Exile (8 page)
To face Azraeil alone.
The thought pops into my head, but the name does not come with a face or form. I worry at the edges of it as I walk down the hill towards the internet café, then push it out of my mind as I enter the narrow, air- conditioned chamber filled with machines and wiring. Put it down to just another of the weird lacunae in my memory.
I consult the lurid signage on the walls and hand the man behind the bulletproof booth a fiver. He hands me a token and jerks his head at the room full of computers. ‘It’ll warn you when your time’s almost up,’ he says.
There are only two other people here. A sour- smelling gent near the door, who glances up at me shiftily before dropping his shoulders and turning back to face his screen; and an Asian kid in the far corner who looks about fifteen but is probably in his twenties.
I head in the kid’s direction. He’s playing some ultra-violent warfare game that involves a lot of flame-throwing, fancy weaponry and people dying in agony in extreme close-up. He doesn’t look up when I squeeze past him to get to my terminal.
I insert the token and place the cursor in the little bar at the top of the page, typing in the exact string of letters for the social networking site’s home page that I saw Ranald input into his laptop. A few seconds later, the computer’s asking for an email address and a password, and I type in the email address I saw this morning and the word
misericordia
, smiling to myself as I do.
It takes me a moment to process what I’m seeing next: advertisements for weight-loss supplements, wrinkle-removal creams and free audio books on a try-before-you-buy basis. Stuff I didn’t even know I needed, ‘tailor-made’ for me. But as I stare at the page harder I realise that I have one friend online at the moment and he badly wants to chat.
I study the little window that’s popped open at the base of my screen, the miniature version of the photo I’ve already seen. Read the black text printed there:
Damn, Mercy, is it you? Really you? Answer me!
I observe with almost detached curiosity that Lela’s hands are shaking a little. It’s after midnight where he is. I can’t believe we’re together again, after a fashion.
I type back:
Yes. Ask for proof if you like.
Almost instantly, he shoots back:
What’s my father’s name? My mother’s?
I reply, grinning:
Too easy. Stewart, Louisa. You can do better than that. I could have gotten that out of a phone book.
He types:
What was the song that Carmen’s choir had to learn for the interschool concert?
I reply at speed:
Part 1 of Mahler’s Symphony No 8 in E flat major. Although that’s probably publicly available information as well. This is hopeless, Ryan. Neither of us has really proven that we are who we say we are — you can’t see me, I can’t see you. You might be Brenda Sorensen for all I know, snooping around. Ask me something only you and I would know.
He’s silent for a long time and I wonder for a minute if it really is Brenda digging around in Ryan’s computer, or whether I’ve offended him in some way with my baiting, my acidity.
It’s funny how he brings that out in me, how we’ve fallen straight back into our old way of talking to each other. It’s like a defence mechanism, I suppose. No one likes to be hurt, especially not someone who’s spent nearly the entire course of their life in hiding. Because I’ve been forced to, because I can’t afford to give myself away. I’m almost poised for disappointment. As the seconds tick by, I almost convince myself I’m communicating with an impostor.
But then words appear on my screen, in fits and bursts so that I must read what’s written there twice for it to make any kind of sense.
He writes haltingly:
Do you think it’s possible . . . to fall for someone you’ve never even really . . . seen?
Luc was right. Ryan may prove to be my salvation, in the end. The blaze of joy I feel is so sudden and so fierce that I find myself literally crushing the edges of the table top with Lela’s fine-boned fingers. Cracks appear in the chipboard surface where her right hand is resting.
I glance over my shoulder at the middle-aged man inside the booth to see if he’s noticed anything out of the ordinary, but he continues reading his Chinese-language newspaper without looking up. Only the ceiling falling down would grab the attention of the baby-faced gamer beside me.
I’m suddenly so dizzy, so giddy, I can’t type straight and I need to wait until my sight clears, until Lela’s crazy heartbeat is roughly back under my control.
He writes:
Mercy? Are you still there?
And I reply, still clinging to that necessary veneer of distance:
Can you be specific?
Am I flirting? I’m no good at flirting.
You know exactly what I mean. The words race themselves to fill the screen. This is hard enough.
I reply: Humour me. Humour someone who’s had everything they’ve ever known taken away from them.
There’s another long pause. Then the words: What are you?
He adds: You promised me once that you’d answer that question when we got Lauren back. Then you went and disappeared off the face of the earth.
I feel the corners of Lela’s mouth quirk upwards and think for a while before typing cautiously:
The people who put me in here say that the knowledge is in me. But I can’t access it. I’m not a ghost, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I’m very much alive. And I’m not a bad . . . person. Not any more. There are things I can do that I don’t understand. But I have a physical form. Lauren mhave told you. I saw myself in Carmen, can see myself in Lela Neill, as I could in the reflections of some of the others. I’m getting stronger. My ability to remember is beginning to regenerate. But I don’t know if what I am is worthy of . . . love.
It’s a leading statement and, mentally, I kick myself for even mentioning the word. But he continues to sidestep the real reason we’ve blundered towards each other again, even though we’re separated by oceans, by continents, by logic itself.
He types:
After you left, Lauren described you to a sketch artist, a guy we know who’s a court reporter. I have his sketch taped up in my room, carry a copy of it in my wallet. I know what you look like. Would know what you look like anywhere. Lauren was the one who saw the resemblance. She knows a bit about art and she said you look like the Delphic Sybil, but your eyes are brown. Now that’s how I think of you. Kind of sacred. Magical. Not-of-this-world.
I make a mental note to look up this Delphic Sybil and write back, grinning:
She’d better be pretty, this Sybil character. So what do we do next?
His response is swift.
It’s Tuesday where you are, Monday here. I’ll be there by Friday your time. There are a few things I need to do here first, a few people I need to talk to. I’ve started studying again so I’m playing catch-up big time. There’s a lot I’ve missed out on. Dad says it’s thanks to you (well, Carmen!) that this little miracle has come to pass. And I may just do that, finally. Pass (LOL).
Lauren sends her love. She’s getting better, too. Some days are better than others. But she knows that she wouldn’t be here without you and she wants so much to thank you properly. She’s not officially back with Rich Coates, although he doesn’t let her out of his sight these days. They spend almost all their time together.
The news makes me smile. Hooray for second chances, I think.
He adds:
Don’t argue. I know you like to argue. I’ve already booked a ticket. I know where the Green Lantern is — I’ve looked it up online. I’ll get there in the morning, I’m coming straight from the airport. So just wait for me. Try not to go anywhere until I get there. Think you can do that?
Lela’s hands are a little unsteady as I write:
That question you asked me? I think it’s definitely possible. And I’ll be right here, waiting.
I frown, remembering, and add:
But Lela might not be able to leave right away. Her mother’s really sick. I might need to wait. But it won’t be long. Days, maybe hours. Just a feeling I get.
Ryan’s response is swift and joyous.
See you Friday. Friday! It doesn’t matter if we have to wait. I haven’t stopped thinking of you since you left. I’ll wait. I9;ll wait forever if I have to.
I don’t trust myself to reply, just close out of the chat screen with a feeling in my heart like sun on the water. Though that little voice in my head’s reminding me all the while just to
stick to the plan
.
It’s 5.03 pm when I let myself into Lela’s house on Highfield Street. The place is so quiet that I’m afraid of what I might find. But Georgia’s in the front room, packing up her gear, and she smiles when she sees me.
‘See you in the morning, God willing,’ she says quietly as I show her out.
I nod.
There’s a lamp burning in Lela’s mother’s bedroom, the familiar whirr of the humidifier running in the corner, the smell of incense and jasmine oil this evening. Mrs Neill turns towards the door as I enter and her gaze is almost luminous, though her eyes are sunken and the yellow of their whites seems more pronounced than ever.
