Atomic City

by Sally Breen

  Cold is a shock to the system here. The city is not built for temperate climes. After a heady summer it takes moments like these to adjust, to get used to low temperatures. The cold snap will not last but the town is an apparition like this; a trick of the light, beautiful, shivering and empty.

  The Dealer drives over bridges, past the man-made canals, over the inky black water shimmering with light. Pockets of darkness punctuated with neon. The car hums. The tourist strips have wound down and the lack of other cars on the streets and bodies on the footpaths gives him time to think.

  He touches the ticket in his breast pocket again, for the fifth time, but he does not read it. He will wait until he is home safe, somewhere he is sure there is no eye in the sky. He thinks about her and if she is at the window looking at the sleepy city thinking about him. He is driving away to the north, driving back home, and every second every kilometre, is undoing his resolve. He is going backwards along that quiet road, going backwards to a time when he laid the bets instead of collected. When he lost more than she could ever make. His index finger starts to twitch on the steering wheel, kicked in by the memory. The Dealer still knows how to play. He still wants to. He will help this woman even though every instinct tells him not to. He will help this woman, standing in the anonymous room, in the Casino, in the artificial light, because he is what he is: a dealer with a past, a man programmed with farce. His city has won.

  THE DEALER

  I forget to close my door when I come in and it slams shut behind me, pulled sharply back by the force of the wind. The sudden crack of noise makes me jump. I remember what it feels like to watch my back. I turn around and bolt the lock.

  I dump my stuff on the two-person table inside, already littered with trails. I take the ticket out of my jacket and clear a space. I do not open it. I move around my flat looking for distractions, make a cup of coffee, peel myself out of my uniform, pick things up, move them, put them down. Finally I settle on the couch, flicking erratically through cable channels but I’m not really interested in anything on TV; I’m interested in where that ticket is going to take me. The white and blue band distracting my vision. I move towards it, touch it; finger it as if it were Braille. The apartment fills with the rich smell of coffee. The minutes shift deliciously slow. The suspense is killing me. Always has done.

  I decide to take a shower.

  My bathroom window looks out over the resort building next door, peach-coloured, low-level, quiet, the rim of identical rooms dark. I can hear the sprinklers the managers run late at night, even in this drought, and the indulgent spray they throw over the glossy tropical garden blooms in measured sections. Directly below me the sick plants fringing my building lean towards the fence, desperate for moisture. Like everything designed for locals they must survive without exemption. For the tourists and the opulent grounds that house them, the fresh water flows unchecked.

  Under the water I look at the dark tones of my skin, another product of my city. Being a croupier gives me late mornings, even in winter, full of sun. Mornings where the simple pleasure of lying my head at eye level with billions of grains of sand is meditative, of how the ocean and the shiny gravel it makes has saved me. I think about Jade’s skin and wonder where she’s been hiding to make it so pale and I wonder if she may have been locked up in juvenile or in jail.

  I turn off the water.

  Wrapping a towel around my waist, I go straight to the ticket, steam coming off my hot skin. I slip the ticket from its sleeve slightly afraid, aware suddenly of how much its knowledge might affect me. I can smell the money, the fresh notes Jade had pressed up against it all the way from Armidale. Armidale. Six hours south. A cold, conservative inland town. Single ticket. One way. No concession. Tracing Jade.

  STATE OF PLAY

  Jade takes the elevator to meet the Casino’s night face, to drink in the acceleration of noise and light. All the slower punters have shuffled away. The foyer is full of young people, drunk from other precincts that have shut down or kicked them out, and they circle the floor of the Casino to ward off the end of the night. The tables are busier and faster. The bars are full. The music is louder, the lights flashing on a higher BPM. The floors in front of the ATMs are littered with white receipts like oversized confetti, the mood edgy and desperate.

  Addicts who still have jobs crawl out into the night, stay later than they should, for one more spin, one more round, and Jade likes the buzz, the sense of hyperactive danger – she likes to play when she can barely hear herself think. She doesn’t talk to anyone, just signals the dealers and watches, ignoring the smiles, the nods of approval that cannot conceal the jealousy of a fellow player’s eye. She stacks her tokens into tall towers and knows when to walk away.

  In Jade’s room the artificial air she breathes raises her body temperature so she sleeps without sheets. The electric lights rising and falling over the Casino flood her windows with kaleidoscopic swirls, twisting through the open space she leaves between the curtains. She cannot bring herself to close them. Every few seconds the neon rolls in, crawling over her. She takes the full force of the light travelling up the building, rippling into rooms, keeping punters awake. Jade doesn’t mind being woken up when she can go down any time and play. She lies naked in the neon light, absorbing its flickering pulse, imagining the blue and yellow tinge on her white skin is sinking in, somewhere deep inside and altering her.

  In the morning her room is so bright, she imagines for a moment she is at the end of the world, that the burning sun she can see all around her but not quite feel is atomic. The room glowing orange but still cool. She lets the buffered rays hit her, gazing into the white-heat sky.

  Jade likes the duplicity of rooms in the Casino, the presence of attendants, their anonymous murmurings in hallways, the mess of her life catered for by strangers. She engages in nothing domestic, nothing but play and thought. She begins to float. Her only concern is victory.

