the front fence writing the same sentence in the air with his finger because that was his way of talking. And I could tell what he was writing because I knew how to read his invisible words in the air.’
I pause for a long moment. There’s a semicircle of dust on Caitlyn’s windscreen.
Her windscreen wipers have smeared a rainbow of old dirt over to my passenger side. That rainbow of dirt reminds me of the milky moons in my thumbnails. Those milky moons remind me of that day in the car with Slim. The small details that remind me of him.
‘What was he writing?’ she asks.
The sun is falling. I have to file my story for tomorrow. Brian Robertson will be steaming already. Mum and Dad and Gus are probably travelling into Brisbane City Hall now. Gus’s big night. A confluence of events. A convergence. Detail upon detail.
‘He wrote, “Your end is a dead blue wren.”’
‘What was that supposed to mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t even think Gus knew what it meant or why he was saying it, but he said it. And one year later, they were the first words I ever heard come out of his mouth. The night they took Lyle away. He looked into Tytus Broz’s eyes and he said, “Your end is a dead blue wren.” It means that dead blue wren represents some kind of end for Tytus Broz.’
‘But that bird in your hand wasn’t dead, it flew away, and I’m not even sure if it was a wren,’ she says.
‘It felt like it was dead to me,’ I say. ‘But it came back. And that’s what Gus is always saying. We come back. I don’t know. Old souls, like Astrid used to say. Everybody’s got an old soul but only the special ones like Gus get to know that. Everything that happens has happened. Everything that is going to happen has happened. Or somethin’ like that. I got up and went out to that bird and I picked it up because I felt like I had to. And then it went and landed on that concrete bunker thing at the side of the lawn.’
‘That bunker did give me the creeps,’ Caitlyn says.
She looks ahead down the winding road back home. The setting orange sun lighting her deep brown hair. Her fingers tap the steering wheel.
‘I never believed Gus was special,’ I say. ‘I didn’t believe Astrid could hear voices from spirits. I didn’t believe a word of it. But . . .’
I stop. She looks across at me.
‘But what?’
‘But then I met you and I started believing in all kinds of things.’
She gives a half-smile. ‘Eli,’ she says, dropping her head, ‘I think it’s real sweet how you feel for me.’
I shake my head, shift in my seat.
‘I see you when you look at me,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I think it’s beautiful. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me like you look at me.’
‘You don’t have to say it,’ I say.
‘Say what?’
‘What you’re gonna say about the timing,’ I say. ‘How I’m still a boy. Or maybe only just a man. You’re gonna say the universe fucked it up. It put me near you but the timing was off. Nice try but about a decade out. You don’t have to say it.’
She nods. Curls up her lips.
‘Wow,’ she gasps. ‘Is that what I was gonna say? Damn, how about that? Here I was thinking I was gonna tell you all about a strange feeling I had when I first met you.’
Caitlyn starts the car, slams the accelerator and spins the tyres as she pulls a sharp U-turn back in the direction of Tytus Broz’s mansion.
‘What did you feel?’ I ask.
‘Sorry, Eli Bell,’ she says. ‘Not enough time. I think I just worked out what’s in that bunker.’
‘What’s in there?’
‘Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘The end is in there, Eli,’ she says, leaning hard on the steering wheel as the tyres howl on the bitumen road. ‘The end.’
*
In a soft twilight we’re parked in dark shadow under a sprawling purple jacaranda tree that rises up to the top of Tytus Broz’s fence, some fifty metres from the security gate. A small white Daihatsu Charade pulls out of the gate, turns left onto the road into the city.
‘That them?’ I ask.
‘No,’ Caitlyn says. ‘Car’s too small, too cheap. That was the help.’
She nods to the glove box.
‘Look inside the glove box will you, there should be a little flashlight,’ she