The Half Life of Stars (24 page)

A secret location

Outside a ruined boathouse the heat is building as the sun rises higher in the sky. Waves slap hard against the rotted wooden pilings, rust clings in heavy scabs to the metal roof. Two people lean against a cracked window frame, seeking shade; smoking a much needed cigarette. Their fingers have stopped shaking, their mouths are moist, not dry; they are weirdly contented. Elated.

‘It made me feel better.’

‘Did it?’

‘You know what? I actually think it did.’

‘Closure. That’s all he needed, I knew it. He just needed to tell the guy face to face.’

Huey crouches down on the ground and turns his face upwards to the sun. He’s warm, he’s happy. His teeth are perfectly still.

‘I feel good,’ he says, contentedly. ‘Reborn. I feel like a whole new person.’

Tess kneels beside her boyfriend and smiles. She reaches into her duffle bag, digs around in the bottom, and pulls out a large pack of Oreos. She piles the biscuits into her mouth. One after the other, a dozen or more; she doesn’t stop until the packet is all gone.

‘I’m starving,’ she says, merrily, between crunches. ‘You know what? I’m totally starving.’

‘So, what happens now?’

‘I’m not sure. I guess we’ll do what you said.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘No…no. We do.’

‘It makes sense.’

‘It does,’ says Huey. ‘It makes a whole lot of sense.’

We go back inside. It smells musty indoors, salty and rotting, like the innards of an old gutted fish. A man is tied to a chair on the far side of the room, bound head to toe in silver tape. His hands are tied in front of him with a line of fishing yarn and a cloud of curly black fibres spill from his mouth.

‘He looks small, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah. Sort of powerless, sort of sad.’

‘You killed him, Huey. You did it. You actually, finally killed him.’

I know what they mean by this; they mean they’ve killed the demon, that they’ve broken the spell this man had over their lives. The man doesn’t know this. He shifts from side to side, getting agitated; breathing hard and fast through his nose. His captors pick up their bags. The man’s eyes dart fiercely back and forth.

‘We don’t know how to thank you. For being there…’

‘When we needed you. We’ll never…’

‘We’ll
never
forget it.’

‘Go now.
Go
. You haven’t got very much time.’

‘What about you?’

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’

‘What about Daniel…
God
…I’m
so
sorry…are you’re going to…will you make it in time?’

I haven’t looked at my watch. I can’t bare to look at my watch.

‘Don’t worry…just, the two of you,
please. Go!
’

Huey and Tess turn and wave. Huey runs back and hugs me one more time.

‘It looks good on you, by the way. Where’d you find it?’

I’m wearing Huey’s blue, alpaca hat.

‘It was in the mouse cage. You’d buried it underneath a mound of mice straw.’

‘Right, shit. I was trying to keep them warm. I remember that
the mice looked kind of shivery. It makes a good balaclava, though, don’t you think? Tess, don’t you think it makes a good balaclava?’

‘Huey…
please
…we have to get out of here
now
.’

‘Claire…thank you. Thank you
so
much, man. We won’t forget this, not ever.’

‘And be careful,’ I say. ‘It’s not going to be easy.’

‘Don’t worry,’ they say, in unison. ‘We will.’

I walk towards the man slowly, with the blue hat pulled low over my face. There are two holes for my eyes, one for my mouth; I must look ridiculous. Insane.

‘Mr Weinstein, please don’t be scared. I’m going to cut one of your hands free then I’m going to lay the knife on this table. When I leave the room you’ll be able to shift the chair over here and cut yourself free. Do you understand?’

He understands.

‘I’m sorry this ever happened. And I’d stay around and help you, but…there’s somewhere else that I have to be.’

The string is cut. He’s not sure what to do. He’s wondering if it’s some kind of trick. I lay the knife on the other side of the room with it’s handle pointing outwards, towards his chair. It should take him a couple of minutes to shuffle over and reach it.

‘I know you won’t believe it,’ I say, opening the door. ‘But just for the record…they’re actually very sweet people.’

I turn around and make for the car and I hear something as I begin to turn the key. It sounds a lot like a cat: hacking, hacking, hacking; clearing hair balls out of its throat.

This drive, how is it so long? Three hours it’s been now, nearly four, and no way on earth I can make it. I’d need my own jet propulsion. I’d need to take off across these cars, across this highway; I’d need to spin, spin, spin, as fast as the earth. I’m driving at eighty miles an hour; racing like an Exocet missile, trying to make it in time. I speed up. I speed up. I slow down again. I’m alternately tired and wired. I should stop. I should rest. I should concentrate. Another of us can’t die on this road.

