Angel Dust

by Sarah Mussi

  ‘Oh no,’ I say, ‘I won’t be sick.’ How can I be sick, when I’m going to see Marcus?

  ‘Because this ain’t my car and I don’t want no trouble.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. I smile at him.

  And we’re away. Streets flash past. Police sirens wail. The funny box voice says things like, ‘Turn left at the next junction.’ Traffic lights flick from amber to red. The roar of the engine. The tug of the morning air. We slice round corners, spin down side streets and I feel a mad, wild, crazy feeling: freedom and a rush of hope.

  Past us speed bargain stores – ‘Turn, first on your right,’ one-stop shops, kebab cafés, pizza parlours – ‘Keep in the inside lane.’ News-stands, bakeries and buns and oh, the smell of roasting chicken!

  I pick up the newspaper. And see it’s called the Herald – just like in Heaven! I smile. I double-check the date. 30th October. One day left. My spirits suddenly plunge as I fully realise. Only one day. I read the headlines: POLICE WARN OF HALLOWEEN DISRUPTIONS: Traffic will be re-routed away from key residential areas tomorrow evening . . .

  Halloween.

  One day left.

  We draw up outside Curlston Heights. I recognise it immediately from that evening, from that other life when I soared up its walls, when I perched on its windowsills and peered in through its windows. I remember adoring lifts.

  I’m going to use the lift now. I shiver in excitement. As soon as the cab draws to a standstill, I jump out ready to bound over to the grey painted front doors.

  ‘Not so quick, young lady,’ shouts the cabby. ‘What about my fare?’

  ‘Fare?’ I say, turning and looking at him in astonishment. What does he mean, ‘my fare’?

  ‘My ride, my loot, my lolly, my spondulicks.’

  His spondulicks?

  I laugh. I’ve never heard such a word – spon-du-lix! Amazing.

  But the cabby’s not laughing. ‘Hand it over. I ain’t got time to play. I don’t do this job for my health. I want my money. All of it, and don’t try to fob me off with any come back later. I need hard cash. The full amount. I got bills to pay.’

  Money?

  My heart falls. He expects money for the ride in his car? Even Charon the ferryman doesn’t expect full payment, just a token coin, a crossing of his hand with silver. But I see at once this cab man does expect it. Not a blessing – not even cheese. I remember now from the textbooks in the Cloisters. I remember Marcus in the hospital garden. How foolish of me. Money, the root of all evil.

  ‘Money?’ I say. I haven’t got any money.

  ‘Yeah, money.’ He spells it out.

  ‘M. O. N. E. Y.’

  Zara 3

  I can see he means it. He’s in earnest. My eyes widen. I look at him. He looks angry.

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ I stammer.

  ‘You don’t say,’ he guffaws (not at all in a jolly way).

  Clearly he doesn’t believe me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I didn’t realise I had to pay. I don’t have anything, but I promise as soon as I find my friend, as soon as I can, I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘You get one every day, don’t you,’ he snarls. ‘A grimy little hooker without a penny to her name.’

  ‘I’m not a hooker,’ I say, shocked. What is a hooker? It sounds horrible.

  ‘Tart, floozie, whatever the hell you are. Look at you plastered all over in make-up and obviously no older than sixteen.’

  ‘I’m much older than sixteen,’ I start to say.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he says. He eyes the gym kit and the pumps and my (rather tattered) raiment in disgust. His eyes travel to my neck. ‘Hand over that crucifix, then.’

  My hand flies to my throat. I clutch my crucifix. Not my crucifix. It’s the only blessing I brought from Heaven. ‘Wear it for me,’ Kamuel said, ‘so that God’s Grace will be with you wherever you go.’ I need God’s protection. Not my crucifix. I can’t give it away.

  ‘Hand it over,’ he says roughly, ‘and count yourself lucky I don’t take you straight to the police.’

  The police?

  He gets out of the car. He’s big. He smells of cigarettes. He grabs my arm. ‘Don’t even think of running,’ he says. He pulls my hand away from the chain. His hand is hurting my arm. He closes his fist on the crucifix. He turns a wrinkled-up lip and scowls at me. ‘Hand it over.’

