CHAPTER 7
Oh em fricking gee. Boss was right. The coverage from this will be insane.
The whole party will be high-fiving me for creating such an awesome diversion from the opposition’s rally.
Boss has been wise-cracking, the kids have been giggling, and the red dragon (who is definitely not Camilla Hatton) has been posing like a phantasmagorical creature who doesn’t get out of bed for less than ten grand a day.
‘When are we heading back?’ I whisper to Boss through my dragon head.
‘I thought I told you,’ he replies in a loud stage-whisper.
‘I’m heading to the country house now. Allegra wants me home to do something with the horses.
And I can’t give you a lift to the station because while you were doing the recce I arranged all the briefing notes on the seats in a particular order.
I’d rather not mess them up.’ He smiles apologetically.
‘I’m sorry. But you can get a bus, right? ’
I see Archie’s gaze jerk towards us.
‘Yep, no worries,’ I reply, trying to keep my voice light despite the disappointment. ‘I’ll call you later.’
I wave Boss off with a dragon paw and make my way back to the PE shed that sits about ten metres from the benches where Archie is still on his laptop.
The shed is cluttered and dark and smells like stale sweat.
I imagine this is where badass Year Sixes come to vape.
Shelves of balls and bats line the walls, while boxes of folded nets and stacks of colourful cones fill most of the floor space.
My pencil skirt and blouse are folded neatly over a collapsible basketball ring.
I shake off the dragon paws, pull off the foam head then tug the zipper at the back of the costume.
Nothing moves. I tug again more forcefully.
Still, nothing moves. I chuckle to myself, imagining how tragically comic (or comically tragic) it would be if the costume was stuck.
Still smiling, I tug the zipper again, mustering up all the dormant strength from my tennis-serving days.
The tab is wrenched clean off the zipper.
I hold it up to the shed’s window as though I’m inspecting a cursed diamond.
Ohhhh mother of pearl and Satan and all that is unholy. This is actually not funny at all.
Desperately, I try to shimmy the costume off my shoulders but the neck hole is too small.
I tug at the neckline and when that achieves nothing, I spin around wildly, searching for some kind of tool to save the day (a dragon wrench?
!)—but this serves no purpose other than to whack the giant dragon tail against a shelf, which sends a mass of basketballs careening to my feet.
I whimper. This is not worth a Triple-0 call. I could ring the assistant principal but I shouldn’t distract him from his work. (Someone’s got to think of the children!) All the journos have left. There’s no one here, apart from …
‘Archie!’ I hiss from the shed door. He’s still hunched on the tiny bench, typing on his laptop. ‘ARCHIE!’ I hiss more loudly.
He looks up from his laptop and blinks into the sunlight, searching for the source of the sound.
‘A bit of help?’ I call feebly. I wave a lone dragon paw out the shed door.
A slow wave of realisation passes across his features and his face creases into a smile. ‘I’ll be there in a second, Millsy.’
I KNEW he knew it was me! He punches a few keys on his laptop, closes it and packs it into his leather satchel.
‘What’s happened here?’ he asks, opening the door to let in a swathe of light.
‘I pulled off the zipper tab thingy.’ I hold it out for him to inspect as the door slams shut behind him.
He takes it from me and holds it up to the window like I did moments before. ‘You did pull it off,’ he agrees.
I bristle. ‘I’m not asking for confirmation. I’m asking for help.’
‘From me?’
‘Ideally I would never request assistance from you, Archibald, but since you’re the only person here, by default of our geographic proximity, I am asking you. So can you help me or what?’
Archie hands the zipper back to me and crosses his arms. ‘Nah.’
‘What the hell?!’
‘You asked me if I could help and I politely declined.’
‘It was hardly polite!’
‘True,’ he says. ‘I should have said, “No thank you, Millsy. I do not wish to help you. In fact, my greatest wish is that you remain in that dragon costume forever. It really highlights your figure.”’ He pokes my dragon pec, which is possibly a dragon boob. ‘Ask me nicely.’
‘Fine.’ I arrange my face into my most courteous expression and take a deep breath. ‘Can you please help me?’
‘Nah, still not feeling it.’
‘For god’s sake!’ I kick away a few basketballs and sink onto my knees.
I place my hands in prayer pose at my chest. ‘Dearest Archibald, whom I respect deeply as a journalist despite you having been a grade-A jock-head during your university days when you deemed me too uncool to be your acquaintance. I acknowledge that you are now one of Australia’s leading political journalists, and that you are probably making heaps of money to add to the riches gained from your career in professional rugby.
As a side note, I also commend you for your Walkley nomination last year and your proficiency on the dating apps, which may or may not be directly attributable to the aforementioned career in professional sports.
So, in summary, you seem to be a very successful person, and thus, I respect you deeply—when it behoves me to do so.
