Enormity

by Nick Milligan

“Yes, I passed them on my way up just now.”

  “I see. Is security letting them up here?”

  “I’m not sure. But they were waving a piece of paper and seemed quite agitated.”

  “How rude.”

  “Jack, I know the security guards here. I’m sure they’ll take care of this. You’re a part of our community and we all need to look out for each other. Especially for you.”

  “That’s very kind,” I say.

  “Why don’t you come over to my apartment, in case they access our floor?”

  “Um,” I say, considering the offer. I’m not ready to speak with the police. I do need time. “Sure. That would be good.”

  “Excellent,” says Mr Roeg. “I’d like to help you. We all know you have done nothing wrong and we can’t have the authorities impeding your work.”

  “The world needs music.”

  I quickly grab my apartment keys from the kitchen counter, lock the door behind me and follow Mr Roeg across our foyer. He unlocks and opens his apartment door. The handle has been lowered for him.

  I step past Mr Roeg and he then closes the door behind us. A moment later I hear the elevator door open outside and voices emerge. Kneeling down, I look through Mr Roeg’s spyhole. There’s two policemen in jet-black uniforms. They have shiny badges and emblems on their shirts, and belts of varied paraphernalia. With their hats pulled down, they march toward my apartment. One of the big security guards from my building steps closely behind them.

  “I don’t think he’s in there,” says the guard, in an innocently dissuading tone. “We saw him leave a few hours ago.”

  One of the officers knocks loudly on my door which, of course, I don’t answer. He knocks loudly a second time, then turns to the guard. “Open this door.” He holds up a piece of paper.

  Sheepish, the guard pulls a set of keys from his belt and unlocks my apartment door.

  “Shit,” I whisper to Mr Roeg, who is pottering about somewhere behind me. “They’ve gone inside.”

  “They’re inside now?” I hear Mr Roeg ask.

  “Yes, right now.”

  When I turn around I see Mr Roeg has picked up his mobile phone. He speaks into it. “They’ve entered.” He hangs up and puts the phone in the pocket of his tiny pants.

  “Who’s that?” I ask.

  “Just the building’s security. Nothing to worry about. I’m keeping them in the loop.”

  “Isn’t there a camera in our foyer? Why would they need you to call them?”

  Something flashes in Mr Roeg’s tiny, dark beady eyes and he smiles, revealing his miniature, pointed teeth. “The cameras are being troublesome. Why don’t you make yourself comfortable until the officers leave?” He motions to his modern living room, which sits by dim lamplight. To the right is a custom-built kitchen, which opens into the wide living area. His apartment’s layout appears to resemble my own, but the dwarf furniture makes his dwelling seem far bigger. As you would expect of someone of Mr Roeg’s miniscule stature, all of his furnishings are shrunken. Everything is in proportion to his toddler’s frame, except for his flatscreen television, which is quite large. A low bookshelf. A coffee table. A few well groomed plants. To my left is a normal sized single-seater sofa, which I quietly sit in.

  On the walls are three macabre artworks, penned in black ink. Vivid in detail. Illustrations of winged creatures and naked humans and flames.

  “Interesting artworks,” I say, pointing at one.

  “I dabble in sketching,” says Mr Roeg.

  I hear the elevator door open outside and the sound of more footsteps. Sharp, heavy shoes echo off the tiles, striding with purpose.

  “Can I get you something to drink? Would it be inappropriate for me to offer you some red wine?”

  “Far from it,” I smile.

  Mr Roeg pulls two wine glasses from a low cupboard and then retrieves a bottle of wine from his pantry.

  “I must say,” says Mr Roeg when he hands me my glass, “it’s quite an honour to have you here in my apartment. Drinking red wine.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I say, dismissively. “Pleasure is all mine.”

  Mr Roeg looks as though he may blush, then fetches his own glass. He sits in a small armchair across from me and a reflective moment passes as we both sip our beverage. On the wall behind my host, perhaps seven feet from the ground, is a medium-sized wooden crucifix.

  “So when is your band performing again?” asks Mr Roeg.

