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The Lovely Magic Makers: 7

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“What are you doing,” hissed Bonita, gripping Tinky’s arm as Talullah steered Marcus away. “He thinks I hate his artwork! If he-”
“Don’t worry,” said Tinky, shoving a fresh gin-and tonic into Bonita’s gesticulating hand. “From what I hear, old Marcus is a ‘loves one, loves all’ type. I’m sure he won’t mind some candid criticism from a jumped up, pay-by-the-hour media intern,” she finished slyly.
Bonita snatched her drink away from Tinky as she smirked.
“You know I’m not an intern,” Bonita snapped irritably, taking a long swig from her glass. Her highly embellished dress was weighing as heavily on her shoulders as the thought of the new intern for whom she was now responsible. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to get the image of Dale standing by her desk like a lost puppy out of her head.
If he thought he was getting her job, he was sorely mistaken.
She took a sip of her drink.
“Bonnie!” squealed Tinky suddenly, catching sight of someone across the other side of the room. “Look! It’s- it’s Maggie Peterson!”
Bonita turned in the direction to which Tinky was pointing.
Maggie Peterson was one of the stars of the TV show Accused: Sydney. Her character, Detective Kilburn, was a hard-as-nails female investigator who commanded the respect of the almost entirely male inner-city precinct she worked for. She executed her stony, drily sexy facade via a lot of brash conversation with male police officers and criminals, excessive coffee-drinking and an apparent particularity to microwaved food. In real life, however, Maggie Peterson was a fabulously leggy. five-foot-eight bombshell with a perfect blow dry and bright scarlet manicure, and Tinky idolised her.
“I’m going to introduce myself,” Tinky announced excitedly, adjusting her fascinator and pinching the gin and tonic Bonita was clutching. “Sorry, Bon – but gin-and-tonic looks way more sophisticated than pink-and-yellow tequila.” She shoved her own sunset-filled tumbler into Bonita’s hand, and she was off, clomping through the crowd in her gold glitter shoes, calling, “Maggie! How wonderful to see you!” as though she’d known the beautiful actress for years.
Bonita grinned and shook her head as Talullah came back to her, flushed and happy.
“Where’s Tink gone?” she asked, taking a sip of her wine and slopping a little down the front of her dress in excitement.
“She’s gone to harass Maggie Peterson,” Bonita replied. Talullah gasped.
The Maggie Peterson?! No! But, she’s not-”
“Yeah, she’s here.” Bonita pointed to where Tinky was standing, chatting animatedly to Ms Peterson, who was laughing at something Tinky had just said.
“How does she do it?” Talullah pondered admiringly, watching Tinky for a moment before turning back to Bonita. “Shall we go and have a look around?”
“What’s got you in a tizz, Missy?” Bonita asked, poking Talulah on the hip as they turned toward a nearby artwork. Bonita was remembering the stuffy, exhausted state in which Talullah had called her several nights previously. Talullah couldn’t have exuded a different sort of energy now if she tried – she was flushed, exuberant and grinning.
“Well,” she started excitedly, “Marcus has agreed to give me an exclusive interview for the paper. My editor is going to be stoked! We’re having coffee this Tuesday in Newtown!”
“That’s great!” Bonita exclaimed, smiling. She turned to to a nearby canvas. “What do you think of his work, though?” she asked, gesturing at the painting nearby. Literally just like unicorn vomit, she thought to herself.
The piece was an enormous canvas, hanging from two thin wire cables that were among the many dangling from the beams above. It featured lashings of neon-coloured oils that appeared to depict a woman, bent over and crying into her hands, surrounded by a cosmos of her own overwhelmingly-bright misery.
“Oh, I love it,” Talullah replied enthusiastically, and she was off, explaining the texture, the colour choices, the theme and the light source that Marcus had worked with to achieve the expansive collection of paintings.
As Talullah spoke, Bonita gazed at her friend thoughtfully. Talullah was delicate, fragile, light; she was the definition of traditional femininity, always dainty, always poised, always nurturing. It had been, in Bonita’s opinion, her great failing with Nico – she had always been to willing to accept that he would never truly appreciate her, dependent instead on the care she was able to provide him; it came from an innate sense of duty as a woman that no amount of feminist propaganda could deter. It wasn’t as though Nico was unique in that regard – Talullah treated everybody the same way. There was no flu too severe or emotional imbalance too scary that would deter Talullah from doing whatever she could, whenever she could, for anybody.
“Talullah,” Bonita interrupted, halting Tallulah’s wide-eyed explanation of the abstract concept of ‘sound’, “why haven’t you said anything more about Nico coming back?”
It was true. Talullah hadn’t mentioned it since her conversation with Bonita on the phone several days earlier.
Bonita watched as Tallulah’s face shrunk – she looked as though she’d just swallowed a lemon whole.
“What?” Talullah demanded rather aggressively. Bonita was surprised. Talullah was never aggressive. “Are you mad at me, or something?”
“Of course not!” Bonita replied, shocked. She didn’t think she’d ever been angry with Talullah. She was suddenly aware that Talullah had gripped her purse tightly to her shoulder.
“Then why bring it up?” Talullah asked, with an increasingly savage tone. She appeared to be swelling like a bullfrog, and was getting quite red in the face.
Bonita actually took a step backwards, alarmed by the sudden downturn in Talullah’s mood. She hadn’t expected anything quite so severe, and people were halting their conversations to stare at them unashamedly.
