by Markus Zusak
Yes, we're all quite happy, until the light goes off in Ritchie's kitchen.
That's when I stand up and say, "Great." I turn to the two best arguers I've ever met and tell them I've missed my chance.
They seem unconcerned.
"Your chance at what?" Daryl asks.
"You know," I tell him.
But he only shakes his head.
He says, "No, Ed, as a matter of fact, I don't. I only know that this is your next message and you still don't seem to be thinking clearly about what you're supposed to be doing." His voice is so casual, but so heavy with something else.
Truth, I think.
That's what the voice weighs in with.
He's right. I really don't know what I'm doing. I'm still guessing as I stand here hoping that the answers will simply come.
Daryl and Keith stand up next to me under the oak.
It's Keith who deals the last questions from my left side.
He feeds the words into my ears with a coarse, gentle, knowing voice.
Close, so close to me, he says, "What are you even doing here, Ed?" The words loom nearer still and crawl into my ear. "Why are you standing here waiting? You should know what to do...." He rests a moment before delivering the final deluge of words. They enter me like a flood. "Ritchie's one of your best friends, Ed. You don't need to think about anything, or wait, or decide what to do. You know already, without any question or doubt. Don't you?" He repeats it now. "Don't you, Ed?"
I stagger back and slide down the tree to where I was sitting.
The two figures still stand, looking at the house.
My voice trips forward, landing on the ground at their feet.
You know what to do, I think.
"Yes," I answer. "I know."
Visions tear me up.
There are pieces of me on the ground.
Keith and Daryl walk off.
"Hooray," says one of them, but I don't know which.
I want to stand up and chase them and ask them and beg them to tell me who's behind this and why, but.
I can't.
All I'm able to do is sit there and collect the shredded pieces of everything I just saw.
I saw Ritchie.
I saw myself.
Now, with the tree above me, I attempt to deny it and stand up, but my stomach drops and I sit down again.
"I'm sorry, Ritchie," I whisper, "but I have to."
If my stomach was a color, I think, it would be black, like tonight, and I steady myself and begin what feels like an endless walk home.
When I get there, I do the dishes.
They're piled up on the sink, and the last thing I wash is a clear, flat knife. It reflects the kitchen light and I catch my own face, lukewarm, inside the metal.
I'm oval and distorted.
I'm cut off at the edges.
The last things I see are the words I need to speak with Ritchie. At that, I place the knife on the rack, on top of the mountain of clean dishes. It slips and clangs to the floor, then spins like a clock hand.
My face appears in it three times as it circles the room.
The first time, I see Ritchie in my eyes.
Then I see Marv.
Then Audrey.
I pick it up and hold it in my hand.
I wish I could hold up that knife and tear open the world. I'd slice it open and climb through to the next one.
In bed, I cling to that thought.
There are three cards in my drawer and one in my hand.
As sleep stands above me, I gently press my finger to the edge of the Ace of Hearts. The card is cool and sharp.
I hear a clock ticking.
Everything watches impatiently.
Name: David Sanchez.
Also known as: Ritchie.
Age: Twenty.
Occupation: None.
Achievements: None.
Ambitions: None.
Likelihood of ever attaining answers to the previous three questions: None.
The next time I go to Ritchie's house on Bridge Street, I find the place completely dark. I almost leave, until the light jumpstarts on in the kitchen. It flicks and dies several times before forcing itself alive.
A silhouette arrives and sits at the kitchen table. It's Ritchie for sure. I can tell by the shape of the hair and the way he moves and sits down.
When I move closer I discover he's listening to the radio. It's mostly talkback, with a few songs thrown in. Faintly, I hear it.
I hide myself as close as I can without being caught out and listen.
The voices from the radio blur and reach out. Words like arms that land and rest heavily on Ritchie's shoulders.
I imagine the whole scene of the kitchen.
A toaster with crumbs around it.
Half-dirty oven.
White but fading Laminex.
The red, plastic-covered chairs with holes picked in them.
Cheap lino floor.
And Ritchie.
I try to imagine his face as he sits there, listening. I remember Christmas Eve and Ritchie's words. I don't feel like going home tonight. I see the eyes that dragged themselves toward me, and I see now that anything would be better than sitting alone in his kitchen.
With Ritchie, it's always hard to imagine a pained look on his face because of his relaxed manner. I saw a glimpse that Christmas Eve, though, and I revisit it again now.
I also imagine his hands.
They sit on the kitchen table, wrapped together, gently moving and pushing down. They're half pale and frustrated. They have nothing to do.
The light smothers him.
He sits there for nearly an hour, and the radio seems to fade out more than anything else. When I look to the window, he's resting his head on the kitchen table, sleeping. The radio's up there, too, next to him. I walk away; I can't help it. I know I'm supposed to go in there, but tonight doesn't feel quite right.
I walk home without looking back.
We play cards the next two nights. Once at Marv's and once at my place. At my place, the Doorman comes and sits under the table. I pat him with my feet and study Ritchie all night. The previous night when I stood outside his house the same thing happened. He woke up, entered the kitchen, and listened to the radio.