I grab hold of Lela’s chair, and as I pull it closer towards the wasted figure in the bed, I see that there are tears on her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, one thin hand grasping at the air above her bedclothes. ‘I know I’ve turned your life upside down, darling, and you’ve got every right to be angry, but you’ve been so good to me, Lel. You’ve never once raised your voice, or been impatient with me. No child should ever have to see their parent this way . . .’ She taps at something beneath the covers, attached to her body, and there’s a flat sound, as if she’s hitting hard plastic. ‘They’ve made a jigsaw puzzle out of me, Lel,’ she half-laughs, half-cries, and I realise that she’s trying to reach out for her daughter’s hand. My hand. ‘Only nothing quite fits together any more.’
She needs something from me, this woman. It’s more than just a feeling I get. She needs permission to go. And forgiveness. And the reassurance that Lela will be okay without her. I don’t need to touch her to know it. There’s something still unfinished between mother and daughter. Something unsaid.
I think of all the hurting words that Lela sensibly confined to her journal and never let pass her lips.
Call me a sentimental fool, but I lean forward now and place a hand on her sleeve, murmuring, ‘I love you, Mum, in case I ever forgot to tell you that. I love you, and you’ve never been a burden. You’ve done everything for me, you’ve been the best mum I could have hoped for, and I honour you for that.’
Lela’s mother closes her eyes, her mouth curving up in a tremulous smile, though tears leak out slowly from below her eyelids, leaving tracks down her gaunt cheeks. She doesn’t bother to wipe them away, so I do, then I place my hand on her forehead again, thinking that the gesture might ease her suffering, as it seemed to do once before.
The tension that is always there, like a knot inside, seems to leave Mrs Neill’s body, to disappear with my touch. Only, it’s as if my palm has suddenly become welded to her skin and
I’m
the one with the terminal disease, because, all of a sudden, I can’t move.
There’s something flowering between us, as if I’ve opened up a direct connection between my mind and hers, so that if she knew how, she might be able to read
my
thoughts, mine
my
memories for knowledge of me, the real me, as the
malakh
had tried to do.
But no, it’s nothing so simple as that.
It’s as if something has taken me beyond what’s inside the woman’s head. I can see inside her body; in some way I am become
of
her body. It’s like I’ve opened a doorway to the grand morphology, the physiology, of Mrs Neill. Her senses are my senses — I feel the intermittent stab of the morphine pump, the slow release of the corticosteroid in her system, the dull, constant ache of the weeping stoma in her abdomen, the bag that is anchored there. The overheated room, the exterior world, they’ve disappeared. She is laid out like a map before me: the highways of her bones, the canals of her lymphatic and cardiovascular systems, her connective tissue, her muscles, her nerves. All of them there. All of them laid bare.
Most of all, I feel her great love for her daughter, the howling fear she carries inside, all of it swirling behind that brave façade she buckles on, like armour, every day.
And though every fibre in me rebels, is screaming at me to rise up, out, of this red-hued world of nightmare, the cathedral of pain, remembrance and regret that is Mrs Neill’s self-devouring body, I tell myself to go under, to let the tide take me —
—
I can’t begin to describe the feeling.
If Mrs Neill weren’t already unconscious from her latest hit of morphine, I’m sure she’d be able to feel my clumsy spirit navigating the chaotic metropolis within her slight frame. It’s like the wildest raceway in the universe, the human body, and I’m being pushed along, I’ve surrendered all volition. I have no control over the physical world, and no idea where I’m headed, how I’m supposed to use this incredible feeling of power, of . . . boundlessness. Capable of passing through the smallest micromolecule, the thinnest cell wall, yet unable to direct that weird sensation of being sentient yet liquid; at once mercurial, permeating, yet impermeable.
Once, I was able to do this; once. But the manual’s gone. If not erased, then altered, written in unreadable code.
Think
. The voice inside me is stern.
Think how it was, in that dream
.
That fearful, punishing dream where Luc took us straight through an asteroid. Through solid matter.
I need less of Lela and more of me. That’s clear. If it’s truly possible to atomise, to scatter one’s energies into any shape one might desire, then maybe I can, too, even as damaged and malformed as I currently am. I glimpsed the possibility of it in my sleep,and this proves it. The ability resides in
me
. But the mechanism — like the meaning of the word
elohim
— is missing from my recall. Not lost, only forgotten.
Luc told me himself once:
The knowledge is in you
. But where?
I’ve lost all sense of time and place when I finally chance upon the epicentre of Karen Neill’s agony. It’s some kind of invasive mass that’s an angry red-yellow in colour, like a nest of plump worms, anchored deep into the walls and surrounding muscle of some long, tubular organ in the body that continuously winds back on itself. There’s evidence near the ugly, swelling mass of past surgeries, barely healed, that failed to halt the body’s instinct for self-annihilation.
All around me, diseased cells are exploding into life. They divide, mutate, evolve, until they are literally cannibalising healthy tissue in every direction. When I come into contact with them, I realise that these cells do not grow old and fade as cells are supposed to do; they have achieved a kind of voracious immortality, would turn on me, too, if I were truly flesh.
I feel like I’m drowning; that if I don’t soon find a way out, I will never be able to leave. But I also know that what I’m witnessing is both a privilege and a burden, and I gather myself like floodwater, like a plague of locusts, like the Holy Ghost itself, and surge through that cancerous mass. I flow through every site of disease and infection I come across, willing myself to burn the sickness from Karen Neill’s body, to purge her clean.
But I can’t. Everything I see, touch, taste, smell and feel that carries the taint of illness remains tainted after my passing. Finally that small voice says in me:
This one is meant to die. This one cannot be saved
.
Azraeil has already placed his mark on her.
There is nothing more to be done.
Immediately I think these things, there is a sensation of abrupt coalescence and I am flung out of Karen Neill’s body, or pulled back — as if by an elastic and invisible cord — into Lela.
I come to, to find myself sweating and shaking and thanking God I got out of there alive.
Mrs Neill sleeps on, dreaming of who knows what?
Finally I sleep, too. Spent.
And dream — not of Luc, of his indelible beauty, his serpentine grace; not of Ryan, his mortal double — but of a fine, silver mist that enters the room. So subtly at first that it is already at the level of my ankles and rising slowly when, in my dream, I wake and rise out of the chair beside Mrs Neill’s bed, leaving Lela’s sleeping body still in it.
In my dream, I am myself as I once was. Tall, pale, shining. Like a being made of pure fire.
I look for the source of that thin fog that is building steadily, taking the warmth out of the air. It is not moonlight that leaves a thin pall of silver over everything: over Mrs Neill’s thin, pinched features, over Lela, sleeping, over the teetering possessions in this room, pushed aside to make way for bedpans and of it ibasins, a wheelchair and a ventilator, the paraphernalia that dogs the terminally ill, making them seem even more earthbound in their final days.
And I see him.
I give a start, feel a cold flash race across my skin.
He is standing with his back to me before one of the long, curtained windows, his palely glowing hand holding aside the heavy fabric as he looks out onto the moon-stained garden, now overgrown with nightshade and bridal creeper. He has gleaming silver hair, worn a little too long for fashion. Every strand straight, even and perfectly the same. And when he turns to look at me — his eyes as blue as the daytime sky but which can darken to near night when he is angered, his face youthful and incorruptible — I know him for who he is, and I bow my head to that vision both terrible and wonderful.
‘Lord Azraeil,’ I say aloud, his name recalled at once in the beholding.
Mercy
, he says inside my mind, for he has no need for speech.
They tell me that it is what you have taken to calling yourself these days.