  I can’t. It’s mine. He yanks the chain. Stinging pain. The chain snaps. He takes my crucifix.

  ‘Flipping whores,’ he mutters, and then he gets back in the minicab, jams the gearstick into place, revs up the engine far more than he needs to. He screeches away.

  I watch him go. He’s taken my crucifix. My eyes start pricking. My arm is hurting. My neck is hurting. I would have paid him. I sniff. I don’t like this feeling. It’s like everything is lost. I think of Kookie. She was so kind. Why wasn’t he?

  A pang starts somewhere deep in my chest. A sudden longing for Heaven. No way home now. No more Elysian Fields.

  I walk slowly up to the side of Curlston Heights, to the main front door of the tower block. At least he didn’t take Marcus’s key. It’s still on its lanyard. I loop it off over my head. Curlston Heights is so huge and strange. The doors look like the fabled adamantine gates that bar the road to Hell. They tower above me, grim, shut fast.

  But oh! Marcus will be there waiting for me. These are just the last doors. I’ve come all the way from Heaven. I am not afraid of these doors. I’ve jumped into the Abyss, been tied to the wheel, been tricked, stripped of my wings . . . bargained with the Devil. What is my crucifix compared to all that? No doors can stop me now. My heart starts to flutter. Marcus will be there!

  I push on the doors. They are barred fast against me. I can’t see where to flex the handle. There is no keyhole for the key. I stand like a small child perplexed in front of the fastened doors, unable to pass.

  How do they open? I drive myself against them. In frustration I rush at them. But I’m no longer made of Heavenly stuff. I can no longer pass through rock and stone, wood and water. Instead I’m hurled back from the door. It has a force and power of its own. My shoulder hurts. The bones inside squeal with the flinging and the battering.

  ‘Oh, please help me God,’ I whisper. But no help comes, only the bitter wind, the downdraught from the huge walls. I shiver. The gym clothes aren’t very warm. I try to tighten the raiment around me, but it makes no difference. My skin is bumpy with cold. My teeth start to rattle. I have to get in. Today is 30th October. There are less than two days left.

  But I don’t fling myself against the doors again; instead I observe them closely. There’s a number pad, a series of little steel grilles – there’s a sign which reads CCTV IS IN OPERATION ON THESE PREMISES. I wonder what CCTV is. I look around to see if it’s a person, someone I can ask. But CCTV is not a person. It must be some other thing that humans do. I don’t know what to do. The History of Life on Earth we studied at the Cloisters did not inform me about CCTV.

  I bend down to see if I can smell Marcus’s scent, as I did before. Find his tread on the pavements, but I can’t smell anything. This human nose I have can only catch the faintest whiff of dog and dirt and cement. I wait. I decide to sit and wait on the sidewalk until he comes. He must come soon. This is his home. Maybe if his mother comes, she’ll know where he is. Maybe if someone else comes, they’ll let me into the building. I know his door number. I’ll find him in his room, in that joyful wild room of his where everything is such a delicious mess. But my heart shudders inside me, as I remember the conversation I heard the very first day I met Mrs Montague.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do any more,’ she said.

  ‘He’s never here . . .’

  ‘It’s his friends,’

  ‘He’s gone for days . . .’

  What if he’s gone for days? What if his mother has thrown him out? How will I find him? A horrid sinking feeling begins. I haven’t thought this through. I haven’t prepared for anything. I’m alone
on Earth, without a coin to hold, without a home, without a friend, without a coat, without anything other than these gym clothes to keep me warm.

  I look anxiously around. A few people pass me on the street. I run to them, hold out my hand. I say, ‘Please can you help me . . .’

  But before I can explain about Marcus, about how I must find him, they brush me off. One woman gives me a cruel push and yells, ‘Baggage! Shame on you!’ I drop back. I slip. I land on the cold concrete.

  Such anger. I don’t understand. I bite my lip. I pick myself up. I wait. One man passes twice. I’m sure he’s looking at me, in a sad, lonely kind of way, but I don’t try to run to him. Another person comes. She’s going up to the door. She’s carrying a green bag slung across her shoulders. She picks a flyer of paper out of the bag and starts trying to push it through a crack between the two front doors. She looks kind. Timidly I walk up to her.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ I say, ‘I’m trying to get into this building; can you let me in?’

