‘This is nice,’ Jane lifts her face to the sky and closes her eyes. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to just … stop.’
The others nod in silent agreement, breathing in the fresh air, lapping up their moment of time out before it all kicks off again, more appointments, home to their families, or their salons, always on the go, always planning the next thing. At least now they can be in the now.
‘You’ve come at the right time,’ Grace explains. ‘Lyrebirds mate in the depths of winter, the adult males start singing a half-hour before sunrise, singing for their lives,’ she laughs.
‘You know what the weird thing is,’ Bianca says. ‘You might not even be mimicking a real kookaburra.’
They all turn to Bianca.
‘You could be mimicking a lyrebird mimicking a kookaburra.’
Which is quite an interesting thing to come from Bianca. Bianca seems to be surprised by herself. Laura and Bianca laugh as if sharing a private joke.
Dress number one on, Laura and the team go outside for the first shot. She feels everybody’s curious eyes on her; the stylist’s team, the press photographer, the magazine photographer and his assistant, Grace the journalist. She feels self-conscious under their gaze.
Despite June being midwinter in Australia, the lushness of the greenery is beautiful. The air is fresh, she’s glad of that. After air-conditioned airplanes and the hotel room, she can fill her lungs now. She longs to take a walk, but the stylist doesn’t want the shoes to get dirty. The shoes don’t fit, they’ve been stuffed in the front with tissue. The dress is too loose and has been clamped down the back, making it difficult for her to bend. She can turn to look at the lyrebird, but not so much that the camera catches the clamps, she’s warned.
While they’re doing more touch-ups to her face and the photographer busies himself checking the light, she hears Bianca tell somebody over the phone that Lyrebird is going to be walking down the steps on the Cory Cooke Show. Great news. Everybody at the shoot is impressed. Lyrebird won’t be sitting on the couch, she won’t be in the front row. Whether she sits at all is TBC. Laura laughs to herself. They look at her as though she is peculiar, which makes her laugh again. They think she is being peculiar now?
The photographer has a quiet word with Laura. He takes her aside, makes a big deal of it, all intense and brooding. He’s handsome, his T-shirt is tight around his biceps, his black jeans fall low on his hips revealing an impressive V-line and Laura wonders if he’s wearing any underwear. Laura feels that he’s flirting with her, even though he’s just discussing the shots. It’s in his face. In his lips and eyes. The thought of this, and no underpants, piques her interest until she realises he looks at everything that way, all around him, a squint, a purse of his lips, a hand through his hair. He flirts with everything he sees. She’s feeling tired now. She had a bowl of seasonal fruits at the hotel, but perhaps it wasn’t enough. She feels slightly faint, light-headed. All these people, so many quirks, so much to analyse and understand in order to work with them; it’s draining. Bianca must be feeling the same because she sits quietly away from everybody, sipping a bottle of water.
Laura looks around the forest. ‘Are we going to wait for a lyrebird to fly into shot …?’
‘We’re bringing the lyrebird to us,’ Grace says with a smile.
And they do. Just as they flew Laura to them, the actual lyrebird arrives in a cage, carried by a ranger who places the distressed bird down on the woodland floor. It looks like a guinea fowl with a long neck and impressive plumage. The photographer tells her where to stand, the soles of her shoes have been taped over so they won’t get dirty, she’s been warned not to ‘scuff’ them, they must be returned to the store by the evening. Everyone watches her expectantly.
Laura doesn’t know what they’re expecting will happen. Do they think she will suddenly start a conversation with the bird in a secret lyrebird language? It’s a bird. A distressed bird that has been scooped from freedom to captivity, driven across the reserve and plonked beside a jet-lagged woman, and Laura knows that, despite her nickname, she’s human, a human that does not possess superpowers to communicate with or understand feathered creatures. Nor does the actual lyrebird possess that quality, both of them are mere mimics. But everyone watches, excited, moved by the pairing of these two species.
The photographer won’t allow the lyrebird out of the cage until he gets his light reading. The lyrebird is in distress. Laura mimics his sound, watching him. As soon as it is let out of its cage it hops behind a tree, instantly, for safety.