“I like music.”
“I know… but besides music. What else?”
I’m not sure what to say. My mind isn’t handling questions with its usual deftness. It’s like trying to play Scrabble when the alphabet is a thousand letters deep. “I don’t know, beautiful…” I say. I can hear that I’m mumbling, but I can’t take control of my lips. “Liberation for women. That’s what I preach.”
This answer seems to suffice, because Jemima smiles and opens her eyes. “You’re sweet.”
“Always.”
“I could lie here all night,” adds Jemima, closing her eyes again.
“We’ll stay here if we don’t get another rush soon.”
“We need some gas,” says Jemima.
“I think I have some in my wallet,” I reply.
Jemima rolls over and retrieves my wallet from the floor next to the bunk. She hands it to me. In one of the compartments is a small bag of white powder. I sit the bag on my chest and pull out a note, which I roll into a thin straw. I sit up, put one end of the note into the powder and the other to my nostril. After a small, sharp snort, I offer it to Jemima. She sits up and does the same. We sit there for a minute, feeling the gas begin to rise, building in intensity. Clearing the cobwebs.
“Do you think fame will change you?” asks Jemima.
“It’s definitely improving my quality of life.”
“Is this the first time you’ve been on a boat?”
No, I used to go fishing with my dad. I also went on a cruise to South America before I agreed to the NASA mission. My distance from those memories is too much to contemplate. “Yes,” I smile. “I could get used to this.”
“To the yacht or to me?” asks Jemima.
“To the yacht… you I can take or leave.”
Jemima pouts in mock offence and says, “Well, I should get back to the party then.” She stands up, picks up her small, white g-string and slips it on. I watch her step into her shorts, sliding them up her legs. “I’ll see you on deck,” she smiles. She leans down and kisses me again, then leaves the room.
The gas takes hold as I stand up and fasten my jeans. Every thought flickering through me seems as momentous as it is fleeting. Returning to the living quarters upstairs I see that the sparkling wine is gone. Jemima probably reclaimed it. From upstairs I can hear manic conversation. Laughing. Someone drops a glass. There’s still music, but it’s a little more chilled out now. More minimal beats.
Then I hear a scream. In the context of this wild evening, it’s not all that alarming. But then the scream echoes and multiplies, rising in a crescendo. I sprint across the room and up the stairs to the deck. From somewhere behind me, I hear the sound of the yacht’s engine shut off. The revelers are crowded on one side of the boat, against the thin wire fence, craning to see into the water. Then they’re all rushing to the back of the yacht, crying and pointing into the water. I see Jemima among them and run to her.
“What happened?”
“Stephanie collapsed and fell in. Cohen’s dived after her.”
I push past Jemima, climb the small fence and stand on the back of the vessel. The floodlight isn’t aimed outward enough to expose much water. It’s darkness, unmerciful to the naked eye. I can’t see Cohen or Stephanie. The boat has slowed now the engine has been cut and the wake of the boat is subsiding.
I see a brief flash of white and I realise it’s Cohen. He’s returned to the surface and is waving his arm. I pull off my t-shirt, wrench my phone and wallet from my pockets and drop them on the deck. I dive off the yacht. The water is warm and when I eventually come to the surface, I freestyle toward Cohen, keeping my chin above the water.
“Where is she?” I call out.
“I don’t know! I can’t find her!” yells Cohen. I can barely see him but my brain adds the visual pieces I’m missing. I can see his eyes, wide and bloodshot. He’s splashing in hopeless panic.
“How long since she fell off?” I ask.
“I don’t know. A minute?” comes Cohen’s gasped reply.
“You haven’t swam out far enough,” I reply. I swim past him, the drugs surging through my body. When I’ve powered another twenty feet from the back of the boat, I dive under, going down a few metres, swimming parallel to the surface. Stephanie is light and my only hope is that she hasn’t sunk like a stone.