His tone is amused. He approaches me slowly, seeming to glide, his feet never quite meeting the surface of the stretched and faded carpet laid down in this room decades ago. Azraeil does not favour the snowy-white raiment that I have come to expect of my erstwhile brethren, my tormentors. He wears what he likes, I remember, so long as it’s black.
He stops mere inches from me. He does not seek to touch me, nor I him, because few ever recover from Azraeil’s touch. Even among the
elohim
— for that is what he is, one of the High Ones, almost the highest — he is a power unto himself, a force that straddles worlds and states, life and death. He has no need for stratagems, for politics, the taking of sides. He is power incarnate; the possessor of a singular ability bestowed on none other but himself.
And my dreaming self reminds me that he is here for reasons known only to himself. I know, without knowing how, that he is not one of the Eight come to gloat over me. Though even in my dream, the irony strikes me as cruel. No doubt when I was first reborn in a mortal body — outcast, bereft, confused, utterly alone — I must have cried out for the services of this man, this being more than man.
Why are you here?
I say into his mind.
Why now? You are several millennia too late, my friend. I no longer need your ‘help’. I might have once, but no longer.
There is laughter in his reply.
The years have dulled your wits, my friend
.
I’m not here for you, clearly.
He raises a shimmering hand and points a finger at the figure in the bed.
But I may not take her yet.
I frown.
I have seen the ruination of her body, Azraeil
.
Only fear and love are keeping her here. She is ready. End her suffering. Take her.
Perhaps there is something self-serving in my words. For even in my dream, I know that if Karen Neill is gone I will be free to fly the nest with Ryan as soon as he arrives, leaving Lela’s old life behind without guilt, without ackward glance.
Azraeil’s eyes are piercing and I see that he sees what is in my heart.
By and by
, he replies.
But she is supposed to go with one other. At the very hour, the very minute, the very instant, the two must go together. And so I must wait to reap them both. But not for much longer.
In the jump-cut way of dreams, I suddenly find myself looking up at him from out of Lela’s eyes again. Like a djinn called back into the bottle, I am shackled once more inside her body. Azraeil seems so very tall now, standing between Lela and her mother’s sleeping form. As beautiful, bright and alien as the stars.
He moves so quickly that I am taken by surprise. He bends low, reaching out with his glowing hands, his breath sweet and warm on Lela’s features, mine. The instant he cups the contours of Lela’s face, I wake, shaken by the gesture, knowing that if it had not been a dream, Lela would already be dead, and I, fled, gone, departed.
In the early morning, when golden light begins to seep in through the heavy drapes, Mrs Neill wakes with difficulty and murmurs, ‘I had the strangest dream, Lel. I thought I woke and saw you sleeping there, in your usual place, but your skin . . . it was glowing. It wasn’t moonlight. It was like there was a light on inside you. It was so . . . beautiful.’
‘It was a dream, Mum,’ I reply gently, holding up my free hand to be examined. ‘It’s just ordinary skin, highly susceptible to sunburn, as you know.’
And the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to
, I add silently.
I stand up and stretch. ‘I’ll be home early today. I’ll ask Mr Dymovsky if I can cut short my shift so that we can spend more time together.’
‘Why, love?’ she whispers. ‘It’s good for you to get out of the house. I don’t feel any worse than usual. Nothing’s going to carry me off today.’
Her quiet laugh turns into a fit of coughing that goes on and on.
I bend and give her some water, a kiss, tell her I’ll see her soon. Not bothering to advise her that Azraeil is waiting. Waiting around for that specific purpose.
‘What do you mean you need to leave early today?’ Mr Dymovsky cries when I tell him what I’ve decided. ‘Reggie, she is the no-show. No phone call. Nothing.’
We’ve just survived the madness of the breakfast run, surfing another giant wave of takeout coffees and toasted bacon and egg sandwich specials. The café is deserted now, save for me, Cecilia, Sulaiman, the boss.
‘Delayed onset of shock?’ I suggest half-heartedly.
Mr Dymovsky rolls his express">Weyes at me. ‘You are unshockable,’ he says, wagging his head of flyaway grey hair. ‘That’s precisely why you were hired.’
‘My mother’s dying,’ I remind him softly. ‘It won’t be long. I can feel it.’ He searches Lela’s face and, satisfied by what he sees there, replies gravely, ‘Now
that
is a reason I understand. Of course, you may leave early. But only after the lunch rush is over. Sulaiman does not have your way with people.’
Sulaiman looks up unsmilingly at the mention of his name, returns his gaze to the passable-looking moussaka he is assembling at the kitchen window just behind my shoulder.
‘And Cecilia,’ Mr Dymovsky adds, ‘she is an artist who must be allowed to work her magic undisturbed.’
Cecilia beams at us as she wipes down the coffee machine, taking a small sip of her own restorative brew. ‘You want one?’ she asks us in her lilting voice.
Mr Dymovsky tells her to make him one strong enough to add extra hair to his chest. I decline politely because with milk, without, with sugar, without, it still tastes like poison to me.
There is a flurry of plastic ribbons then the front door pushes open. Warm air from the street mingles with the Siberian conditions in here.
‘Ranald!’ Mr Dymovsky cries heartily. ‘Welcome, welcome! Your usual, my friend?’
Ranald nods happily, gives us all a little wave. He sets his laptop bag down on his usual table, rips open pocket after pocket and takes out a raft of electronic devices I am incapable of naming.
‘He likes that,’ Mr Dymovsky says to me under his breath, ‘that we know him, know his habits. He’s very complicated, very peculiar. Smart, you know?’ He taps one temple with the middle finger of his left hand. ‘But almost like a child in many ways. If you get it wrong . . .’ He lifts his eyes to the ceiling, lifts his shoulders and hands in a
Heaven help you
gesture. ‘Still, the customer is always right, eh?’
He steps forward, picks up a steel ladle and fluffs up the fried rice warming in a rectangular receptacle beneath the lights of the hot-food counter; moves on to rearranging the fried snacks in neat, family groupings with a pair of tongs, while Cecilia starts grinding a new batch of coffee beans for Ranald’s coffee.
Ranald sees me at a loose end and beckons me over, smiling with such genuine warmth and pleasure when I approach that his usually reserved, slightly cold demeanour is transformed.
‘Thanks for setting up my profile,’ I say. ‘You really helped me out. I wouldn’t have known where to begin.’
Which is the honest truth. Sulaiman might believe that computers are somehow within God’s contemplation, but I’m not so sure.
‘I wish everything was that easy,’ Ranald says with a grin, picking at the ragged thumbnail on one hand. ‘But my reasons were purely selfish. I’m calling in that debt — the dinner date you promised me, remember? Now you can’t say no. Or pretend you didn’t hear me.’
‘Dinner?’ I repeat, disconcerted. ‘When?’
I hadn’t actually promised him anything concrete but it seems churlish to remind him of that now. I’d been on fire to get a message out to Ryan, would probably have promised Ranald the earth, the moon, the stars for his help if I’d had to.
‘How about this Friday?’ he replies. ‘Just something easy and casual. There’s a place I like that’s only a couple of blocks away.’
‘Uh, sure,’ I say uncertainly. ‘Friday sounds okay.’
By 5 pm on Friday, if it all goes to plan, Ryan and I will be as far away from here as it’s possible to get. I’ve just got to keep on lying like I mean it, until I can disappear Lela right out of her life.
I refocus on Ranald with difficulty.
‘Bring your prettiest dress in,’ he’s saying eagerly, ‘and we’ll head straight out after you knock off. I’ll run you home later in my car.’
‘Sure,’ I say again neutrally, ‘that would be great.’
‘Yeah, it will be,’ Ranald says, inserting some kind of square, portable device into his machine, his head bent over one of the small, rectangular slots in the side. ‘But you’re sure you don’t have anything else on?’
