Enormity

by Nick Milligan

  “Sure, leave it with me.”

  “You’re a gem. Have I ever told you that?”

  “The police will definitely have to come into your apartment to inspect the balcony. Can you make sure there’s nothing lying around?”

  “The place will be spotless. I’ll make myself scarce.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Reception can let them in. You can accompany them, yes?”

  “Okay, Jack. How was the gallery exhibition?”

  “Aphrodisiacal.”

  “Good,” says Amelia, before she hangs up.

  As I walk over to Rose, I step on something. I pick up the small, cotton shape and unfold it. “Forgetting something?” I ask.

  Rose looks at her underwear and gives me a disapproving look. “Sorry, I’m not really thinking clearly at the moment.”

  “That’s fine,” I reply. I kneel down and allow her to step into the garment, and then gently pull them up her slender legs until they’re back in place. I look up at Rose and she seems slightly embarrassed. Her cheeks blush slightly. I stand and kiss her.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “It was the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  Rose keeps drinking wine in the kitchen as I dart about my apartment, putting clothes, drugs and money into a suitcase. I run a hand through my hair, trying to think of all the different places I hide my substances. Books. CD cases. Guitar cases. Guitars. The freezer. Flour pots. Surely they won’t search the place.

  Satisfied that I’ve collected everything I need, I put my suitcase by the front door. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll call the Pluie Tordue. They always make the penthouse available for me. They love me.”

  “That would be amazing... but I think I’d rather stay at my place tonight.”

  “Really?” I ask. “Have you ever stayed at the Pluie Tordue? It’s, like, fucking expensive.”

  “No, I haven’t. And I know it’s amazing, but...”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I can drop you home. It’s no problem.”

  “You can stay too.”

  “Really? Can I sleep in your bed, or am I relegated to the sofa?”

  “I suppose you could sleep in my bed.”

  “Madam, you have yourself a deal.”

  We take the elevator straight down to the car park. I don’t normally drive, but I do own a car and managed to acquire a licence. This was all despite not having any documentation that proves me a resident of this planet. It’s funny what money can buy you.

  “That’s my car,” I say, pointing at the sleek, two-door black convertible ahead of us.

  “Wow, that’s... an expensive looking car. I didn’t even know you drove.”

  “I didn’t think a car would impress you, so I never brought it up.”

  We drive out of my building and light rain begins to fall. Outside, the crowd of onlookers has grown exponentially. A writhing mass of police, fire engines, news crews and photographers. Somewhere in the middle will be a very angry deliveryman.

  I think about the railing. How it broke away so easily. Years of hectic parties must have weakened its rivets. Party guests shaking it and shoving against it. Maybe the previous owners damaged it. I’m probably not the first person to have sex against it. It’s been a common occurrence. The railing probably decided to jump. But the idea that it was tampered with plays on my mind. It’s a theory I’d be stupid to ignore.

  Rose directs me as we drive out of the city’s central business district. The buildings get shorter and the roads more narrow. Soon we’re driving through small suburbs, where trees erupt from the footpaths, houses squash into terraces and house pets wander aimlessly. It’s all so familiar, like the shady streets of my childhood.

  We turn up a small road and Rose points out the townhouse that she rents with two friends. We cross the footpath and Rose opens the small iron gate into their tiny front courtyard.

  “Nice place,” I say, with a hint of unintentional sarcasm.

  “I like it,” says Rose, defiantly. “My housemates are probably home, so be nice.”

  “No problem. I’ll try not to get star struck.”

  Rose steps through the door first. I stand tentatively behind her, holding my suitcase. The lights of the living room are dimmed and the glow of the television casts a bright, flickered light.

  One of her housemates speaks. “Oh my god, Rose! You have to watch the news. It’s all over the television. Jack tried to kill himself.”

  “Really?” she asks.

  I remain hidden from view as her other housemate chimes in. “They haven’t even found his body yet.”

  “What are you talking about?” asks Rose.

  “A railing fell off one of the apartment buildings in town and on the news it’s saying that it’s from Jack’s apartment,” says the first housemate.