I keep my arms circling in a wide berth, breaststroking further and further. I’ve gone a long distance now. She’s probably below me somewhere, unconsciously drifting to the ocean’s floor. That could be a thousand metres beneath us. If it were day, I would be able to see her. But the unforgiving night has closed its fist and claimed her.
My brain starts screaming at me to return to the surface. I need to breathe. But the drugs are thumbing their nose at my body’s natural inclinations. I keep swimming and the realisation that she’s gone builds in me like lead. As I ready to kick upward, my hand brushes against something soft. I grasp it and pull. I think it’s a forearm. I heave upward with all of my strength, kicking furiously. As I break the surface, I pull Stephanie up with me and wrap an arm across her chest, holding her against me. I can’t see her face, but I know she’s not conscious.
When I look back, the yacht has stopped and I can see someone in a small dingy, powering towards me, barely touching the water. I wave an arm and call out. As it gets closer, I can tell it’s the yacht’s driver. The hired hand.
“Grab her,” I call out. He pulls alongside us and takes Stephanie underneath her arms and starts lifting her into the dingy. I push upward and then throw my upper half over the side and hold on to the inner rope. I’m facing her now and I can see her blue lips. The matted hair. Her chest isn’t moving. “Hang in there, Steph,” I say, as the raft flies back to the yacht, my legs still trailing in the water.
Emerson and Brannagh are standing on the small steps at the back of the vessel and as we pull up next to them, they hurriedly bend down to pick up Stephanie’s motionless body. Everyone is gathered around, panicked, crying.
I pull myself into the dingy and then spring up on to the back of the yacht, following the driver.
“I don’t think she’s breathing,” I hear Emerson say, as Stephanie is laid on the deck.
“She’s not!” I say. “She’s not breathing.”
The party guests start to sob, filling the air in a choir of dismay and shock. Emerson and Brannagh are standing back, looking down at her body, shaking their heads. Defeated. But I’m bursting with adrenaline. So much that my mind doesn’t process anything except the instinctive need to begin artificial respiration. I’m capable of performing an array of emergency medical procedures in microgravity, so resuscitation on a boat isn’t beyond me.
Everyone’s out of their minds, dizzy on amphetamines and self-prescribed empathogens. Right now they’re getting very emotional, moving forward to stare at Stephanie as she slips away.
“Everyone, get back!” I yell. “Get the fuck back and give me some space.”
I’m on my knees next to Stephanie, rolling her on to her side to check her airway. Then I’m rolling her on her back, grabbing her wrist to feel for a pulse. I put two fingers from my other hand to her neck. I could be wrong, but I feel a faint beat. I pinch her nose and give five strong breaths into her mouth. Her lips are cold, as if all the blood has rushed from them. While I try to remain calm and focus on the procedure, my mind is telling me that I can’t save her.
I continue to breathe into her mouth, exhaling with as much force as I can muster. Every five seconds. I put my fingers to her neck again and I’m certain there’s a pulse. I continue the breaths and compressions, desperate for a response.
Then Stephanie coughs. She splutters and water bubbles from the corners of her mouth and nose. I roll her over and she coughs again. Water gushes out and then she vomits. Alcohol, froth and bile spill across the deck.
“Stephanie!” I yell, my mind reeling in amazement. “You fucking sweetheart!”
She continues to splutter an
d groan, emptying her lungs and stomach. I almost collapse in relief. I’m on my hands and knees, the drugs in my system hollering in a conga line through my veins. A minute passes and I keep Stephanie on her side to make sure she doesn’t choke. I don’t notice the silence around me. The stunned absence of sound. The yacht is bobbing, perhaps drifting. Water licks its side but not with enough vigour to crash in the way that waves do. I look up and around me. The party guests, including my band and the yacht’s driver, are staring at me. Speechless. Wide-eyed. Astonished in a cartoon-like way.
Brannagh, like a good host, is the first to speak. “What did… how… did you do that?”
“Do what?” I say, breathing deeply, saturated.
“She wasn’t breathing,” he replies.
“No…” I reply. “No, she wasn’t…”
Although I see it, I won’t really think about it until later. But a girl, who I think is friends with Stephanie, is standing just to the right of Brannagh. She’s pointing a shiny video phone at me, recording everything.