  “Soon, I hope. We’ll probably announce some dates in the next few months. But nothing’s confirmed.”

  “Would it be a long tour?”

  “Possibly. We might go around the world again.”

  “So you’d be leaving us?”

  “Temporarily. But nothing’s confirmed. A lot of promoters harass us, so I’d say we’ll have a festival headline spot locked in somewhere.”

  “Excellent,” nods Mr Roeg. “I can’t say I’ve been to a festival, but I might come along to your next one. Stranger things have happened.”

  “Yes, I think that is a fair observation.”

  Mr Roeg chuckles lightly, with his odd, high voice. Like air escaping a balloon. He composes himself and asks, “So, with your songs, how do you think of them? How do you keep writing such amazing music?”

  “Uh, they just come to me I guess. I hear a melody in my head and I start fooling on the guitar. It’s difficult to explain.”

  “Do songs appear to you anywhere?”

  “Yes, they can. If I’m not near my guitar I might sing a tune into my mobile phone and record it until I can get home.”

  “So this inspiration follows you? It’s all around you?”

  “Yeah,” I shrug.

  “Like direct gifts,” says Mr Roeg, and his eyes become distant, no longer looking at me but through me. I’d be more freaked out by him if I weren’t capable of kicking him through a plate-glass window. He’s just a little eccentric. “What you’ve given to the world is miraculous,” he continues. “Music that’s unlike anything that has been heard before… so deftly spiritual.”

  “Music is spiritual,” I say, casually. “Or at least it should be.”

  We both sip our wine which, if my palate serves me, is an expensive drop. Then the phone, which sits low on the wall near the kitchen area, begins to ring. Mr Roeg drops from his small seat and waddles across the room, red wine in hand.

  “Yes?” he says, then listens to the voice on the other end. “Oh, good. Excellent. Thank you for letting me know.” He hangs up. “That was security downstairs. They say it’s safe for you to go home now.”

  “Great,” I say, and rise from my seat, taking a long gulp on my wine.

  “Oh,” says Mr Roeg. “There’s no need to rush off. You’re welcome to stay and talk.”

  “I’d love to,” I say, “but I’ve got so much to do.”

  “Of course, of course,” says Mr Roeg.

  I finishing my wine and place the glass on Mr Roeg’s low kitchen counter. I then head for the door and Mr Roeg rushes to open it for me.

  “It was an honour to have you here, Jack,” he says.

  “No, no, the honour was all mine. You’ve been a wonderful host.”

  “You’re welcome to visit any time.”

  “That’s very kind. I promise I will… when my life settles down a bit.”

  Standing inside my dimly lit kitchen, glancing across the uncluttered breakfast bar to the living areas beyond, I can’t spot anything out of place. Everything is as I left it. But I can smell something strange. An odour from the tiles. I switch on the kitchen light and kneel down. The tickle in my nostrils takes me through space and time to hot summers in the public pool in the small rural town I grew up in. Memories that lose the three-dimensional clarity of video footage and become singular snap-shots. Then the colour fades from those images and they lose their detail. They fall from the photo album over time and you try to put them back in sequential order. But then you stop trying and decide that it doesn’t matter.


  I can definitely smell chlorine, or a similar cleaning chemical. I put my nose to the surface of the smooth tiles. Rocking back, I shift to my feet and squat down, continuing to glance around. Looking for a sign that someone was even here. I saw them walk inside. They must have looked around, opened a few cupboards or rifled through some papers. They’ve not even touched the mail on my breakfast bar. Some of it is still unopened. That might have given them a few useless clues.

  When I look at the white cupboard directly in front of me, beneath the bar, my eyes fix on something. I lean forward and touch it lightly with the tip of my index finger. It’s only small and so insignificant, but when I pull back and rub my index finger against the pad of my thumb, there’s a smear of red. On the cupboard door, the dot I poked has spread out, admitting its vivid redness. A puny crimson stain that the word droplet would exaggerate.

  I walk to the sink and rinse my hands. Checking the time on the oven, I determine that Rose finishes work in around an hour. Tonight might be the perfect time to strike.