‘Nope, nothing that can’t wait,’ I reply without missing a beat.
I glance up as someone else comes in from the street. Franklin Murray — in the same business suit, shirt and tie as yesterday. He doesn’t look wild-eyed or edgy today. Just numb.
Cecilia takes one look at him and abandons the coffee she’s making for Ranald. She hurries into the kitchen, where I can see her peering through the serving hatch from behind one of Sulaiman’s muscular, black-clad shoulders.
‘What are you doing here?’ Mr Dymovsky roars. ‘I will call the police!’
‘I came to apologise,’ Franklin mumbles, eyes downcast, mouth trembling slightly. ‘And to get a coffee and a chicken salad sandwich. My wife thinks I left early for the office. I’ve been walking around for hours. I’ve got nowhere else to go. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what came over me.’
I do, but I don’t say a thing, because who’d believe me?
Beside me, Ranald is curiously still, watching the interplay between the two older men.
Mr Dymovsky is red in the face. ‘No one shoots up my place and my people and gets away with it!’ he shouts.
But Cecilia, Sulaiman and I act instinctively. Cecilia comes out of the kitchen and begins brewing Franklin a coffee, while I seat him at a table near the door. Sulaiman abandons lunch prep for a moment and brings out a small bowl of freshly shredded iceberg for the man’s sandwich.
‘You’re all mad!’ Mr Dymovsky blusters. ‘Get him out!’
‘Lightly toasted?’ I ask Franklin in a neutral voice.
He doesn’t look at me, just stares straight ahead and says softly, ‘Yes, thank you.’
His suit jacket is hanging a little awkwardly, and as I move around the table I spy the grip of the handgun jammed into its inside breast pocket like it was yesterday. The guy’s still a walking situation. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be treated like a human being. We’ve all been there. It’s just that most of us haven’t resorted to firearms.
As I pass Ranald’s table, he whispers to me conspiratorially, ‘Is he still packing a gun?’
I nod almost imperceptibly.
I fetch Franklin his sandwich and coffee. ‘There won’t be any charge today,’ I murmur, placing them down in front of him.
There are tears in his eyes as he answers with dignity, still not meeting my gaze, ‘I can pay.’
I shrug. ‘You decide.’
Mr Dymovsky gives an audible snort and heads into his cramped little office off the corridor that leads to the poorly ventilated toilets at the back of the Green Lantern. From the stubborn angle of his head and shoulders, the way he’s muttering to himself in Russian, he’s probably planning to give the police a heads-up anyway.
Cecilia looks at me uneasily as Franklin openly cries between bites of his sandwich and sips of his coffee. He’s got his back to us, but we can all see his shoulders shaking, hear the small animal noises he makes as he mops at his face with the backs of his hairy hands.
Ranald frowns at his computer, like an irritable turtle. ‘People are trying to work here,’ he growls at Franklin’s back, stabbing at his keyboard ill-temperedly.
I can tell he hasn’t forgotten Franklin’s jibe about him being a low-level functionary.
Franklin doesn’t respond. He just keeps sobbing and eating, sobbing and drinking, making those awful wounded noises that he thinks we can’t hear.
A few coffee orders blow in and out, looking at him curiously as they go by. When I tidy up some loose newspapers sitting on top of the counter by the front window I see that the guy’s face is a mess. I slide a paper napkin dispenser across the table at him on my way back to the kitchen. He ignores it.
Mr Dymovsky comes back, mouth in a stern line. He gestures at me.
‘Move him on!’ he says fiercely when I return to the front counter. ‘I don’t want any troubles with this guy. He is like the time bomb. No good for business, crying custr. Tell him to cry somewhere else, okay?’
I walk back towards Franklin’s table.
Ranald looks up as I pass him. ‘It’s about time you guys did something.’ His voice is sulky and he’s actually pouting. ‘I can’t work in these conditions.’
Standing just behind Franklin’s left shoulder, I can see that he’s finished his sandwich and there’s only a couple of mouthfuls of coffee left.
‘Franklin?’ I say quietly. ‘I’m going to have to clear the table now, because we’re about to get really busy.’ What I say next surprises even me; is the exact opposite of what I intended to say. ‘But you’re welcome to finish up your coffee and come again tomorrow. Do you hear me? What you did yesterday — nobody holds it against you.’
Behind me, Ranald gives a loud exhalation of disbelief.
I hesitate, then place a hand on one of Franklin’s pinstriped shoulders, hoping he won’t try and touch me like Ranald did. He doesn’t. But by his sudden silence, his stillness, I know that I have his full attention.
‘Just don’t do it again, okay? Mr Dymovsky doesn’t want to have to involve the police. Spare your family that, at least. Just tell them what happened with your job and maybe you can figure out together what the next course of action should be? I think they’ll surprise you. Give them that chance. There’s a reason you’re a family.’
I hear Ranald snort again and feel irritated. Doesn’t the guy possess a modicum of empathy? It’s almost as if he wants to push the other man into doing something desperate in a public place.
Franklin doesn’t say anything, and still doesn’t look at me as he scrapes back his chair and rises to his feet. I feel more than see everyone tense up when he shoves his right hand inside his jacket, feeling around in there. He holds onto the handgun’s grip for a long moment, as if debating something with himself. But after a minute or two, he lets it go and adjusts the front of his jacket with shaking fingers.
It was a gesture of self-reassurance more than anything else, I realise, a reflex action. Like he was telling himself that he still has options.
Without a backward glance, he pulls open the door and bats his way back out through the plastic curtain. ‘I thought he was going to shoot himself this time, I really did,’ Ranald says as I let out the pent-up breath I’d been unconsciously holding.
Mr Dymovsky — who hadn’t actually heard me invite Franklin to come back again tomorrow — gives me a thumbs up from behind the counter, but his face is pale and the shaken expression on it probably mirrors what’s on Lela’s face. Cecilia, standing close to Sulaiman near the kitchen door, looks equally stunned. Sulaiman, as usual, appears as impassive and immovable as stone.
It must be nice
, I think,
to have a faith so strong that a little scene like that doesn’t even cause you to break a sweat.
I don’t work that way. Fate is there to be meddled with, in my view. Anything else just makes you an observer in your own life.
‘It didn’t help, you making those stupid comments from the sidelines,’ I snap at Ranald as I pass him.
He surprises us all when he yells in white-hot fury, ‘Stupid? Stupid is a dead-end waitressing job in a shithole excuse for a coffee shop!’
He jams his laptop and doodads into his computer bag and storms out of the café.
‘Touchy,’ I say.
‘He didn’t even get his second coffee,’ Cecilia adds in wonder.
‘What did I tell you?’ Mr Dymovsky says to me, shaking his head ruefully.
Sulaiman just gives me one of his unfathomable stares and heads back into the kitchen.
Right on cue, the lunch rush starts and doesn’t wind down until after two thirty.
‘Okay if I go now?’ I ask Mr Dymovsky about ten minutes later.
‘It’s okay, Mr Dymovsky,’ Cecilia urges. ‘Sulaiman say he clean up for Lela today. You should let her get back to her mother.’
‘Go, go!’ Mr Dymovsky says mock angrily, making a shooing gesture with his big, beefy hands.
As I shrug on Lela’s backpack, preparing to step out into the heat of the afternoon, he places something into my hands. It’s a plastic bag containing a large oblong plastic container of rice with odds and ends ladled over the top.
‘You share this with your mother,’ he says, already half-turning away sheepishly. ‘You eat, and you come back tomorrow and do what I pay you for, okay?’
I turn at the door and give them a wave and the three of them wave back, each in their own place, each in their own way so kind that, for a moment, I look at their faces and think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be a waitress in a shithole excuse for a café in a gritty-pretty city at the bottom of the world.
