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Authors: Chris Womersley

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The Low Road (6 page)

BOOK: The Low Road
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He often felt more at home in the houses of strangers, but there was nothing here in Lee's apartment; it was entirely too familiar. He stood in the bedroom with his gun still in hand. Clothes lay on the wooden floor in piles as if their owner had urgently disrobed before fleeing. The walls were grubby, dotted here and there with marks and smudges, like the thumbprints of ghosts. He was preparing to leave when the phone rang. Automatically, he raised his gun. As always, he expected the phone's plastic form to vibrate in accompaniment to the urgent trill and was slightly disappointed when it failed to do so. It rang about ten times before falling silent. Josef scratched his tattoo. He heard people walk past in the street below. A woman chuckled. He stood still.

The phone rang again. He crouched beside the mattress and lifted the receiver to his ear. Hello.

Lee, a woman said. Where on earth are you?

Josef stood up, phone in his left hand, gun in the other. No, he said after a pause. Lee's not here.

There was a brief silence. Sorry? Who's this, then?

I'm a friend.

More silence. He heard the woman transfer the phone from one hand to the other, the crumpling sound so close it might have been happening in the shell of his own ear. Strange that strangers could be so close. Josef knew that people would speak almost compulsively to fill silences. He hoped she would. It might be his only lead. She would speak or just hang up. He waited, tapping the gun against his thigh, and was surprised to detect a quickening of his heart. The woman said nothing.

Maybe I can help you? he said.

Well. Do you know where he is? She was curt, suspicious.

No. I was looking for him myself.

What are you doing in his house? What's your name?

I have a key, alright.

I see. Well, he was supposed to be here this afternoon and he hasn't turned up. I've been ringing all evening.

You were expecting him?

Yeah. I'm his sister. He's coming to stay with us for a while. Who are you?

His sister?

Yeah. Claire. Has he left yet, at least?

I thought . . .

What? Thought what?

You're his sister? Lee's sister?

Yes.

He told me his family were all killed in a car crash.

Oh, Jesus. Did he?

Yes.

The woman sighed. No. Not everyone.

There was a man's voice in the background and again the phone rustled. More muffled voices. He imagined the woman, this sister of Lee's, pressing the phone against her chest to relay their conversation to a man in a doorway.

Beside his own wan reflection, Josef could see that a large moth had attached itself to the outside of the bedroom window. Even from several feet away, Josef could discern its tiny wings, its rotating antennae and the furry bulk of its body. An aunt used to tell him that a moth attempting to enter a house was a harbinger of death and he wondered how such an apparently innocuous creature—this mute Labrador of the insect world—could signify such a thing. He always thought they looked like royalty outcast, their brown wings tattered robes fluttering about their bodies.

More rustling and it seemed the woman was back with him. He needed to force the conversation. And where are you?

So you don't know where he is?

Why don't you give me your telephone number and address and—

No. It's OK . . . I think I'll try later. He'll show up. He promised.

Wai —

The woman hung up. Shit. He'd blown it. Josef tossed the phone receiver onto the mattress. Shit. He shrugged inside his jacket. Again he looked around the bedroom and wondered at the sheer inevitability of a life that now found him standing in this apartment. It seemed he had not travelled very far since his adolescent break-ins. The moth still hung grimly onto the windowpane, its wings ruffling in the wind. He imagined it staring at him with its black eyes, but doubted moths could even see.

So. Lee had a sister. This was interesting.

He shoved his gun back inside his jacket, unzipped his trousers and fumbled until he stood ponderously with hips jutting forward, his cock between thumb and forefinger. A chill murmured through him like a current of polite applause. How painful that one's body eventually needed quiet urging to accomplish the most rudimentary tasks. Was old age merely an inability to complete those things that for so long have occurred naturally? He waited as his organs awakened somewhere in his abdomen and finally produced a hot, thin arc of piss. He aimed more or less at Lee's mattress and before long a sizzling pool formed within the folds of a dirty sheet.

He was unsure what to do when he had finished. He zipped himself up and waited while the rust-coloured puddle melted into the sheet and mattress. It didn't give him nearly as much satisfaction as he had hoped, but perhaps he had expected too much.

It was almost midnight. He needed a drink, but the only thing in the fridge was half a bottle of beer with a teaspoon dangling in its neck. He lifted the bottle out, shook it, then dropped it onto the linoleum floor. It landed with a thud but failed to break. Beer glugged out. Josef shook his head and smoothed his hair. He yawned and leaned against a bench to smoke a cigarette. The puddle of beer collected beneath the sink. His hands shook as he stroked the inside of his left wrist. He paused, stopped breathing. Yes. There it was. The hum, heard through his fingertips, of his tattoo.

7

L
ee slumped against the passenger-side door with the gun in his lap. The lower half of his t-shirt and the waist of his jeans were heavy and warm with his own blood. His body was lighter, his mouth woolly with thirst. Although painful to do, every so often he swivelled in his seat to check the road behind. There was just asphalt unravelling into the darkness. Wild drove at an unthreatening pace but ever since the accident, as long as he could remember, Lee found himself pressing his foot to the floor in search of the brake whenever in a car. This despite never having learned to drive.

The car smelled of old takeaway food. Empty chip packets were jammed between the dashboard and windscreen. Soft-drink bottles lolled drunkenly about the floor. The back seat was covered in clothes and books. The door handle rattled beside him as if preparing to break loose and he moved to the middle of his seat, afraid the door would fly open under the barest pressure. The suitcase of money was on the floor. Now and again Lee tapped his foot against it, to ensure it was still there.

