“WOO!”
“Apples, we can’t even see the beach yet,” said Dorothee. “I think you’re getting a little premature with your ‘woo’-ing.”
“But I’m also getting very, very good at knowing when to use my ‘inside woo’ and my ‘outside woo’,” said Apples. “Except really my ‘outside woo’ is my, like … my genuine woo. My ‘true woo’. My ‘inside woo’ is more like—”
“All right,” said OJ, “I have to tell you right now, if you say the word ‘woo’ one more time I shall be forced to revoke all ‘woo’ privileges for a period not less than four hours.”
“Who made you the woo judge?”
“Dad did,” said OJ. “Remember? It was part of Regulation Eight, the settlement package.”
“Oh yeah,” said Apples. “Huh. Man, that was a big mess, right? I can’t believe it got so—oh! Oh oh oh! That one doesn’t count, right? When I said … ‘court judge’?”
“When you said what?” Dorothee asked.
“I can’t say ‘that word’ so I’m substituting another word with the same meaning.”
“How on earth does ‘court’ have the same meaning as ‘woo’?” OJ asked.
“You know, it’s like … if you like someone and you want them to be your sweetheart then you can do stuff like serenade them and romance them with chocolates and flowers, that’s called ‘courting’ but also … ‘wuh-ing’. Right? Therefore, ‘court’ can also mean … ‘wuh’.”
Dorothee and OJ both stared at Apples for a moment as they walked, then looked at each other.
“It does make a certain kind of Apples-brand sense,” Dorothee said. OJ shook his head and turned his attention back to his sister.
“Disregarding all that,” he said, “I’m allowing that one ‘woo’ but ANY FURTHER ‘woo’ outbursts shall be—”
“COURT! There’s the beach!”
OJ stopped talking as Apples ran forward with the speed of a small cat launching itself from the breadbox it had been trapped in for the past hour as part of an intricate plan to figure out who was eating all the crumpets.
“I never even found out where that stupid cat came from,” OJ muttered. Dorothee sighed as she watched Apples trip and roll seven times in the sand, laughing and spluttering all the while.
“I wish I enjoyed anything as much as Apples enjoyed … well, any given moment of her life, really,” said Dorothee. “If there was a way to live as someone else, like a way to borrow someone’s life for a little while, Apples could become a millionaire in a week just from renting hers out.”
“She’d never do it, she’s read too much sci-fi,” said OJ, as he and Dorothee made their way onto the hot white sands of the beach. “She knows how that kind of thing inevitably ends.”
“I was speaking … figuratively? I can never remember which one it
is—not metaphorically because there wasn’t a comparison … or was there?”
“You know,” said OJ, as he rolled his beach towel out over the sand, “I think you’re less relaxed on holiday than you are normally. You never worry about whether you’re speaking figuratively or metaphorically at home.”
Dorothee threw her towel onto the sand and sat down on it, watched Apples as she chased seagulls for a while, then pulled her knees up to her chin.
“Huh,” she said.
“I’m not criticising or anything,” said OJ. “I just think it’s weird. People usually relax on holidays.”
“Maybe it’s because I decided to spend my holiday with the least relaxing person I know.”
OJ blinked.
“Too Tight Tim is here?” he asked.
“No! Apples!”
“I actually find her antics quite soothing,” said OJ. He lay back on his towel and pushed his hat forward over his eyes. “It’s like a Magnus painting, there’s all this chaos and weird stuff going on but if you stand back and take it as a whole it all just, y’know, mellows.”
“I never liked Magnus paintings. Too much unpleasant subtext.”
“I don’t think you can have subtext in a painting,” said OJ, after a moment. “Mainly on account of there being no ‘text’. If you’re going to have sub—”
“All right, all right,” snapped Dorothee. “Sub-imagery or whatever then. God, you’re as bad as her sometimes, did you know that?”
“Calm yourself, woman,” said OJ, pushing his hat off his face and turning to look at her. “You really don’t do ‘holidays’ well, do you?”
“Huh,” said Dorothee.
“Let’s talk about not-holidays then,” said OJ, forcing joviality into his voice. “Have you found out about getting back your old job?”
