‘You murdered –’
Nico shakes his head. ‘I didn’t murder anyone, perro. I fined you like any businessman would for breaking our deal in Mexico.’
Munch, munch, munch.
‘If it matters to you, she did fight back. She sprayed me in the eyes with perfume. It was all over my hands when I wrapped them around her beautiful neck.’
‘You put her back in the bed…’ I tremble. ‘Made her look…’
Nico shrugs. ‘Presentation counts.’
I open my mouth but nothing comes out for a moment. Then, ‘I’m going to kill you…’
Nico shakes his head. ‘No you aren’t, perro.’ He looks at me with condescending eyes. ‘You’re not because I gave you a chance to punish Hanna like no one else could and you chose to hit me over the head with a statue instead. She led me to your girl and you couldn’t even fit together the pieces. You’re like a child.’
Munch, munch, munch.
‘So, why do you run? What do you have left? Hanna will be dead soon. You should hear the moans coming from that room. The last one was practically a scream.’ He licks his lips, dabbing up some crumbs of meringue. ‘And after Matthew’s enjoyed her, he’ll call me. I’ll finish her.’
I don’t flinch. I see Epiphany, tied to a stake, being burnt alive like Joan of Arc.
‘Exactly,’ Nico says. ‘Why care about her after she led me right to your girl?’
His meringue, it’s down to the size of a baseball now. Munch, munch, munch. He takes another bite, halving it.
‘I’ve worked hard and want to enjoy the party,’ he says between full lips. ‘So, I’ll be merciful. I’ll make this quick,’ and he pauses to stuff the remainder of the lemon meringue into his mouth, ‘like I did with your whore.’ Munch, munch, munch.
Crumbs from his stuffed mouth fall to the floor. They spill from his lips and land with the sound of boulders in my roaring ears. My body trembles as I watch his big, stupid, lemon-meringue grin split like a crack in the earth. There’s a sudden quaking in me – a tremor of anger and hatred and rage and regret. Then an explosion follows of such force it could level a mountain to dust.
In the movies, if you hit someone square on the nose, you’ll push its cartilage into their brain, killing them instantly. But this is real life, and that magnitude of anger you feel boiling up inside you? It can rarely be focused into anything useful. As I lunge at Nico, my punch misses his nose – misses his entire face. My fist lands on his shoulder as my feet trip over one another and I fall into him, taking us both down to the stone porcelain floor.
He lands on his back and I fall on his chest. It’s like a barrel, his chest is. I scramble to my feet, intent on grabbing for the gun he’s placed in the drawer, but as I do, Nico stays on the floor. The big veins in his thick neck bulge fat like bloated worms.
There’s a banging at the door. ‘Hey, come on!’ a sassy voice shouts from the other side. ‘You’ve been in there forever!’ I heave breaths and my body sweats as the banging continues. Nico hasn’t gotten up yet. Crumbs from the lemon meringue dot his mouth. His lips, they’re a shade of purple. And this is where he begins clutching at his throat. This is where he starts to wriggle on the floor.
That last half of the huge meringue, it’s lodged in his throat.
And Nico’s face begins to turn an ever-darkening shade of blue. Sweat breaks out on his forehead. He makes odd clicking noises as he scratches at his Adam’s apple. He would dig through his skin if he could. That’s how bad it feels.
‘There’s a line out here, you know!’ the sassy voice shouts through the bathroom door. ‘You’ve got thirty seconds! Do you know who I am? Thirty seconds! One, two…’
And I count with the sassy voice. ‘Three, four…’ I count with the voice and watch a powerful brute wriggling around on the stone porcelain floor like a clubbed baby snow seal.
‘Fourteen, fifteen…’ Nico’s hand clutches at my ankle.
‘Twenty-six…’ A horrid smell fills the room. Nico’s shit himself. His body has relaxed every muscle – even his sphincter – in a last-ditch attempt at salvation.
‘Thirty!’ the sassy voice says. ‘Let’s go!’
