Mercy (2) — EXILE

by Rebecca Lim

  That gets my attention.

  When I’m done reading I nod, and together Ranald and I navigate the rest of the search results on the page, reference by reference. They don’t seem to be in any kind of chronological order.

  ‘Why did they give Carmen the keys to the town of . . . Paradise?’ I wonder, before I realise that I’m talking aloud. ‘Where is that?’

  Why do I suddenly feel so . . . uneasy?

  ‘Would Paradise,’ when I repeat the word, one eyelid begins to jump again, ‘even require keys?’

  Ranald shrugs, clicks in and out of a few other sites while I look over his shoulder.

  ‘I remember that case now,’ he exclaims as he skims a web page he’s just opened. ‘The place where it all happened didn’t look particularly, uh, Paradise-like from the news footage, but I think the town rolled out the red carpet for Carmen because she managed to free two other girls that the guy was keeping prisoner in this dungeon beneath his house.’

  ‘What were the names of the other girls?’

  Ranald closes the page we’re looking at and clicks in and out of a couple more before replying, ‘Jennifer Appleton and Lauren Daley.’

  The words are barely out of his mouth when, inexplicably, I see Luc before me. So vividly that he might be standing right here with us, in this room. His beautiful mouth is both cruel and amused, the way he looks when he’s playing a joke on someone, or setting them an impossible task. I grasp at the air with my hands, unable to hold onto the golden vision of my lost love, knowing that I am suffering some sort of waking dream, a hallucination. It’s a message to myself, a reminder. Of what?

  Luc, my love, what am I supposed to remember? Help me.

  Ranald’s still peering at his screen and hasn’t noticed my strange reaction. ‘Lauren was imprisoned the longest, just over two years. She was the one from Paradise. The whole town — almost two thousand people, it says here — turned out to welcome her home when she was discharged from hospital. They had the ceremony honouring Carmen the same day.’ Ranald’s eyes flick up to me then back to the screen. ‘You wouldn’t believe she could do that, would you? Save herself and two other people. She blinded the guy as well. He’s never going to see again, they say.’

  A voice calls out, ‘Lela?’ from the back of the shop; it’s slow, deep, heavily accented, unfamiliar.

  I turn, see that it’s Sulaiman the cook speaking. A guy who hasn’t bothered to address me with anything more than a flick of his eyes or a grunt since I got here hours ago. I meet his dark, steady gaze through the serving hatch separating the kitchen in, thehe front counter, raise an eyebrow at the interruption.

  ‘You are needed in the kitchen,’ he rumbles.

  I stare at him. Since when? Why now, when there isn’t another soul in the joint? He stares back unblinkingly.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say tightly to Ranald.

  He nods, looking down, and takes another sip of his coffee. I can tell he’s disappointed. But after I walk away, he opens up a new window and begins working again, intently.

  Chapter 5

  When I reach the kitchen, Sulaiman says without warmth or preamble, ‘Unload the dishwasher.’ He indicates with one hand a big, stainless-steel machine wedged into a back corner of the room.

  There’s so little floor space in here that I have to skirt him carefully to avoid touching him. I hate being touched — it’s something instinctive in me; I’m big on personal space, on the whole live and let live thing. And it’s funny, but it feels as if Sulaiman’s giving me a wide berth, too, almost as if he doesn’t want me around even though he was the one who called me in here.

  ‘That’s all you want me to do?’ I say, stomping bad-temperedly over to the hulking machine, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘No.’ His reply is curt. ‘I need clean dishes. Without them, it is impossible for me to do my work. Everything has its place, everything in its place, or it is chaos, Lela. You should know that. Reggie jokes that you are the “dog’s body” around here, but it is no joke, I think?’

  I don’t bother to answer, just bend to study the machine’s complicated-looking control panel. I finally work out which button is supposed to pop the front door open, and cough as a cloud of steam shoots straight into my face. The dishwasher’s contents are scalding to the touch but I don’t hesitate, grabbing handfuls of side plates, servers, bowls, trays, pots and pans and slamming them into messy piles on the bench closest to the burners, to his big hands. Let him make sense of them all.

