I wasn't supposed to have ever met Oscar Braithwaite, so I said to Georgia, "Stone the crows! Who's that?"
Her stocky body quivering with distress, Georgia spat out, "Braithwaite. Oscar Braithwaite."
The sound of a loud thump carried through the wall. Georgia seized my wrist and wailed, "I don't know what to do. Dr. Braithwaite is capable of inflicting great bodily harm on Professor Yarrow, but Professor Yarrow will be furious if a fuss is made."
"You bloody bastard!" was followed by something indistinct from Yarrow.
"Perhaps one of us should go in and break it up," I said.
Georgia stared at me, astonished. "We can't do anything like that. They're men. They're men fighting-like primal beasts!"
Primal beasts, was it? I thought I deducted a hint of excitement underneath her chubby exterior.
A door slammed. Through Georgia's open door I saw Oscar Braithwaite's bushy head. "Bloody Yarrow! Bloody Yarrow!" he was shouting as he stamped down the hallway. His voice grew fainter, then there was another, muted slam of a door at the end of the hallway.
Georgia let out her breath in a long sigh. "He's gone," she said. I thought she sounded disappointed.
There was no use trying to pump Georgia, as she was totally atwitter about the confrontation between Oscar and Yarrow, so I said I'd drop in on her tomorrow. I had a quick look around to see if I could eyeball Oscar, but he'd disappeared. I collected my car from the cavernous parking structure and drove east along Sunset Boulevard to Kendall & Creeling.
When I opened the front door, Harriet was sitting at the reception desk reading something and giggling happily to herself. When she saw me, she said, "Message from Ariana. She says to tell you she'll be back here by five-thirty."
Irritated that Melodie wasn't at her post, I said, "Where's Melodie? Don't tell me she's off on another audition."
"Not at all," said Harriet. "You'll find Melodie in the bathroom, piling on the makeup. After work she's going straight from here to the theater to try out for Quip's play." Grinning, she held up the bound pages she'd been reading. "This is the audition script. Melodie's been poring over it all day."
I took a squiz at the two-line tide: LUL (Laughter Under Luna)
"It's a comedy?"
"Tragedy. Intensely dark tragedy." Harriet was still grinning. "I believe Quip's intention is to distill the angst of the early twenty-first century."
"But you find it funny?"
"Hilarious."
She passed the bound copy over to me. "Take a look at the front page."
Under "Characters" appeared the names: Lucy/Lucas, Ricky/ Ricki, Ethel/Ethelbert, Fred/Fredricka.
Below was a Note from the Playwright, which read: "The audience will recognize iconic figures resonating in the shared group consciousness…"
"These names seem familiar," I said. "Lucy and Ricky? Ethel and Fred? It's the cast of that old TV show I Love Lucy."
Harriet chuckled. "Top marks, Kylie, but things get drastically different after that. In Quip's play they're all transsexuals; their genders are changing because of pollutants in the environment. Lucy's in the process of becoming Lucas, Ricky's changing to a very feminine Ricki, Fred's on the way to Fredricka, and Ethel will be Ethelbert any day now."
"Crikey," I said, "which one has Melodie got her sights on?"
"Anything she can get." Harriet's tone was dry.
Fran and Melodie appeared, with Fran holding open what was obviously another copy of the play. Melodie was proclaiming, "Incest, incest, incest!" with great dramatic intensity.
She strode up to us and flung her arms wide. "Fratricide, filicide, matricide, patricide…um…" She dropped her arms and looked to Fran for help. "Drat! I always forget this next one."
"Parricide."
Melodie reflung her arms. "Parricide!"
"Jeez," said Harriet, "I know fratricide, matricide, and patricide respectively mean killing your brother, mother, and father. But what's filicide and what's parricide?"
Thanks to my exacting English teacher at Wollegudgerie High, I was able to enlighten her. "Parricide is killing a parent or similar authority figure. Filicide is killing a pastry."
Harriet shot me an incredulous look. "Killing a pastry? You're kidding me."
I had a bit of a giggle over filo pastry. "I am," I admitted. "That would be filocide. Filicide is killing a son or daughter."
For some reason my Aunt Millie popped into my mind. Was there an aunticide?
Meanwhile, Melodie was lifting entreating hands to the ceiling. "I embody sanguinariness," she announced, having a touch of trouble with the pronunciation. "I am slaughterous, I am-"
"Mortiferous," said Fran.
"I am mortiferous." Melodie bowed her head, then sank gracefully to her knees.
" 'Strewth,’ " I said, "the audience will need to bring their dictionaries along."
Fran, who never took kindly to even a hint of criticism where her husband was concerned, snapped, "Quip is deliberately forcing the audience to surrender to the cadence of the language without necessarily fully understanding what the words mean."
"I was talking to Quip this morning," said Melodie, "to get his thoughts on the essential core of Lucy-Lucas. He explained how LUL is deep-real deep."
"I reckon it's a bit of a challenge starting off as Lucy and ending up as Lucas," I remarked.
"For some, it would stretch their talent too thin." Melodie smiled complacently. "Fortunately, that doesn't apply to me."
"I'm sure Quip's play is very profound," I said to Fran, "but it's a bit beyond me."
For Fran, her smile was quite kindly. "Don't feel too badly, Kylie," she said. "Quip's work is a challenge to an educated American. Being an Aussie, you don't have the cultural references to decode, so yes, you're right. It is quite beyond you."
TWELVE
I sat in my office staring at the phone. I'd had a hard day, and dealing with my mother was going to be a challenge, to say the least. Perhaps I'd wait until after I'd spoken with Ariana about my experiences at UCLA. And Lonnie had left a note on my desk saying he had found something interesting, so I could postpone the call until after I'd seen him. Or I could read the bunch of brochures on garden sheds that Fran had left in a neat pile for my attention.
But then, I'd be dreading making the call, so it was preferable to get it over with. Mum had a dich6 for every occasion. Right now I could hear her saying "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today," followed by "Strike while the iron is hot." I sighed and picked up the receiver.
Before punching in the international code and the country number for Australia, I rehearsed what I would say. The plumbing emergency should be over, leaving my mum to concentrate on getting me home from the hellhole she imagined Los Angeles to be. And freeway shootings and Oscar's brush with death would provide her with fresh ammunition.
I had some responses ready. "Now, Mum," I'd say persuasively, the moment the random shootings came up, "statistics show I've got much more chance of winning the lottery than being shot on a Southern California freeway."
No, maybe that wasn't the way to go, considering my mum firmly believed she'd win the lottery any day now. "Got to be in it to win it," she always said, scanning her fistful of tickets every week.
I considered announcing I'd be more likely to be struck by lightning. But then I remembered Great Uncle Samuel, who was struck by lightning. Of course, he helped this along by standing under the tallest tree on a hill in the middle of a thunderstorm, but that wouldn't put Mum off citing him as an example of the prevalence of lightning strikes.
A jab of guilt stabbed me as I punched in the numbers. Mum loved me and wanted the best for me. Unfortunately, our ideas of what constituted the best for me did not correspond. She was determined on getting me back in Wollegudgerie to help her run the Wombat's Retreat. I was determined to stay here in L.A., learning to be a private investigator so I could pull my weight at Kendall & Creeling.