‘Lot of cars on the road today.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, that’s a lot of cars out there today. How many vehicles do you think?’

They stream past us in an endless ribbon: red, blue, big, green; fast, determined, insistent. Eyes straight ahead, bonnets in line, each one committed to the road.

‘Everybody in a hurry to get somewhere, these days. Everybody always in a hurry.’

I’m sat on a concrete seat outside a gas station, sipping coffee with my shoulders hunched, watching the traffic. Day trippers file in and out while I rest: couples; families; fractious, scolded children; truck drivers with skulls as tight as fists. They stop for ice cream and cigarettes and bright day-glo Slushies. They stop to pee and fight and stretch their legs. I should get going. Toss this sweet cup of coffee to the back of my throat and climb back into the driving seat. If only I could keep my eyes open. If only I could fight the urge to shut my eyes.

My new friend taps me hard on the shoulder, his fingers feel narrow and bony.

‘You look like you could use some shut-eye,’ he says. ‘You want to be careful. It’s easy to fall asleep at the wheel.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I know it is.’

They say my father looked like he was sleeping, that no one suspected he was dead. I wonder if he looked peaceful or in pain, with his head slumped down heavy on his chest; with the cold black leather of the steering wheel pressing an imprint into his cheek. It’s no good. I’ll have to have another pick-me-up. Another sweet cup of coffee or a sandwich. I
have
to take my time. I
have
to hurry up. I’ll leave now. I’ll go and buy my food first. I’ll leave in another ten minutes. I’ll leave in another half an hour. I sit on the bench immobile, unable. I crush the damp paper cup.

My lips are greasy and warm, and I’m buzzing and shaking from caffeine. I’ve eaten a hamburger and mainlined two cans of syrupy energy drink but I still feel like I’m driving on autopilot. The launch counts down in less than half an hour and I’m still more than a hundred miles from the Cape. It’s a Boeing Delta 4 heavy rocket on a demonstration mission for the US government. This is what I hear. This is what I’m told. I have no notion, nor any interest, in what it means. I just want it see it take off. I just want to be there before it goes.

The traffic is thickening and slowing down now; the Magic Kingdom filter system clogging up the road, drawing in the crowds with its mouse-shaped magnet. Is this where they stopped and got caught? Is this the spot that it happened? Did Daniel crouch down on that shallow embankment, his raw toes bleeding into the grass? Did he run down the middle of this same highway, veering in and out of the traffic? It’s hard to imagine, this child, this boy, tearing in and out of the stranded cars: desperate to get there, hoping to do it, killing himself to make time. I was swimming. I see myself swimming with Julio. I feel the bath-warm water on my skin. I feel lips pressing hard onto my lips. I feel soft skin on my skin. The explosions, the fear, the falling,
the bliss; all of us reaching out for one another. All of us so far out of reach.

I’m coming up to a crossroads. The sign says next exit Kennedy Space Center, the exit after that is Jetty Park. I haven’t time to think. Four seconds. Three seconds. Two seconds. One. And I’m past it. I’m already gone. I’m an hour or more late but I know how things are. There are always delays, every time. It’s too much to expect that they could launch on schedule. Not this time.
Please
. Not today.

I just have time to park the car, to switch off the ignition and climb out. The air is fresher and cooler out here by the sea, and
look
, there it is, there she goes. A dash in the sky, a punctuation mark, so high up and far away, already. A Boeing Delta 4 heavy rocket; vanishing, almost out of sight. I want to rewind it, to make it come down again; I want to reverse the shouts and cheers. I can’t be too late, I
can’t
be. I must find a lasso or an arrow; something to bring the vehicle down with. But it’s steaming so high now and so fast; detached from the gravity of earth, breaking free from this planet and its atmosphere. There are faces tilted upwards, still watching it, still staring, but not enough people, not
enough
. Some have made their getaway already and fled away from the park to beat the crowds. I know in my bones he was one of them. I know in my heart that he’s gone.

The last of the observers are making their way towards the exit and I want to push them all back inside: the tourists and the nerds and the kids and the tour parties, all filing past me, eager and chattering. What a sight it was. How wonderful it was. They are satisfied, cheery, full up. I rub my forehead with my fists and try to squeeze some concentration out of my eyes. I’m facing the wrong way, towards the launch pad not the exit. I can’t take my eyes off the distant launch pad. They push past me, swerving or crashing into my shoulder. They glare at me, shout at me and swear. They all look the same, they all look so different. I don’t know, I can’t tell, I can’t focus. He could walk past me now and I wouldn’t know it.

‘Is that you?’

‘Yes. It’s me.’

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘I’ve been here.’

‘All this time?’

