Exile m-2

by Rebecca Lim

  He writes finally:

  Should I be scared?

  My reply is swift.

  Of me?

  He replies:

  Yeah.

  One word. How do I read that?

  I type:

  No, never of me. I would never hurt you.

  Then I think about Luc’s plan and I close my eyes briefly before adding:

  But there’s some weird shit going down with the crowd I used to run with and I can’t promise that you won’t see stuff that’ll turn your hair white overnight. What you saw on that clip is just a tasting plate of what these guys can do. There’s a game of tug of war going on right now and I think that, maybe, I’m the rope. You still want to come get me? Don’t feel obliged.

  Please, I think. Please still want to come and get me. I’m almost terrified — me, the person who claims to rarely feel fear — as I wait for his response.

  Finally, he types:

  Yes, I AM still coming to get you, don’t even question that. You and I aren’t done. Flight arrives Friday morning. I’ll come directly to the Green Lantern as soon as I clear customs. Pack whatever you think you’ll need because we’ll go as soon as you say we can. Stay safe till then. I mean it, Mercy. Stay safe.

  I close the window, leave the internet café, walk slowly back up the hill through Chinatown, the muggy heat weighing down on me now where before I welcomed the warmth.

  That footage Ryan directed me to is on constant replay behind my eyes. It’s further evidence that two worlds — one seen, one unseen — are beginning to bleed, one into the other. And I — a citizen of neither, a denizen of nowhere — am doomed to watch from the sidelines and wonder at it.

  I stare out the window the whole bus ride home but don’t see anything except Uriel walking on water before vanishing into a singularity in time and space.

  What had he been searching for?

  Mrs Neill is happy to see me, love and relief blazing out of her eyes when she beholds her daughter’s face. But she’s noticeably weaker today, and as I draw the heavy chair close again to her bedside, I can almost see that silver mist rising in the room, Azraeil’s form standing by the heavy curtains at the window.

  I never sleep very well anyway, but that night, all that night, I do not sleep at all. I just keep vigil, sombre and dry-eyed, over the slowly emptying shell that is Lela’s mother.

  Chapter 15

  Mrs Neill’s still sleeping when I leave to catch the 7.08 bus into work. I decide not to wake her, because Georgia’s due to arrive any moment. I’ll ask Mr Dymovsky if I can have a half-day again so that I can be there for her. He has to say yes. Under his no-nonsense exterior, I sense that he’s like a marshmallow. Still, he’ll be incandescent when I tell him on Friday that I’m quitting. But he’s Russian. Once he calms down, sees Ryan and me together, he’ll understand.

  On the bus ride in, I drink in the sky, the clear, hard light of it, its boundlessness. I’ll miss it. There’s no sky like that where Ryan lives, in Paradise, as funny as that sounds. It’s an ugly place with ugly, polluted beaches, surrounded by oil-refining and military interests, razor wire; grey from shore to distant horizon.

  When I get into the coffee shop, Reggie’s back and already angry, although it’s only 7.38 am.

  She holds up a hand to me as if she’s stopping traffic. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she snarls.

  ‘I wasn’t planning to ask you anything,’ I say mildly.

  ‘Just get to work.’ Eyes hard, she jerks her head at the queues already forming for the breakfast special: one dollar to upsize the coffee.

  Cecilia lifts her eyebrows in welcome, and Mr Dymovsky smiles at me through the open serving hatch from the kitchen where he’s consulting Sulaiman on the day’s menu. Sulaiman acknowledges me with a small nod of his head and I almost smile. From him, that’s tantamount to friendly.

  I belt on a clean black apron over my black clothes and get to work with the sandwich press, the sandwich cutter and long bread knife, wielding them awkwardly as Sulaiman slings out trays of fried eggs and rashers of bacon faster than I can jam them between slices of buttered bread.

  As if he brings the lull with him, Ranald’s entry into the café signals our first collective breather for several hours. Reggie goes out for yet another ‘ciggie break’.

  Ranald comes up to the counter where I’m standing and says gruffly, ‘I didn’t mean what I said yesterday. About you being stupid. You’re not stupid. I wouldn’t have asked you out if I thought that. Are we still on for Friday?’