Without speaking, they drove through sprawling industrial suburbs, fenced in and broken. Smokestacks fingered into the sky, each topped with plumes of white steam or smoke. A girl waited alone in a bus shelter with her knees pressed together, a newspaper was flattened by the cold wind against a wire fence. The suburbs petered out as they fled. The buildings became lower and less frequent, giving way to open spaces until, finally, the city fell away altogether.

The countryside was dark, but occasionally Lee could make out an ancient shed listing in a field as if frozen mid-collapse or the bulky shapes of cows dumbly watching as they passed. There weren't many other cars. Lee didn't know where they were going, but was relieved to get away.

He turned to face Wild. You really a doctor? I mean, this car is pretty shitty.

Wild sighed and wiped his nose with a sleeve. Yes. More or less.

What does that mean?

Wild shrugged and stared straight ahead. His voice was ragged. It means that I studied medicine and that I worked as a doctor for a long time but that due to certain … Due to certain factors, I am what they call
suspended
. Meaning I'm not able to practise at the moment, if ever. So yes and no is the answer.

Lee waited for more information. He stared at Wild's craggy profile. What sort of factors?

He didn't answer. The road climbed and they rounded a bend. Ahead on the other side of the road, a car was parked facing away from them. The brakelights glowed red, but the car's exact colour and shape were oily in the forest gloom. Its boot was agape. They slowed and Lee recognised the car as the one that had departed the motel earlier in the afternoon. One of its headlights continued to burn, illuminating a crowd of trees. Wild wound down his window and Lee heard the sound of their tyres crunching on the gravel shoulder. They came to a complete halt. Cold air filled the interior.

Lee shivered and adjusted his position. The bandages Wild had applied earlier pressed awkwardly into his abdomen. What are you doing?

Wild waved the question away. Beyond the sound of the idling car, Lee heard the metallic
tick, tick
of a cooling engine. But there was something else, a hiss of air escaping. Lee peered more closely at the parked car and saw that, in fact, it had crashed. He grimaced. The car's front end was compacted into half its size and the windscreen was jigsawed and sagging. Liquid dripped onto the asphalt. It seemed a tableau just perfected, and Lee imagined those responsible scurrying into the shadows and crouching out of sight. Some elaborate joke.

This is how it was, a scene that might even have been assembled from his own memory. The moaning silence. The stillness. The
tick, tick, tick.

It was only then, as he assembled the discrete elements, that he saw a face leering from the bottom corner of the passenger-side window like that of a drowned woman. Her bloodied mouth was slightly open and pressed against the moist glass. A wave of dark hair drifted like seaweed across one eye.

This is just how it was.

Panic spidered through him. Oh shit. Let's get out of here. Let's go.

Wild didn't move.

Lee poked him in the shoulder with the gun. I don't think this is a good idea. These people are dead. Let's go.

But still Wild made no move.

Don't make me shoot you.

Wild faced him. He breathed heavily. In the half-light, his face was a cliff of hollows and ridges. Wild blinked and ran a hand through his wayward fringe. He looked down. Let's not go through this again, he said. He sounded afraid, but didn't make a move.

Lee sat up to relieve the pressure on his wound, which had begun to throb. Please. Can we keep going? He paused. Please.

Wild scratched his neck and turned away. He appeared not to be even looking at the other car, but at nothing really, just staring straight ahead at God knows what. Something twitched in his jaw, some muscle working away beneath the skin as if attempting to surface. There was a sharp pop of exploding glass from the crashed car.

Lee jammed his gun into Wild's side, but it drew no response and Lee wondered if Wild had even felt it through his huge overcoat. He made another movement with the gun but again it elicited nothing.

Then, unbelievably, Wild grabbed his bag, got out of the car and walked across to the wrecked car. Just walked right over to the car.

Lee remained where he was. Fuck, he said under his breath. Fucking Wild. He shivered and tried to curl himself into some position of warmth, to no avail.

After a minute, he too stumbled from the car and followed, the gun still in his hand. Whatever pipe or valve was hissing, it began hissing even more as Lee approached, as if aware of him. His breath fogged in front of his face and he had the sensation of stepping into a dream.

Wild banged on the passenger-side window with the heel of his palm and might even have said something, some sort of doctor-style reassurance, but the woman's head just jounced against the glass. A smear of bloody drool bubbled near her broken lip and smashed teeth.

Through the rear window, Lee could see the driver slumped against the steering wheel. Wild walked around to the open driver's-side door. There was a smell of hot metal and singed plastic, the aroma of the machine age, of chaos and organisation. It was also, Lee knew, the smell of loss.

Lee looked around. His breathing was loud. The wreck's windscreen sagged with a damp crackle. He heard a low growl and remembered the dogs accompanying the couple when they left the motel. He stepped away, expecting them to leap from the wreckage, but the back seat of the car was empty. There was no sign of them. They had been killed or had run off into the forest. He imagined them bounding through the darkness with rolling eyes and pink tongues and wondered what would become of the poor things.

He wanted to get away from here. If he knew how, he could take Wild's car and drive off into the night. Or just set out walking into the woods, into the forest, into the darkness? Keep going until something happened, until he fell into a fucking hole or off a cliff or something. Anything would be better than standing on a country road in the middle of a cold, cold night. Instead he shuffled over to where Wild was leaning over the driver's-side door.

Again the low, strangled growl and the driver sat back in his seat. The man sighed deeply, unbuckled himself and stepped from the car with the demeanour of one who has recently completed an arduous journey. His face shone with blood and there was a deep horizontal wound along his forehead that bore the crenellated imprint of a steering wheel. The man swayed, and spat blood and matter from his broken mouth.

BOOK: The Low Road
8.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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