Albedo Chapter Three
Terpinolene, Cherry Cola
Cheap illuminated panels spaced every six metres, acetate images of models with perfect bright
white teeth slid into the boxes. Advertisements for hotels and perfumes and toothpaste and fishing
gear, graffiti'd and washed many times over and over. The plasti-concrete floor glittered with shards
of glass. Bottles and their contents all of a clatter 20 minutes ago, cherry cola in a spreading
puddle, iced with chunks of clear silica. The reflection of Marnie's closest two friends juddered in
the puddle as they stepped over to her, crouched amidst the carbonated debris picking out pieces big
enough to hold and bag up. The laces of her boots were already beginning to wick up the
saccharine drink at the tips. Already sneaking out under the yellow guardrail they'd erected to ward off
distracted shoppers. The pop's sweet-citrus, floral smell was mixing with the rotten musty
mop-water. Bubbles still danced in the dying effervescence, a quiet static in the caramel reflected
ceilings below. The long lancet windows in the hallway spread the light out in stark rows.
Catching Fliss's delicate features staring down at her through the pool's image, she wrangled her
features into a huge gurn. Popping a look at herself to check its ugliness, matching it to
the actual placement of Fliss's head in real space, who returned a matching mug, looking up to spot
Connie morphing her own addition before looking over from between her two blonde curtains of hair.
Marnie's own hair showing up a few shades darker than the box-dye job from a few days back had
advertised. They snickered along with each other, years past air-filling chatter. Speaking only when
they had something good to say, something tasty to the ears.
Even after clocking the hour taken to clear up the mess, getting thanks and pay from a manic S.P
Pete, dropping off an inventory of the damages to the sundries department office, and walking over to
Gem's Tea Hut, they'd still not heard from Lucille about their supposed 11 AM meeting. The clock in
the hut read 12:32. None of them were surprised, you met her when she was ready. It was how it had
always been. It would annoy Marnie if she weren't so used to it, and if it didn't lead to well paid
work. The Tea Hut was something like a mismatch between an old information kiosk and a sort of roving
food van. Vats of heat, jars of wet and dry ingredients nestled in storage bins, fine crockery and
its rustic brethren, steam clouds and delicate aroma. The owner Gem, a small sweet woman in bug
lenses and crochet clothing, would gossip your ears red while she served you loose leaf tea by the
cup. Pouring each from a large pot almost without asking, a knowledge of taste almost in the
supernatural. She would offer to read your leaves after you finished swigging, something of a tongue
in cheek mystic. "Cherub, I'm lost for words here. Either you're set to grow a second head or I'm
reading this bloody book wrong" she said once to Marnie, staring into the bottom of a cup through the
lower half of a pair of varifocals. "Pay attention to nature girls. You wouldn't want to miss the
last words of somebody on their death-bed! Especially not someone that old!" She had a cynical laugh
and a million half-serious theories about a million things.
"Looks to me like you're in two minds here. This could signal that you're due for a big change. This
part I'm not too sure..." she said half in a giggle. Then nodded over to Connie who was engrossed in
her phone and held her finger up to her lips. When Connie finally noticed the silence and looked up
Gem butted in with "we know your secret!" And set the girl to flushing red. "What? I wasn't
listening." She returned back to whatever she was staring at on the screen before she got
interrupted but then looked back up again to stare daggers at them all for the teasing. Gem had
stepped close to her and placed a hand on her forearm in apology. Pointing up to the glass box that
hung above the hall and which housed Lucille's office, now illuminated at the owner's return, she
said "Don't work too hard now."
A sweet, floral aroma filled the air inside the office. Lucille, leaned back in her white leather and
birch chair, pushed slightly away from the matching desk that constituted almost all of the
furniture present. The cream sole of her shiny black shoes visible on the top crossed leg, manicured
french-tipped fingernails visible on all but the raised index finger, holding the silence she needed
to finish her call before the girls could say hello or ask why she needed them that day. She was
bronzed and bleached, skin and hair, and the type of woman Marnie assumed to wax prodigiously. Not
an errant hair anywhere. Clothes all designer and tailored and unavailable to purchase outside a
small circle of connected and well-funded persons. The sort of person that would sleep standing up
if it meant that she may look better for it. She was smooth and shiny all over, sensuously firm and
taught and clean and pert and grotesque. Marnie found herself staring. She had all the charisma of a
forcefully held bowel movement, impossible to talk to, unbearable to listen to, but entirely too
well connected to avoid when working in this centre. Anyone amongst the cohort of people who made
their living here could tell you. Success hinged on how you fell, fair or foul, of this woman.
