I Am the Messenger (33 page)

It all happens as usual, except tonight the radio I’ve brought sweats next to me as the moon rises, falls, and fades when morning finally approaches. I wonder for a moment why I didn’t just set my alarm at home and come over at dawn, but I know I have to do this right. I had to suffer the night to do this properly.

My legs stretch out, but the night stretches further. First light frightens me.

I’m swaying toward sleep in the park when I hear a door slam and Simon’s car start up. He exits the town house complex with a quiet, clumsy turn onto the street. A minute passes, but I realize that now is the time. It all feels right.

The radio. The light.

And now, my footsteps toward Audrey’s front door.

I knock.

No answer.

Again, I clench my fist, but just as I’m about to hit the wood again, a crack appears in the doorway and Audrey’s tired voice edges through it. “Did you forget some—” Her voice props.

“It’s me,” I say.

“Ed?”

“Yes.”

“What are you—”

My shirt feels like cement. I wear wooden jeans, sandpaper socks, and anvil shoes.

“I’m here,” I whisper, “for you.”

Audrey, the girl, the woman, is in a pink nightie.

She opens the door and stands barefoot, removing some sleep from her eye with her fist. She reminds me of the little girl Angelina.

Slowly, I take her hand and bring her out onto the path. The heaviness has left me now, and it’s just her and me. I place the radio in the bark-spattered garden, crouch down, and press play.

At first, a moderate static rustles through the air. Then the music begins and we can both hear the slow, quiet, sweet desperation of a song I won’t mention. Imagine the softest, toughest, most beautiful song you know, and you’ve got it. We breathe it in and my eyes hook with Audrey’s.

I walk closer and hold her hands.

“Ed, what—”

“Shh.”

I hold her close now around her hips and she holds me back.

She places her hands around my neck and rests her head on my shoulder. I can smell the sex on her, and my only hope is that she can smell the love on me.

The music hits low.

The voice reaches high.

It’s the music of hearts again—but much better this time—and we move and turn, and Audrey’s breath places itself on my neck. “Mmm,” she moans gently, and we dance on the path. We hold each other. At one point, I let go and twirl her slowly. She comes back and it’s a small, small kiss she gives me on the neck when she returns.

I love you,
I feel like saying, but there’s no need for that.

The sky flows with fire, and I’m dancing with Audrey. Even when the song ends, we hold on a little longer, and I think it’s about three minutes we danced for.

Three minutes to tell her I love her.

Three minutes for her to admit she loves me back.

She tells me when we let go, but no words of love exit her mouth. She just kind of closes one eye at me and says, “Well, Ed Kennedy, huh?”

I smile.

She points her finger. “But only you, though, right?”

“Right,” I agree. I stare at Audrey’s bare feet, her ankles, her shins, then make my way up to her face. I take a photo of her in my mind. Her tired eyes and morning mucked-up hair the color of straw. The smile gently scratching her lips. Her small ears and smooth nose. And the last remnants of love, holding strangely on….

She let herself love me for three minutes.

Can three minutes last forever?
I ask myself, but already I know the answer.

Probably not,
I reply.
But maybe they last long enough
.

I pick up the radio and we stand for a little while longer. She doesn’t invite me in, and I don’t ask.

What needed to be done was done, so I turn and say, “Well, I’ll see you, Audrey. Maybe at the next card game. Maybe before.”

“Soon,” she assures me, and with the radio tucked back under my arm, I begin the walk home.

Twelve messages have been delivered.

Four aces have been completed.

This feels like the greatest day of my life.

I’m alive,
I think.
I won
. I feel freedom for the first time in months, and an air of contentedness wanders next to me all the way home. It even remains as I walk through the front door, kiss the Doorman, and make us some coffee in the kitchen.

We’re halfway through it when another feeling finds its way to my stomach, winds up, and spills.

I don’t know why I feel it, but any contentment vanishes instantly as the Doorman looks up at me. We hear a latch open and shut from outside and a person rush off.

I walk slowly out the door, down the porch steps, and onto the front yard.

My letter box stands there. Slightly crooked. It looks guilty.

My heart shakes.

I walk on and shudder as I open the letter box.

Oh no,
I think.
No, no. No!

My hands reach in and my fingers take hold of one last envelope. My name’s on it, and inside I can already see it.

There’s one last card.

One last address.

I close my eyes and fall to my knees on my front lawn.

My thoughts stammer.

One last card.

Without thinking, I gradually open the envelope, and when my eyes find the address, all thoughts are cut down and left there to die.

It reads:

26 Shipping Street

The address is
my
address.

The last message is for me.

part five:
The Joker

The street is empty and silent.

The Joker laughs at me.

Everything’s quiet but for the silent laughter of the clown in my hands. He roars.

The grass is covered with sweat, and I stand alone with the wild card between my fingers. I’ve been watched all along, but never have I felt as vulnerable or scrutinized as right now.

Inside
. I panic.
What’s waiting inside?

“Get in there,” I say, and I walk across the sweat-soaked grass. Of course, I don’t
want
to go inside, but what other choice do I have? If someone’s in there, there’s nothing I can do about it. My feet print the cement porch with wetness.

I walk through to the kitchen.

“Anyone there?” I call out.

But.

There’s no one.

In.

My kitchen.

In fact, there’s no one in my house at all except the Doorman, the Joker, and me. I all but check under the bed, even though I know it wouldn’t be the style of what’s been happening. They’d be drinking my coffee or taking a leak in my toilet or having a bath or something like that. There’s nothing and no one in my house. Silence pervades everything until the Doorman yawns and licks his lips.

Hours pass until I have to go to work.

“Where to?”

“Martin Place, please.”

With each pickup I grow more numb, and for the first time ever, I don’t speak to a person all day. I don’t discuss the weather. I don’t talk about who won on the weekend, the state of the roads, or any disposable conversational crap that fills the void inside a taxicab.

That’s the first day.

The second’s the same.

On the third day, something happens.

I’m on my way back home when I nearly crash at a roundabout. A kombi in front of me attempts to go, but I look right instead of staying focused on the van. It stops abruptly, the brakes yell at my feet, and I manage to stop a few inches from the kombi’s number plate.

I had the Joker on the passenger seat.

It springs forward.

It lands on the floor.

And laughs.