  Rose walks inside and I follow. Her two friends sit on adjacent couches and they stare at me, jaws wide open.

  “It’s true,” I say. “But I survived the fall.”

  Rose rolls her eyes. “Girls, this is Jack. You’ve met him before. Backstage. Remember?” Neither of the girls seems able to reply. They just stare. Catatonic. Perhaps Rose doesn’t tell them that I visit where she works. Or that she was meeting me for dinner. “Anyway,” continues Rose. “Jack’s having some renovations done at his apartment, so he’s going to crash here.”

  “Rose has very kindly let me sleep on her floor tonight,” I say.

  “Oh... cool,” says one of the housemates.

  “I don’t want you telling a single person about this,” says Rose to them. “No comments on Banta, okay?”

  They nod slowly, still in shock. Rose gives me an embarrassed glance and then takes my hand, leading me across the room and up a narrow flight of stairs. At the top, we take a sharp left and arrive at a closed door.

  “This is my bedroom,” says Rose.

  “I see.”

  “It’s really messy.”

  “Right. Well, perhaps you should leave the lights off then.”

  “Might be for the best.”

  I kiss Rose, dropping my suitcase next to our feet. She holds me with one arm. Her other hand finds the door handle and opens it. We stumble into the darkness of her bedroom and soon she’s pulling me on to her bed. I feel her push a pile of clothing off the mattress and on to the floor. Her sheets are soft and smell like her.

  As I slowly move in and out of Rose, it occurs to me that I haven’t truly made love to anyone since landing here. Jemima and I had some intense nights together, but the fact that she was married seemed to cast a grim shadow over everything. When you sign up for a situation like that, you’re agreeing to all the painful consequences that are typed in the fine print. But now, with Rose’s young, naked body beneath me and her thin, waif-like limbs wrapped around my torso, I only feel freedom. Exciting freedom. Perhaps my life here can transcend its current farce and I can discover something of true value. My connection with Rose feels like it runs very deep. It’s as if the cells of our bodies are scientifically drawn to each other. Light years of distance and countless hours of time have delivered me to this tiny, modest bedroom, beneath Rose’s soft sheets.

  Can I pull from the binds that tie me to Earth and completely surrender to this planet? That’s down to me. But for all the desire I have for Rose, there is someone else behind my eyes when I close them. She’s reclining and smiling seductively. Natalie. Had she answered my call when I arrived in Easton, I wouldn’t be here with this special person. I would be surrendering to far more depraved inclinations. I would not be making love. I would not be perpetuating the lie that is Jack.

  When we’ve finished with each other, Rose falls asleep, tucked into the curve of my body. I also enter a slumber, my dream delivering me into a crowded room. Possibly a club. Possibly an apartment. There’s a faceless woman. Lean. Beguiling. Gorgeous. It’s not Rose. I can’t be with this woman, because I’m with Rose. But this woman is dancing and gazing at me. Looking into me,
beneath my vulnerable exterior. She sees everything. Frozen, I do nothing as she approaches. Perhaps for a second I brace for impact. Then we’re in a bedroom. The door’s closed and I’m pushing her against it with my body. Pinning her with all of my strength. She is submitting, her mouth open in a blur of pleasure and pain. Despite my lust overflowing from my edges, displaced by this woman, I refuse to stop. This is wrong and that’s why I’m doing it.

  Sunlight glows through the gaps between Rose’s curtains and the interior of her bedroom finally becomes apparent. She has a white dressing table with a mirror. Photos of her and her friends are tacked to its rim. Up on one of her walls is a small crucifix.

  Rose is lying next to me on her back, asleep. She’s still naked, the thin white sheet covering up to her waist. Her hair is up in a ponytail and one of her arms lies above her head and curls across her pillow. The other is by her side. I watch her small, firm breasts rise and fall in gentle, peaceful breaths. She’s an exquisite creature.

  I lie naked on the bed, arms folded across my chest, looking at the ceiling. In my head I sing ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’, which is a song I loved as a child. An alien that lands on Earth and brings a message of peace and good will in the form of a song. Just a melody. I wonder whether I’m an agent of peace or an agent of chaos.