  ‘Lela . . .’ Sulaiman warns.

  I ignore him and continue to layer things quickly and haphazardly on top of each other. I have to catch Ranald before he leaves. There’s so much I need to know. There’s something important that I’m missing about Carmen’s story, a whole bunch of somethings. Some clue as to how I got here must be out there inside his machine. The Neills don’t have anything like it at home — I know, because I combed the entire house this morning before I left: from the dust-covered, unlived-in formal rooms right through to the bomb-just-hit-them kitchen and laundry area. There’s nothing more high tech than a wall phone in the place.

  Outside in the dining area, a phone rings loudly and insistently for several minutes before it’s picked up. I’m almost done. The dishwasher is almost empty. There’s just a giant basket of cutlery and cooking utensils left.

  ‘Green Lantern,’ someone barks finally. From the sound of things, Reggie’s returned and her temper hasn’t improved.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ she snarls, turning to glare at me through the serving hatch.

  I see Cecilia wrestle the phone out of Reggie’s grasp and take over the conversation. She shoots me a worried glance before saying, ‘Yes, I understand, thank you.’

  She places the receiver back in its cradle as Reggie exclaims, ‘I’m sick of her not pulling her weight! It’s not fair on any of us. He should sack her, find somebody else. This can’t go on.’

  ‘Reggie!’ Cecilia rebukes the taller woman, who just replies, ‘Well, he bloody well should,’ before turning her back on me and wielding her charmless hospitality on another sweaty punter who’s just wandered in.

  I’m extricating the last pair of tongs from the dishwasher when Cecilia materialises inside the swing doors. She wipes her hands nervously on her black apron.

  ‘Uh, Lela?’ she says carefully. ‘You’re needed at home. Georgia called. Said it was pretty urgent.’ She looks at me strangely when I don’t move straightaway. ‘Your mother? It looks bad.’

  ‘Oh?’ I frown, then remember. The woman in the bed. Georgia was the shift worker. Some kind of nurse? From the look on Cecilia’s face, I know that my reaction’s off. I should be upset.

  I rearrange Lela’s features hastily, then glance at Sulaiman, at the teetering piles of cookware beached there beside him in no kind of useful order.

  He shakes his head and sighs. ‘Go to your mother. Take as much time as you need. Cecilia will help me sort this out. Again.’

  Cecilia turns me around as if I am a child and unknots my apron strings, then lifts it over my head and hangs it on a nearby hook.

  ‘Take the side door,’ she says softly, ushering me through the swing doors and pointing down the dark, narrow corridor with the Toilets this way sign on the wall. ‘Go now, while Reggie’s not looking.’

  I can’t help pausing for a moment to scan the dining area. Ranald’s already gone. The clock over the clattering refrigeration units says it’s just gone midday.

  When I open the side door cautiously, the heat outside hits me like a sucker punch to the head. The stench coming off the waste bins is eye-watering. I stand in the laneway looking out at the road before me and realise I have no idea where to catch the bus home.

  I’m moving uphill in the direction of the nearest intersection when someone behind me calls out, ‘Lela?’

  I turn, shading my eyes. A tall fig, with long, dark, wavy hair, is walking up the slight slope towards me, the sun at th
eir back and shining full upon them so they seem surrounded by a corona of hot, bright light, their white-clad figure shimmering slightly in the stifling heat. And, for an instant, it seems as if that hot light is inside me, too, and what I’m seeing is a distant memory made flesh again. Disorientated, head suddenly pounding with a terrible anticipation, I walk slowly towards the approaching figure as if hypnotised.

  The illusion crumbles and I realise that it’s only Justine Hennessy. At some point during the day, she’s unbound her wild topknot of hair and put curlers through it to make it even wilder. She’s also sporting the heaviest, stagiest glitter eye make-up I’ve ever seen and consequently looks at least ten years older than she did this morning. Her face is a study of weird contrasts — the skin almost geisha white, lips a shiny blood red, brows too prominently drawn in an unnatural shade of kohl. She’s wearing false eyelashes with feathers threaded through them. From the neck up, she’s like a caricature of the woman who got on the bus with me this morning. Her body is covered by a shapeless white shirt worn unbuttoned over a strapless white terry-cloth maxi dress that’s elasticised across the bust, like the kind you’d slip on at a beauty spa. An outfit designed to conceal her form, detract from her natural beauty.