“I have, actually,” said Dorothee, brightening immediately. “They want me back because apparently I’m the only competent employee they’ve hired in the last two years. Which is both complementary and sad.”
“I think you meant to say ‘complimentary’ there.”
“I did! That’s what I said!”
“No, I think you’ll find that you said ‘complementary’, as in ‘completes the whole’.”
“They’re pronounced EXACTLY THE SAME!”
“Settle down, I’m just playing with you,” said OJ. He smiled at Dorothee. “I’m actually a bit jealous.”
“Why, because I can misspell words even when I’m talking?” Dorothee muttered.
“No—and don’t worry, it’s only when you’re on holiday that you do that—the reason I’m jealous is because of your ultra-competency.”
“I’d trade all my ultra-competency for five minutes of Apples’ enjoyment of ridiculous things.”
“You wouldn’t really.”
“I guess not,” said Dorothee. She sighed. “It’d be nice to know what life is like in Apples Land, though.”
“Busy, is my guess.”
“GUYS! You will NEVER guess what happened!” Apples cried, as she came running back to them. “I had a brilliant idea!”
“You’re right,” said OJ, “I would never have guessed that.”
“We should build a sandcastle—all together, I mean!”
“Apples—wait, actually that does sound fun,” said OJ. He sat up, adjusted his glasses, and put his hat on properly. “I’ll build the moat, you can get started on the main ‘keep’. Doro—”
“Turrets,” said Dorothee firmly, as she stood up. “I’ll be in charge of defences.”
“Yay! OJ, Doro’s playing!”
OJ smiled at Dorothee as they followed Apples to the spot she’d already marked out (and signed).
After a moment, Dorothee smiled back.
*
“Oh, stop sulking.”
“But we didn’t even get to do half the things we were supposed to do! I still can’t believe there’s nowhere around here that sells watermelon, that’s just ridonkulous.”
“It IS an island, Apples,” said OJ. “If there aren’t any watermelon farms or whatever around here they’d have to import them—besides, they have heaps of other fruit—”
“It has to be a watermelon! What kind of an island doesn’t have watermelons? Especially an island that’s CALLED ‘Tropical Island’—and it’s part of the ‘Candy Melon Islands’, how can they NOT have watermelon?”
“They’ve got lots of candy melon—”
“CANDY melon, OJ, not WATERmelon. It’s COMPLETELY different!”
“Maybe we should have gone to ‘Watermelon Island’,” Dorothee said.
“Yeah! Totally!” Apples agreed. She thought for a moment, then frowned. “Is there a ‘Watermelon Island’?”
Dorothee shrugged.
“I don’t see what’s so great about hitting a watermelon with a stick, anyway,” said OJ. “Especially on the beach. Wouldn’t it just get sand all in it?”
“That’s not the point!” protested Apples. “It’s just part of things! In the beach episode you HAVE to split a watermelon with a stick while blindfolded, it’s just … it just IS!”
They walked on in silence for a few moments, before Dorothee lost the struggle with herself:
” ‘The beach episode’?”
“Oh! There’s that place I saw earlier, EVERYTHING has coconut in it, even the soup!”
“Do you really—”
“Enough talk, let’s-a go!”
For perhaps the twentieth time that day, OJ and Dorothee exchanged glances.
“Coconut soup does hold kind of a strange appeal for me,” OJ said.
“Apples doesn’t even like coconut, does she?”
“It’s only desiccated stuff that she doesn’t like. It makes her choke, except when it’s on a lamington or macaroon.”
“Huh.”
“Come ON you GUYS! Everything’s coconuts!”
OJ and Dorothee looked at Apples, who was dancing impatiently in front of the restaurant, then at each other. OJ shrugged.
“She makes a good point,” he said.
*
OJ sat on his bed, looking out through the glass doors to the beach and the ocean beyond, lit pleasantly in tones of orange chocolate by the light of the setting sun. Above him a lizard splayed itself haphazardly on the ceiling, like a spy caught in a searchlight.
“Apples,” he said, after a moment. “What are you doing?”