But then I remember that Ryan is coming for me in two days.
Two days
.
And I know that once we’re together again, all this is going to seem like a distant dream and I won’t want to be anywhere else except where he is because I’ll be one step closer to being
free
.
I find myself walking faster as I round the corner beneath that ceremonial arch, the air so hot that it’s coming off the pavement in waves and making the plain black cotton shirt and skirt I threw on this morning stick to’s Irish skin.
I tell myself that I’ve got it all under control, that it’s cool, that I’m just checking my messages, keeping to the plan. But deep down, I’m praying for Ryan to be there, even if it’s just in that disembodied, virtual way that I still can’t get my old-school head around. So that we might occupy the same space, the same time, touch each other’s minds, if only for a brief moment.
Not for the first time, I think how this truly is an age of miracles.
Followed quickly by the realisation that I am actually setting Luc’s plan into motion. Operation Get Me Outta Here is truly about to begin. The sudden burst of happiness I feel inside is as hot as the sun on the top of Lela’s head.
The same guy is on duty behind the bulletproof glass at the Magic 888 Internet Café, which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with coffee at all. Only computers. But that’s what I’m here for, so I slide my fiver across the counter and he gives me the token in return, without any sign that he recognises me from yesterday.
I head to a computer away from the three boys in identical dark green school uniforms clustered noisily together around one terminal, away from the Chinese lady in her sixties with the tightly permed hair and maroon short-sleeved pants suit who is watching a live-streaming Hong Kong lifestyle program on her terminal and taking notes in a symbolic kind of language I can’t read.
I log in quickly and click on my
chat
screen.
Hello, beautiful, he types, as if he’s been waiting for me, and I can’t help a wide smile breaking across Lela’s little face.
And I write: Friday can’t come soon enough. There’s room at my place if we can’t leave straightaway, but don’t go reading anything into it, buddy.
He just sends me back two symbols . . .
;)
. . . which takes me a little while to figure out. But when I do, I can’t help a kooky grin from breaking out all over my face all over again.
I ask:
Do your parents know? About me?
Ryan replies:
No. So you’ll have to pretend you’ve never met them before in your life. But they do know that I’ve invited the Australian girl I’ve been writing to online to stay for a while. They’re anxious about it, of course. But kind of happy that I’m back being interested in girls and not getting into trouble with the law.
That makes me smile harder.
I write:
How many people know about me — the real me?
The fewer people who know about me being in Paradise, the better. Especially if Luc’s planning on the two of us doing a vanishing act from there. Until Luc arrives, I’ll need to lie lw. Part of me is more than a little uneasy about treating Ryan’s home as a hideout, but I have no other options. I know it’s cowardly, but I don’t want to think too hard right now about how I’m going to explain it all to Ryan down the track. I’m just going to live in the moment and pray that his feelings don’t get hurt when Luc arrives on the scene.
Today
, I tell myself,
is all about the silver lining, not the cloud
.
As I was hoping, Ryan replies:
Your secret’s safe. Only me, Lauren, Jennifer Appleton know about you. That’s it.
I sit back, relieved. They’re all people I think I can trust. They already know that I’m way freaky, so if I suddenly disappear again, they’ll just put it down to that.
I’m about to type something else when Ryan gets in first.
You might already have seen this, because it’s been leading all the news bulletins, here and overseas. But if you haven’t, you should catch the YouTube footage of this guy walking on water. Kid you not. He reminds me a lot of Lauren’s description of you. The person who posted the video says that she and her BF were making out in a car by a lake in Scotland and all of sudden they saw a glow on the water and saw a guy at least seven feet tall, dressed all in white, just gliding across the surface for a couple of minutes before he vanished.
Instantly, I feel a chill.
I type, breathing unevenly:
Where? Where do I find it?
A moment later Ryan pastes a URL into the chat screen.
Over a million people have already looked at this, and it’s only been a couple of days. Anyone you know??
I open another window and copy and paste the URL into the bar at the top of the screen. There’s only one minute and forty-six seconds of footage but it’s possibly enough to make even the biggest sceptic believe there might be something more to life than just the facts.
The man drifting across the surface of the loch is tall, pale, broad-shouldered, like something out of a classical painting. He has brown eyes, brown hair, every single strand straight, even and perfectly the same, worn a little too long for fashion; and a strong face that is all angles and planes, with a straight nose, lips set in a stern line. White raiment so blinding that its outline is indistinct. Like a living statue, a being of pure fire, youthful in aspect, yet ageless. A living flame is cupped in one hand. By its light, his eyes are searching the depths of that dark water, looking for something. Or someone.
The camera work is understandably unsteady but I could swear it’s Uriel. So much like me in looks, if not in personality. We last came face to face when I was Carmen and he refused to help me find Lauren, or to set me free. One day, I’m going to hold him to account for that.
I watch the footage one more time to be sure, then flick back to the other window, the portal behind which Ryan waits patiently.
ght="0em" width="1em" align="left">I don’t know what to say, and hesitate over the keyboard.
Ryan types finally:
Mercy? Did you see it?
Galvanised into motion, I type back:
Yes, turns out he IS someone I know. But I couldn’t tell you what he was doing.
This time it’s Ryan’s turn to be silent — for so long that I think he’s left the room, fallen asleep, given up on me.
He writes finally:
Should I be scared?
My reply is swift.
Of me?
He replies:
Yeah.
One word. How do I read that?
I type:
No, never of me. I would never hurt you.
Then I think about Luc’s plan and I close my eyes briefly before adding:
But there’s some weird shit going down with the crowd I used to run with and I can’t promise that you won’t see stuff that’ll turn your hair white overnight. What you saw on that clip is just a tasting plate of what these guys can do. There’s a game of tug of war going on right now and I think that, maybe, I’m the rope. You still want to come get me? Don’t feel obliged.
Please
, I think.
Please still want to come and get me
. I’m almost terrified — me, the person who claims to rarely feel fear — as I wait for his response.
Finally, he types:
Yes, I AM still coming to get you, don’t even question that. You and I aren’t done. Flight arrives Friday morning. I’ll come directly to the Green Lantern as soon as I clear customs. Pack whatever you think you’ll need because we’ll go as soon as you say we can. Stay safe till then. I mean it, Mercy. Stay safe.
I close the window, leave the internet café, walk slowly back up the hill through Chinatown, the muggy heat weighing down on me now where before I welcomed the warmth.
That footage Ryan directed me to is on constant replay behind my eyes. It’s further evidence that two worlds — one seen, one unseen — are beginning to bleed, one into the other. And I — a citizen of neither, a denizen of nowhere — am doomed to watch from the sidelines and wonder at it.
I stare out the window the whole bus ride home but don’t see anything except Uriel walking on water before vanishing into a singularity in time and space.
What had he been searching for?
Mrs Neill is happy to see me, love and relief blazing out of her eyes when she beholds her daughter’s face. But she’s noticeably weaker today, and as I draw the heavy chair close again to her bedside, I can almost see that silver mist rising in the room, Azraeil’s form standing by the heavy curtains at the window.
I never sleep very well anyway, but that night, all that night, I do not sleep at all. I just keep vigil, sombre and dry-eyed, over the slowly emptying shell that is Lela’s mother.
Mrs Neill’s still sleeping when I leave to catch the 7.08 bus into work. I decide not to wake her, because Georgia’s due to arrive any moment. I’ll ask Mr Dymovsky if I can have a half-day again so that I can be there for her. He has to say yes. Under his no-nonsense exterior, I sense that he’s like a marshmallow. Still, he’ll be incandescent when I tell him on Friday that I’m quitting. But he’s Russian. Once he calms down, sees Ryan and me together, he’ll understand.