  She looks at me and tries to hide a sudden expression of pity and disgust. ‘Why d’you want to get in?’ she says warily.

  ‘There’s a boy –’ I start.

  ‘Listen,’ she says. ‘If you need love, turn to God.’ She dips into her bag again and pulls out a flyer. She goes to shove it into my hand.

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s not like that. I love him.’ I say it simply; it’s the truth. I love Marcus. ‘I need to get in to see him.’

  ‘Accept Jesus into your heart,’ she says.

  I don’t know what to say about Jesus, about God. My mind is quite blank.

  ‘I just love Marcus,’ I say.

  The lady shakes her head. ‘Poor thing,’ she says, ‘that’s what love does to you. Rips you from on high and pulls you down.’

  Suddenly I understand. I only have my love for Marcus left. Everything else is gone. Yes, she has made me understand. And instantly I panic. If I should fail? If I should lose Marcus? What would be left?

  ‘And suddenly you’re vulnerable and lost and anything can hurt you and it usually does.’

  I look at her. She is a prophet. She is warning me.

  ‘Listen.’ She scribbles something on to the back of the flyer. ‘That’s the address of the refuge. If he’s beating you, locking you out,’ she is looking at my bleeding hands, my smudged face, ‘if he’s abusing you, you can go there. They’ll take him to court if he comes within a mile of the place. They’re Christians.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, looking at her, perplexed.

  She thrusts a little folded pamphlet at me. ‘Book of Job,’ she says. ‘Read it and see if you can’t find your way to our church.’

  I remember Job. He came to the Cloisters once and gave a series of lectures on Loss of Faith. I nod. ‘I do love God too,’ I say.

  She stops and frowns at me. ‘I’ll remember you in my prayers,’ she says.

  I watch her go. I clutch the flyer to me. I try to understand what she means, but I can’t. Human love is sacred. I tell myself, ‘It’s sacred.’ It is. On Earth as it is in Heaven. Once you’ve found your true love, once you’ve waited all your existence for your one and only, once you’ve been united with them, that’s all there is, isn’t it?

  Zara 4

  The morning turns into afternoon. The wind whips more fiercely down the side of Curlston Heights. I wait and I wait. My hands are numb. I’m shivering. I wait a long time. At last I see people intent on entering the building. I’m shy now to approach them. Shy in case they turn me away with harsh looks, with shoves. Instead I watch. I start to notice something very curious. As each person approaches the main door they tap something on to the number pad. I try to creep closer to see what exactly they’re doing. But a man there sees me coming and covers his hand so I can’t know the trick he uses to get into the building. I try to call to him. I say, ‘Please, I would like to enter this building with you,’ but he gives me a funny look and bolts through the door when it opens, like a small frightened thing. He yanks the door back after him. I’m once again locked outside.

  It’s only when an old woman comes to the door that I suddenly understand. She balances her shopping basket on the paving slabs and punches in 103 on the number pad. I wait hoping to see the door open, if 103 will open the door. As soon as she’s gone, before I can alarm anyone else, I’ll tap in 103 too. Once I’m inside the building I know I’ll find my way to Marcus.

  But the door does not open. Instead a funny tinny voice rattles out from the little steel grilles arranged beside the number pad.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, dear,’ says the woman. ‘It’s me, Margie.’

  ‘OK,’ says the tinny voice. There’s a strange buzzing – very faint – like a fly trapped in a cup.

  The old lady, Margie, hastily pushes on the adamantine doors and lo! they crunch open! There’s a click and the sound of an electronic lock opening (or closing). Then Margie pushes through.

  I’m left outside.

  But now I’ve an idea. I think my idea is good. I think Margie tapped in the flat number of her tinny-voiced friend. I think I’m beginning to understand how I might get into the building.