On the bathroom floor, I squat by his side and Nico, his hand skims my chest. It pulls on my shirt. His eyes look wide into mine with desperation; with total submission; with absolute acknowledgement that I’m the only one who can save his life – me the coward; me the dog. He tugs my arm – my hand. He begs my hand to follow his to his throat, to use it to lift his death sentence. His hand dances and dances, his fingers tickle my tux, but me, I just slap it away.
Nico’s eyes swim with surprise and horror that someone like me can so calmly sit by a man’s side and watch him die. And weaker than before, his hand begs again for my fingers to pry the meringue from his throat. But again, I slap it away and watch Nico’s shock until his face is the colour of a blueberry. I watch until his wriggling stops. I watch until his eyes are as lifeless as a shark’s.
And that’s how it ends for the terrifying and cruel Nico. The monster who trafficked girls all over the world. The murderer of my love. Killed by a Swiss dessert while wriggling in a pile of his own shit.
And I wait for it … the relief.
‘What’s going on in there?’ The voice from the other side of the door yells. ‘What’s all that noise? Are you … are you having sex?’
The relief that doesn’t come.
‘Someone get security! Matthew wouldn’t want something as base as sex in a public toilet happening at his party! Get security!’
Matthew’s thugs with their guns and their thighs like tree trunks will shoot me dead once they’ve seen I killed Nico. I make for the bathroom window again. But before I’m fully out, I stop. Soon the room will be filled with security guards and men with bloated bladders, and, well, I’d hate for anyone to think I did it. I turn back inside. I walk past Nico’s dead body. His expensive Italian shoes butt against the base of the toilet. That big piece of celebrity shit bobbing around the bowl? I give it a flush. I’m not gonna be blamed for that.
50
Freefall
Bela baby, I did it. He’s gone.
And I wait … I wait crouched on the windowsill. The six-inch width of the ledge to either side of it not as frightening as what isn’t happening inside of me.
‘He’s gone,’ I say aloud. As if voicing it will carry the pain away in the breeze that flows past me.
But the only thing that carries up here are the notes from the orchestra playing three storeys below.
The pain’s still there, inside me. The emptiness. The loss. The hurt.
And I know the pain, it’s still there because of Epiphany. Nico said she led him right to Bela. Epiphany’s as responsible for Bela’s death as he is. The devil. All of us are insignificant collateral damage in her world.
She’s like a goddamned cancer, Epiphany. You do the chemo, the carcinogenesis meds regimen, the bone-marrow transplants, the cell scrapes. You just want to stop hurting, so you do all that stuff, but Epiphany, it lays in you, dormant, slowly eating away at you. You think you’ve beat it. You hope. You dare to believe. But when you have Epiphany there’s always something more. Something hidden. She’s leukaemia and she’s devouring you from the inside out.
Behind me, back in the bathroom, there’s a loud scraping of the tall metal trashcan across the stone porcelain as someone forces the door open. Gripping the inside edge of the windowpane I slink my way across the ledge, out of sight of the window. As I release my hand from the window’s edge, the windowpane shudders as it slides shut with a loud bang. That’s when I reach my hands toward the sky like I’ve found Jesus. It looked like I could grasp the upper ledge of the roof deck, but my fingers come centimetres short. The best I can do is brush the bottom of the deck’s ledge with my fingertips. I glance back through the window, hoping I can crawl back into the bathroom, but a security guard stands over Nico’s body. I see him mouth ‘What the hell?’ as he pulls his gun
from its holster.
I retreat from the window’s view, balancing on my little ledge, three storeys above the garden, pressing my back against the wall of the villa. I’m spread-eagled, trying to balance on a ledge the width of a VHS tape, as my fingertips press against the bottom of the roof deck in an attempt to stop my body from wobbling.
