Beyond Carousel

by Ritchie, Brendan

  I checked the time on the barman’s watch and pulled myself together. I had to keep moving and there was stuff in the store that I could use. Batteries, torches and bug spray. I took the best of each of these, along with a dauntingly thick but lightweight writing pad. Before I left I went back into the office and wrote out a note for my boss.

  Hi Julie. On my way in today I decided that it wasn’t a great idea for me to work here anymore. Nothing against you (although only giving overtime shifts to juniors to save cash is pretty shit – you know that kid you hired Craig steals from the till yeah?). I just need to focus on my writing for a while. Nox.

  Julie hated when you texted her emojis, so I drew a couple next to my name and left the note central on her desk. It was juvenile, but made me feel a bit better about things.

  I left the store and rode on northward for a while before I emerged onto the first of two outdoor malls. It was wide, barren and deathly quiet. The type of place that shouted ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! from every vantage. In the distance I saw a weird looking device lying central on the paving. I rolled over to it cautiously. A series of generators surrounded something on a raised platform in the middle. I got off my bike and moved inside the circle of generators. On the platform were clusters of giant strobe lights all pointed up at the sky.

  It was the nightly lightshow.

  A laptop was hooked up to a lightboard, which in turn ran cords down into each of the lights. There was also a small solar panel nearby that seemed to be powering the laptop, and a line of jerry cans ready to refuel the generators. Aside from topping up the fuel in the generators every so often, the lightshow was effectively self-sufficient. It was weird to think of this collection of devices as the source of the art we had gathered to watch almost nightly in the hills. For some reason I had imagined somebody would be down here orchestrating. I had only ever considered the outcome, not the process.

  I took a break and ate some lunch on a nearby bench. My legs felt stiff from the riding and would be aching by this time tomorrow. I also had a headache that wouldn’t seem to lift. There was an unnerving silence hanging over every corner of the city. I hadn’t expected to find it bustling and full, but this was something else entirely. Almost like a second disappearance.

  I finished eating and cycled back east towards the Collective. I remembered City Farm being close to the train lines that wrapped around the back of the city. I rolled down past the second street mall and saw the central station over to my left. There was a lot of construction behind the station and I thought I could see the crane Tommy mentioned.

  Before he left, Tommy had told me about a giant construction crane that had blown over during a winter storm. I could see a great steel arm sticking up out of the ground where the base should have been. It was warped and bent back in on itself, a bit like a spring. Behind it was a building with a savage hole running the length of its side where the crane had hit during the storm. Empty offices and break rooms now stood exposed to the weak winter sun.

  I rode forward to the edge of the tracks. They were fenced off and littered with crap. It smelt pretty bad down there. The same sweet rotting-apple smell that I had picked up on the Terrace, but bumped up a notch and mixed with old eggs. I followed the tracks back eastward and hoped the air might improve. After a while they swung away and a pocket of smaller offices and parkland stretched out before me. I weaved through until I noticed the dirty white top of a marquee to my left.

  It was one of hundreds.

  Past the final set of offices, rambling out across a wide open lawn, lay what had to be the Collective. There were marquees everywhere. Some were wide and rigid with steel framework. Others were humble and sagging in the weather. Beyond the tents I could see the brown and green of City Farm by the railway. I got off the bike and walked it over past the first marquee. It had some old couches and tables and pile after pile of paperbacks. The next one looked to be somebody’s sleeping quarters. There was a mattress on the floor. A rack full of tops and dresses. Clusters of thirsty looking potted plants. The third was kitted out with video equipment and an editing station. There was a power cord running out of this marquee in the direction of City Farm.

  I continued on. Tent after tent. But not an Artist to be found.

  The largest of the marquees was central in the Collective and had a raised stage with lighting, amps and a mixing desk. Again there were power cords running away towards the farm. The area in front of this marquee was left clear so that a decent crowd could gather beneath the stage. Lizzy must have been excited by this. Maybe she and Taylor had even played there.

  Where the hell were they?

  Where was anybody?

  Something felt risky about yelling out, so I kept quiet and edged forward to the farm area. By the time I reached the final marquees there were dozens of snaking power cords running across to the overgrown farm.

  I steered clear of a grid of portaloos and entered the first of the gardens.

  City Farm was a patchwork of edible gardens, cafes and bespoke sustainability projects. There was gravity-fed water storage. Banks of solar panels and wind turbines. Festering stacks of compost. Pens for chickens and who knows what else. I wandered through and took in some of the slightly fresher air. The walkways needed a sweep and most of the plants were overgrown and ratty.

  In a converted barn I saw a cafe with an outside menu board reading: Serving during easterlies – Scrambled Eggs & Basil. Fire-Roasted Cherry Tomatoes on Flatbread. Minted Rainwater Lemonade. Nothing had a price. The chalk was slighted faded, but didn’t look more than a few weeks old. It broke my brain to think of a cafe still being open for business. I had hardly eaten anything and should have been starving, but the headache was sending spikes of nausea down to my stomach and a thin sweat across my forehead. I wondered what it meant – serving during easterlies.

