His Brand of Beautiful (7 page)

He felt his way along the corridor to the bathroom, dropped his clothes to grey Dubai slate, turned the shower nozzle to jet and let needles rain abuse across his back and shoulders, edging the temperature down until in the ten seconds before he turned the water off and stepped out he could barely volunteer breath.

Wrapping a towel around his hips, he headed for the study, moving silently along the black corridor, not bothering with the lights until he pushed through the study door. This was the only room outside the garage where he felt remotely at home. It had sketch pads, Lily Malone

sharp pencils, Sakura pens of varying points and an unopened bottle of single‐malt Scotch.

Clean clothes.

He pushed his arms into a sweater, pulled on the first pair of tracksuit pants on the pile and sat in the cold leather chair staring at his pens. He didn’t like drawing here, nothing inspired him, but he had to work. Had to do something to get the evening out of his head.

The pen was a welcome weight. The sound of its scratch filled the room.

He’d come so close tonight. Christina soft in his arms, the curve of her cheek like a peach in the lamplight.
So close
. Damn‐near undone by Rubens and running and Robin Hood. By her plea on sweet lips:
That’s why I need you
.

For a few seconds there he’d dared to dream she was different. That maybe, he had her all wrong.

Then poison. Alcohol profits to help Aboriginals.

The sketchpad tore.

He threw the pen to the desk, balled the sheet of paper into a clump the size of his fist and hurled it at the bin. Then he leaned back and flexed the fingers of his right hand.

Both biceps ached.

Amber‐coloured liquid glinted in the bottle on his filing cabinet. He’d hit that too after Jolie died. He could almost smell the peat, feel the fire coat his throat.

Something Australian
, she’d said—and he heard her buttery voice so clear she could have been right there in the room—
Outdoorsy. Fresh. Wild.

The wisp of an idea ghosted through his mind.

He reached for the pen then stopped with his hand outstretched. “She wouldn’t know wild if it landed in her lap.”

A brand that turns Australian wine upside‐down.

He stared out the window, at the solar lights twinkling in the garden he loathed; at the Adelaide city skyline hemming him in. He couldn’t see any stars. At Binara, they’d carpet the sky on a night like this.

The more he tried not to think of it, the more the threads wove together.

There was one sure way to get Christina out of his head. He could let her in. Show her some of the wild Australia he loved. See how much she’d hate it.

Two hours later he slapped the pen on his desk and pushed his chair back. The bin at his feet overflowed with screwed‐up paper balls. He picked them up, scrunched each one a little tighter and shoved them in so they all fit.

The drawing on his sketchpad was almost too good to be used as bait, but at least he had a plan for tomorrow—he glanced at the clock and amended—
today
. He placed the sketchpad face‐down in his scanner, pressed
okay
, and watched as the scanner’s white light slid across the glass.

****

Mick Jagger’s
Give Me Shelter
sent Christina groping for the sleep button on the radio. Her thrashing arm served only to give her knuckle an almighty whack and something hard thudded to the floor. Salt‐crusted eyes registered 6.30am and she rolled over and buried her head in the pillow.

Jagger wouldn’t quit.

Damp seeped beneath her cheek and helped penetrate the fog in her head. Not the radio, her phone.
At this hour
? She sat quickly, flicked the switch on her up‐lamp and wriggled off the bed to fish the phone from the top of a crumpled pile of green chiffon. It looked how she felt. Then she retracted beneath the quilt, the phone against her ear.

“Hello?” Her mouth tasted terrible.

“Good morning, Christina. This is Tate.”

A car wreck of memories slammed through her head. How cold she’d been. Freezing by those stone pillars, waiting till she was two‐hundred per cent certain she wouldn’t cry because a wedding reception filled with relations was the last place on earth to fall to pieces.

The light poking around the curtain was only a shade off night’s pitch‐black, the street outside quiet. Wind stirred the leaves of the camellia, branches scraped the gutter.

“I didn’t get you out of bed did I?” He said it with the tone of someone who never let sunrise find him horizontal.

He can shove his pleasantries up his ass.