  He can’t quite meet my eyes, looks at a place a few inches to the right of me, his words scrambling over themselves to be uttered. I2019;s not really an apology, but then again I’m not intending to honour that promise about dinner, so I figure we’re about even.

  ‘You betcha,’ I say. ‘All set.’

  ‘You sure you don’t have anything else on?’ he says curtly.

  I shake my head, looking at him curiously. There’s something tight and hard in his features that I can’t read.

  He stands there awkwardly for another long moment — a moment in which I think he is going to bark something else at me — before he moves away to his regular table and slams his laptop bag down on its surface. He unpacks his jumble of add-ons more noisily than usual and throws himself into his work, not bothering to talk to any of us. He’s clearly preoccupied with something. Deadlines maybe.

  Cecilia looks at me when she returns from handing him his first coffee and shakes her head, her eyes seeming to say: Do not engage.

  Fine by me, I think. Whatever.

  I gaze out the window, see a guy with a gleaming bald head go by, built like a pit bull terrier. He’s almost as wide as he’s tall and dressed a little too warmly for the day that’s developing, in a red bomber jacket with black sleeves, a blue-toned plaid shirt and faded blue jeans. He has a hard, weightlifter’s body and some kind of complex Celtic tattoo crawling thickly up the back of his neck in black ink. Must have killed him to get it done.

  ‘Do not mess with that one!’ Mr Dymovsky says as he slides a tray of fried schnitzels into the warming area beside me. He curls the fingers of both hands into two loose fists and pivots them outwards at the wrists as if he is breaking something between them, like an imaginary stick. Or a bone.

  Ranald raises his head and says sharply, ‘Cecilia! This coffee isn’t strong enough. I’d like a replacement, please, as soon as you can manage it.’

  He holds the offending mug out without meeting her eyes, as if she is some kind of servant.

  Cecilia looks at Mr Dymovsky as if to say, What do I do? He frowns but nods that she’s to make him another one, on the house.

  ‘Délat’ iz múkhi sloná!’ he mutters darkly.

  ‘I can go somewhere else …’ Ranald’s voice is silky.

  ‘It is no trouble,’ Mr Dymovsky replies smoothly in English, bringing the replacement over himself. ‘That is all I was saying.’

  Ranald sticks his face into his laptop screen again and goes back to whatever he’s doing, reaching for his scalding coffee a moment later and taking a small sip.

  ‘But I make it the same,’ Cecilia whispers at me, mortified.

  Reggie breezes back inside. ‘Here’s trouble!’ she exclaims,0em”ting the door firmly behind her to keep the heat out. She gazes through the front window from the side just near the door, as if she wants to see but doesn’t wish to be seen from the street.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mr Dymovsky says, crossing the floor to where she’s standing.

  Cecilia and I, curious, drift forward, too. I wrinkle my nose as I get closer: Reggie’s overpowering musky perfume now has top notes of nicotine, bleach and tar.

  ‘Have a look!’ Reggie says, jerking her thumb at a point outside the window. ‘It’s that slut who comes in here sometimes — Lela’s friend. From the “club” around the corner in Chinatown. She’s having another argument with her boyfriend — looks even more like a train wreck than usual.’
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br />   At her words, even Sulaiman leaves what he’s doing in the kitchen and comes over to where we’re standing.

  The man with the Celtic tattoo and shaved head comes back up the street dragging a crying Justine by the elbow. She’s got his bomber jacket on over something that looks like a sequinned string bikini, and she’s wearing a pair of improbably high stilettos with clear crystal soles and heels, porn star shoes.

  ‘Like I said,’ Reggie repeats with relish. ‘The slut who comes in here sometimes.’

  ‘Not her boyfriend for a long time,’ Sulaiman says in his deep voice, a frown on his face.

  He and I look at each other and, almost in the same instant, throw open the door and spill out onto the street, Mr Dymovsky and Cecilia behind us.

  Justine and her ex are almost past the front of the Green Lantern when I shout, ‘Hey, Juz! I’ve been waiting for you for ages. Aren’t you coming in?’