  Outside her window cranes swing past delivering cement, miniskips and tools to workers renovating the giant atrium hovering below; nothing remains the same for long. The Casino is always updating, always changing, and yet inside it still feels like a tomb. Somewhere to be hidden and forgotten, revelling in claustrophobia.

  Downstairs in the lobby bar she drinks mineral water and watches. In the early morning the Casino is a sea of grey. Coach loads of white-haired players congealing in the bars for morning tea. Their eyes cast skywards to the light of Keno screens. Hobbling with walking frames, in American tracksuits or smart two-piece numbers and sensible shoes, clipping along the expansive stretches of shiny tiled floors. The easy-listening sounds of a cabaret singer with a palm-tree voice rise from the bar into open space. The crisp click of glass, teacups and non-alcoholic mocktails – the Casino in the morning.

  Jade takes lunch in the bathing pavilion, a sprawling Romanesque landscape of tri-level pools, spas and water features. The trickle of water and time. In the middle of the day the winter sun is warm enough to lie in and tourists from colder places burn and play. Jade likes the homogeneous comfort of identical sun beds and crisp white towels. When the wind gets cooler on her skin, she retreats into the Casino, waging games randomly. Jade likes wandering in the Casino, all of its edges curved. There seems to be a lack of walls and everything leans towards something else. Every surface is oblique, every line bent and tilted. The bars and restaurants appear to undulate out into open levels held up by round columns and vast bowed sheets of beech wood or frosted glass. Only their back walls are solid. In the Casino there are no straight lines, no clocks, no windows and no natural light. The hours drift.

  Jade’s head begins to fill with a consistent hum and it is not the rattle of cutlery, glass, tokens and coins landing in sudden bursts or the bottles gathered, glasses being cleaned, the sounds of fragile things, the squeaking of machines. It is not the voices lifting, laughing and cussing in a wave of peripheral noise distinctive and gradual and all around her; it is the old voices she has carried with her
that make her head rapidly ache, the steel memories pressing between her ears, behind her eyes. She tucks her shaking hand protectively in her shift, fights the same shuddering in her lips. Jade knows she has to shut down, to retreat quickly.

  Only her room is as quiet as she needs. Glass encased.

  Jade lies quietly on the perfectly stretched sheets of her king-sized bed, her body curved to the window. She stares into a vacant patch of sky and waits for change, until she can see that faint whip of blue, caught on the glass, until the city is glittering in the early evening and her breath finally slows. She moves towards the sealed pane, resting her hands against its flat thickness. She feels like pushing, like falling through the sky as she has so many times but instead she smiles, buoyed by the promise of a night with the Dealer. Across the road Broadbeach hums with families on holiday and the onslaught of hundreds of rainbow lorikeets flying in at dusk. Tiny birds darting out of the sunset full of cacophonous song. Jade can’t hear them, only watch them swarm. Tiny flashes of green and red. The rapid movements of their silhouettes splashed against an evening sky. The birds go to a small forest of pine trees fringing a vacant lot, a rare unbuilt space hostage to a travelling carnival that never moves and Jade can feel a different kind of adrenaline moving through her, pulsating, focused. Pushing against the glass she steps back from the edge.

  THE DEALER

  Eight pm at Gino’s and Jade is already at the table. She seems calmer than yesterday and the smile she gives me is smug. She knows I’m in. I feel the rush of uncertainty, the idea that something bad is going to happen, that there will be consequences. I know Jade will attempt to guess my next move but I am ahead of her. She is in a daze, in the afterglow of escape, the retreat from whatever she is running from. Her indifference will work to my advantage. She does not expect I’m accustomed to challenge. She feels the space I’m from precipitates some kind of lethargy, a lazy mind, and she thinks this is what makes me a prime target. Like everyone else Jade has forgotten that I live inside the promise of paradise. I sell it but I don’t believe in it. I pretend so they don’t see me coming. I’ve never found it hard to keep a straight face.

  I take a seat. We exchange hellos.

  We don’t talk at first. Jade seems to like the sidewalk atmosphere, all the people she doesn’t know. I don’t know them either, but I’m used to the parade. I picked Gino’s because it’s the least pretentious of the restaurants round here and I know when we want to get down to it we’ll be able to. The noise of Italians on keyboards, fireworks on the beach and the busy street will protect us.

  I notice we’ve both made an effort for each other. She looks beautiful in red, the strange equine features of her face made up strong. I wait until after the meal, until the coffee comes, to ask her: So you never told me where you’re from?

  Jade takes three sugars and dumps them in her coffee.

  Sydney, she says.

  The first lie and she doesn’t even flinch.

  Did something go down?

  What makes you say that?

  She stirs the sugar in slowly, staring at the cup.

  I don’t know. Your reaction last night when I asked you.

  Oh that.

  Jade looks away from me as if she doesn’t want to acknowledge what happened.

  No surprise, most people who come here are running from something.

  They don’t look too fazed if they are.

  I laugh and she gives me a wayward look.

  Not being fazed is what I was hoping for.

  What’s the plan?

  Telemarketing.