On the bus ride in, I drink in the sky, the clear, hard light of it, its boundlessness. I’ll miss it. There’s no sky like that where Ryan lives, in Paradise, as funny as that sounds. It’s an ugly place with ugly, polluted beaches, surrounded by oil-refining and military interests, razor wire; grey from shore to distant horizon.
When I get into the coffee shop, Reggie’s back and already angry, although it’s only 7.38 am.
She holds up a hand to me as if she’s stopping traffic. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she snarls.
‘I wasn’t planning to ask you anything,’ I say mildly.
‘Just get to work.’ Eyes hard, she jerks her head at the queues already forming for the breakfast special: one dollar to upsize the coffee.
Cecilia lifts her eyebrows in welcome, and Mr Dymovsky smiles at me through the open serving hatch from the kitchen where he’s consulting Sulaiman on the day’s menu. Sulaiman acknowledges me with a small nod of his head and I almost smile. From him, that’s tantamount to friendly.
I belt on a clean black apron over my black clothes and get to work with the sandwich press, the sandwich cutter and long bread knife, wielding them awkwardly as Sulaiman slings out trays of fried eggs and rashers of bacon faster than I can jam them between slices of buttered bread.
As if he brings the lull with him, Ranald’s entry into the café signals our first collective breather for several hours. Reggie goes out for yet another ‘ciggie break’.
Ranald comes up to the counter where I’m standing and says gruffly, ‘I didn’t mean what I said yesterday. About you being stupid. You’re not stupid. I wouldn’t have asked you out if I thought that. Are we still on for Friday?’
He can’t quite meet my eyes, looks at a place a few inches to the right of me, his words scrambling over themselves to be uttered. I2019;s not really an apology, but then again I’m not intending to honour that promise about dinner, so I figure we’re about even.
‘You betcha,’ I say. ‘All set.’
‘You sure you don’t have anything else on?’ he says curtly.
I shake my head, looking at him curiously. There’s something tight and hard in his features that I can’t read.
He stands there awkwardly for another long moment — a moment in which I think he is going to bark something else at me — before he moves away to his regular table and slams his laptop bag down on its surface. He unpacks his jumble of add-ons more noisily than usual and throws himself into his work, not bothering to talk to any of us. He’s clearly preoccupied with something. Deadlines maybe.
Cecilia looks at me when she returns from handing him his first coffee and shakes her head, her eyes seeming to say:
Do not engage
.
Fine by me
, I think.
Whatever
.
I gaze out the window, see a guy with a gleaming bald head go by, built like a pit bull terrier. He’s almost as wide as he’s tall and dressed a little too warmly for the day that’s developing, in a red bomber jacket with black sleeves, a blue-toned plaid shirt and faded blue jeans. He has a hard, weightlifter’s body and some kind of complex Celtic tattoo crawling thickly up the back of his neck in black ink. Must have killed him to get it done.
‘Do not mess with that one!’ Mr Dymovsky says as he slides a tray of fried schnitzels into the warming area beside me. He curls the fingers of both hands into two loose fists and pivots them outwards at the wrists as if he is breaking something between them, like an imaginary stick. Or a bone.
Ranald raises his head and says sharply, ‘Cecilia! This coffee isn’t strong enough. I’d like a replacement, please, as soon as you can manage it.’
He holds the offending mug out without meeting her eyes, as if she is some kind of servant.
Cecilia looks at Mr Dymovsky as if to say,
What do I do?
He frowns but nods that she’s to make him another one, on the house.
‘
Délat’ iz múkhi sloná!
’ he mutters darkly.
‘I can go somewhere else . . .’ Ranald’s voice is silky.
‘It is no trouble,’ Mr Dymovsky replies smoothly in English, bringing the replacement over himself. ‘That is all I was saying.’
Ranald sticks his face into his laptop screen again and goes back to whatever he’s doing, reaching for his scalding coffee a moment later and taking a small sip.
‘But I make it the same,’ Cecilia whispers at me, mortified.
Reggie breezes back inside. ‘Here’s trouble!’ she exclaims,0em"ting the door firmly behind her to keep the heat out. She gazes through the front window from the side just near the door, as if she wants to see but doesn’t wish to be seen from the street.
‘What do you mean?’ Mr Dymovsky says, crossing the floor to where she’s standing.
Cecilia and I, curious, drift forward, too. I wrinkle my nose as I get closer: Reggie’s overpowering musky perfume now has top notes of nicotine, bleach and tar.
‘Have a look!’ Reggie says, jerking her thumb at a point outside the window. ‘It’s that slut who comes in here sometimes — Lela’s friend. From the “club” around the corner in Chinatown. She’s having another argument with her boyfriend — looks even more like a train wreck than usual.’
At her words, even Sulaiman leaves what he’s doing in the kitchen and comes over to where we’re standing.
The man with the Celtic tattoo and shaved head comes back up the street dragging a crying Justine by the elbow. She’s got his bomber jacket on over something that looks like a sequinned string bikini, and she’s wearing a pair of improbably high stilettos with clear crystal soles and heels, porn star shoes.
‘Like I said,’ Reggie repeats with relish. ‘The slut who comes in here sometimes.’
‘Not her boyfriend for a long time,’ Sulaiman says in his deep voice, a frown on his face.
He and I look at each other and, almost in the same instant, throw open the door and spill out onto the street, Mr Dymovsky and Cecilia behind us.
Justine and her ex are almost past the front of the Green Lantern when I shout, ‘Hey, Juz! I’ve been waiting for you for ages. Aren’t you coming in?’
Pit-bull swings around, his fat fingers digging into Justine’s elbow like a vice while she cries and tries to pull away. She’s almost unrecognisable in her spangled bikini, two sizes too small. Her skin is unnaturally pale under the hard summer sun, and there’s smeared make-up all down her face. A thin, rhinestone hairband is jammed down low over her head like a tarnished halo, her thick, wavy hair beneath it scraped back into a low and messy chignon. If the get-up is supposed to look alluring, it’s anything but. And there’s a new bruise on her other cheek; I can almost make out the shape of the bastard’s knuckles.
‘Get back inside, you nosy bitch,’ Pit-bull replies. ‘It’s between me and Juz here. No law against talking, so stay out of it.’
He turns and starts dragging her away. Justine pulls back towards us pleading, ‘Help me, Lela! Please!’
I need anger to unlock those powers that are my right, so Luc told me in my dream. But where has my anger gone? I have nothing to draw on except sadness. Justine, dressed like something out of a freak show; Mrs Neill, with the cheater husband and incurable disease; Franklin Murray, bankrupt, self- pitying, suicidal.
I turn and look at Sulaiman helplessly, all the paind numbness I feel in my gaze. Without anger, I could sooner stop a hurricane than stop that man dragging Justine away.
Sulaiman meets my eyes for a long moment, seems to come to some kind of decision that is against his better judgment because the corners of his mouth tighten before he explodes into motion.
Before the Pit-bull can even react, Sulaiman’s rushed him and grabbed him by the collar of his checked shirt, wrenching Justine out of his grip and pushing her back in our direction. He shoves the man and he goes down hard onto the hot, stinking concrete of the pavement like a flailing windmill, an audible rush of air leaving his lungs.
Tears streaming down her face, Justine stumbles towards me in her crippling heels, her arms outstretched. I pull her into our tight little group by the door. Mr Dymovsky moves in front of her, while Cecilia shifts so that she’s got Justine’s back, the three of us hemming her in so her ex would have to fight his way through us to get to her again.
‘I’ll kill youse!’ he howls, struggling to push himself up from under the large, heavy shoe Sulaiman has placed on his back. ‘Then I’ll kill her! Shoulda done that months ago, the whore.’