Apples was frozen in place, one arm raised, the other thrust out behind herself. Her legs were spread apart in a perfect upside-down ‘v’. The expression on her face was one of purse-lipped concentration.
“I’m being ‘preparedness’,” she said.
OJ considered this for a moment.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because lack of preparation is an invitation to disaster.”
“And you suddenly care about preventing disasters.”
“I always—”
“Instead of creating them.”
“Unfair! Oh, that’s so unfair, OJ, I do NOT create disasters! Not intentionally, anyway.” Apples shifted position a little, stretched her legs out further. “If anything I ‘manage’ disasters.”
“I can’t really argue with that, it’s just a shame that your style of management would best be illustrated by a five second film clip of a kitten chasing after a laser pointer and running into a wall.”
Apples was silent for a moment, then she relaxed into a more normal posture.
“That was a really well thought-out put down, OJ,” she said. “I’m kind of too impressed to take offence.”
“Thank ye.”
“Plus, you know me, can’t hold a grudge for more than a minute—”
“And your sixty seconds are almost up. That restaurant tonight was surprisingly good.”
“Wasn’t it? Especially the liquid coconut cheesecake, SURPRISINGLY good. And coconut soup, I’m still so happy about that, coconut soup!”
“It was pretty awful.”
“But still, that it exists! Kind of delightful! But—oh, hey! Don’t distract me like you always do, I was going somewhere with the whole ‘preparedness’ thing, you really threw me off my stride. Don’t throw me off my stride, OJ.”
“Apologies.”
“And don’t just say ‘apologies’, you know of my distaste for people using plural nouns or adverbs as a means of expression.”
“Understandings.”
“Why you!” cried Apples, shaking her fist at her brother. “But anyways, what I was talking about was, like, WHAT is going to happen when we get home? I mean, WHAT?”
OJ frowned at his sister. “What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“WHAT, OJ, WHAT?”
“WHAT what?”
“What WHAT what?”
“What ‘WHAT’?”
“What WHAT. WHAT!”
OJ paused.
“Um, what?”
“Stuff!” Apples cried. “Lots of stuff! I still feel bad about your whole TV show thing—”
“No, no, no, no, no, we said we wouldn’t talk about that. Besides, it was fun getting just a pilot made, and honestly I’m kind of relieved that things didn’t go beyond that, I mean I didn’t really have the scripts for the rest of even the first season. I think what I’m good at is thinking up like all the little details for something and like the overreaching myth arcs but that I’m not so good at actually, y’know, writing the stuff leading up to the, what would you call them … um, the ‘big moments’.”
Apples pouted a bit.
“I still wanted to watch your show,” she muttered. “All that stuff you wrote, like the Churchill Incident? It seems like a shame not to actually, y’know, see it all. Kind of like a waste.”
“I guess so, I mean … maybe. At least you made some new friends. Not that you need them.”
“I always need friends, how can you say that? I need new friends FOREVER. Anyway, what are you gonna do? You’ve lost all direction in your life, you’re wandering down a dark road, alone without a light, you can’t see forward and you can’t turn back, you—”
“Wait, why can’t I turn back?”
“Because if you turn back you turn into a pomegranate, OJ, everyone knows that.”
“Where’s Dorothee, she usually rescues me from these
conversations—”
“She’s in the spa bath jacuzzi thing, she said she didn’t want to waste her last evening on holiday rescuing you from bizarre conversations.”
“Oh.” OJ considered this. “Well, that’s kind of fair. Anyway, what about you?”
Apples staggered back, shocked. “What ABOUT me?”
“What are YOU going to do, now that you’re freed of the responsibilities of parliament and Apples TV or whatever it was going to be called—”
“As I have explained to you SEVENTEEN TIMES now it was going to be an offshoot of the Ministry of Arts and it was going to be called the Ministry of Fun—”
“No, it wasn’t, Apples, that was just your proposal.”
Apples pouted again.
“I still can’t believe they rejected it,” she muttered.
“It was written in crayon, I think they did have fairly solid grounds—”
“It’s the Ministry of Fun, OJ! What’s more fun than crayons? Not much I bet! They were really nice crayons, too, my BEST crayons, and I spent aaaaaages drawing the ponies around the edges—but anyway, that’s not important!”