He thinks for a long while. He listens.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘A part of me has been here all this time.’

There’s only a few dozen left now and I turn and exit along with them. Off they all go to their coaches and their cars, and off I go to the sea. It’s a short walk to the beach, a thin spit of coarse sand and white polished pebbles, holding back the whole of the ocean. And I just want to dive right into it; to rip off my clothes and to swim.

It isn’t as calm as I would have liked, the fat waves butting me awkwardly from side to side, making me shiver in my bra and knickers. I spread out on my back, floating, floating, while the waves break over my face. Perhaps Kay found him, perhaps he’s OK, perhaps she was right and he went to Kennedy. Maybe he’s with them both now, her and Julian; hugging them, holding them, beginning his small world of repairs. But Pinhead, I know you were out here. I know you stood out here in Jetty Park. It would have been just like you, you stubborn bastard. To rest on that very same spot. To look out in that self-same direction. To visit the last place you stood with your father and replay that moment in your head. I failed you. I missed you. Didn’t we always? I stuttered. I looked the wrong way.

I swim farther out–head down, arms tight–until all of my muscles ache and burn. They tell me to turn back, to return to the beach, but my head just tells me to keep on going. I stop for a breath when my lungs force me up, and when I surface the shore seems very far away. I could keep on going, I
want
to keep on going; the sea feels so warm, so obliging.

I bob up and down to get my breath back while the sun beats down on my head. I feel tired and small and alone and incapable, and I want to close my eyes and go to sleep. When I open them
again–my lids sore and stinging from salt–I spot a cargo boat sailing for the horizon, heading east; its narrow bow slung low in the water. I don’t know where it’s going, where it’s headed, what it’s called, but it’s just–well, it might–those figures on the deck, it could be them. It’s possible I did a good thing today; there’s a chance that I made two people happy. If they did what I said, if they called the right people; if they got there in time, then who knows.

They can’t see me waving, but still I wave. Splashing the water, spoiling the surf, warming my muscles and my heart. Some energy from somewhere skids through my bones and suddenly it feels like I’m swimming. For home, for the shore.

A man has broken off from one of the Japanese tour groups that were in the park and he’s wandering towards me now, along the beach. I’m drying myself off with my T-shirt, wondering if my underwear is see-through, grabbing at my jeans and my shoes. He nods, he doesn’t speak good English. I ask him if he saw the rocket launch. Yes, he liked it. It was his first and only one; he took pictures of it on his digital camera. What happened to his group, is he lost? Lost? He doesn’t understand the word. I explain it to him in Japanese. He smiles, he doesn’t think he’s lost. But their coach is delayed. It’s being held up, they don’t seem to know for how long.

‘What’s the problem?’ I say, pulling my T-shirt over my head, ‘Why can’t your tour bus leave the park?’

‘No point,’ he says. ‘The road is full of problems outside.’

I’m gone in an instant. Long before he tells me it’s a traffic jam.

What rage there is brewing outside this park today: the honking and spitting and railing of horns, men and women out of their cars. They have their arms in the air and their fists, and their mouths are wide open, full of shouts. They curse and moan and stand close to one another, like they might spill over into blows. Is this what it was like when the shuttle went down? Were people in a rage like this, that day? Or had the disaster neutered and tempered them a while; left them thoughtful, unsettled and perplexed. These people aren’t asking any questions. There is nothing they are fighting to comprehend. They want revenge, pure and simple. They are all for making rash decisions.

‘What is it?’ I say. ‘What’s the hold up?’

‘Man up ahead, on the road.’

‘Crazy fuck. I hope they run him over. Run him down,
man
. I need to get back to work.’

Somebody laughs and an engine revs. Another man shouts
run the fucker down
. I don’t think they’ll do it, not on purpose, but I do think there’s a chance he might die. I hear cars swerving and skidding up ahead. There’s been one crash already, a saloon car has rear-ended a mobile home and the exit ramp is stuffed shut and blocked. That’s where he was. That’s what they tell me. The exit ramp is where he broke onto the road. And now what? Where is he now? Out on the main highway? It can’t be possible; there is no way on earth he could survive it.

I don’t have the physical strength. I am disjointed, un-athletic, not so tough. He always had a rhythm, what was it? Arms then legs, legs then arms; head, neck and torso impossibly still. I force my forearms like pistons but they still feel weak from the swim.
I dredge some adrenalin from my organs, hammer my legs into the ground. I take off onto the tarmac, directly into the line of the oncoming traffic. I’m right through the barrier. I’m flying.