  When Rose finally wakes I’m sitting by her open window, smoking a cigarette.

  “Making yourself at home?” she asks, rubbing her eyes.

  “Yeah,” I smile. Then I point at the acoustic guitar that’s sitting in the corner of her room. “Are you any good on that thing?”

  “I’m not bad,” she replies, pulling the sheet up over her exposed chest. “It was my brother’s.”

  “He stopped playing?”

  “Yeah,” says Rose. “He died two years ago.”

  “Oh,” I reply, pausing. “Do you think he’d mind if I played it?”

  “He really loved your music. I think he would feel very honoured.”

  “What was his name?” I ask, picking up the guitar.

  “His name was Richey.”

  I sit on the edge of the bed and position it on my lap, plucking the strings and adjusting the tuning pegs. It’s a bit bent out of shape and has seen better days, so I immediately feel an affiliation with it. Rose sits up in bed, bringing her knees to her chest, the sheet still pulled over her.

  “Did he have a favourite song?” I ask.

  “Um,” says Rose, thinking. “He liked all of them, but I’d have to say his favourite was ‘Meadowlake Street’.”

  “Well, he had good taste,” I say, before beginning the song for Rose, singing the opening verse. As I coo the first chorus and move on to the second verse, I notice a tear roll down Rose’s cheek. She hurriedly wipes it away.

  When I finish the song, Rose says, “That was beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” I reply, with a smile.

  “Richey would have loved to hear that. He’d be very jealous.”

  “Well, maybe somewhere Richey heard it?”

  “Yes, definitely.” Rose tries to smile, but I can tell that sadness has washed over her.

  “Would you like to hear a new song?” I ask.

  Rose nods.

  I play the opening notes of a song that, somewhere in the past, I first heard while making love to the woman I was to marry. It’s Wilco’s ‘Reservations’. As the final, yearning lyrics roll off my tongue, Rose motions for me to come to her. I put the guitar down and crawl across the mattress. She pulls me down on top of her. Pulling the sheet back, I explore her naked body in the sunlight and Rose occasionally puts the back of her hand in her mouth to stifle her moans. After another half an hour of slow, mutual stimulation, Rose puts on a gown and heads for the kitchen to make us some coffee. When she opens her bedroom door, one of her housemates has left the morning’s newspaper outside in the hallway. It’s next to my suitcase. Rose picks it up to find a photo of herself on the front page, standing next to Jack and an expensive restaurant.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  They started calling people my grandfather’s age “generation ink”. He represents the era when extensive tattoos tipped into the mainstream. Now the old men and women sit together in the lounge room of my grandfather’s nursing home, watching daytime television. They don’t watch sport. Tattoos from their wrist to shoulders and across their chest, snake beneath their woolen cardigans and cotton shirts. Withered souls eternally painted in often incomprehensible scrawling. Faded colours.

  But that’s not to say that they regret getting inked. Far from it. It’s a part of who they are. As real and as precious as the blank skin they were born with. Their tastes in music haven’t mellowed either. They slowly approach the sound-system, leaning on their walking frame, and skip to songs by Pantera and Sepultura. Or Metallica, Slayer and Iron Maiden. My grandfather enjoyed punk and post-rock bands like Millencolin, Thursday, Coheed and Cambria or At The Drive-In.

  They sit and play card games to the brutal onslaught of Parkway Drive, some of them wandering outside to smoke cigarettes as the sun sets. I imagine they all think back to their youths, to a time when the human acceleration of global warming was still a debate. To when gay marriage wasn’t a reality. To an age when the Earth appeared to be retaliating. The tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in New Zealand, the earthquake in Haiti, the fires in Australia. Death was on the horizon, in every direction you looked.

  I spent days with my grandfather in his nursing home when I was really young. My mother didn’t like him playing me aggressive music, so we’d wait till she left. I found metal and rock music exhilarating. If my little old granddad liked it, then I couldn’t understand why it was deemed offensive. He would play me music from the 1970s. Bands his granddad had played for him. Acts like Yes, Pavlov’s Dog, Wishbone Ash, Led Zeppelin and Focus.