  I turn on my mobile phone, expecting there to be a trillion missed calls and frantic messages. Mostly from my manager. I scroll down the list of texts, trying to avoid opening any from Amelia. Then, as if on cue, a call comes through. The tiny device vibrates and whirs in my hand. It’s Brannagh.

  “Marty,” I say. “What’s happening?”

  “Jack!” he says, sounding incredibly relieved. “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good, good,” he says. “I heard that you’re back in town. You didn’t stay out at Godiva?”

  “No.”

  “Oh… ok. Was there a problem?”

  “The isolation was getting to me.”

  “Right,” says Brannagh, maintaining his politeness. “After two nights?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “It’s haunted.”

  “Haunted…? I’m not sure what you mean? Is it infested?”

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s terrible. That’s totally unacceptable.”

  “Completely.”

  “Where are you now? Are you safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. That’s excellent news. Well, I just want you to know that I am taking care of this situation. I’ve been in regular contact with the authorities and have made it clear to them that it is inappropriate for them to be pestering you about a random bunch of girls who have probably taken off with their friends, or run away from overbearing parents. Their reasons for wanting to speak to you are circumstantial, at best.”

  “I agree.”

  “Our desire is transparency. We have been sharing your work schedule with the investigators and I have been demonstrating to them that you have alibis for every single one of these supposed disappearances.”

  “They’re more like… misplacings.”

  “Yes, absolutely,” says Brannagh. “Even the girl that you were seen with. I’ve explained that that could have been anyone.”

  “Girl?”

  “Yes, the witness. You haven’t heard about it?”

  “No, I haven’t heard about it, Marty.”

  “A taxi driver came forward today and made a statement that he saw you with the girl in today’s paper. He picked you up from the beach with a blonde girl and dropped you home.”

  “Outrageous,” I say.

  “The girl’s friends have all said that they left her at the beach talking to a stranger.”

  “To me?”

  “They couldn’t be sure, but they said that it definitely could have been. Just guess work. All guess work.”

  “I get approached by lots of blonde girls, you know that. I barely have time to sleep with them all, let alone kidnap them.”

  “I know. You’re in a precarious situation where a lot is expected of you.”

  “Too much. Too much, if you ask me.”

  “Well… I just wanted to assure you that I’m sorting everything for you.”

  “Much appreciated.”

  “We’ll talk again soon, yes?”

  “Sure.” I hang up.

  I slip on a pair of black jeans, a black tee and a black hooded jumper that I zip up to my chin. When I take the elevator to the foyer, I head out through a back door and into the garage. Rather than use my pin code to exit through the roller doors of the garage’s street entrance, I hang out of sight behind a pillar, in the shadows, until a car exits. It only takes a few minutes before I’m given the opportunity to casually stroll outside and duck the automatic door before it closes on me.

  With hands in pockets and hood over my face, I walk briskly across town towards my favourite café. Soon I smell the salt of the ocean, blown on the humid swirls of night breeze. The footpath is buzzing with revelers who fill tables outside restaurants and bars. Queues form in front of the nightclubs.

  I turn a corner and I can see Zunge Bohne, lit from within and clearly busy with people seeking a light, but over-priced supper. The establishment’s name glows in cursive neon on the roof. Beyond the outdoor lighting of the café’s courtyard area, I can see crowds of people strolling along the beach side of the road, taking that romantic wander by the sand’s edge, rolling down a well-trodden cliché that for most suitors still works.

  The sound of the waves increases as I walk towards Zunge Bohne. I stand directly across the street, the beach surging down to my left. Through the glass floor-to-ceiling windows of the café I try to spot Rose. She generally works the same section of tables. After thirty seconds my target appears, looking typically beautiful. Her blonde hair is in a neat ponytail. Dressed in a white blouse, black skirt and apron, she carries three plates of food to a trio sitting at a table against the glass.

  Rose is beautiful, there’s no questioning that. She has turned heads since puberty and short of disfiguring herself, there’s not a damn thing she can do about it.