The Hendrix tattoo stares at me as Ritchie throws down the Queen of Spades and wrecks me.
"Thanks a lot," I tell him.
"Sorry, Ed."
His existence consists of these late, lonesome nights, waking up at ten-thirty in the morning, being up at the pub by twelve and across at the betting shop by one. Add to that the odd dole check, playing a card game or two, and that's it.
There's a lot of laughter at my place because Audrey's telling the story of a friend of hers who's been looking for a job in the city. She went through one of those recruiting agencies, and they have a policy of giving people a small alarm clock when they get a job. When she got the position, she turned up on the same day to thank the people who hired her and forgot about the clock. She left it on the counter in the main office when she left.
The clock was sitting there in the box.
Ticking.
"See, and no one wants to touch it," Audrey explains. "They think it's a bomb." She throws down a card. "They call the head honcho of the company, and he practically shits himself because he's probably getting it off with one of his secretaries and his wife's finally got the better of him for it." She lets her words pause to keep us listening. "Anyway, they evacuated the whole building, called the bomb squad, the police, the lot. The bomb squad arrives and opens the box when it starts ringing." Audrey shakes her head. "She got fired before she even started...."
When the story ends, I watch Ritchie.
I want to move on him.
I want to make him uncomfortable, to rip him from where he is and put him in his kitchen at one a.m. If I can achieve that somehow, I might see a longer version of what he looks like and how he feels. It's just a matter of timing.
&n
bsp; The time comes half an hour later when he suggests we play cards at his place in a few days' time.
"About eight?" he asks.
When we've all agreed and are about to say goodbye, I say, "And maybe you can show me what radio station you've got there." I force myself to be brutal and calculated. "The late show must be excellent."
He looks at me. "What are you talking about, Ed?"
"Nothing," I say, and I leave it at that because I've seen the look on his face again now and I know what it is. I know exactly how Ritchie looks and feels when he sits there in the paralyzed kitchen light.
I go into the blackness of his eyes and find him somewhere far inside, searching through a maze of anonymous, empty avenues. He's walking alone. The streets shift and turn around him, but never does he change step or mood.
"It's waiting for me," he says as I take my place next to him, deep inside.
I have to ask it. "What is, Ritchie?"
At first he only continues walking. Only when I look down at our feet do I realize that we're actually going nowhere. It's the world that moves--the streets, the air, and the dark patches of inner sky.
Ritchie and I are still.
"It's out there," I imagine him saying. "Somewhere." He walks with more purpose now. "It wants me to come for it. It wants me to take it."
Everything stops now.
I see it so clearly in Ritchie's eyes.
Inside them, where we stand, I say, "What's waiting, Ritchie?"
But I know.
Without question, I know.
I only hope he can find it.
When everyone's left, I share another coffee with the Doorman. After about half an hour, we're interrupted by a knock at the door.
Ritchie, I think.
The Doorman seems to nod in agreement as I walk over and open it.
"Hey, Ritchie," I greet him. "You forget something?"
"No."
I let him in and we sit at the kitchen table.
"Coffee?"
"No."
"Tea?"
"No."
"Beer?"
"No."
"You're picky, aren't you?"
He answers that one with silence but soon looks at me. He asks, with penetration, "You been following me?"
I look straight back and say, "I follow everyone."
He pockets his hands. "You a pervert or something?"
It's funny--that's what Sophie asked me as well. I shrug. "No more than anyone else, I s'pose."
"Well, could you stop?"
"No."
His face edges closer. "Why not?"
"I can't."
He looks at me as if I'm trying to pull one over him. His black eyes say, Why don't you enlighten me, Ed? so I do.
I go into my bedroom and pull the cards out from the drawer and return to the table. My hand drops them down in front of my friend and I say, "Remember when I got that first card in the mail, back in September? I told you I threw it away, but I didn't." It flows out of me quickly. I face him. "And now you're on one of the cards, Ritchie. You're one of the messages."
"Are you sure?" He attempts to point out that it might be a mistake, but I hear nothing of it. I only shake my head and feel some sweat gather under my arms.
"It's you," I tell him.
"But why?"
Ritchie's pleading with me, but I don't let it get in the way. I can't let him slink off to that darkness place inside him, where his pride is strewn all over the floor in some hidden room. In the end I talk completely devoid of emotion.
I say, "Ritchie--you're an absolute disgrace to yourself."
He looks at me like I just shot his dog or told him his ma died.
He sits in that kitchen every night, and no matter what the voices on the radio say, the words are always the same. They're the words I just spoke and we both know it.
Ritchie stares at the table.
I stare over his shoulder.
We both pore over what was just said. Ritchie sits there like an injury.
This goes on for a long time, until a certain smell arrives--the Doorman walks in.
"You're a good friend, Ed," Ritchie finally says, and returns to his usual easygoing expression. He fights to keep it there. "And you," he says to the Doorman, "smell like the sewer."
He stands up and leaves.