  I discovered classical music on my own. If you follow the history of metal into the past, its roots are in the classical compositions. On Earth it’s available on the internet, floating in the digitised realm for the niche audience that still engages with it. I find elements of classical music here on Heaven too. But it’s used in films and commercials. It’s uncommon for people to go and watch a live orchestra on its own. On this planet strings and brass are used as an accompaniment for rock music. I wonder if classical music will have its day again. When will it come back into vogue? Every genre seems to. When it does, Jack might compose a few tunes. They’ll be called ‘Moonlight Sonata’, ‘Für Elise’ and ‘Ride Of The Valkyries’.

  I drive Rose back to Racquel’s studio to return her outfit and the diamond jewellery. I offer to buy them for her, but Rose refuses. She says she’d never wear them.

  It’s early afternoon. Rose starts work soon. She’s in the passenger seat in her uniform. She’s wearing little make-up and her hair is up in a ponytail. We don’t say much, but whenever I look over she is smiling at me. I’m deep in thought, thinking about the balcony. Rose could have died. We both could.

  “Remember the night I stopped you from being picked up by The Disciplinary?”

  “Yes,” says Rose.

  “There was a group of men you were serving just before you finished work.”

  “Um,” says Rose. “I can’t really remember.”

  “They were young, good-looking guys. All dressed rather equally. Boring, yet in a manner that a lot of women would find attractive.”

  “Oh, do you mean Michael and his friends?”

  “Michael? Michael who?”

  “Michael…” says Rose, thinking. “Mac something.”

  “McCarthy?”

  “Yes, I think that’s it.”

  “What’s his occupation?”

  “Something to do with money. Financial planning, maybe?”

  “Accountancy?”

  “Yeah, that sort of thing.”

  A piece of the puzzle falls into place, because I do know Michael McCarthy.

  I pull up outside Zunge Bohne. I lean over to kiss her before she exits t
he vehicle and tell her that I’ll see her again when I finish the final leg of our tour. Rose kisses me back and then gives me a little smile as she steps out and closes the door behind her.

  I’m standing on a footpath in downtown Easton, right in the middle of the central business district. The rush of lunch trade has died down and most of the suits have scurried back into their buildings, returned to their cubic-metre nests, stationery and swivel chairs. The sky is overcast and I think it’s going to rain.

  Across the road is the Ballard & Co Building, which is one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city. Many businesses and companies operate out of its eighty storeys. But there’s only one company that I’m interested in visiting and that’s the one that Michael McCarthy works for. It’s becoming apparent that in my desire to assimilate with the natives and to experience this culture as it unfolds, certain details have slipped past me. Crucial aspects of my little bubble are staring me in the face. Every answer is in arm’s reach. Questionable acts have gone unnoticed due to widespread naivety and my ignorance. My general lack of interest. So I need to piece it together, see the greater picture and analyse what it means.

  As I look up the street I can still see small groups of suits either walking in and out of the various designer clothes stores or having bombastic business brunches. Grinning, dealing and shaking hands as they stand to leave. Thin-rimmed glasses on both the males and females, most of them more for show than sight, notebooks under arms and laptops dangling in shoulder bags. These are all very beige coloured people. Their souls are beige. Their essence and energy are beige. I wonder what sort of music they listen to.

  From behind my large, reflective sunglasses, and beneath my baseball-style cap, I watch them for a few moments longer. I scan the street around me, back and forth. Everyone is engrossed in their day. Many people appear to talk to themselves as they wander past me, but they’re really speaking on mobiles phones via small microphones on their collars. I’m invisible to them.

  Stepping across the narrow, one-way street, I push through the revolving glass door of Ballard & Co and into the vast, sterile foyer. Coffee-coloured marble spreads below my feet and right up the walls of the grandiose entrance room. Set into one of the walls is a small touch-screen, which is a guide to the building, explaining which elevator will deliver you to the business or company you seek. On levels sixty through seventy is Mercer Lightburn. They’re a financial firm. They look after the estates of all of Brannagh’s Endurance artists, including my own. I believe they also look after Brannagh’s personal finances.