Chapter Fifteen
Stephanie’s face appears on my television screen, looking straight down the camera.
“What you just saw is real and it’s just the beginning,” she says, solemnly. There’s nothing behind Stephanie but a black curtain. She is dimly lit. Maybe there’s a red tint somewhere to her left. It’s all very moody and dramatic. Whoever edited the video has put a mild grain effect on it for a dash of authenticity. “This is one of Jack’s miracles. He has arrived to deliver the word of his people. The winged ones will return. Jack is here in human form… and he has chosen you. Jack loves you and he wants to shine his light on you. His power. You will hear from us again soon.”
“Horse shit,” I say, taking another swig on my scotch bottle.
Rose and Jennifer are both staring at me from the sofa.
“Is that footage real?” asks Jennifer.
“You breathed life into that girl. You returned her from the dead,” says Rose, pointing at the screen, in the hope that it will validate her.
“That wasn’t magic,” I say.
“Was that girl really not breathing?” asks Jennifer, who thankfully seems a little more sceptical than Rose.
“That was… a medical trick,” I say. “Anyone can do it if they’re trained properly.”
“No,” says Rose, standing, her fire returning. “There’s no medical trick that can do that. You breathed life into her.”
I screw the lid back on the scotch bottle and drop it on the floor next to my single-seater. I stand up too. “I didn’t breathe life into her, Rose. I breathed oxygen.”
“What’s oxygen?” asks Jennifer.
“Air, I mean air,” I say. I march across the living room, slide open the glass doors and step out to the balcony. “Just when I think I have this fucking planet worked out,” I mutter to myself, the scotch’s spark igniting my simmering agitation. I point at the giant billboard of Jennifer that still faces my apartment. When I look around the city’s night-lit skyline, the dozens of other advertisements flash in neon and delicately placed uplighting. “Are you trying to tell me…” I say, pointing out at the billboards, speaking loudly enough for the two girls to hear from the living room, “that you have invented diet pills, cars, watches, sunglasses, perfume and… skyscrapers and bridges… the internet…three-dimensional pornography and flatscreen televisions… but you never worked out how to resuscitate someone?”
When I turn around, Rose and Jennifer are staring at me blankly. I return to the living room.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Rose.
“Don’t you guys do organ transplants? Haven’t you invented microscopes? Blood transfusions?”
“What do you mean ‘you guys’?” asks Jennifer. “You’re talking like you’re…”
“Like what…?” I ask, daring her to say it.
“I don’t know!” says Jennifer. “You’re referring to us as if you’re different.”
“Because he’s not from here,” says Rose, softly. She’s looking me square in the eye. “He is different. He’s very different.”
“Where am I from then?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” says Rose, even though I think she knows something. She walks over to her handbag on the counter. She unzips it and pulls out a piece of paper. Then she walks over and hands it to me. “Tell us what this is,” she says.
I unfold it and glance at it, then fold it again. “A forged document?”
“What is it?” asks Jennifer.
“It’s a DNA test,” says Rose. “It’s a photocopy, so maybe it could be a fake. Maybe. But it says that Jack doesn’t have typical DNA.”
“I love that you have DNA tests, but you don’t know how to resuscitate someone,” I smile, shaking my head. Then I retrieve my scotch bottle from the floor and remove the lid.
“What kind of DNA does he have?” asks Jennifer.
Rose takes the form from me and hands it to her. “It doesn’t say,” says Rose. “But it means he’s not entirely human.”
“So I must be the Messiah?”
“It was a compelling theory,” says Rose, slumping next to Jennifer again.
“I’m sorry, Rose. But someone has tricked you. And not just you. Girls are disappearing...”
“But… you must be the Messiah. It made sense. You appeared out of nowhere. You’ve brought this Earthly music… so much music... your DNA isn’t human…”
“Yes,” I say, “but that doesn’t make me supernatural.”
“What about the animal thing?” asks Rose.