Sulaiman bends down and turns the man over roughly, his big fists bunched in front of the guy’s checked shirt so they are eye to eye. People on the sidewalk give them a wide berth.
I hear Sulaiman rumble, ‘She does not consent to go with you and so she shall not go.’
He turns his head to look at us clustered tensely together beneath the front awning of the Green Lantern.
Mr Dymovsky takes one look at his expression and chivvies us back towards the front door like an anxious mother hen. ‘What have we done?’ he mutters to himself. ‘
Likha beda nachalo!
’
I try to get a look at what Sulaiman is doing over Mr Dymovsky’s shoulder, but Mr Dymovsky waves at me and Cecilia to create a gap in the plastic curtain and open the door. He leads Justine inside gently, hand beneath her elbow, as if she were a small, lost child, then I hear him barking orders at Reggie, whose red-painted mouth is opening and closing like a fish’s.
As I look back, standing on tiptoe to see better over the counter that runs across the café’s front window, Sulaiman is removing one hand from Pitbull’s face and letting him up off the ground at last. Justine’s tormentor stands unsteadily before lurching away up the street, staggering as if he has been mortally wounded, though there appears to be no blood, no wound, on him.
As Sulaiman walks unhurriedly towards the café’s door, Mr Dymovsky mutters again, ‘
Likha beda nachalo!
’ Then, ‘Somebody watch her while I get the first-aid box, okay?’
He disappears down the narrow corridor in the direction of his office, leaving Justine slumped in a chair, her face in her hands, shoulders still shaking.
Sulaiman enters the café, going straight back to his usual station in the cramped galley kitchen as if nothing has happened. Cecilia and I peo himsep the street together. There’s no sign of Justine’s attacker. I wonder uneasily what Sulaiman did to the guy to make him look the way he did as he left.
‘Why does Mr Dymovsky say that?’ I ask Cecilia. ‘What does it mean?’
She shoots me a troubled glance. ‘It mean “disaster follow trouble”, something like that. When he worried, he say it. I’m scared, Lela.’
‘You should be,’ Ranald says unexpectedly as I close the front door. He’s got a strange look on his face, almost like excitement.
He says again, a weird light in his eyes, ‘You should be.’
Ranald’s long gone, the lunchtime crowd dispersed, when Justine finally stops crying.
Franklin Murray had been among them for a time, sitting on a bar stool at the front window, eking out his chicken salad sandwich and coffee, reading every single word of the newspaper as if his continuing existence depended on it. When I leaned across him to pick up his plate and crumpled paper napkin, I felt the weight of the pistol in his inner breast pocket brush against my arm. He’d given me a frightened look but I pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing as I sailed away with his plate.
Justine’s a tough cookie. She outfaced all the starers that came and went. ‘Have a good look!’ she hissed at some of the worst offenders. ‘Go on, knock yourselves out.’
Cecilia and I try to clean up her face as much as possible with what we have in the shop. But nothing can be done about the new bruise. If anything, it seems to be spreading. Soap and water isn’t enough to budge all the eye make-up, and Reggie refuses to lend some remover out of her own handbag.
‘Not my problem,’ she says, her mouth pursed primly like a cat’s bum as she stirs the sweet and sour pork with unnecessary force. ‘Don’t look at me.’
‘Like you’re some kind of saint,’ Justine mutters.
‘At least I don’t get my tits out for strangers
for money
,’ Reggie replies.
‘Sanctimonious bitch.’
Mr Dymovsky shakes his head tiredly as the two women continue to take verbal pot shots at each other across the room. It’s bad for business.
‘Take Justine into the office,’ he tells me. ‘Then go buy her some shoes, something to wear. It is not safe that she walks around dressed like, like . . .’ He waves one hand towards her, looking gallantly at a fixed point above her head.
He gives me a fifty out of the till to back up his request and I head around the corner to Chinatown, where I go into the first variety store I come across and pick up a pair of black men’s kung fu shoes in a small size and Chinese-style pyjamas, with change to spare. It’s not high fashion, but Justine’s still got that creep’s bomber and the ensemble will do until she can get home and into a change of clothes.
She’s self-conscious as she slips into the lemon- coloured, faux silk pyjamas in Mr Dymovsky’s office. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she mutters, changing hurriedly while I stand guard at the door like she told me to. ‘I’ve broken out across the tops of my shoulders from all the latex they’ve been getting me to wear lately — it’s disgusting.’
She slips the soft, flat shoes onto her large, wide feet. They’re only a little too big. The bomber jacket she asks me to hand to Sulaiman, to dump it straight into one of the skips outside.
‘It smells like him,’ she says, and shudders. ‘Don’t want it.’
Mr Dymovsky gives me a long-suffering roll of his eyes when the two of us come out of his office. ‘Of course you can go early, Lela, I was expecting it. And you take care, Justine. Don’t go back to that place; you come work here instead, okay?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Justine says, suddenly shy, as we take our leave.
She raises a hand gratefully to Sulaiman in the kitchen. He gives her an unsmiling nod, gets right back to the tray of pizza he’s making for tomorrow.
‘I think I’m in love with that guy,’ she laughs in quiet despair as we bat our way out of the plastic curtain hanging over the door. ‘I always pick the tricky ones — guys on drugs, guys with rap sheets longer than my arm, women-hating latent homosexuals, and now a big Muslim bloke who probably thinks I’m trouble. I’m hopeless. Might as well shoot me now.’
I take the sleeve of her Chinese pyjama jacket between my fingers, steer her up the road towards the same bus stop she pointed out to me yesterday.
‘He’s all right, Sulaiman. Not seeing anyone, Cecilia says. Doesn’t talk much about himself, bit of a mystery fella. But he’s contemplative, spiritual, respectful, no woman-hater, I can vouch for that. You’d have to wear a few more clothes, though, change your line of work, if you’ve set your heart on him.’ I grin at her.
She looks down as we cross the street to the bus stop. ‘Stripping’s a crap living,’ she says sadly. ‘But it’s a living.’
‘But it’s not a life,’ I say pointedly.
Her reply is weary. ‘But I’m no good for anything else, am I? I mean, look at me. I’m a joke.’
After fifteen long minutes of Justine tapping on her crooked teeth with her baby pink fake nails, of Justine itching at her shoulderblades, shuffling her too-big slippers, no bus comes, so we flag down a cab.
When it pulls up, Justine clutches at my sleeve. ‘Would you come with me? I don’t want to go in by myself. He might be there. And you must live cloa jy seeing as we get the same bus. It won’t take long . . .’
I can feel her tension as she waits for my answer.
I check Lela’s watch and see that Georgia will still be with Mrs Neill for a few hours yet. The council carer should be there, too.
‘Sure,’ I reply, making another decision almost in the same instant. ‘And you’re welcome to stay at our place tonight. Just in case, you know. We have plenty of bedrooms.’
Bedrooms filled with dried flower arrangements, foot massagers and doilies, overflowing with books and papers, cushions, clothing, hat racks draped in more clothing, plastic bags, shoe boxes, walking canes and filing cabinets. Rooms and rooms of stuff that soon no one will want.
‘I can’t promise it’ll be tidy, though,’ I caution. ‘You’ll have to dig yourself out a place to sleep.’
‘Best offer I’ve had in years,’ Justine says gratefully.
She gives the driver her address, then falls silent and stares out the side window for the entire ride. The cab’s filled with the smell of well-worn leather, stale sweat and pulsing bhangra music. When we get to Bright Meadows, I hand over forty-five dollars, waving away Justine’s embarassed thanks.
‘All my stuff’s still at the club,’ she says.
She gets out with as much grace and dignity as a person with smeared eye make-up in an oriental costume can manage. The middle-aged cabbie gives her a hard sideways look as she slides out the door, keeps looking at her as he executes a slow U-turn and heads back the way he came.