‘Now there’s two of them…
shit
,’ says the man on my left. ‘Fuck, lady. Get off the
road!
’

I have the right shoes: my white trainers. I have the right T-shirt: canary yellow. They can see me–there’s no doubt–they can all see me coming, they can hear my lungs crying for gas. I’m shouting, I think I must be shouting. Warning the traffic, warning the road, screaming for everything to stop. Slow down, can’t you? Daniel,
Daniel
. Why do you have to run so fast? There is nowhere to go to, no place left to run, no possible spot he can hide. But there is, of course. If he could just go one step faster, if he could just make better time; he could twist his entire world back to front. It would shift on its axis–north to south, south to north–and turn its face up to a different set of stars. He’d make the years and the days and the minutes slip away, and somehow he’d be back where he started: back on this same stretch of tarmac, back on this very same road, and this time,
this
time, he’d make it.

Because he’s trained for this moment, I know it. Every minute of every day since he got here. Out on the beach, to the north of Sunny Isles, grinding his body back into shape. Hours of it, days of it, the wrath of it, the pain of it; until he was immune to the strain. One week, two weeks, morning and evening and now he has speed over distance. His blood is thick with protein. His muscles are sinewy and strong. His lungs and his heart run in unison, and they beat together sweetly, like a clock. So how can I catch him? How will I reach him? I can’t. I can’t I can’t.

‘I need it,
please
.’

‘It’s brand new.’

‘I’ll bring it back. I promise. I’ll bring it back.’

‘Get on. Get up here. I’ll drive you.’

The motorbike growls like an animal as the driver fights to control it; turning it quickly, redirecting its wheels towards the oncoming
traffic. He’s working it now and it’s looser, more liquid, and look how it weaves in and out. We don’t scratch the bonnets, we don’t skid or fall; we sew the dense traffic like a needle. I can see something ahead of us, a body, a figure? How is he so rigid, so straight? He looks neither to the right nor the left. He takes no avoiding action at any time. He leaves it to the cars, to the drivers; he is dependent on the sheer grace of others. He runs like he doesn’t begin to see them. He chews up the centre of the road. His feet come down faster and faster, powered by instinct, some ancient engine. He runs like a rocket, higher, higher. We’re gaining on him now and then we’re not. A truck is stopped sideways, directly in front of us, and we can’t get around it. And then we can.

On the other side, I can’t see him. We pull the bike up on the hard shoulder, stall and shut down its engine. My eyes scan the road, forwards, backwards; over to the right then to the left. I walk along the road with my mouth held open; slowly, awkwardly, unable to comprehend what just happened. Maybe he actually did it, the fucker. Maybe he ran so fast he went back in time.

‘Did you see where he went?’

‘The runner?’

‘The runner.’

‘Went over the embankment just there. Came to this spot and stopped dead. Went over the railing, crazy fuck.’

Over the lip of the embankment stands the body of my crazy fucking brother. He’s staring at a length of road that runs below us, a tributary to the main highway. The traffic isn’t slow here, it’s moving along fast, and the cars are flying like bombs. He’s edging towards it, to the bottom of the verge, trying to work out where it was. That’s right, of
course
, it must have been down there. That’s where the family car stopped. And on he goes towards it and I’m running down towards him, a hundred metres take a million seconds. I’ll never get down there, my body is collapsing, stabbing me, whipping me with the effort. He’s not looking, I
know
he’s not looking. He’ll step out onto the asphalt and he’ll die.

My voice. I think he hears my voice. Daniel, I say to him.
Daniel!
I scream. Nothing. Nothing. No response.
Pinhead
, you fucking pinhead. Do you hear me? His legs bend and buckle by the kerb.
Pinhead, I’m telling you to stop!
And he does. Miraculously he does. And I pull him and shove him to the ground. And for a moment, for a moment–for a moment the universe stops turning.

We are salty and smothered like newborns, both of our bodies drenched in sweat. His face is rough and unshaven, peppered with specks of white and grey. We are old and young all at once. I hold his hand like I did when we were children, except this time it’s me drawing him to safety. Across the haunted landing, from the dangers of this highway, through the traffic to the gentle grassy incline. We collapse onto the knoll, our legs made of fabric, my lungs screaming louder–so much louder–than his. My heart is attacking me, beating me up: angry, affronted, alarmed. The sun shines down on us even so, feeding us filling us up.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m not.’

‘I mean your legs. Are you OK to walk.’

‘I’d rather stay here.’

‘You don’t want to move?’

‘No, I don’t want to move.’

We’re drying from the heat, we’re congealing. We can see the horizon in the distance; we can hear the faint spill of waves.

‘How beautiful it is out here.’ I say. ‘The sea a deep religious blue…’

‘The light as sharp as lemons.’