You'll have been cornered at some point, after she'd noticed you a few times, and once she'd thought
up something you could do for her to prove fealty. The topics of conversation with her felt like
cards in a stacked deck, ordered precisely and coming up un-shuffled from her practised sleight of hand.
She often recounted her own history to newcomers, or repeated it to those she'd failed to remember.
How she'd borrowed money from her father to take on a risky and floundering centre but had managed
to turn it into a profit making enterprise by allowing all of the closed businesses to shelter and
operate from the high ground in here. Exploiting a freshly emerging rental market. She effortlessly
repeated the phrase 'Donned my waders' when recounting how she'd canvassed her first tenants. She
even offered details of her first and only ad campaign. 'Indigo ink on cornflour blue paper' her
flyers that seemed ubiquitous even now. "Let's all make some money out of this" emblazoned on the
front fold in large letters. Her original low rates now approaching strangulation, a lot of the
original takers had abandoned the centre for floating barges to sell from.
Marnie could hear her hosiery slip together as she uncrossed and recrossed her legs, ceased actively
participating on the call and drumming her fingertips onto the tabletop with impatience. "I think
I've said my part here" was all it took to herald her dismount from the call. Her attention
immediately on the girls in the room with her. She beckoned them closer, no chairs to sit on meant
they awkwardly stood at the edge of the desk like school kids. "My father and I have been in
business together for... Well, it must be ten years now." Marnie could tell they were in for a
story, as often happened when they came in looking for a job, too many 'Story-telling for business'
seminars attended by Lucille. "The house growing up was always cold, impossible to heat such a large
old building" she looked over at Connie, who always seemed to be more interested than the others. "I can
remember sitting in the golden sun pouring through those beautiful windows, soaking up the warmth
into my black school trousers. Reading about my father and his impact on the country. When he was
younger, when we were, he had such an influence on business and politics and even culture that it's
easy to see why he didn't have a lot of time for his family. Didn't have a lot of time for me. I'd
only just begun to understand it at that age. Around when I had one of the most memorable experiences of my
life with him. I can remember my teeth felt fluffy, that feeling you get when you've eaten too much sugar. I
was always a porky child, always stuffing, but I was preoccupied with the feeling on my teeth while
this great thing happened to me. It made it more memorable. He came into my room unannounced and sat
on the floor with me, strangely at home on a Saturday instead of working. He began asking me a series
of questions, more than he'd ever asked me at once, far more probing than any of the regular father
daughter niceties he'd usually use. He covered my sisters, my mother, the house-staff, what I'd seen
in the news, in books, what I knew about him, what I wanted to do as I grew older. He was testing me
for some reason, and I was trying hard to pass, giving him model responses.
Everything I thought he would want to hear. When he asked about my career ambitions I told him I
wanted to do what he did and he smirked, I've never seen the face he pulled since, he said "What
makes you think you can do it like me?" and a silence filled the room after.
It was like he'd imparted something in me then, some sort of
hunger, I can feel the thread of that moment stretching out to connect itself to what's coming up."
She stood up and walked over to the edge of the office, looking out over the internals of the
centre. "This shabby place proved to him that I can turn a profit. Every time I return dividends to
him I can feel his approval. It's been the proof he needed to consider me for what's coming up. The
new retail centre of which I will co-chair the operating board. Huge investment from Japan, the
chance for us to finally work together." She turned and looked over, holding her gaze on Connie for
maybe a moment more than the other two. Fliss couldn't care less, and was looking over at Marnie,
who actively despised what was being said and was grinding teeth. Connie looked shamed or even envious.
Marnie never knew she cared about her career enough to let it bother her.
"There's a stretch of land up near the levee we've purchased. Utterly beautiful, includes all of the
ridges over the other side of town. Good water access, a new offshoot to be built from the motorway junction. A
real destination. We've got land deeds and site plans, but it's
going to cost us a lot to comply with the environmental regulations. We'll be chopping
down the trees that are in the way and planting our own new saplings, to grow with the centre.
Usually a professional surveyor is the bulk of the cost, to figure the amount of trees coming and
going. With yourselves taking on that role we can do it without so much hassle, and get ourselves the
eco-credit for replanting ...and you three can get a day or two of proper money." Implicit in this
all to Marnie was that she didn't usually get proper money, and that she was basically undercutting
someone else for their work and doing a cheap imitation. She didn't however, have the capital to
push her morals further than thought. A full screen worth of notifications had appeared on Lucille's
phone while she was talking at the girls.
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