Claire McNab - Quokka Question

I found myself a spot on the grass in the nearby sculpture garden and sat cross-legged, sharing bits of my salad with a couple of entirely fearless squirrels. It would be easy to doze happily in the afternoon sun, but I had plans to make. Erin Fogarty would have to be carefully cultivated, but I was pretty sure we'd soon be best mates, and she'd be telling me how she snaffled Oscar's research for Jack Yarrow.

For the moment I thought I'd steer clear of Professor Yarrow. Ditto his wife, whose jealousy I reckoned would make her vindictive. Georgia Tapp I was going to see this afternoon. Before lunch I'd popped into her room and made an appointment to see her at three o'clock. I could see my respectful attitude had made a good impression. I hoped this would predispose her to like me, because she should be a terrif source of information.

Rube Wasinsky had set me straight on administrative assistants, and why Georgia Tapp was a very rare bird indeed. Years ago, Rube said, there'd been scads of secretaries to do the clerical stuff, but such resources vanished as government funding to universities like UCLA tightened. Now faculty members were supposed to do everything for themselves on their computers.

Professor Jack Yarrow, however, had access to private funding for a research center within the larger structure of the biology department, and he used some of this to cover the salary of his own personal administrative assistant, namely Georgia Tapp.

Georgia's desk was situated in a room next to Yarrow's palatial office. I put my head through the door at exactly three o'clock. "Ms. Tapp?" I raised my eyebrows tentatively. "Could you see me now?"

Georgia was on her feet, wringing her small, plump hands. Even her wispy hair seemed agitated. "I don't know whether to call the campus police or not," she hissed.

Strike me dead! Had she tumbled on to who I really was? "The cops would be a bit of an overreaction, I reckon."

She wrung her hands some more. "Listen!"

"You're a bloody bastard!" came from the adjoining office. "I'm going to expose you for what you are, Yarrow! A sniveling, pathetic arsehole who has to bloody steal my work to shore up his bloody reputation!"

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."