Therefore, in conclusion, and in the name of Neil Armstrong, Louis Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, and all other humans who have achieved great miracles, whether through assistance of performance-enhancing drugs or not, can you please, with cherries on top, help me get out of this dragon costume? ’
‘What the actual …?’
‘I was trying to make it sound impressive.’
‘I think under all that drivel you just gave me the biggest roasting of my life.’
‘Accidental,’ I say, standing up and brushing the dust off my dragon thighs. ‘Insulting you comes so naturally.’
Archie puts his hands on my shoulders to spin me around to face the window and my dragon tail whips him in the calves. ‘I never thought you were uncool,’ he says, kicking the dragon tail away as he inspects the zipper.
‘Could have fooled me,’ I say, ignoring the brush of his fingers at the base of my neck. ‘You never spoke to me.’
Archie was always the quiet giant in a gang full of quick-lipped testosterone. I know he knew who I was, but we were the kind of acquaintances whose eyes would meet across the room before quickly darting away.
‘You never spoke to me,’ he says. He pulls at the zipper and I accidentally stumble back into him before righting myself. He slides his fingers under the neck of the costume, as if testing how securely the fabric is connected to the zip. ‘I think I can rip it apart,’ he says.
My back stiffens under his touch. ‘Okay, but close your eyes when the zip gets further down. I don’t want you seeing anything you shouldn’t.’
‘Millsy, we’ve been to the beach together. I’ve seen you in a bikini before.’
I roll my eyes. ‘This is very different. And plus, we never went to the beach together. We were just there at the same time, and we had mutual friends, and the clumps of beach-goers just kind of merged. It was circumstantial. Never by design.’
Archie’s fingers wrench the upper teeth of the zipper apart with a tiny crack. ‘How is it different? You’re not wearing a matching set?’
‘Seriously, Archibald. Do you know me at all? Of course it’s a matching set.
But when there’s lace instead of cossie material, it’s completely different.
Like, if you saw me wearing this set on the beach, I’m pretty sure you’d avert your eyes from the second-hand embarrassment of seeing me wear my underwear in public. ’
Archie’s fingers go still. ‘Just to be clear, are you actually asking me to check out your underwear to validate this hypothesis?’
‘No!’ I shriek. ‘I’m trying to achieve the opposite.’
‘Okay, then we need to stop talking about your lacy red underwear.’
‘I never said it was red! It’s black!’
Archie laughs quietly to himself. ‘My brain immediately went to red.’
‘You can get your head out of Tinder, Archibald. My underwear is a very boring black.’
‘Lace,’ he adds, and I can feel his smirk.
‘It’s not all lace,’ I huff. ‘It’s plain cotton with little bits of … oh, whatever. Is it working or not?’
Archie chuckles. ‘I can confirm lots of things are working right now, but if you’re referring to the zipper, yes, it’s coming apart.’
I flush. ‘Just get it over with.’
Having seen Archie do vox pops in Pitt Street Mall, I know he has the uncanny knack of being able to make the most mundane comments sound like pick-up lines. Strangely, the over-eighties go wild for it.
He gradually prises the costume open and I feel the relief of cool air touching my skin.
I scrunch my eyes to ignore the real or imagined pause in his motion when the zipper reaches the hook of my bra, and start reciting One pink elephant, two pink elephants in my head.
He just needs to keep pulling, and then I will be free, and we will never talk of this again.
‘Done,’ says Archie finally, letting go of the costume.
I clasp it to my chest so it doesn’t fall off, and turn around, whipping him in the legs again with my tail.
‘Thank you, Archibald. You can go file your story now. I hope the execs don’t blacklist you for it.’
‘They won’t,’ says Archie, his tone irritatingly smug.
‘Shame.’
‘Want a lift back east? I saw how your boss ditched you.’
‘Not required, Archibald,’ I reply tartly. ‘I enjoy public transport.’ It’s a giant lie. I’ll have to take a bus and two trains but it’s infinitely preferable to being in a confined space with Archie Cohen for forty minutes.
‘Millsy, I know for a fact that you hate public transport. But whatever. I’ll see you later.’ He opens the shed door and strides out.
‘Not true,’ I call after him. ‘I find the people-watching on the Eastern Suburbs line positively scintillating.’
Archie ignores me and by the time I emerge from the PE shed dressed in human garb, he’s back at the tiny kids’ bench with his laptop. He doesn’t look up as I close the door behind me, so I don’t bother saying goodbye.
I’m on the first train when the headline whooshes into my inbox.
CIVIL WAR: DANIEL HARCOURT AND NANCY MILLER NOT SPEAKING TO EACH OTHER. Divide threatens to split party. Archie Cohen reports.
I almost choke on my own saliva.
I’m going to kill him.