“What animal thing?” asks Jennifer.
I take a breath and lean back on my single sofa.
“I was sent footage of you from a nightclub,” Rose informs me. “You were being searched by narcotics officers. They had porcines.”
“I fucking hate those pigs,” scowls Jennifer. “Did they find anything on you?” she asks me. “I’ve had two personal assistants get done, plus a dear friend of mine who is an eyelash technician. The only eyelash technician I’d let anywhere near me...”
“The porcines began licking your hand, Jack,” says Rose.
“What?” asks Jennifer. Then she shakes her head. “No, I’ve seen them. They don’t lick. If you put your hand anywhere near them they’ll bite it off.”
“I have video footage of three porcines licking Jack like they’re fresh from his womb,” says Rose, smugly.
“You’re an expert on porcine behaviour?” I ask Rose.
“My brother was an officer,” she says.
I don’t reply.
I hear something outside. A noise rising in volume, separating from the distant buzz of the city. It sounds like a helicopter. It’s flying beneath my apartment. It’s definitely worthy of my attention.
“What’s the matter?” asks Jennifer.
“I can hear something outside,” I reply. I race over to the balcony, then across to the railing. When I look down I can see a black helicopter slowly rising, pointing a white, wide searchlight at my building. I retreat inside, pulling the balcony doors shut and drawing the blinds. “It’s a helicopter,” I say, darting around the apartment, switching off all the lights.
“Is it the police?” asks Rose.
“Probably,” I say, turning off the final lamp. “Let’s just be very quiet. Stay away from the windows.” Moments later the helicopter is level with my apartment, its light slicing through the blinds like sunshine. I can hear the girls gasp. The searchlight is moving back and forth along my balcony. None of us move. Then I have an idea.
“Quick,” I say to the two girls. “Run down the corridor and hide in the room at the very far end. Straight ahead.”
In their panic, Jennifer and Rose do as I say. I follow them down the hall, stepping quietly behind them. Now we’re all in my bedroom. “It’s safer in here,” I say.
The sound of the chopper rumbles like a storm outside. Its light continues to roam the side of my apartment, finding the ga
ps in the blinds of my bedroom. Unless they’ve got infrared vision, we’re as good as invisible. The three of us huddle just inside the closed bedroom door, low against the wall. A minute passes and the chopper finally moves on, before fading into the distance entirely.
“I think we should leave the lights off,” I say.
“You need to go to the police,” says Rose. “If everything you’ve said is true and they’ve tricked these girls, then they could be in danger.”
“I know, I know,” I mutter.
“I could come in with you. I have all the stuff I was sent. I can be a witness.”
Rose could certainly reinforce my plea for innocence. The tape is incriminating though. The last thing I need is more people watching it and thinking I’m special. I don’t want people thinking I can undo death. The police have probably already seen the porcine footage. I suppose I could tell them the DNA test is a fake, but what if they want to do one of their own?
“I’ll go in tomorrow morning,” I say.
“Wow, that’s heavy, Jack. That’s a big decision,” says Jennifer.
“Oh well,” I sigh, “I guess it’s time to face the music.”
“If they arrest you, it’ll be great for your album sales. You’ll sell millions more, I promise,” adds Jennifer.
“What room are we in?” asks Rose.
“We’re in his bedroom...” replies Jennifer. Then a moment later she hits my shoulder with the back of her hand.
“What was that for?” I ask.
“You jerk,” she says. “We didn’t need to come in here. We were perfectly safe in the living room.”
“Jennifer, I don’ know what you are insinuating,” I reply. “But I am a perfect gentleman. I thought my bedroom would be a much safer place to hide.”
“So should we all get into your bed, just in case the helicopter comes back?” asks Rose, echoing Jennifer’s incredulous tone.
“That hadn’t occurred to me but, honestly, my bed might be the safest option right now,” I say, trying not to give myself away.
“Unbelievable,” says Jennifer, shaking her head. “You’re at the centre of a sinister conspiracy and all you can think about is getting fucked.”
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