Free The Astrologer's Daughter by Rebecca Lim Page A

coffee and cake like a trained circus animal.
    ‘Jesus Christ!’ I howl, snatching them off him, throwing both in the bin so hard
that the coffee cup bounces up off the steel rim and splashes me with hot liquid.
Mum never snacked. She didn’t like sweet stuff, and she ate like a bird.
    She never had milk in her coffee .
    ‘What are you going to do?’ Simon says cautiously as I scrub angrily at my wet front,
then at my face with the back of one sleeve.
    ‘Finish having a small breakdown,’ I mutter, too ashamed to look at him, ‘and then
I’m going to copy the entire freaking j-journal…’ I wave my other arm uselessly in
the direction of the balding, bird shit-infested lawns outside the State Library.
‘Because I can’t just leave it to people who don’t know her to find her. Then I’m
going to hand it in to the police. That’s what I’m going to do and why do you care ?’
    It feels like there is a balloon just under my skin, slowly inflating. I stand here,
clenching and unclenching my hands, struggling to get air into my lungs while the
balloon goes up and up, squeezing me out of my body.
    She told me everything: that was how things worked. Mum was a talker; you couldn’t
shut her up. But she never told me that the eventuality would end up claiming me,
too.
    I feel Simon slide my backpack off my rigid shoulders. He barely touches me, but
it hurts my skin; that he should be here, seeing me like this.
    ‘ Give me that ,’ I say fearfully, scrabbling in the air for my pack. ‘What are you
doing?’
    He leads me like a blind person to the pedestrian crossing, punching the button with
one elbow. His voice is almost lost in the scattergun sound of the green man lighting
up. ‘I’m getting you there. Somebody has to, okay? Move it.’

    Inside his car, later, I’m surprised by lots of things. By the way he patiently positioned
the journal while I was operating the copier. By the way he showed me the room where you can access old newspaper articles on the microfiche machine because it might
come in handy, later, you never know . By the look and smell of his car.
    I’m in Simon Thorn’s car , travelling across Princes Bridge down St Kilda Road, thin
sunlight kicking up sparkles on the surface of the murky river that bisects this
city. It’s a bomb, Simon’s car, the kind of car I might one day drive: an early model
Holden with peeling maroon paint and bubbly window tints, black plastic louvres across
the back window. It looks like a low-rent drug dealer’s ride on its second go round
the odometer. On the inside, the car is OCD bandbox-neat the way Simon dresses—not
a scrap of loose shit bouncing around anywhere. But it smells like stale hash browns.
Like years of fried breakfasts eaten behind the wheel, with a throbbing bass note
of male body odour.
    I’d expected a late-model BMW with leather seats and chrome trims. And for Simon’s
ride to smell like he does: fresh, sandalwoody, expensive. But I find myself actually
trying to breathe through my mouth.
    Simon gives me a quick sideways look then cranks down his window with the kind of
dinky manual handle you see in retro TV cop shows. ‘It’s kind of disgusting, isn’t
it?’
    All I say, faintly, is, ‘I appreciate the lift. But you aren’t coming in with me.’
    He shrugs and then says, ‘Pick one.’ He points at the poetry compendium, big as a
brick, at my feet.
    ‘ Are you dense or something ?’ I say in an angry rush. ‘I’m not doing it.’
    ‘Just look at them,’ he says patiently, slowing down and craning his neck up at the
numbers on the passing buildings, big and concrete and sprawling. ‘Looking does
not indicate commitment to any further course of action.’
    I lever the compendium up off the floor by its bent cover, turning to the single
dog-eared page I myself inflicted on Simon’s once-pristine book.
    John Donne (1572–1631)
    Beside the chapter heading, Simon’s written in his anal, leaning script: Military
service for