The wind is picking up speed. Towards the red mountains that curve in the distance the storm clouds have moved closer. Now they block out the sun, causing the sky to form a premature grey-orange-purple dusk. I scan the villa to see if there’s a way in through another window. Towards the east wing I see nothing, but when I look towards the west wing, that’s when I see a group of girls – young girls – all huddled in a window on the third floor. They’re all taking furtive peeks into the garden below. And one of the girls, from this distance she looks like–
I crane my neck for a better view and my heart fires wildly as my body caves outward as gravity tries to pull me from the ledge. I pivot my hips back, desperately trying to regain equilibrium. Every inch of my back tries to bond with the wall behind me. I swallow hard, only having narrowly avoided falling three storeys to my death. I try to be as still as a gargoyle, sucking in my gut, flattening myself against the wall. But the damned wind, it isn’t doing me any favours. As the storm approaches, it blows my body hard. If I stay here I’m going to fall.
Three storeys below me, the orchestra plays ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’.
To my right, there’s a drainpipe no more than a foot from my ledge. If I can reach it I can use it to climb to the deck above.
But stuff like this, it all looks way easier on TV. As I stretch my hand towards the pipe, my foot slips and I careen sideways. The only thing that keeps me from going splat on someone’s trombone is my tux sleeve. It’s caught on a retainer holding the drainpipe to the wall. My jacket shreds as I desperately wrap my arms around the pipe. I stretch my foot towards the window ledge, but my weight causes the drainpipe to buckle. A rivet pops from the wall and the pipe bends like a straw. My feet dangle in the air. I kick wildly, searching for traction. Then I glimpse a surface below my soles. I press my toes onto the crown moulding as hard as I can.
So here I am, arms wrapped around a crooked drainpipe, toes clawing crown moulding, leaning like the Tower of Pisa over gardens filled with the most recognisable people on the planet. And man, the thing about stars is they never look up. They never look up because they know they’re the ones to be looked up to. There is nothing above them. That’s why not a single person below notices a man in his tux hanging on for his life three storeys above the ground.
But I’m not alone up here for long. Above me on the rooftop deck, the most famous actor in the world has stepped onto the ledge. Hugh Fox. The forty-million-a-picture man. The actor that likes to fuck little girls. The guy who likes to be called ‘Daddy’.
A voice cries at him. It begs him to get down.
‘Please, baby, just come to me.’ It’s the Starlet’s voice.
‘No!’ Hugh cries. ‘My career will be ruined when this gets out!’
‘I didn’t see what I thought I did,’ the Starlet’s voice lies.
‘No. No, you’ll tell people about this! It’ll help your career. The coverage you’ll get for turning me in–’ Hugh looks towards the cliffs. His spittle, carried by the wind, mists my face. ‘I’ll be destroyed. I’ll go to jail! Worse! I’ll never get a major role again!’
And this is where Hugh does a triple-somersault off the rooftop. And on his way out of this world, he notices me hanging to my drainpipe. And in that space between free-fall and the ground, Hugh automatically flashes me that beautiful smile of his just in case the man hanging from the drainpipe has a camera with him. Then, splat.
Jordan appears at the edge of the roof. She screams and tears flood her eyes. And even from all the way up here, you can see the blood begin to pool around Hugh’s body below. He’s more a work of art in death than he ever was in life. Looks like a Pollock. Nice use of red.
Below, the orchestra stops playing. A group of publicists stare at Fox’s body in stunned silence. Some of the partygoers in the garden begin to scream.
‘What the hell is going on in this place?’ a voice says. The security guard, he’s forced the bathroom window open. Fox’s is the second body he’s found in five minutes. But just as the guard thinks he’s seen everything, now the most powerful man in Hollywood comes trotting into the garden like he’s in a one-legged race. His pants circle his ankles and a bloody hand is cupped over his balls.
‘Help me!’ Matthew Mann screams, ‘Someone help me!’ Then Epiphany bursts into the garden. She’s lost her blonde wig and tiny blood bubbles dribble down her cream-white chin on to her cheap tea-dance-twenties dress.
There’s such a stinging in my chest. The walking cancer. The terminal disease. You led him to Bela.
Below me, in the gardens, the crowd scatter like bowling pins at Epiphany’s approach. Epiphany rips the fake Arabian sword from the hand of The Princess of the Sand’s evil king statue and, like the reaper, she stalks through the bed of lilies where Matthew Mann has collapsed. She swings the sword wildly at someone who attempts to help him up. She’s scarier than death, she is. The blood that trickles from her mouth, it’s all come from Matthew’s penis.
