Caitlyn turns her eyes to Mum and Dad; they’re watching this scene like it was a moon landing.
‘Hi,’ Caitlyn says.
‘This is my mum, Frances,’ I say. ‘My dad, Robert. My brother, Gus.’
‘I’m Caitlyn,’ she says.
Mum shakes Caitlyn’s hand. Dad and Gus smile.
‘So you’re the one he’s always talking about?’ Mum says.
‘Mum,’ I say, short and sharp.
Mum’s looking at Caitlyn, smiling.
‘Eli says you’re a very special woman,’ she says.
I roll my eyes.
‘Well,’ Caitlyn replies, ‘I think I’m only just starting to realise how special your boys are, Mrs Bell.’
Mrs Bell. I don’t hear that much. Mum likes it as much as I do.
Caitlyn turns her eyes to the auditorium. Tytus Broz is still talking on stage. He’s talking about selflessness and making the most of the time we have on earth. We can’t see his face from here because there are too many people gathered in the foyer before the auditorium doors.
‘Keep pushing,’ Tytus says. ‘Never give up. Whatever you want to achieve. Keep going. Never waste a single opportunity to transform your wildest dreams into your favourite memories.’
He coughs. Clears his throat.
‘I have a surprise for you all tonight,’ Tytus Broz announces grandly. ‘The sum of my life’s work. A vision for the future. A future where young Australians who are not blessed with all the gifts of our glorious God are, instead, blessed by the gift of human ingenuity.’
He pauses.
‘Samantha, if you will be so kind.’
Perspective, Slim. Infinite angles on a single moment. Maybe there are five hundred people in this auditorium and each person views this moment from their own individual perspective. I view it in my mind because my eyes can only see Caitlyn. We can’t see the stage from where we stand but we can hear the sound of the audience as it reacts to Samantha Bruce removing the red silk cloth on Tytus’s glass display box holding his life’s work. We can hear the horrified gasps of the audience that ripple from Row A all the way to Row Z. People howling. A woman wailing. Men screaming in shock and outrage.
‘What’s happening, Eli?’ Mum asks.
I turn to her.
‘I found him, Mum.’
‘Found who?’
I can see the police officers rushing down the central aisle now. Other officers close in around Tytus Broz from the east and west sides of the auditorium. August and I share a glance at each other. Your end is a dead blue wren. Your end is a dead blue wren.
I see it all unfolding in my mind’s eye from the perspective of the people still sitting in Row M.
Captain Ahab is drowning in a sea of Queensland Police. The sky-blue cops dragging Tytus Broz away, taking his old and frail arms by the sleeves of his white suit. Placing those arms around his back. Audience members shielding their eyes with their cupped hands; women in cocktail dresses gagging and screaming. Tytus Broz dragged from the stage as he looks, looks, looks in befuddlement at the glass box on stage, wondering how in the world and in this puzzling universe his life’s-work silicone super limb was replaced with the warped and macabre and plastinated severed head of the first man I ever loved.
*
Time, Slim. Do your time before it does you. It slows now. Everybody moves in slow motion and I’m not sure if I’m making them do it. The police lights, flashing red and blue and silent. That slow and deliberate nod of August’s that says he’s proud of me. That says he knew it was going to happen exactly like this. That it was going to all unfold in this busy City Hall foyer, with people rushing to leave the building, clutching their purses and umbrellas and tripping over their long evening dresses. Important men barking their dismay and trauma at event organisers. The woman with the evil eye in tears, overwhelmed by the pandemonium caused by that severed head on stage. August’s knowing smile and his right forefinger pen writing me a message in the air.
August walks away, shuffles elegantly and calmly towards Mum and Dad, standing to the side of the hall’s entry doors. They’re giving me some space. They’re giving me some time. Time with the girl of my dreams. She stands before me, a metre from me, police and audience members and officials zipping back and forth around the bubble of us.
‘What just happened?’ Caitlyn asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I shrug. ‘It all happened too fast.’