I wake up curled around my
guitar like it’s a sleeping girl. I push it away from me and sit up, feeling pathetic. If I had any dreams I can’t remember them. It’s been so long since I’ve had a proper sleep.
I find my watch next to the bed. It’s four, and it must be Friday, but I’ve got no idea if it’s day or night. Regardless, I should leave the house. Nothing good comes of moping around doing nothing.
Blake’s bedroom is empty and her bike has gone from the hallway. The insect book is still open on her bed. I rummage through her books, still thinking about the dead tarsier.
There are no Dewey decimal labels on any of the book spines, so Blake can’t have been raiding the abandoned public library. I select a book at random—Heliographs and Optical Communication—and look inside. The inside front cover has been stamped with blood-red ink. A curly W&S, set inside a rectangle, twined with leaves. An old-fashioned logo, or monogram. I check a few more books—they’re all stamped identically—but there’s nothing on tarsier.
As I’m piling the books back into the crate, some letters catch my eye. The book is cream-coloured and pamphletslim. The title embossed in gold on the plain front cover: SHYNESS: A young lady’s treatise. By Delilah Gregory. I wonder if she’s a relative of the Doctor.
I flick through the book. It’s old, and odd, with journal entries and sepia-tinted photographs. Delilah is twenty, but seems much younger. Her journal is as melodramatic as Paul’s early poetry. She apparently detested every member of her household, including the housemaid. No one understood her. No one cared about what she wanted. I wish Paul was here to see it. Historical artifacts are more his kind of thing.
Paul’s bedroom, my parents’ old room, is as empty as Blake’s, but it has a staler, sourer smell about it, with a thin camping mat and a sleeping bag in the centre of the room. There are still round marks in the carpet where the old bed used to stand. I can’t see Paul’s satchel anywhere.
I leave the door open to let some air in and head out into the night. The usual mist hangs near the ground along Oleander Crescent, but when I lift my face I can also smell traces of smoke on the breeze.
It’s amazing how the thought of Doctor Gregory can bring on a headache. Even before the night Nia and I came face to face with him in Orphanville, he would harass me with letters about my ‘condition’. I had to look up what ‘psychosomatic hypertrichosis’ meant. Doctor Gregory thinks I’m like this because I’m crazy. The howling, the hair, the appetite, the growth spurt, the muscles—all due to what’s going on in my mind.
After that night, after I beat up Doctor Gregory’s bodyguards, I expected payback for sure. But so far, nothing.
I take Hobson Street towards Ennio’s, the only decent place to get coffee in Shyness. There’s a long trickle of people walking in front of me, and, when I turn to check, quite a few behind. Twenty or so people walking in the same direction. Peak hour. This straight stretch of road is lined with two-storey terraces, mostly Dreamer houses. The only reason to be on Hobson is if you live here, or you’re going to Ennio’s.
I slow my steps, puzzled. Surely not everyone needs a caffeine fix at the same time? The people in front walk metres apart and don’t talk to each other, but, despite this, I can’t shake the feeling they know each other. They don’t look at each other at all, not even with casual curiosity or out of caution. They walk separated by neat regulated distances. A handful are dressed almost identically, in blue cotton pants and shirts.
I turn around, under the guise of checking the rooftops for tarsier, to see that several of the people behind me are also dressed in the blue uniform. I’m caught in a silent street parade. Everyone walks with purpose, eyes straight ahead. Most are youngish, in their mid-twenties, but there is one middle-aged woman among them. They don’t seem to notice or care that I’m checking them out. I drop into a crouch, pretending to tie my shoelace. I hope no one realises my boots have zips.
‘My boy!’ A voice calls out, whispering and urgent. ‘Over here!’
Someone stands in the shadowy doorway of the closest house, beckoning furiously.
It’s Lupe.
The dark doorway can’t hide the unmistakable red puff of hair, or her tropical tent dress. I wait until the last person has passed me, then join her.
‘What are you doing here?’
I’ve never seen her anywhere other than in sight of her van, and here she is on the other side of Shyness, deep in Dreamer territory. She has a thick cardigan over her parrot dress as a concession to the cold, and a battered handbag thrown over her shoulder.
Her dark eyes crinkle. ‘I am being the spy.’
‘On who?’ I ask. ‘On me?’
‘Always you are thinking you are centre of the universe,’ Lupe smiles. ‘Not you, my boy—Paul.’
I poke my head out of our doorway to see the tail end of the parade turn the corner.
‘I didn’t see him.’
‘He passed already, before you came. I see him walk with blue people.’
‘Let’s go then. We can catch up.’
Lupe throws her hands up. ‘He has long passed and I’m an old woman. I won’t be running all over town.’
‘You’re not old,’ I say, even though she does look shorter and older outside her caravan, without her prize possessions gathered around her. ‘What are you doing on Dreamer’s Row anyway? How long have you been following him?’
Lupe flaps her hand vaguely. ‘I am a few streets away on errand when I see Paul. I think to myself I will talk to him. But then I see the blue people.’
‘You mean the way they’re dressed?’
While I’ve never seen people dressed like hospital orderlies before, Locals go through weird phases all the time.
Lupe pats my cheek. ‘Not just a pretty face, are you?’
I help her down the stairs. I can see the circle of white on the crown of her head where her hair needs touching up. ‘What errands do you have to do?’
‘Is all done, my boy.’ She pats her bulging handbag.
We start down the street. The middle-aged woman I saw earlier is standing in the yard next door, looking at us. A statue at the fence line. I take Lupe’s elbow.
‘Evening,’ I say, keeping us moving.
The woman comes to life, as if my greeting has activated her. Her face becomes animated and stern. She shakes her finger at us. ‘Marcus! How many times have I told you to take off your shoes before you come into the house? Tracking mud everywhere. I just did those floors.’
‘Sorry,’ I play along. I nudge Lupe. ‘I won’t do it again.’
‘That’s right,’ says the woman. And then her face changes again. The life ebbs out of it and a confused expression takes over. She looks from me to Lupe.
‘You’re not him, are you?’
‘No, we’re not,’ says Lupe.
‘Slippage,’ says the woman. ‘It happened again.’
Lupe hesitates, and I make it clear we’re leaving. ‘Bye now.’
I walk fast towards Grey Street, still with my arm linked through Lupe’s. She takes three steps to my one. I catch myself frowning at the ground as I walk. Has Paul really found new friends? Is that why he hardly comes home anymore? I wasn’t surprised to be dumped by Thom for Maggie, but I always assumed Paul and I would be tight forever.
‘Lupe, did you actually see Paul talking to those people?’
Lupe shakes her head. Her face is bright with make-up, her eyes sharp. ‘There is no talking but he is one hundred per cent with them.’ She grips my arm tightly. ‘Our Paul is like lost puppy trying to find family.’
‘He’s not lost,’ I say, trying to sound scornful about the idea, even though I haven’t seen him in over a week and if his absences go on much longer he could qualify as lost.
‘Jethro, I do not know if your eyes are open but I see Paul and this pretty girl go together for months. And I think to myself, there is youth and there is happiness. But recently I see Paul, and I see no pretty girl.’
I blink. Lupe is in one of her cryptic moods. I know that Paul was seeing this girl a while back, but her name has slipped from my mind. ‘I still don’t get why you need to spy on him.’
‘Because I only see Paul by his self. Not with pretty girl, not with you. Come to see me, on his own. And when I see him, it does not need a doctor to know that he is lost. And now he is with these people and, Jethro, these people are not normal.’