  She smiles tentatively, hitching the strap of her nondescript black leather handbag higher on one shoulder. ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ she says. ‘You heading out for a break?’

  I shake my head, still having difficulty framing any words. Justine had reminded me so strongly of someone I’d once known that I’d almost said that person’s name out loud. Almost. Except, like everything else in my head, it had slipped out of reach before I could utter it.

  Lela’s voice, when it finally emerges, sounds weird even to me. ‘Was there . . . something you . . . wanted?’

  ‘Actually, there was,’ Justine replies, her smile faltering at the look on my face. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning, about your, uh, brain condition?’

  I return her gaze warily. ‘Yes?’

  She clears her throat. ‘Uh, well, I wanted to help you, even though it’s only a small thing. I’ve never been able to thank you properly. He hasn’t been around since . . . that day. Maybe you’re my lucky charm, eh?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ I reply, glad that Cecilia filled me in on Justine’s horrible back story, every woman’s nightmare, to have a person you love turn on you. ‘But that’s great news. I have told you before, haven’t I, to get out of the . . . business?’

  Justine’s smile dies altogether. ‘Yeah, you and everybody else. Mum and me don’t talk any more because of what I do. But you don’t need any skills to do this. I’m too old, too stupid and lazy to do anything else.’

  ‘Believe that, and you really will be,’ I say.

  Her answering laugh is brittle.‘Yeah, well, point taken. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that you got home safely.’

  ‘I was just trying to work out how,’ I reply, surprised. ‘You sure someone didn’t send you?’ It’s meant to be a joke, but as I finish saying the words I feel my confusion return.

  ‘Dressed like this?’ Justine snorts. She slips the elasticised band around the top of her chest down an inch or two and shows me the upper edge of a heavy, tacky-looking bra top that’s covered in multicoloured rhinestones and sequins. ‘It’s meant to be sexy.’ Her laughter is forced. ‘To a drunk old pervert maybe.’ She yanks the elasticised white dress back up under her armpits.

  Then I remember something. Luc was there. In my dream. He offered to help me, too. Only I have to do something first. What is it?

  Justine clears her throat and my train of thought vanishes like smoke.

  ‘I came out to grab a bite to eat,’ she says, ‘but I also wanted to show you where the bus stop is for when you go home tonight. I think you should cross at the lights — this old chookie won’t be around to haul you across the road later, and you seem a little confused today . . .’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ I reply, still troubled. ‘I’m leaving now. So you can walk me there, if you like.’

  Justine gives me a sharp look. ‘Something wrong at home?’

  I nod, and her face crumples a little in sympathy. She reaches out for one of my hands, but instinctively I take a step back and she does, too. Unwanted touching isn’t something she’s into, either, and she recognises the warning signs.

  ‘It’s this way,’ she says gently, pointing. I see that her short, natural nails of this morning have been replaced by long, baby pink, acrylic claws with crystals embedded in the tips.

  Side by side, we head uphill about eighty metres to a major intersection. Justine points across another four lanes of busy traffic.

  ‘There’s a bus shelter just outside that hotel on the corner,’ she says. ‘You need to get on there.’ She gives me a quick smile and starts back down the street towards the Green Lantern, moving with unconscious grace, a dancer’s grace.

  ‘Wait!’ I call out, and she turns, her handbag banging against her hip. ‘If I wanted to find a place where I could access the, uh, internet, where would I find one?’

  Justine’s face clears. ‘See that noodle shop on the corner?’ She points downhill in the direction she’s heading, one hand shielding her eyes. ‘Straight past the Green Lantern — the one with the happy bowl painted on it?’

