‘I need to think on that some more,’ she says. She nods to a huddle of police officers.
‘Cops want us down at Roma Street police station,’ she says. ‘You wanna come with me?’
‘Mum and Dad are gonna drive me down,’ I say.
She looks out from the foyer to Mum, Dad and August, now waiting at the edge of King George Square.
‘I thought they’d look different, your mum and dad,’ she says.
I laugh. ‘You did?’
‘They’re so nice,’ she says. ‘They just look like any normal mum and dad.’
‘They’ve been working on normal for quite some time now.’
Caitlyn nods. Hands in her pockets. She bounces on her heels. I want to say something else to stay in this moment, freeze it, but I can only slow time, I can’t stop it yet.
‘Brian’s gonna want me to write all this up tomorrow,’ Caitlyn says. ‘What do you think I should say to him?’
‘You should say you’ll write it, every last bit of it,’ I say. ‘The truth. All of it.’
‘No fear,’ she says.
‘No favour,’ I say.
‘You want to write it with me?’ she asks.
‘But I’m not a crime writer.’
‘Not yet,’ she says. ‘Joint byline?’
Joint byline with Caitlyn Spies. Dream stuff. A story in three words.
‘Caitlyn and Eli,’ I say.
She smiles.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Caitlyn and Eli.’
Caitlyn shuffles back towards the huddle of police. I walk to the entry doors of the auditorium. The space is almost empty of people. A police forensics officer is on stage carefully inspecting Tytus Broz’s glass box, now with the red silk cloth covering it. I look up to the moon-shaped white ceiling, like four white beach shells, four quarters of a circle coming together to form a whole moon. I see the beginning in that ceiling and I see the end. I see my brother, August, sitting on the fence in front of the Darra house, the full sun behind him, writing those air words that have followed me through my short life: Your end is a dead blue wren.
*
I turn away from the auditorium and walk towards the front hall exit but a figure stands before me. Tall and lean and old and strong. I see the figure’s shoes first, black leather dress shoes, unpolished and worn. Black dress slacks. A blue button-up shirt with no tie and an old wrinkled black jacket. I see the face of Iwan Krol and it’s the face of death. But my spine knows him first and so do the teenage bones in my calves and they help me move. I spring sharply away but not sharp enough to miss the blade hidden in his right fist that stabs into the right side of my belly. It feels like a tear. Like someone tore open my belly and stuck a finger inside, wiggled it around like it was searching for something I shouldn’t have swallowed. Something I swallowed long ago, like the universe. I stagger groggily backwards, staring at Iwan Krol as though I still can’t believe he would do such a thing. That he could be so cold, despite everything I know about him, despite everything I’ve seen. That he could stab a young man on a night like this, this electric night when Caitlyn and Eli saw the future and they saw the past and they smiled at them both. I’m dizzy and my mouth is suddenly dry and it takes me a moment to realise Iwan Krol is coming towards me for a second blow, a final blow. I can’t even see the blade he stabbed me with. He’s hiding it somewhere. In his sleeve, maybe. In his pockets. Run, Eli. Run. But I can’t run. The wound in my belly makes me keel over in agony. I try to scream but I can’t because screaming uses the muscles in my gut and my gut muscles have been stabbed deep. All I do is stagger. Stagger left. Stagger away from Iwan Krol. And I pray to be seen by police gathering beyond the hall doors but they have not seen me in the movement of the audience members gathered in the foyer, discussing the horror of the severed head while missing the horror of the boy and the blade-wielding beast unfolding among them. Iwan Krol got me with a perfect prison yard stabbing, an accomplished porridge shiv. Quick and quiet. No big scenes.