“What is important, then?” OJ asked.
Apples thought for a moment.
“… ice cream?”
“Apples, just focus for a moment here. You seemed like you might have had a point there for a little while—or was that just a wild fancy of mine?”
“Point … point … I don’t know, I can’t stop thinking about ice cream, now. Oh! I bet that restaurant would probably have had coconut ice cream, I LOVE coconut ice cream!”
“Who doesn’t?”
“We really missed a trick with that one, OJ! We’ve gotta be more sharp, that’s ridiculous that we missed an opportunity for coconut ice cream—it’s not the kind of thing that comes up every day, after all. But anyway, what do you think Dorothee’s going to do?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Dorothee said, as she stepped into the room. She was wearing a pink gown and had a towel wrapped around her hair. “OJ, can I go ONE evening without having to rescue you from your sister’s conversational pit-traps?”
“Sorry, Doro,” said OJ. “I have no idea where I’m up to with this one.”
“Yes you do, OJ! We were wondering what our best friend Dorothee was going to do once she got home—Dorothee, what are you going to do?”
“I … well, I don’t know, really,” said Dorothee, as she sat down on OJ’s bed. “I do have a job offer but I checked my account balance while I was drying off and it turns out I’m kind of rich. Apparently being made redundant as the assistant to the Minister of Fun comes with a remarkably heavy golden handshake.”
“How, um … how rich are you talking?” OJ asked.
“Well, enough to not worry about working for a while, anyway,” said Dorothee. She lay back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, locking gazes with the lizard still crouched there. “Although I don’t really ‘do’ holidays very well.”
“You seem okay tonight,” said Apples, as the lizard scuttled away. “Kind of relaxed and happy.”
“Opening up your bank account and finding an extra zero on the end of things can have that effect,” said Dorothee. “But really I’m just happy to be going home. Three weeks is too long to be away. Anyway, what about you, Apples? If we’re talking ‘people who need to focus on the direction their life is taking’, I think of the three of us it’s not me who needs to be worrying.”
“Right? I was just saying to OJ—”
“I mean you, Miss Apples.”
“Don’t I get a golden handshake too?” Apples asked.
“You got yours a month ago,” said OJ. “That’s why we’re on this holiday, remember? And you donated most of the rest to the United OCC Front.”
“What? Did I? Well I am a fan … did I really?”
“Apples, how can you not remember that?” Dorothee asked. “OJ and I spent FIVE HOURS trying to convince you not to.”
“Huh. You’d think I’d remember something like that. Oh, that explains all the ice cream in our freezer! Orange chocolate chip FOREVER!”
“No, Apples,” said OJ, patiently. “You bought that with the remainder of your money. Remember? ‘Three hundred dollars worth of ice cream, there’s nothing about that sentence I don’t like!’.”
“Hmm,” said Apples, adopting a thoughtful pose, with the expression to match. “That does sound like something I’d say for reals.”
“Well, I say ‘remainder’, this was, of course, after you spent several thousand dollars on a new giant chest freezer—”
“Big Frosty Joe McIcicle! Oh, I DO remember now, of course, how silly of me. So everything’s great, then!”
“How do you figure—”
“OJ, there is a chest freezer FULL of ice cream waiting for us when we get home. How could anyone consider that situation to be anything but splendid?”
OJ stared at his sister for a good few seconds.
“You do make a very valid point,” he admitted. “But still—”
“And anyway I DO have a direction,” said Apples, “I have a very wonderful schedule laid out for myself. Really, my days are just packed.”
*
“Please entertain me, Dorothee. So bored.”
“Apples, we’ve been home for less than an hour. What happened to your schedule?”
“Huh? Schedule? Since when did I ever schedule anything? For my best friend you’re not very observant about me, you know,” said Apples, from where she was lying over the edge of the couch. Dorothee sighed and turned to OJ, who hurriedly shook his hands as if warding off some EEEEEVIL curse.
“Don’t drag me into this,” he said, “I’ve got to get to bed. I have work in the morning.”
“Oh yeah!” Apples sprang up immediately. “You’ve gotta start taking it seriously now that your promising career as a brooding and mysterious television writer has tanked!”