  It’s getting late and the kitchen will close soon. I’m hoping Rose isn’t the last to sign off. I take a few deep breaths as the night drops in temperature. I lean against the brickwork of the shop-front behind me. It’s a little boutique homeware place that is long closed. People walk past me as I stand there, hood pulled down. A few folk glance at me suspiciously, but most are too caught up in their proceedings. I mostly keep my eyes down, looking at the mottled, gritty concrete footpath beneath my feet.

  The song ‘Reckless’ by Australian Crawl enters my head and I hum it to myself, trying to keep the memory afloat long enough to remember its every detail. When I’m not near my guitar or a recording device, I have to concentrate on songs I remember. Like balancing spinning plates in their precarious centrifuge. I pull my mobile phone from my pocket and when no one is near me, I sing quietly.

  Putting my phone away, I steady my mind and refocus. I stare hard at everything around me, inspecting every detail of the surrounding block; how many people, what they’re doing, how many cars are parked, what sort of cars.

  It’s natural to feel nerves before any kind of mission and as far as missions go, I’ve been on more than most humans. The unknown goes on forever, so there’s no point taking it slowly. The speed doesn’t matter. Although I stand here very still, I am really hurtling into a dark, sloping tunnel with no bottom. But I feel confident. Any sense of doubt that I will be successful tonight is elusive. Perhaps not even there at all. I am in complete and utter control. I can manipulate the environment around me and it bends when I flex it. I take what I want and give back what I want. Such is the life of the privileged.

  Half an hour passes and I lean on this shopfront and remain a statue. I examine every vehicle that passes between the peripheries of my vision. Inside Zunge Bohne, trade is slowing. A number of tables in Rose’s section have paid and left. Rose, being a diligent worker, has cleared the vacated tables and stripped their cloths. I watch her move about her work with a sense of urgency. Such is the behaviour of the hospitality worker. Sign-off can’t arrive soon enough. Rose should have finished work by now.

  Ten minutes lat
er a group of men stand up from the final table in Rose’s section. They’re well-dressed, yuppie-types. Bobo larvae. Offspring hooked up intravenously to a trust fund until they’re old enough to be self-sufficient and exorbitant on their own income.

  They’re clean cut, wearing jeans with vests and polo shirts. One even has a sweater tied around his neck. Handsome in a very uninteresting way. They belong in a retail window, rather than a café. They look primed and ready to join a college rowing team. Or the space program.

  Rose is behind the cash register, scanning a credit card that one of them handed over. She’s smiling that unassuming, slightly embarrassed flirty smirk that she constructs when she’s a little smitten. I’ve seen that smile and some would accuse me of exploiting it.

  The men turn for the door and she gives them a polite wave goodbye. When the group of five reaches the footpath, one of them, who has a square jaw and a no-nonsense haircut, turns back. He approaches Rose, who has already started clearing their table. She smiles when she sees him. His mouth moves as he asks her something. Rose beams for a moment. She then pulls a pen from her apron and scribbles something on an unused napkin. It is then handed to the man and he smiles and bids her farewell.

  He rejoins his friends and they head in a group towards the beach-end of the block and then disappear around the corner. I think about the man with the square jaw. I know him. But I can’t remember how.

  Half an hour later I’m still standing in place, watching Zunge Bohne close for the evening. People still wander past, but it’s too dark to recognise me. Rose waves goodbye to one of her fellow waitresses. Her apron is draped over her left shoulder. She pushes through the swing doors and into Zunge Bohne’s kitchen and out of sight. I peel from my position and cross the road. To the right of the building is a narrow laneway. I unhinge a small gate and pull it quietly shut behind me. I then weave up the lane, stepping around unemptied bins of food scraps. Various smells, all of them noxious, reach out to grab me. Soon I’m at the end of the path and waiting in the dark.

  Behind Zunge Bohne is a small carpark that’s used by staff and deliverymen. I press against the wall, out of the single streetlight that illuminates the area. The entry to the carpark is off a small back road. It meets the beach at one end, to my left, and then travels up into the city connecting with a main road. The carpark has a high fence on each side, which meets the ground at a small flowerbed.