  I took a break on a wooden bench. The scratch and berk of a chicken drifted through the gardens. Otherwise everything was quiet. The wind strengthened and brought another wave of odour in from the city to the west. My sweating increased. I gagged, then threw up all over the paving.

  This went on for a good five minutes. By the end of it I was dizzy and my stomach was heaving.

  I lent back and took a shallow breath. There was a banging noise somewhere behind me. I turned to find a woman looking at me from inside the cafe. She was waving at me to come inside.

  I pulled myself up and shuffled across to the door. The woman took a couple of steps back from the door. I pushed it inwards and stepped cautiously inside.

  ‘Hello,’ I said meekly.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

  I did a double-take. The woman was Hollywood actress Cara Winters.

  ‘Trying to find my friends,’ I replied.

  Cara looked at me carefully. I felt dizzy and swayed forward.

  ‘You better come downstairs,’ she said.

  She moved across the room to where a doorway opened onto a small concrete staircase. I steadied myself on the walls and followed her down to a basement where I slumped onto a bench and held my head.

  ‘Do you have any Panadol?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope. It won’t help with the gas anyway,’ she replied.

  ‘What gas?’ I asked.

  Cara stared down at me like a teacher in a classroom.

  ‘Did you only just complete your Residency?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it was a while ago. I was living in the hills. Then the casino,’ I replied.

  The air in the basement was stale, but clean. The thump in my temples started to subside and I sat back and looked around.

  The room was somewhere between a speakeasy and a microbrewery. There were communal tables adorned with candles and scattered glassware. One of the walls was entirely covered in shelving. These shelves held liquor of all kinds. It was a strange collection, by the looks of it just whatever people happened to bring in from the closest store. The far end of the basement housed a complicated brewing setup. Pipes, vats an
d plumbing. It was hard to tell if they were dormant or still being used. There were also a couple of doors leading away to what looked like some living quarters. On a low concrete ceiling the lights were on and a fan was gently circulating the air.

  ‘Your friends aren’t here. The gas drove everyone out of the city. Most Artists have gone west to the beaches,’ said Cara.

  My heart sank.

  ‘When did this happen?’ I asked.

  ‘It was gradual until winter arrived and the westerlies blew in. Now the gas sweeps across us everyday. The headaches are too much. And the nausea,’ replied Cara, nodding at me.

  ‘Somebody told me my friends were here,’ I said.

  ‘I doubt it. Who are they?’ she asked.

  ‘Taylor and Lizzy Finn,’ I replied.

  There was a flicker of recognition in Cara.

  ‘Lizzy was here for our final show. That was well over a month ago now. Last I heard she left for the airport,’ said Cara.

  ‘The airport?’ I repeated.

  ‘There’s a community there. It’s small, but some of the Artists like it,’ she replied.

  ‘What about Taylor?’ I asked.

  Cara studied me once more. As if we were in some method acting class and she was trying to uncover my motivation.

  ‘Are you in their band?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I had a Residency with them. In a shopping centre,’ I replied.

  ‘A dual Residency?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah I guess. There were actually four of us,’ I replied.

  ‘Taylor and Lizzy didn’t mention a dual Residency,’ said Cara.

  I’d been wiped from their minds. Brilliant.

  ‘So you met Taylor?’ I asked.

  ‘I remember her being here briefly. After Lizzy arrived she left with a painter,’ said Cara.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I whispered.

  Cara began flicking through some notes that were spread out across one of the tables. Her interest in the topic was waning.

  ‘How come you haven’t left the city?’ I asked.

  ‘I am to present my soliloquy here,’ she replied.

  ‘For the Prix de Rome?’ I asked.

  Cara looked up.

  ‘Who told you about the Prix de Rome?’ she snapped.

  ‘Ed Carrington,’ I replied.

  She seemed sceptical.

  ‘When was it that he told you?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a few days ago. I ran into him at a bar,’ I replied.

  Cara looked to be running a complex inner monologue.

  ‘Did everyone here know about the Prix de Rome?’ I asked.

  Cara glanced at me, almost surprised, and shook her head. I couldn’t get a handle on her demeanour. She either had a bunch of secrets, or maybe this was just how a real celebrity acted around a nobody like me. Whatever the case, the job of finding the Finns and racing them back to Carousel suddenly felt monumental.

  I stood up and tested out my balance. I didn’t feel great but I had to get moving.

  ‘The wind won’t turn back east until dawn tomorrow,’ said Cara.

  I stopped and looked at her.

  ‘Right, okay,’ I replied.

  I lingered, unsure of what to do as Cara seemed to have resumed work on her soliloquy.

  ‘There is coffee in the cafe upstairs,’ she said, preoccupied.

  Coffee was the last thing I felt like, but I was about to head up there regardless when I had a thought.

  ‘Is there somewhere here I could write for a while?’ I asked.

  ‘There are studios through that door,’ she replied, and nodded to a wooden door by the brewing equipment.

  ‘Great. Thanks,’ I replied.