“You’re just so tactful, I really appreciate that about you,” said OJ. “And, hey, I always took my job seriously.”
“Not seriously enough to actually devote any screentime to it,” Apples muttered. “I’ve never even met this unbelievably cool co-worker of yours.”
“Who, Moxie? Why haven’t you met her?” Dorothee asked.
“OJ won’t let me go to work with him,” Apples pouted. “And I must say, Oranges, I think it was just a little bit OTT to get a job working in a music shop in Leyton with a ‘no sisters’ policy JUST so you didn’t have to take me there. Going on the ferry every day must be … oh wait, that must be really fun, oh, I get why you did it now. Oh. Okay then.”
“Leyton?” Dorothee asked. OJ made a complicated eyebrow-movement that, to Dorothee’s trained eye, looked like ‘am trapped in orangutan send dishwashers urgently’.
“Do you mean ‘straight away’ or ‘in an urgent manner’?” she asked.
“In an urgent manner, of course,” said OJ, this followed closely by: “But actually what the heck are you talking about?”
“I … never mind. Didn’t you say something about going to bed?”
“I suppose I did.” OJ drooped. “I hate going to bed because I have to. I liked it better when I went to bed because I couldn’t physically keep my eyes open any longer. That was much more fun. Goodnight anyway, I guess, I suppose, don’t see what’s so ‘good’ about it, see you in the morning except I won’t because I have to get up early and you two don’t, you lucky ducks.”
“You don’t start work until ten o’clock,” said Dorothee, “that’s hardly ‘early’.”
“Any time is early when you don’t want to be awake,” said OJ, before thinking for a moment and adding: “At that time.”
“I guess I’ll go to bed too since it’s so BORING around here,” said Apples. She skipped off towards her room, then spun to point a warning finger at the other two. “And when I wake up in the morning there had better be some plot around here, or answers will be politely but firmly demanded.”
*
“What did I say last night?”
“I’m not sure, I wasn’t really paying attention,” said Dorothee. “I’m still recovering from being on holiday. Also, technically it’s not ‘morning’ yet, not really—but anyway, I had an idea—”
“Seriously! There’s got to be some cool little adventure or something going on around here, we’ve been back almost a full day already and literally NOTHING has happened.”
“Well, we’re sharing a dream, that’s kind of ‘something’.”
“Huh. Sharing dreams is so, I don’t know, it’s just a thing is all, it’s not an adventure.”
“Hallo you two.”
“Apples, look! It’s David Bowie!”
Apples perked up a little.
“Well, I guess that’s pretty good,” she mumbled, then smiled at him—he was wearing a thin white suit and a tall silver top hat. “Hi, David Bowie. Are you here to start us off on another grand adventure?”
“Not really sorry Apples. I just thought I’d visit seeing as I was passing through. I’m on my way to a party actually.”
“Oh.”
David Bowie flashed a grin at Apples. “Cheer up,” he said. “Just do what you want and adventure will follow.”
“That doesn’t seem like very responsible advice,” said Dorothee.
“I suppose it depends on whether or not you consider adventure to be a good thing,” said David Bowie. “Anyway, that party isn’t going to attend itself—”
“Hang on, wait a minute here,” Dorothee said. “You swan in here, spout some rubbish, then try to leave without a word of explanation? You really left us hanging in Pimsneyback, what was all that about? ‘It’s time I should be going’ and then over a year later you walk back into our dreams like nothing’s happened? What kind of way to behave is that?”
“I really must—”
“Doro’s right, as usual!” said Apples. “I forgot I was annoyed at you, hey! You DID just leave us hanging, what was up with that?”
“I—”
“Come on, David Bowie. I think we deserve a few answers.”
David Bowie looked helplessly between Apples and Dorothee.
“Oh look, a bus!” he said, pointing.
“Don’t think you can distract—”
“Doro, look! It’s a bus with polka-dots! It’s dancing!”
By the time the bus had finished its final pirouette (with, Dorothee thought, a completely unnecessary flourish), David Bowie was gone.
World 1-2
Crystal Cove
GET READY!
