The Shining Girls

Kirby ^{14 JANUARY 1993}

‘Hey, Kirsty, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot. Just lost track of time,’ Sebastian ‘call me Seb’ Wilson launches in as he opens the door to her.

‘It’s Kirby,’ she corrects him. She’d been waiting in the lobby downstairs for half an hour before she got the receptionist to call his room.

‘Yeah, sure, sorry. I don’t know where my head’s at. Well, actually I do. It’s wrapped up in this deal. Come in, won’t you? Excuse the mess.’

His suite has to be one of the swankiest in the hotel; top-floor room with a view of the river and an adjoining lounge, the kind with a glass coffee table that would be marked with distinctive razor-blade scratches and the finest dusting of cocaine.

Right now, it’s buried under a shuffle of spreadsheets and data forms. The bed is unmade. There is a collection of empty mini-liquor bottles clustered around the over-sized statement lamp on the side-table. He shoves his briefcase off the white leather couch to make space for her to sit down.

‘Can I get you something? A drink? If there’s anything left…’ he glances at the empties, embarrassed, pushing his fingers through his immaculately tousled hair, revealing that it’s starting to recede prematurely at the temples. Peter Pan all grown up and turned corporate, she thinks, but still trying to coast on the bad-boy persona from high school.

Even under the expensive suit, Kirby can make out that once rangy muscle is going soft, especially around his middle. She wonders when he last tinkered with a motorbike. Or if it’s something he tells himself he’s going to get back to as soon as he cracks that first million and retires at thirty-five.

‘Thanks for taking the time to see me.’

‘Hey, sure. Anything to help Julia. It’s tragic. I still haven’t, you know… gotten over it.’ He shakes his head. ‘That day.’

‘It was a struggle to catch you.’

‘I know, I know. This big merger. Normally the firm wouldn’t be interested in heartland stuff. We’re more coast-centered. But farmers require mortgages, same as everyone else. You probably don’t even know what I’m talking about. What did you say you were studying again?’

‘Journalism. But actually, I just dropped out.’ It hasn’t occurred to her that she’s made the decision until the words are out in the open, confessed to this total stranger. But she hasn’t been to class in over a month. Hasn’t turned in an assignment in two. If she’s lucky, they’ll put her on probation.

‘Hey, I get that. I got sucked into all those political demonstrations and shit. I thought it was something useful I could do with all the anger.’

‘You’re very candid about it.’

‘I’m talking to someone who understands, right? Not a lot of people can.’

‘No kidding.’

‘I mean, you’ve been there.’

The door opens and a Filipino maid sticks her head in. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says, retreating quickly.

‘An hour, okay?’ Sebastian shouts, overly loud. ‘Come back and do the room in an hour!’ He smiles vaguely at Kirby. ‘What was I talking about?’

‘Julia. Politics. Being angry.’

‘Yeah. That’s it. But what was I supposed to do? Stop my whole life? Jules would have wanted me to go on, make something of my future. And look at me now. I think she’d be proud, right?’

‘Sure.’ Kirby sighs. Maybe death concentrates everything. Makes you more of a selfish fratboy ass, even if you’re wounded and lonely underneath it all.

‘So, you go round talking to victims’ families? That must be depressing.’

‘Not as depressing as the murderer getting away with it. I know it’s a long time ago, but can you remember if there was anything that struck you as strange about the police finding the body?’

‘Are you kidding me? That it took two days for anyone to find her. That’s injustice right there. When I think about her lying there in the woods, all alone.’

The words are shop-soiled enough to irritate Kirby – he’s said them so many times that they’ve lost all meaning. ‘She was dead. It wouldn’t have mattered to her.’

‘That’s cold, lady.’

‘It’s true, though. That’s why it’s called having to live with it.’

‘Chill out. Damn. I thought we had a connection here.’

‘Was there anything out of the ordinary? Anything found on the body that was out of place, that didn’t belong to her? A lighter. Jewelry. Something old.’

‘She wasn’t into jewelry.’

‘Okay, thanks.’ Kirby feels tired. How many of these interviews has she done now? ‘You’ve been very helpful. I appreciate your time.’

‘Did I tell you about the song?’ he throws in.

‘I would have remembered.’

‘It has a lot of meaning to me now. “Get It While You Can” – Janis Joplin.’

‘You don’t strike me as the Joplin type.’

‘Neither was Julia. It wasn’t even her handwriting.’

‘What wasn’t?’ Kirby clamps down on the spark of hope. Nothing, it’s nothing. Just like Jamel.

‘On the tape in her purse? I guess someone must have given it to her. You know what girls are like in dorms.’

‘Yeah, all that tape-swapping and pillow fights in their underwear,’ Kirby snipes, to hide her interest. ‘You tell the cops?’

‘What?’

‘That it wasn’t her handwriting?’

‘You think one of those assholes who killed her was a Joplin fan? I think it was more like…’ He mugs drawing a gun sideways out of his pants. ‘Boom-boom! Fuck-tha-police, yo!’ He laughs at his own bad parody, and then his face crumples into sadness. ‘Hey, you sure you don’t want to stick around, have a drink with me?’

She knows what he means.

‘It wouldn’t help,’ Kirby says.