The words repeat themselves around me as the Kawasaki starts up and meanders down the dark, motionless street.
That was a bit harsh, Ed, the Doorman says.
We stand awhile in mutual silence.
The next night, I'm there again, outside Ritchie's. Something tells me I can't relent on him.
The figure of him becomes visible in the kitchen, but this time he comes out the front door with the radio in one hand and a bottle in the other. His feet fall and his voice calls out to me.
"Hey, Ed."
I step out.
He says, "Let's go to the river."
The river runs past town, and we sit there, having walked from Ritchie's place. We hand the bottle back and forth. The radio talks quietly.
"You know, Ed," Ritchie says after a while, "I used to think I had that chronic fatigue syndrome...." He stops, like he's forgotten what he's going to say.
"And?" I ask.
"What?"
"Chronic fatigue--"
"Oh, yeah." He regathers it. "Yeah, I thought I had it, but then I realized that in actual fact, I just happen to be one of the laziest bastards on earth." It's quite funny, really.
"Well, you're not the only one."
"But most people have jobs, Ed. Even Marv's got a job. Even you've got one."
"What do you mean, even me?"
"Well, you're not the most motivated person I know, you know."
I admit it. "That's pretty accurate." I swig. "And I wouldn't call driving a taxi a real job."
"What would you call it?" Ritchie asks.
I think awhile before speaking. "An excuse."
Ritchie says nothing because he knows I'm right.
We drink on and the river rushes by.
It's been a good hour now.
Ritchie stands up and walks into the river. The water rises above his knees. He says, "This is what our lives are, Ed." He's picked up on the idea of things rushing past us. "I'm twenty years old, and"--the Hendrix-Pryor tattoo winks at me under the moonlight--"look at me--there isn't a thing I want to do."
It's impeccable how brutal the truth can be at times. You can only admire it.
Usually, we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay," we say. "I'm all right." But sometimes the truth arrives on you, and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.
I get to my feet and join Ritchie in the river.
We both stand there, knee-deep in water, and the truth has well and truly pulled our pants down.
The river rushes by.
"Ed?" Ritchie says later. We're still standing in the water. "There's only one thing I want."
"What's that, Ritchie?"
His answer is simple.
"To want."
Ritchie bypasses the pub and the betting shop the next day and actually starts looking for a job. As for me, I've also thought a lot about what was said last night at the river.
I'm driving people around the city, being told what to do and where to go. I watch the people. I speak with them. The weather's nice today. The weather's always something.
Am I whingeing?
Complaining?
No.
This is what I chose to do.
But is it what you want? I ask.
For a few kilometers, I lie that, yes, it is. I try to convince myself that this is exactly what I want my life to be, but I know it isn't. I know that driving a cab and renting a fibro shack can't be the final answer of my life. It can't be.
I feel like I just sat down at some point and said, "Right, this is Ed Kennedy."
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Somewhere along the line, I feel like somehow I introduced myself.
To myself.
And here I am.
"Hey, is this the right way?" my plump, suited customer questions from the backseat.
I look in the mirror and say, "I don't know."
The next few days are quiet. We play cards one night and I realize I need to get started on Marv. With Ritchie on his way, Marv is next in line.
I watch him from the corner of my eye, wondering, What the hell do I do with Marv? He works. He's got money. Certainly, he owns the worst car in living history, but he seems satisfied enough, considering he won't spend any of that money of his to buy a new one.
So what could Marv want?
What could he need?
With every other message I waited for the solution to come.
With Marv, I'm not sure. For him, I have a different feeling. It moves close and resides somewhere I seem to walk past all the time but never notice. I must see it every day, but there's a big difference between seeing and finding.
In some way, Marv needs me.
I don't know what to do.
It goes on for the next twenty-four hours, this complete indecision. New Year's Eve has come and gone. The fireworks have swept the sky in the city. Drunken louts have decorated my cab, shrieking happiness that can only end in bedsheets soaked with the breath of beer and the weight of tomorrow.
Everyone went to Ritchie's place this time, and I made sure to drop in around midnight. His folks were having a party. I shook Marv's, Ritchie's, and Simon's hand. I kissed Audrey on the cheek and asked her how she managed to get the night off. Pure luck, apparently.
After that it was back to work and home to the Doorman in the early hours of morning. That's where I am now. We share a prolonged celebratory drink, and I say, "Here's to you, Mr. Doorman. May you live another year." He drinks up, heads over to the door, and lies down.
I'm pretty circumspect for New Year's Eve. I guess I'm not really in the mood for celebrating this year. Part of it's thinking of my father, as he's not here anymore for these kind of days and nights. Christmas. New Year's. Not that he was ever sober enough to really have an impact, but it affects me nonetheless.
I take the towels in the bathroom down as well as the fairly scungy tea towel in the kitchen. That was one of my father's idiosyncrasies, or superstitions. Never leave anything out to dry as the sun comes up for the new year. A hell of a legacy, I know, but better than nothing.
The other reason for my mood is the thought of Marv and what to do.