  I headed across the room and was almost through the door when Cara looked up from her work.

  ‘Sorry. Do I know of you? What is it that you write?’ she asked.

  24

  Cara set me up at a studio and made me some ginger tea to calm the lurching in my stomach. I had been unable to dodge her questions about who I was (nobody) and what I wrote (pretty much nothing). Her gaze was piercing and didn’t let up until she had all of the information she required. So I spilled and told her I was just starting out. And that I hadn’t really written anything since we had left Carousel. And even that had been pretty insignificant.

  She seemed oddly interested in the details of the writing I had done in Carousel. How many short stories had I completed in total? Was it a collection or were they separate? Were they edited or just drafts? She even asked me some questions about Taylor and Lizzy’s album, as if to confirm what she knew already. Eventually she stopped, almost abruptly, and left me to return to whatever it was she was working on.

  The studio was small, but not stuffy. A vent ran across the top of one wall, just above ground level outside. I stood up and sniffed cautiously at the air drifting inside. Thankfully it seemed okay. The room consisted of a simple wooden desk. A high-back office chair – probably swindled from a nearby business. Some notepads and pens, and a powerboard in case you were lucky enough to have an operational laptop. Otherwise it was cool and empty.

  I had been anxious to get writing again ever since my meeting with Ed. My time at the casino felt like a giant, bathrobe-wearing hiatus. Now things were moving again I felt a great pressure to be writing. Ed’s theory said that I was to be judged on the work I had created in Carousel alone. But Ed didn’t know how I arrived at Carousel. How I conned a pathway to survival. I still hoped to be transported back with Taylor and Lizzy and all of the other Artists, but I felt that I needed to return to Carousel with more than just the short stories buried down in my backpack. Somehow I had to justify my selection by writing more. Writing bigger. And now, with the Finns spread out across the city, I felt as though I was racing the clock on both art and geography.

  I shoved aside my swirling mass of thoughts and anxieties and started filling the new notepad with descriptions of the city. It was what I had started doing when we left the hills. Writing third-person prose about the world now. I guess kind of focusing in on its contradiction. How a world with only Artists was beautiful and simple. There was silence and reflection and pockets of gobsmacking art bursting through where you least expected it. But it was also lonely and decrepit. Like the people left were separate to the environment. They lived in it and looked at it and made art about it, but they didn’t inhabit its walls and spaces. Of all the people I had met, Rachel was the only one who seemed to have integrated into the new world. Everyone else was still drifting. Focused on bigger things. A lot of artists are nomadic and transitory by nature, and that hadn’t changed here.

  The pages filled one by one and it felt good to be writing again. After what I considered to be a decent session I got up and stretched and left the room in search of something to eat. Cara was pacing the basement, mouthing words from one of her notepads.

  ‘Hi,’ I said.

  She continued pacing while I stood awkwardly in the centre of the room.

  ‘Are you breaking for dinner already?’ she asked, eventually.

  ‘Um. No. I’m just finished, I guess,’ I replied.

  She dipped her head and studied me from above her glasses.

  ‘The whole manuscript?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  ‘There’s no TV here, Nox. If you’re still alive and breathing, you might as well be in there writing,’ she said.

  I looked at my shoes and felt like a seven-year-old.

  ‘Behind that counter are some nuts and dried fruit from the gardens. And there’s more tea in the pot by the sink. You’re welcome to take whatever you choose back to the studio,’ said Cara.

  ‘Alright, great. Thanks,’ I replied.

  I walked over to the counter and loaded a bowl with as much food as it would take. Cara seemed oblivious. Preoccupied with her pretentious soliloquy. Back in the study I sat down and quietly fumed over her preachy schoolteacher attitude. There’s no TV here, Nox. What the fuck.

  Th
e food tasted good, but I would have preferred something fresh from the gardens. I cleaned out the bowl and washed it down with more tea. Then I looked around and considered sleeping. There was nowhere obvious to do this but the floor, which was concrete, so I sat at the desk and listened for sounds of Cara leaving. I could still hear the occasional flick of a page and clink of her teacup.

  Surely I couldn’t keep writing. I had already put down way more than my usual amount. I read back over it and made some amendments. The final paragraph ended abruptly so I played around and drew it out with a few more sentences so it finished properly. Then I grudgingly started on another paragraph.

  Five hours later I had filled up a third of the notepad.

  I stepped away from the desk and looked at the pad as if it was a foreign object. It looked back at me, plump and real. It was as intense a writing experience as I had ever had. Out of my wordy descriptions of place had emerged a character and a narrative. Not somebody I knew or had met, but someone I had invented. A character with backstory, flaws and a motivation that felt interesting. Like I wanted to know more. It also felt as though, if I kept writing, I would know more. I felt a chill and wondered whether this was what it felt like to actually be writing a novel.

  I packed the notepad securely into my bag and emerged to find Cara drinking wine and listening to music on an iPod. She pulled off her headphones at my arrival.

  ‘Nox! Pour a glass. I was just about to make us some dinner,’ said Cara.