Chapter 9 #2
‘Celeste! How are you?’ Zoey allowed Celeste to embrace her then add a few air kisses to the mix. Two? Three? She could never remember what the ideal number was. ‘Nick, this is Ainsley’s ex, Celeste. She’s a musician. She helms the Wall of Knobs?’
‘You don’t have to insult the poor woman, Zoey.’
Zoey was about to explain herself until she saw Nick’s eyes twinkling. Right. ‘So you’re familiar.’
‘I’ve seen you lot down at the Crystal Ballroom a few times. Cool sound.’
Celeste beamed, the silver stars below her eyebrows glimmering.
‘We’re in our reverb era right now. You two should come check us out at McMenamins Schoolhouse.
We’re doing this benefit concert thing for Punk Broc.
The Mountain Stoats are opening.’ Celeste’s tattooed hands fiddled with a moon pendant around her neck. ‘Maybe you could let Ainsley know?’
‘Sure.’ Zoey tried to hide her surprise.
Ainsley and Celeste’s breakup had been one for the ages.
There’d been shouting, followed by the throwing of clothes and guitars out onto the lawn of the sharehouse.
Then make-up sex, followed by more shouting.
Then a visit from the cops about a noise disturbance called in by the sole house on the street who was in the habit of calling the cops.
First the backyard chickens! Now matters of the heart! A girl should be able to be free in her own home, Ainsley had bellowed.
The cops had eventually left, although she’d received a citation for the chickens. (She’d exceeded the four-chicken limit by one. And the backyard tortoise wasn’t helping matters.)
‘Who’s your tattoo artist?’ asked Nick, with a nod at her hands.
Celeste held them up proudly. ‘Joaquin. They’re one of Zoey’s roommates.’
‘We’ve met.’ Nick showed off the temporary tattoo Joaquin had applied to his wrist.
‘Have you now.’ Celeste’s thin eyebrows rose like the Hawthorne Bridge when a ship required passage. ‘Our Zoey here is mellowing in her old age.’
Zoey coughed. Never. She would never mellow. She’d painstakingly acquired her emotional armour, and she was going to wear it as long as her spine would allow. No matter how hot Nick was.
Alice licked Zoey’s hand, and Zoey could feel her armour softening. Armour didn’t apply to dogs, after all.
Celeste examined her hair in a mirror shaped like a gaping mouth hanging by its teeth. It could have been Zoey’s for the low price of $700 and some night terrors.
‘Anyway, Joaquin has this new vegan ink, and they invited me to come in to have a piece done in exchange for a social post or two,’ said Celeste, turning away from the mirror of horrors. ‘They’re going to be at the InkWell festival.’
‘So’s Zoey.’ Was that a touch of pride in Nick’s voice? ‘The smoothie shop has a booth.’
Zoey sighed. She did indeed have a booth.
When Ainsley had suggested it the other day, she hadn’t actually been suggesting.
She’d pencilled in Zoey’s details in place of another vendor who’d cancelled last-minute.
At least Zoey didn’t have to pay for the spot.
(Even so, she’d tried to pass the spot off to Nick, but he preferred to stick to farmers’ markets.)
‘Ainsley’s going to be doing the signage,’ added Zoey. ‘She’s stoked about it. It’s her biggest gig to date.’
Celeste beamed. ‘Good for Ains. She deserves it.’
She sounded genuinely happy for Ainsley, and Zoey wondered whether perhaps their breakup hadn’t been their last – but rather their latest.
‘Where are you living these days?’ asked Zoey, curious.
‘The next block over.’ Celeste pointed at a newer-looking red-brick building with floor-to-ceiling windows. ‘You’re always welcome to stop by. I miss you guys.’
‘Holy shit, it’s Celeste from Wall of Knobs!
’ A group of students accosted Celeste, and a conversation about synthesisers and special-effects pedals quickly ensued.
Nick and Zoey waved and continued their art crawl, pressing their way through an installation that resembled the interior of a car wash.
Oh bloody hell, the giant rotating brushes were humans in fringed, squishy costumes. Zoey tossed them a tip.
‘Celeste’s nicer than her stage persona suggests,’ said Nick. Celeste typically performed in frightening fabrics covered in spikes and zippers, with makeup straight out of Hellraiser’s special effects team.
If Julia and Frank from Hellraiser could find love, so could Zoey. Right?
‘I’m not sure Ainsley would agree.’ Zoey sighed.
Her phone buzzed: someone had left a one-star review because the shop had run out of the mushroom smoothies.
Well, that, and apparently a customer had been behaving oddly outside.
It’s Portland! she wanted to scream. People are always behaving oddly outside!
‘All right there?’ Nick reached over to rub the frown lines that appeared between her eyes when she was stressed.
