me, but all it did was make me feel lonelier. I didn't want her to go, but she did and then it was just me and Dad and the dripping tap in the background, and Gully was in his bed, and there wasn't even
Monkey
.

Dad rubbed his hand through his hair. “I need a drink.”

“Don't,” I whispered.

He carried the mugs over to the sink. Then he threw them in and snapped.

“You shouldn't have left him alone!”

My voice wobbled all over the place. “We were on the Scenic Railway. It was only ten minutes.”

“You don't leave Gully alone.”

“I KNOW!”

I ran upstairs. It sounded like the bones of the old building were creaking.

There was a thin strip of light under Gully's bedroom door. I put my ear to the keyhole and heard nothing, no talk, no reportage, no crying, just quiet. In my bedroom I found my box of beautiful people and sifted through them, hoping for inspiration or beauty, something, but nothing came. I stuffed the pictures back in the box and closed the lid. Then I dumped it outside my door.