  Pitbull swings around, his fat fingers digging into Justine’s elbow like a vice while she cries and tries to pull away. She’s almost unrecognisable in her spangled bikini, two sizes too small. Her skin is unnaturally pale under the hard summer sun, and there’s smeared make-up all down her face. A thin, rhinestone hairband is jammed down low over her head like a tarnished halo, her thick, wavy hair beneath it scraped back into a low and messy chignon. If the get-up is supposed to look alluring, it’s anything but. And there’s a new bruise on her other cheek; I can almost make out the shape of the bastard’s knuckles.

  ‘Get back inside, you nosy bitch,’ Pitbull replies. ‘It’s between me and Juz here. No law against talking, so stay out of it.’

  He turns and starts dragging her away. Justine pulls back towards us pleading, ‘Help me, Lela! Please!’

  I need anger to unlock those powers that are my right, so Luc told me in my dream. But where has my anger gone? I have nothing to draw on except sadness. Justine, dressed like something out of a freak show; Mrs Neill, with the cheater husband and incurable disease; Franklin Murray, bankrupt, self-pitying, suicidal.

  I turn and look at Sulaiman helplessly, all the paind numbness I feel in my gaze. Without anger, I could sooner stop a hurricane than stop that man dragging Justine away.

  Sulaiman meets my eyes for a long moment, seems to come to some kind of decision that is against his better judgment because the corners of his mouth tighten before he explodes into motion.

  Before the Pitbull can even react, Sulaiman’s rushed him and grabbed him by the collar of his checked shirt, wrenching Justine out of his grip and pushing her back in our direction. He shoves the man and he goes down hard onto the hot, stinking concrete of the pavement like a flailing windmill, an audible rush of air leaving his lungs.

  Tears streaming down her face, Justine stumbles towards me in her crippling heels, her arms outstretched. I pull her into our tight little group by the door. Mr Dymovsky moves in front of her, while Cecilia shifts so that she’s got Justine’s back, the three of us hemming her in so her ex would have to fight his way through us to get to her again.

  ‘I’ll kill youse!’ he howls, struggling to push himself up from under the large, heavy shoe Sulaiman has placed on his back. ‘Then I’ll kill her! Shoulda done that months ago, the whore.’

  Sulaiman bends down and turns the man over roughly, his big fists bunched in front of the guy’s checked shirt so they are eye to eye. People on the sidewalk give them a wide berth.

  I hear Sulaiman rumble, ‘She does not consent to go with you and so she shall not go.’

  He turns his head to look at us clustered tensely together beneath the front awning of the Green Lantern.

  Mr Dymovsky takes one look at his expression and chivvies us back towards the front door like an anxious mother hen. ‘What have we done?’ he mutters to himself. ‘Likha beda nachalo!’

  I try to get a look at what Sulaiman is doing over Mr Dymovsky’s shoulder, but Mr Dymovsky waves at me and Cecilia to create a gap in the plastic curtain and open the door. He leads Justine inside gently, hand beneath her elbow, as if she were a small, lost child, then I hear him barking orders at Reggie, whose red-painted mouth is opening and closing like a fish’s.

  As I look back, standing on tiptoe to see better over the counter that runs across the café’s front window, Sulaiman is removing one hand from Pitbull’s face and letting him up off the ground at last. Justine’s tormentor stands unsteadily before lurching away up the street, staggering as if he has been mortally wounded, though there appears to be no blood, no wound, on him.

  As Sulaiman walks unhurriedly towards the café’s door, Mr Dymovsky mutters again, ‘Likha beda nachalo!’ Then, ‘Somebody watch her while I get the first-aid box, okay?’

  He disappears down the narrow corridor in the direction of his office, leaving Justine slumped in a chair, her face in her hands, shoulders still shaking.

  Sulaiman enters the café, going straight back to his usual station in the cramped galley kitchen as if nothing has happened. Cecilia and I peo himsep the street together. There’s no sign of Justine’s attacker. I wonder uneasily what Sulaiman did to the guy to make him look the way he did as he left.

  ‘Why does Mr Dymovsky say that?’ I ask Cecilia. ‘What does it mean?’

  She shoots me a troubled glance. ‘It mean “disaster follow trouble”, something like that. When he worried, he say it. I’m scared, Lela.’

  ‘You should be,’ Ranald says unexpectedly as I close the front door. He’s got a strange look on his face, almost like excitement.

  He says again, a weird light in his eyes, ‘You should be.’

  Chapter 16

  Ranald’s long gone, the lunchtime crowd dispersed, when Justine finally stops crying.