  I stare full into the afternoon sun without flinching. Farther down the busy road we’re standing on there’s another intersection, but this time with a narrow, one-way street. As far as I can tell, this city is made up of a regular series of perfectly straight lines. It’s a cakewalk to memorise for someone wired like I am. The Happy Noodle House is on a corner on our side of the one-way street. Facing across from the noodle house on the other side of the narrow thoroughfare there’s a grand but faded theatre, bright lights flashing because a matinee show is on — something by Samuel Beckett playing.

  Justine points upwards between the two buildings and I see an archway painted in blues, reds, greens and ochres, with a ceramic tiled roof fashioned to look like the roof of a pagoda. She points back up the one-way street, up the hill away from the theatre, and there’s another archway. A whole series of them.

  ‘That’s Chinatown,’ she says. ‘You turn the corner at the noodle shop and about halfway down the block there’s an internet café. It’s open all night, like a lot of places around here. But I wouldn’t . . .’ She stops, then says awkwardly, ‘I’m not sure you should, the way you’re . . .’

  ‘You’re sweet to worry, um, Juz,’ I reply swiftly, ‘but I can take care of myself. I’m much stronger than I look, really. I’ll be fine.’

  Justine looks at me doubtfully, but responds to something in my face because her expression clears. ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ she says and heads away with one last wave over her shoulder.

  I press the button for the pedestrian crossing, the heat of the afternoon sunshine on my skin giving me a moment of visceral joy.

  The light turns green, making a rat-a-tat sound like a machine gun firing. And the feeling of well-being vanishes, the magnitude of my predicament comes crashing back in on me.

  Luc, my love. Help me. What is it that I am supposed to do?

  I remind myself grimly to breathe in, breathe out, as the light turns red before I’m even close to reaching the other side.

  This time, when I ask the driver to let me know when we get to Bright Meadows, he doesn’t give me a strange look; he doesn’t look at me at all. He just grunts and waves me away, which I take as assent.

  I look out the window as we trundle through the suburbs I crossed this morning, except in reverse. I’m the only person on the bus until we get to Green Hill, and I barely register the presence of the woman who gets on and sits several rows behind me because I’m so absorbed by what I’m seeing. The dirty shopping strips and worn-out housing, the peeling billboards and primary-coloured petrol stations, the lived-in faces of the people we pass, the makes of the cars that eddy around us, even th
e polluted smell of the hot, stifling air that crowds into the bus through its one jammed-open window. Everything seems at once gritty yet miraculous, as if I’m seeing it all for the first time. As if I am truly . . . awake.

  But I can’t be, can I? Because I’m suffering a spectacular case of — what was the word that the internet story about Carmen Zappacosta used? That’s right: amnesia. Only, I can still remember what Lucy’s horrible high-rise apartment looked like; recall the exact scent of the headache-inducing perfume that Susannah’s mother liked to wearI even have memories from the lifetime before Susannah, when I managed a bookshop and learned how to knit. But I get nothing from my time as Carmen, no matter how gingerly I probe. It’s a complete blank.

  That’s when I feel it. Like an energy, at once hot and cold, hair-raising, like a hum, like vinegar in my bones. Distant, but moving closer at a speed faster than I can credit, because the strange maelstrom of sensation I’m feeling is strengthening all the time.

  I look around wildly for the source and my eyes pass over the face of the middle-aged woman behind me, fanning herself resignedly with the edge of a glossy brochure, her other hand on the bag on her lap. She’s just past her fifties, I’d say. Thick, wavy wheat- coloured hair cut into the kind of short, easy-care style unanimously favoured by European royalty in the 1980s. She’s plump, rounded, of average height, in a Liberty-print, short-sleeved blouse, round tortoiseshell glasses, tomato-red lipstick. Even from here I can smell freesias and face powder. She’s wearing a tag with the name June written on it and she’s looking out the window.

  Whatever it is, it’s not in the bus with us.

  I scan the passing streetscape and that’s when I see it. A smear of light, a small, dirty patch of luminosity, of ambient energy, streaking across the surfaces of parked cars, bouncing off street signs and shopfront windows, sometimes outpacing our vehicle, then falling back as if keeping the bus in sight.