  When nobody is looking I pull my cloth over my head. I sidle up to the keypad. I know Marcus’s number by heart. I should, it’s engraved on it: 56, Curlston Heights. I tap in 56. I stare at the door waiting for it to pop its lock, so that I can push it open, just like Margie did. But it doesn’t pop. It doesn’t do anything. I even give it a tiny shove, but it stays well and truly locked. Instead I hear the tinny voice. It’s ringing out of the steel grille. ‘Hello,’ it rings.

  I almost recognise the voice. It seems to belong to another life. ‘Hello,’ it says again. I cross back to the little steel grille.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  ‘Who’s that?’ says the voice. It’s a woman’s voice.

  ‘It’s me,’ I say.

  ‘Go away,’ she says. I hear a click.

  ‘Hello,’ I say again, but the tinny fuzzy sound has gone. I stare at the steel panel – maybe I should have put my lips right up against it. I don’t know what to do. I stare at the steel grille, hoping the tinny voice will speak again, but it’s not going to. As I try to make sense of what just happened, I push away thoughts of Heaven. There are no locks there. Every door will open for you, if you want it to. There are no tinny voices there, nobody will tell you to go away.

  Just as I’m starting to take pity on myself, I remember whose voice it was. Mrs Montague! I peer at the steel grille with more interest. Mrs Montague is using the grille like a mobile phone. How has she done that? How I wish I still had my angelic powers. I touch the wall again to see. I know it’s hopeless. It’s just bare brick, cold cement. I can’t tell who built it, who lived in it, who designed it, what creatures wandered over its soil before it was raised from the dirt.

  I sigh and my eyes start watering in a sudden horrid way. I brush my hand across them, and make-up comes away on my fingers. My heart sinks further. Kookie took so much time over me. I don’t want to spoil it. I want to look right for Marcus.

  I take a deep breath and press 56 again.

  ‘Hello,’ says the tinny voice, angry now.

  ‘Hello, is that Mrs Montague?’ I say.

  ‘You again?’ she barks.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. Please don’t go,’ I say. ‘Please, is Marcus there? Can I speak to him?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ says Mrs Montague, as if that settles the matter.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, completely stunned. ‘Can I come in and wait?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m not from Hell,’ I hastily reassure her.

  She snorts. I’m not sure what to say next. I can see why she’d be upset, if she thought I was a demon sent to get Marcus.

  ‘I’ve come a long way to see Marcus,’ I say. ‘He knows me. He’s been expecting me.’

  ‘My dear,’ says Mrs Montague, her voice suddenly kinder, but all sort of stiff and
pompous, ‘it may surprise you to learn that Marcus knows a lot of young women and that you are not the first to come hanging around the flat.’

  ‘I know,’ I tell her. Of course I know. I saw him with so many beautiful girls. I do know.

  ‘But that was before me,’ I say.

  She laughs. It’s not a mean laugh, just a laugh like she’s sad and happy and knows more than I do.

  ‘Well, not to upset you, dear,’ says Mrs Montague, ‘but you don’t look his type.’

  I quickly look over my shoulder. Can she see me?

  ‘What do you mean,’ I say, ‘his type?’

  She coughs as if she’s made a mistake.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I’m sure you’re a nice girl, but shouldn’t you be somewhere? School? College? Here’s a piece of advice; Marcus is my son, but he’s not really the kind of boy you’re looking for. I’m sure you’re a nice girl, now go on home and forget about him. Don’t get yourself mixed up in trouble. I’m his mother, and I’m saying this!’

  ‘But,’ I say.

  ‘I’m tired: tired of standing here talking to you. No, you can’t come up, and, no, I’m not going to get involved, and no, no, no, I’m tired of it all, far too tired. And if you don’t go away I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say again, but the tinny machine has clicked off.

  I wait a while. I’m afraid. She may call the police. I remember Jasmine saying how ‘Mum knows not to buzz strangers through when she’s alone’. How Sharissa didn’t. How everyone is afraid. But I must get in. I screw up courage again and press 56.

  But this time she doesn’t answer. I dare not press it again. She must be really worried about people pressing her doorbell. She must be really worried about me.

  So I sit down on a bollard and wait. If Marcus is up there he’ll have to come out, won’t he? But why would his mother lie? Suddenly doubt seizes me – what if he’s with somebody else?