  Franklin Murray had been among them for a time, sitting on a bar stool at the front window, eking out his chicken salad sandwich and coffee, reading every single word of the newspaper as if his continuing existence depended on it. When I leaned across him to pick up his plate and crumpled paper napkin, I felt the weight of the pistol in his inner breast pocket brush against my arm. He’d given me a frightened look but I pretended I hadn’t noticed a thing as I sailed away with his plate.

  Justine’s a tough cookie. She outfaced all the starers that came and went. ‘Have a good look!’ she hissed at some of the worst offenders. ‘Go on, knock yourselves out.’

  Cecilia and I try to clean up her face as much as possible with what we have in the shop. But nothing can be done about the new bruise. If anything, it seems to be spreading. Soap and water isn’t enough to budge all the eye make-up, and Reggie refuses to lend some remover out of her own handbag.

  ‘Not my problem,’ she says, her mouth pursed primly like a cat’s bum as she stirs the sweet and sour pork with unnecessary force. ‘Don’t look at me.’

  ‘Like you’re some kind of saint,’ Justine mutters.

  ‘At least I don’t get my tits out for strangers for money,’ Reggie replies.

  ‘Sanctimonious bitch.’

  Mr Dymovsky shakes his head tiredly as the two women continue to take verbal pot shots at each other across the room. It’s bad for business.

  ‘Take Justine into the office,’ he tells me. ‘Then go buy her some shoes, something to wear. It is not safe that she walks around dressed like, like …’ He waves one hand towards her, looking gallantly at a fixed point above her head.

  He gives me a fifty out of the till to back up his request and I head around the corner to Chinatown, where I go into the first variety store I come across and pick up a pair of black men’s kung fu shoes in a small size and Chinese-style pyjamas, with change to spare. It’s not high fashion, but Justine’s still got that creep’s bomber and the ensemble will do until she can get home and into a change of clothes.

  She’s self-conscious as she slips into the lemon-coloured, faux silk pyjamas in Mr Dymovsky’s office. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she mutters, changing hurriedly while I stand guard at the door like she told me to. ‘I’ve broken out across the tops of my shou
lders from all the latex they’ve been getting me to wear lately — it’s disgusting.’

  She slips the soft, flat shoes onto her large, wide feet. They’re only a little too big. The bomber jacket she asks me to hand to Sulaiman, to dump it straight into one of the skips outside.

  ‘It smells like him,’ she says, and shudders. ‘Don’t want it.’

  Mr Dymovsky gives me a long-suffering roll of his eyes when the two of us come out of his office. ‘Of course you can go early, Lela, I was expecting it. And you take care, Justine. Don’t go back to that place; you come work here instead, okay?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Justine says, suddenly shy, as we take our leave.

  She raises a hand gratefully to Sulaiman in the kitchen. He gives her an unsmiling nod, gets right back to the tray of pizza he’s making for tomorrow.

  ‘I think I’m in love with that guy,’ she laughs in quiet despair as we bat our way out of the plastic curtain hanging over the door. ‘I always pick the tricky ones — guys on drugs, guys with rap sheets longer than my arm, women-hating latent homosexuals, and now a big Muslim bloke who probably thinks I’m trouble. I’m hopeless. Might as well shoot me now.’

  I take the sleeve of her Chinese pyjama jacket between my fingers, steer her up the road towards the same bus stop she pointed out to me yesterday.

  ‘He’s all right, Sulaiman. Not seeing anyone, Cecilia says. Doesn’t talk much about himself, bit of a mystery fella. But he’s contemplative, spiritual, respectful, no woman-hater, I can vouch for that. You’d have to wear a few more clothes, though, change your line of work, if you’ve set your heart on him.’ I grin at her.

  She looks down as we cross the street to the bus stop. ‘Stripping’s a crap living,’ she says sadly. ‘But it’s a living.’

  ‘But it’s not a life,’ I say pointedly.

  Her reply is weary. ‘But I’m no good for anything else, am I? I mean, look at me. I’m a joke.’

  After fifteen long minutes of Justine tapping on her crooked teeth with her baby pink fake nails, of Justine itching at her shoulderblades, shuffling her too-big slippers, no bus comes, so we flag down a cab.