And a celebutante faints.
A muscle-bound action hero screams like a little girl.
A conservative talk show host flees with a falafel balanced in one hand and a drink in the other.
In the bathroom window next to me, the security guard says, ‘I left South Central for this?’ and then disappears.
Above me, from the rooftop deck, a teardrop from the Starlet hits my hand. Is she crying over losing a fiancé or over how much his death will affect her career?
Below me, three security guards approach Epiphany, guns drawn.
Just shoot the bitch. She’s got a plastic sword, for God’s sake. Shoot her and put us both out of our misery.
A searing pain flashes through my shoulder blades. I press my eyes shut so tight I see red between my lids. And Bela, I see Bela.
The pain trails off and I open my eyes. Over by the circular gravel drive, you can hear limo after limo speed away.
Back below me, one of the security guards is down. Epiphany must have done something. His arm shouldn’t look like that.
Another teardrop hits my hand. Jordan Seabring. The beautiful blonde actress again. The Starlet. The non-fiancée. So many names for one person. As I watch her cry, she reminds me of Bela. It’s because of their lips. They both have full lips. But one’s were real and the other’s are due to three collagen injections a year.
Back on the ground again, the second guard is down. Epiphany hovers over Matthew like the angel of death. No. Not the angel of death. She hovers over him like a fallen saint. A misguided Joan of Arc. She fights fearlessly because she believes she has God on her side. She fights with one purpose, one goal. Her own.
Ask her, ‘What about what I want? What about me?’
She’ll answer, ‘What about you? You don’t matter.’
Fuck Epiphany.
The Quester.
The Devil.
And as I speak Epiphany’s name in vein, pain sparks through my body like hellfire. Hanging from my drainpipe, I try to think of anything else to block the pain, but my biceps still spasm. My fingers lose all feeling. My body is done. I’m done. I crane backwards as my hold on the pipe begins to slacken. Below, the last guard on the lawn is down. The prop sword is sticking out of his throat. And Epiphany? Epiphany and Matthew have both disappeared.
My feet slip from the crown moulding, sending my body swinging away from the villa.
Jerry, this is your life.
These are its final seconds.
The last of my fingers slips. As my body enters free fall, time virtually stops. It’s like you’re given a slight stay of execution to take in the wonderful world that wasn’t. And, after blaming Epiphany one last time, I fill my mi
nd with thoughts of Bela and Emma. And I even see Emma. She’s watching me from that window in the west wing. And even though I know she’s only a figment of my imagination, brought on by the inevitable onslaught of my imminent death, it’s nice to have someone you loved with you when you’re about to die. You’ll understand what I mean one day.
And, as Emma stares back at me from that window in the west wing, someone appears by her side. Someone appears by her side … and takes her hand.
Oh God.
This person that takes her hand, it’s Phineas.
His words, they echo in my mind: ‘Jonathan only ever used one girl … A real stunner … like a young Audrey Hepburn … No one else was allowed to touch her.’
This figment of Emma I see? She’s not a figment at all.
She’s Epiphany’s daughter.
And I say, ‘Please–’
As my body speeds on its collision course with the ground, I pray.
I say, ‘Oh, Saviour, please–’
I pray to Epiphany that she does what I was never able to. I pray that she saves my little sister.
51
Hanna
The landing feels exactly like it does when you wake from one of those dreams where you’re falling. The unrelenting speed. The beats of your heart as you plunge. The sudden stop that jolts you awake.
Of course, there are differences too. A femur breaks. A rib cracks. I look to my side and there’s an ulna sticking through torn flesh. Everything goes black.
‘Damn it! How many people are going to jump off the roof today?’ a voice is saying in slow motion.
Another voice, it takes on regular speed as I open my eyes. ‘My God! My God! Whose bone is that?’ a guy holding his shoulder says.
Epiphany Jones Page 36