“Lu,” she began in quietly reproaching undertone, “I’m only asking because I’ve been worried. So has Tinky, we’re just-”
But what Bonita and Tinky were, Talullah never found out.
“What do I care? Why does it even matter?” she demanded, wild-eyed; her voice had risen to a shrill crescendo; the kind that precedes tears. “It’s not up to me what he does with his spare time, what do I care if he decides to come back to Sydney whenever he fucking well pleases, I don’t give a rat’s arse-” she was clutching her wine glass so tightly Bonita was worried that it might explode in her hand, “…he left, and he’s gone, he’s back to visit and that’s all there is to it-” Tallulah’s voice cracked and her bag slipped from her shoulder to the crook of her arm. To an untrained eye, it might have appeared that she was about to swing her purse around and clobber an innocent bystander.
Bonita stepped forward and grabbed Tallulah’s wrist. People within earshot of their conversation were watching with bemused embarrassment, now fully aware of the source of the noise and desperately trying to appear aloof and unconcerned.
“Lu,” Bonita said quietly, gripping Talullah’s wrist assuringly, as she breathed in and out of her nose like a rhinoceros, shifting her weight from vintage-clad foot to vintage-clad foot, “come outside.”
She dragged Talullah away from the artwork, through the curious crowd, past Marcus, who was watching with an air of polite concern, and past Tinky and Maggie Peterson, who were halted mid-conversation like fashion dummies, their dramatic gesticulations frozen in mid-air. Bonita shook her head at Tinky, who had arranged her face into a passable image of concern, and pulled Tallulah out the door, down the faux-cobblestone pathway onto the pavement.
“What?” Tallulah hissed at Bonita once they were outside. They were standing on the sidewalk beyond the tangled iron gateway, and the chatter and clinking of glasses had resumed.
Bonita drew herself up to full height, and Talullah appeared to shrink down to appropriate size – quite the feat, as Bonita was only five-foot-two.
“Lu,” Bonita began firmly. She was dismayed to see that Tallulah’s eyes were already wet with tears. “Lu,” she repeated more softly, and took a step toward her friend, who was shaking with pent-up rage and sadness. “Tinky and I are worried about you. She told me what you did to your bedroom-” Talullah actually stamped the ground, angrily, and her tears spilled over, “-and you have to understand … it’s just so out of character for you, Lu. We want you to know that it’s okay, it’s okay to admit that things aren’t – okay,” she finished awkwardly. Bonita had never really been any good at emotional stuff.
Tinky took a deep breath and glared at Bonita, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Then, she turned on her heel and sat down on the curb.
“Why did he leave?” she mumbled, snapping open her purse and rummaging around its contents. She withdrew her coin purse, her phone, her media pass for the gallery opening, a lip gloss, a crumpled bag containing four love-heart shaped sweets and a handful of bus tickets before drawing out a brand new packet of cigarettes.
“Honey,” Bonita murmured gently, clomping over in her combat boots and sitting beside her on the cold cement. Talullah’s fingers wrestled with the plastic wrap before pulling a cigarette from the packet and lighting it, coughing.
“Things change. People grow,” Bonita stated cautiously, watching Talullah ash into the gutter with distaste.
“I know,” Tallulah replied flatly. “They do. They grow out of other people, the people who cared about them, looked after them, worried about them-”
“Don’t you think that’s part of your – the – problem, though, Lu?” Bonita interrupted. “Isn’t there a part of you that can see your relationship with Nico was very… one-sided? He never made an effort, he never went to any events, he never tried to get to know me or Tinky… he didn’t even go with you when you had to go and see Gran in hospital that time.”
Bonita and Tinky had called Talullah’s grandmother Gran from the first time they’d met her. Neither Bonita nor Tinky had any family in Sydney, and Gran had become their surrogate grandparent over the years. Bonita felt just as much affection for Gran as she did for Talullah, who was now catching fresh tears on her fingertips before they could spill onto her perfectly rouged cheeks.
Talullah sighed, messy and hiccoughing, and sank her head into her hands. Bonita snatched the half-smoked cigarette away from it’s precarious proximity to Talullah’s hair and threw it in the gutter by her foot, stamping it out in a shower of orange sparks.
“Since when do you smoke?” Bonita asked with a valiant attempt at joviality.
“Since Thursday,” Talullah responded dully. “I thought it might help.” She lifted her head from her hands to see the ember die in the gutter. “I hate it, though,” she admitted, with a disgusted look at the boot-stamped stub on the filthy concrete. Bonita smiled humourlessly. Talullah’s reaction to stress had always been to try something wild and new.
“You know.”
Talullah stated it with purpose, breaking the silence, her mouth muffled by her delicate hands. Bonita’s stomach dropped. “You know why he’s here, I know it.”
Bonita paused.
“Yes,” she agreed finally, hating herself. “I do.” She had never wanted to be the one to deliver this information to Talullah. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right.
“You don’t want to tell me.”
“No.”
Talullah sat up, contemplating the brightly lit street lamps with the air of somebody who didn’t want to know what they were about to hear.
Bonita sighed.
“Nico’s engaged,” she admitted haltingly. With a sideways glance at Talullah, she slipped her fingers through hers.
Talullah muttered dully, gripping Bonita’s hand, “…well. Fuck me.”

* * *

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Image creds: Artfully Awear

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