The movement surprised her, and yet … she didn’t jump away, the way she might ordinarily. Because she could see it. She could see how he could be someone in her life. And Alice, of course.
‘Sorry,’ she said, feeling her forehead relax under his touch. ‘Just lost in the minutiae of smoothie entrepreneurship.’
‘Ah yes, day after day of searching for that elusive Kermit the Frog texture and colour.’
‘I’d never do that to Kermit,’ protested Zoey. ‘You know I’m a friend to all frog kind. Now turtles, they’re fair game.’
‘She’s a monster of the worst kind,’ said Nick sadly. ‘And yet …’
‘And yet?’
‘And yet I really want to buy her a set of crocheted pens with sunflower toppers.’ He bought a bundle of them from a street vendor wearing a knitted sloth beanie, who wrapped them for Zoey as though they were a bouquet of flowers.
‘Looks like it pays to be a monster,’ said Zoey.
All right. She secretly loved the gift.
‘Thanks,’ she said momentarily. ‘That was really sweet. I’ll use them to write my magnum opus. Or at least draw some smiley faces on receipts. Oh look, Darina would love those.’
They’d arrived at a booth that veritably bristled with tutus and floofy, tiered skirts. Zoey had never seen such a profusion of sequins: it was lucky the sun was low, or the light rebounding off the outfits might well have set something on fire.
‘Speaking of Darina.’ Nick held a giant sparkly bow over Alice’s head in thoughtful assessment. ‘She was meant to come out to the farm for a small-business assessment thing the other day.’
‘She didn’t show?’ Zoey was surprised. Darina was one of the least flaky people she knew. She built in extra commute time to allow for spontaneous cartwheeling.
‘Oh, she showed. But I think she had a fever or something – maybe something’s going around. She was shambling all about the place, making no sense whatsoever. In the end I had to call for help.’
Zoey made a face at a ruffled collar. ‘I hope she’s all right. I haven’t seen her at the shop in a few days, actually. I just assumed she was off doing a handstand somewhere. But I’ll ask June next time she comes in.’
‘Good idea. I just hope she doesn’t have to pay out for the rideshare she ruined. Straight into the ditch, smoothie all over the upholstery.’
‘Shouldn’t drink and drive, I guess,’ said Zoey. ‘Especially when you can barely see over the dashboard to begin with.’
But something about the situation made her feel a tad uneasy.
First Nestor’s strange behaviour behind the dumpster.
Sascha had said that he hadn’t been in to work since – he must’ve scavenged and eaten something well beyond its due date.
Then Nova, who’d left Opal in the lurch the other day and apparently wasn’t answering his calls.
And now Darina. The city of Portland was known for being the very embodiment of the artistic temperament, but was it normal for this many people to go off the rails all at once?
Perhaps it was an early seasonal affective disorder thing.
They’d reached the end of the art crawl, as marked by a security barrier decorated with shimmery bunting and balloon animals.
There, at the very corner of the street, was a tiny building with painted-over windows and decorative tiling in the shape of an open book.
An extremely stoned guy sat on a fire hydrant spinning a sign that read Slam Poetry.
‘All roads lead to slam poetry,’ whispered Nick.
Zoey grinned, her thoughts about Darina and the others now on the backburner. ‘Uh-huh. It’s like reposting Tom Holland dancing to “Umbrella”. We can’t not do it.’
‘Even Alice wants to,’ agreed Nick.
Alice was sniffing around at the tiled front entrance for reasons that Zoey wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
‘Oh shit, the mime’s back,’ she whispered, pointing. ‘And I still can’t read his expressions, but I’m pretty sure he’s angry.’
‘That settles it. We’re going in. C’mon.’
Nick pulled her through the black front door, slapping a twenty down on the counter where a bored individual in an ironic trucker’s cap and dramatic suspenders squinted at a volume of Richard Brautigan short stories in the changeable light of a lava lamp.
Not looking up from the Brautigan, Trucker Cap pointed down a flight of stairs lit only by the type of glow-in-the-dark star stickers that had adorned Zoey’s childhood best friend’s bedroom. Zoey ran her hands over the stars as she descended the steps, Alice’s nails clicking along beside her.
‘I always wanted a set of these,’ she admitted.
Nick’s hand covered hers. ‘What’s stopping you now?’
Zoey frowned. ‘They’re silly.’
‘Frog and Toad are silly,’ he pointed out.
He had a point. But perhaps that wasn’t what she’d meant. Perhaps what she’d meant was that they were part of a childhood that was so divergent from her own that it didn’t make sense that they’d actually find their way into her life.
They paused on a triangular threshold that led down to the event space – Zoey could hear the murmuring of tipsy voices. Before Zoey could take another step, Nick put his arm around her again.