“I never intended to get my photo in the paper handing over a cheque to the Tribal Elders. I was never going to paint my tits and dance a corroboree and upload it to YouTube.”

The words burst from her lips.

If she told him about the work experience idea, he’d probably understand. At least he might mellow. But she was so pissed at him for not giving her any benefit of the doubt, she didn’t think he deserved an explanation. He should know her better than that.

“I’m sorry for being an asshole. I have to work on my tact.”

She snorted.

“If I start telling you now about everything that sucks with cause marketing, I’ll still be on the phone in two hours and I can’t do that because I have a plane to catch, so trust me. I can’t take what I said back, but I can make it up to you—if you’ll let me. I’ve been awake most of the night. I’ve got a brand concept for you. I can email it.”

She lowered her head until her chin rested on her hunched knees, trying to work out what she was missing here. A brand concept? It didn’t make sense.

“I thought you didn’t want to work for me.” It wasn’t a question.

“You’ve got nothing to lose by looking at it,” he said.

Her left thumb flicked the fingernails of her left hand, across, then back, like playing scales on a guitar. She wished she wasn’t so tempted.

“If it makes you feel better, Tate, send it. I’ll take a look. No promises. And I’m not paying for it.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

She spelled out her email address and heard his fingers tap the keyboard.

“I’m hitting send now.”

With a stab of her finger she ended the call and slammed the phone at the splotch on her pillow where mascara‐tinged tears had soaked in the night.

Teaming Explorer socks with her white dressing gown she padded to the bedroom across the hall. A practical timber desk, beige fabric swivel chair, filing cabinet and Dell computer sat opposite a sofa bed, folded in sofa mode. Until yesterday morning, Lacy’s wedding dress had called its cushions home and the room had yet to register the change. It still smelled of the lavender sachets she’d layered through the tissue paper, dried lavender sprigs she’d stitched into the big white bow that decorated the dress box.

A single tap made the computer whir. She didn’t bother to sit, just stretched her forearms over the back of the chair to the keyboard.

Lily Malone

The message loitered in her inbox, black and bold. The subject line read: Introducing CC & Muddy Pot.

How does he know Mikey’s nickname was Muddy?
As far as she knew, Tate had never met her brother. Her fingers dived to the mouse. Double‐clicked.

The file took its own sweet time to download. The screen buzzed from grey‐blue to black and white and a hand‐drawn picture appeared, magnified so high she couldn’t recognize any piece of it. She zoomed out to a view that better fit her screen.

Her mouth opened with the
phluck
of lips gone dry.

There was a character with a Lara Croft plait halfway down her back. A hat. Killer heels.

The other wore footy shorts, a singlet and Wellington boots.

Each character was drawn with an upside‐down terracotta pot body—
a clay pot
—

with skinny arms and legs poking through holes top and bottom, knees and elbows like golf balls.

She was looking at a scene in a bottle shop, shelves filled to overflowing with wine.

Muddy Pot’s arms were clamped across his pot stomach and he was laughing with CC Pot.

Laughing fit to bust. A bottle of wine had smashed on the floor, its contents spilled like ink.

The crashed bottle pointed a shaky finger at Muddy Pot. Its speech balloon said:
He told me
to jump
.

The speech balloon above Muddy Pot’s read:
He said he wanted to know what
happened to all the other green bottles
.

Christina’s view drifted to the words at the bottom of the page.

CRACKED POTS by CLAY

She turned the chair and slumped sideways to the padded seat, heard it gush air.

Chair wheels tracked over carpet as she pushed back, swivelled toward the window and pulled the curtain aside. A dog barked at the morning. Little dog. Yappy bark.

A lone male jogger, earphones in, passed her mailbox, wind creasing his white shirt.

A camellia flower flopped to the bed of red petals on the lawn. It was impossible to tell where red‐brick path ended and the red flower carpet began. Then a second email pinged into her inbox.

Suburbia hunkered on the right side of Main North Road, all orange‐roofed and brick‐walled behind a row of roadside eucalypts choked by weeds, branches petrified into the shape of the prevailing winds. The left side of the highway housed plumbing supply shops, used-caravan lots and discount car yards, most boasting signs about end‐of‐financial‐year sales.