We’re standing in front of a 1970s mission-brown brick apartment block with crumbling balconies in a nice, contrasting light beige. She can tell from the appalled expression on my face that it’s no kind of place to call home. She buzzes someone’s doorbell and they let her into the building. The stairwell smells of cooked cabbage and inadequately aired clothing, cats’ piss, dead rent, lost opportunities, a failure to capitalise.
‘Got a credit card?’ she says when we fetch up outside her apartment.
I’m not sure; hand her Lela’s red wallet to rifle through. A second later she takes out a thin plastic card and plays around with the lock on her front door. About two minutes later, the door swings wide open.
‘There’s a reason it’s cheap,’ she says. ‘Can never lock yourself out. One of the benefits. Wait here for me.’
I do as she says, noticing that the narrow hallway is unrelieved speckled concrete. There’s rising damp along the skirting boards, the florid 1970s wallpaper bubbling up in places as if fed by a subterranean stream. The ceilings are low and there’s a pervasive smell of mould, or bacteria.
I shudder and move further back into the external corridor.
Oh, Justine
, I can’t help thinking.
A block and a half later and I’m unlocking the door to Lela’s house.
‘Mum?’ I call out softly.
Georgia rises, gathering her things as I enter Mrs Neill’s bedroom with Justine in tow. She nods at Justine, not batting an eyelid at her weird get-up.
There’s an awkward expression on Justine’s face as she looks around the room. ‘Lela,’ she says quietly. ‘I had no idea.’
‘She’s sleeping now,’ Georgia whispers, ‘but she’s been asking for you. I’ll be here at the usual time tomorrow, but call the number on the fridge if she gets worse overnight. One of the team will respond. She might . . . Not that I trust myself, but it’s just a feeling I get.’
I nod, my face grim. ‘Me, too. And thanks.’
Justine perches in the chair I usually sleep in, so I clear a footstool for myself to sit on.
‘That you, Lel?’ Mrs Neill murmurs without opening her eyes when I draw the stool closer to the edge of the bed.
‘Yes, Mum,’ I reply quietly. ‘And I’ve asked a friend to stay. Her name’s Justine.’
Justine leans forward. ‘I won’t be any trouble, Mrs . . .’
‘Neill,’ I interrupt quickly at Justine’s stricken look. We
are
practically strangers.
‘Mrs Neill,’ Justine repeats awkwardly.
Lela’s mum opens her eyes, turns her head slowly, giving us both an unfocused smile. ‘So lovely to meet you. Lela used to have friends over all the time. It’s been months since she’s done that.’
She swallows painfully, closes her eyes, polite to the finish. ‘Please make yourself at home,’ she adds, her voice like something carried back on the wind from the afterlife.
She slips immediately into an uneasy sleep, as if the effort of speaking is too great to sustain. I must bend low to perceive that she is still breathing, still with us.
I stand and Justine immediately stands, too.
‘Kitchen’s here,’ I say as we approach the entrance to it. ‘We can offer you . . .’
I open the refrigerator and see a solitary jar of apricot jam; look in the freezer, see half a loaf of bread — provenance unknown, age unknown — and boxes and boxes of a frozen brown pureed substance. Food for Lela’s mum, I figure, and I’m loath to serve it because I don’t know what it is.
‘. . . jam sandwiches for dinner,’ I finish apologetically.
I’m not often hungry myself, only eating or drinking mechanically when the body I inhabit feels hunger or thirst. It never occurred to me that I might need to actually go shopping for food.
‘Jam sandwiches are fine,’ Justine laughs, a genuine sound of delight. ‘I like jam sandwiches.’
We leave the kitchen, go down the corridor towards Lela’s bedroom. ‘Let me show you where you’re going to sleep,’ I say.
‘It’s a beautiful house,’ Justine says as she pads after me in her Chinese pyjamas.
I give her a speaking look.
‘It would come up lovely with just a small tidy,’ she demurs, something like longing in her tone.
I clear a space on Lela’s desk for Justine’s bag, and tell her to make herself comfortable while I go out to the linen closet in the hall and bring in some new bedding, changing the bed efficiently while Justine looks around the room, runs her fingers along the old fireplace built into the wall, pulls back the curtains to look upon the neglected garden.
‘It’s lovely underneath,’ she whispers. ‘Just needs someone to give it a bit of attention.’
And that gives me an idea that I file away for thinking on later.
I tell Justine to help herself to whatever she needs, point the way to the icy bathroom with its 1950s fittings and 1950s concept of water pressure, and retire to Mrs Neill’s bedroom, to my usual seat.
I stay there late into the night while, before me, Mrs Neill slowly ebbs away.
Or maybe I imagine it, because I open my eyes and it’s morning.
Friday morning.
Ryan gets in in just a few hours
, I think, suddenly wide awake, every nerve ending thrumming.
I say softly, ‘Mum?’
Mrs Neill doesn’t respond, and I touch one hand to the side of her face and realise that she’s gone beyond hearing, beyond speech. Her weightless soul has already begun cleaving away from the flesh. I know with certainty that there is only a little time left before Azraeil returns to complete the division of soul from body.
The first thing I do is call the palliative care team and tell them to send someone over.
‘I think it might be today,’ I say quietly.
‘I’ll send Zoe right away,’ the woman tells me kindly. She does not question the certainty in my voice. ‘Georgia will take over at her usual time. If she’s needed.’
Though it’s only 5.35 am, Justine’s already awake, and agrees to stay with Mrs Neill while I head out to the Green Lantern.
‘Ther s just something I need to do at work. I’ll be back around midday and you can head off,’ I say.
‘I’m in no hurry,’ she tells me. Wrapped tight in a woolly robe she’s brought from her damp-infested apartment, cartoon slippers on her feet, she looks younger, softer, a world away from the teary, edgy woman I accompanied home in the taxi. ‘I was planning to give in my notice at that dive anyway — I’ll just need to call in at some stage and pick up my share of the tips for yesterday and the pay they owe me. So I’ll be officially unemployed as of today. Might do what Mr Dymovsky suggested and get a regular job.’ She gives a soft laugh. ‘Might even take up his offer of some work at the Green Lantern.’
‘You mean it?’ I say, delighted. I give her a wide smile. ‘You couldn’t suck at it any worse than I do! And you’d soon show Reggie who’s boss.’
Justine giggles. ‘I’d be top dog in no time — Reggie’s a choirgirl compared to the broads I usually work with.’
Her smile disappears, and she’s probably unaware of how wistful her voice sounds. ‘Then maybe that Sulaiman guy will have to start taking notice of me, instead of looking away whenever I come near him . . .’
‘He wasn’t looking away yesterday,’ I point out.
She looks down, scuffs at the threadbare hallway rug. ‘No, he wasn’t, was he?’
She heads off to the shower while I prepare her something to eat. The act of making a toasted jam sandwich hardly calms my strange feeling of nerves. Every sense seems heightened this morning, everything seems brighter, more beautiful, as if newly minted just for me. Even the motes of dust that drift through the air in the sun-stained, cluttered, silent rooms of Lela’s house seem beautiful, like tiny winged creatures.
I am impatient to get away; almost leap out of my skin when the doorbell rings, signalling Nurse Zoe’s arrival.
I hear Justine answer the door and place the sandwich I’ve made for her carefully in the centre of the kitchen table. I catch myself wiping Lela’s palms on the ankle-length, black tiered skirt I’ve chosen for her to wear beneath a whisper-thin, black, empire- line, long-sleeved top. Nerves. Since when do I suffer from nerves? But I feel oddly fallible today, sure that my skittish inability to settle to anything is showing on Lela’s face.