  I’m taken aback. Trying to hide it by sipping my coffee; the long glass shielding my face. Not what I expected and not as big-time as I’d had in mind. The waiter comes over with the bill. I wait until he leaves.

  You wanna get into that?

  No. I wanna get into someone else’s.

  I don’t like the way she’s imitating my speech but I know what she means and I tell her I like it.

  Good, ’cause I’m going to need your help.

  I’m listening.

  I’ll come at it from the inside. Get their trust; move in on someone in particular.

  Whatever it takes?

  She nods.

  To do that I’ll need a voice, a body, someone on the outside, someone who can move for me when I can’t. When I’m there, you know?

  Yes.

  And it’s going to take a lot. You have to be on call, be fluid with me, there when I need you … There’ll be other things too, sidebars, because I need to build it up.

  What?

  The cash flow.

  Any particular reason?

  You don’t need to know that yet. I haven’t decided whether I want someone in on it. But for the rest, the cut is fifty–fifty.

  Sounds reasonable but if I want out, I’m out. No questions.

  Okay. No questions.

  I pay the bill.

  STATE OF PLAY

  The first thing the Dealer and Jade do is get her a series of dodgy credit cards. A new identity only takes a scanner, some design skills and someone else’s mail. Don’t put anything, he tells her, in your own name. Jade knows all this but the charade is part of the game: the Dealer must be the teacher. They must do and talk and devise these things together so the days are filled with excuses to meet and sound each other out. And the city makes such play easier. Everyone’s a stranger. Everyone’s from somewhere else. No one gives a shit.

  He tells her that she should live in Surfers Paradise, that she shouldn’t live near him. Not because he doesn’t want her to but because that’s what new people do. Live in the famous place because they don’t know any better. And she shouldn’t live too big, he says, because that will cause suspicion.

  In the back streets of Surfers, on the riverside, they find her a large but nondescript place near Budds Beach. Not a tower but a three-storey walk-up, a place not dodgy enough to ruin her story but not flash enough to scare anyone away.

  You should get a flatmate, he tells her. It’s normal.

  They like how the days pan out. In the mornings the Dealer goes to the surf alone. Jade doesn’t like the beach. She’s only five minutes away but all that water untapped scares her, the loss of control, and she still thinks walking around a neighbourhood is enough to get you known. She sleeps instead. When the Dealer is in the water he doesn’t think about her, or the chances or what he’s doing; he doesn’t think about much. He bodysurfs and lies in the sun, letting himself melt. He has always left the world like this, on the soothing atmosphere of sea spray, but on the drive over to her apartment the idea of her starts rushing in, starts making him want to play. And not even the ocean can separate the Dealer from Jade, from the pull of her secretive game.

  They drive low to the ground, in the kind of car that always feels good on these clean, long streets, a white low-line Celica gliding through the city from banks, to real-estate agents, to post offices, building her identity, always talking; in the car, in lines, walking back and forth – they speak the same language, an understanding based not just on the words but on the codes.

  They have lunch from two o’clock on various alfresco tables in the winter sun, weighing things up, teasing things through. And then the Dealer goes to work.

  Jade doesn’t like when he goes; everything seems too slow. She desperately misses the distraction of the Casino. Sometimes she goes with him because she can’t stand to be alone and sometimes she has no other choice, working hard to still the noise, to hide her real face, to avoid the machine-gun panic in her chest. He tells her she should get out but Jade doesn’t know the city well enough. She hasn’t found her bearings, her equilibrium or her first sting. The rooms in her bare apartment are perfectly cool so she stays there alone, working on the things he tells her to, the things she wants and the things she has to erase. In this city there is plenty of time to dream.

  THE DEALER

  Jade and I have developed a routine. I meet her after work, just after
midnight, and we go to the places where the odds of winning are better, illegal dens and hothouses where I know the crew and they know me. Sometimes they’re surprised to see me, mostly they’re not. That’s the good thing about an invisible world: no one inside judges you. They forgive you because they need you to return. I like gambling with Jade; she makes it feel good again.

  When we’ve won enough or look like losing too much I drop her home. We’re always moving around the city, in its peak times, the downtimes, it doesn’t matter. What matters is Jade is getting to know the place and I’m getting to like having her around. Late at night when we’re driving she looks out the passenger window most of the time, spellbound, gazing at the lights and the towers and the sea. And I know the view excites her because it’s beautiful, this city; whether it’s in the light or the dark it’s been made to be looked at.

  When we pull up at her apartment and talk about the next day over the low rumble of the engine I sometimes find myself wondering if she’ll ever ask me in. But I know that’s not my role. Every day I get further away from the chance of that proximity. She won’t sleep with me because she needs to trust me.

  STATE OF PLAY

  They look good together, the Dealer and Jade. Both tall, one pale, one dark. One young, one roughed out. They like how they look. How they leave questions and strange impressions behind them, but the Dealer should know better. The Dealer should know in this city, nothing, not even the good stuff can hold out for long, a place always turning, over time, over them, over itself and they are on the surface that always slips. Routine is just an illusion, routine can happen, it can happen for weeks but eventually something will give, something will crack, something will disappear.