Christina drove past a McDonalds doing brisk breakfast trade and an adults‐only store, windows blacked out.

It was a while since she’d been out here, not much had changed.

Kings Road intersected Main North ahead. One other car exited there and she followed it left. A second left took her into Parafield Airport. Hangar 56 was easy to find, its door gaped like a missing tooth and she recognised the tank hulking out front. She slotted the Golf beside it, let her foot rev the engine a few seconds longer than necessary, then buzzed the window up, cut the motor and stepped into an arctic wind laced with the smell of tarmac, fuel and fast food. The wind tried to blow the driver’s door off its hinge.

“Less than an hour, I’m impressed,” Tate called, wiping his hands on a rag. He stuffed something that might once have been silver—a wrench or a spanner—in the pocket of a long‐sleeved red‐checked shirt and emerged from the hangar. Black jeans hugged his thighs.

The shirt blew open over a black Springsteen T‐shirt that clung to his chest like a peach to its stone.

A plane barely big enough to earn the title squatted behind him, and she could make out the word
Jabiru
written in a double red stripe on the tail.

God help me, he’s serious. We’re flying. In that.

“Did you shoot that cat? Or did it volunteer its spots?” He eyed her canvas flats, a crooked smile jagging the corner of his mouth.

Reaching back into the Golf she grabbed her cardigan and pulled it over her shoulders, retrieved handbag, hat and her takeaway latte, and stalked past him into a hangar that smelled of grilled beef, fried onion and motor oil. Suicidal mosquitoes had baked on to the overhead fluorescent light.

Inside, the wind contented itself with clanging the metal chains of the roller door instead of trying to throttle her with her scarf. She searched for a surface free of tools on which to sit, gave up and leaned against a bench, took a sip of coffee and wrapped her hands around the Styrofoam cup.

“So you’ve decided to add blackmail to your many talents?”

“I think blackmail’s a little strong,” he responded.

“You wrote the email.”

“Any new client relationship needs boundaries. I was just reminding you of ours.” He whipped the silver thing out of his pocket and started doing pilot stuff to the engine.

“I thought you said today is about research?”

“I did.”

It was like pulling teeth. “So what
exactly
are we researching?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Your email said—”

“Stop fishing, Christina, it’s a
surprise
. I’d pee before we take off though if I were you. The Ladies’ is to your left and round the corner.” He tossed the silver thing at his toolbox. It hit the upright lid with a clatter.

Lily Malone

“Surely you can tell me how far we’re—”

“
Christina
.” He advanced a half step and her hands jerked, sloshing coffee in her cup.

“If you want me to design Cracked Pots it’s on my terms or not at all. Your choice.” His words were soft but she felt their weight.

She drained the coffee, hunted for a bin to dump the cup and found a milk crate half-filled with red and yellow fan‐shaped fries’ packets and drink cups with the straws still poking through the top.

“Scout’s honour, I’ll have you home before sundown.” He gave her a three‐fingered salute.

“Like you were ever a boy‐bloody‐scout.” She turned on her heel.

Pea‐sized gravel the grey of smoke‐stained snow sank beneath her shoes as she trudged to the windblown toilet block and shoved open the gate. She tried to think where anyone would fly in a plane like that for a day ex‐Adelaide. There really weren’t many options. Kangaroo Island? Port Lincoln? He wouldn’t take her diving with Great White Sharks.
Would he
? How wild did he think she wanted this brand to be? His email was etched in her memory and she ran through it again as she hovered an inch above the cold plastic toilet seat, hoping she finished peeing before her thighs caved in.

Christina

You want an Australian brand that walks on the wild side? You need to broaden your
horizons. There’s a lot more to Australia than your little patch of vineyard at McLaren Vale.

Meet me at Parafield Airport by 8.30am and we’ll do some research.

That’s if you like the concept. If not, no harm done.

Remember I own the copyright. I’d hate to see Cracked Pots crop up at Clay Wines
under any other designer’s name.

T.

“If I
like
the concept,” she muttered to the wall. “Why else would I be standing here?”