The Frankfurt Kabuff

Chapter 12

I run back home, and find Callum sitting at the kitchen table with his MacBook Air, leaning back on two legs of the chair, a cigarette in the ashtray. Smoke curls around the kitchen, delicate wisps rising and dispersing in the cool air. My heart is still twisting as I take in every detail of this, the life I thought I knew. It all seems the same. Well, almost all. There's an envelope for me under the ashtray, postmarked from Germany.

I take his cigarette, and draw on it deeply. He shoots me a confused glance, and switches off the podcast he is listening to.

'We have to talk, Callum.'

He doesn't deny his involvement with Kev's plan when I confront him.

'I've been telling you for years how hard making a living as a poetry publisher is, but what should you know with your steady teacher's salary.' His face is contorted, as he spits the words out.

'Writing and reading books is the easy part,' he lectures. 'The difficult part of the circuit of the book is publishing it.'

'Yes, Darnton's communication circuit,' I sigh. I can't believe we're going over this again. 'And you're also a hero struggling for symbolic capital.'

Callum looks up sharply. He can tell something's shifted between us; I've criticised Darnton before, but I've never been sarcastic about Bourdieu. There's a moment when genuine theoretical conversation seems possible, but then his facial muscles shift again, he ignores my words, and just looks at me beseechingly.

'Now we've got that distribution deal with Allen & Unwin, this will be the last time I work with Kev. Bea, I did it for us. So we can leave this outer suburban neighbourhood and move to North Fitzroy. When I got that funding knockback from the Australia Council because our list wasn't hitting 'equalities targets' I couldn't think of any other way. But you know how good our books are, Bea... I only see excellence.'

I stare at him, as he tucks a long strand of hair into his Alice band. I take another drag of the cigarette, the nicotine hitting my system, my heart rate rising.

'Boom!' An enormous noise ricochets around the neighbourhood, breaking the tense silence between Callum and I.

For once, it's not just me rushing out into the street. Callum is by my side. 'It's the chicken shop,' he says, with a thin note of panic in his voice. 'I just got an internet message from the lookout guy. I need to retrieve my stuff.'

Our feet hit the footpath in tandem, a bittersweet echo of the intimacy we once shared. We hurtle around the corner towards the clutch of shops that is the heart of our neighbourhood. The burger shop. The frozen yoghurt shop. The kebab shop. And right at the end — blackened and pouring out smoke — the chicken shop.

'Boom!' A second explosion rings out and Callum and I reel backwards. But it's just a momentary check. Callum's eyes are steely and he is faster than me. He ducks into the shop.

I arrive at the front door of the chicken shop a few seconds later. I can hear Callum shouting deep in the interior, but the sound fades to a ringing in my ears as I take in the scene. The heartbreaking scene.

Amina's body is crumpled behind the counter. I glimpse Angela Carter's feminist reworking of Bluebeard just beside her and feel a stab in my heart — of course Callum knew that I would recommend this book, of course he knew Amina would love it so much that it would absorb her, blind her to the danger in the chicken shop. When even the best books could be turned to evil purposes, what use were they?

Flames, red orange and pale pale blue, leaping from the fryer. Thick smoke. I realise I have only seconds to act.

'Help, Bea!' comes Callum's voice from the back of the shop, 'I need help to carry the goods! We need these for our future.'

But my future is clear, and it doesn't include Callum. I bend down and scoop up Amina and run through the chicken shop door, out into the street.

***

Sirens are wailing, and the neighbours are out on the street in force. Amina sits in the back of the ambulance, wrapped in a blanket. She's going to be fine. She's already discovered that the young paramedic woman treating her is an Angela Carter fan, who has promised to lend her more books. I haven't seen Callum yet. The news reporter recording a TV segment out the front of the shop is talking about a corrupt politician, bribes, a drug ring, rival bikie gangs, and more. But I'm done here.

I turn to the elderly couple standing nearby. 'Either of you got a smoke?'

The woman passes me one, and I stride towards the chicken shop. I bend down and light the cigarette on the still glowing coals by the door, under the fluttering remnants of the lunchtime specials poster.

The chicken shop will haunt me, I know that. But I will keep moving.