‘We had a great time,’ Harriet said. Then she turned to Nathan. ‘Didn’t we?’
But Nathan was already moving past her with the box of groceries. There was a ritual to the unpacking of the groceries. Dad always supervised, making certain things were put where they belonged. ‘You know where the tomatoes go?’ he’d say. ‘Third shelf down.’ Everybody knew where the tomatoes went, but Dad was simply expressing his pleasure at the presence of these new tomatoes, at their place in the order of things, at his own tight world. This time, though, Nathan left the groceries on the kitchen table and climbed the stairs to his room. He heard Dad and Harriet discussing him below.
‘What’s wrong with Nathan?’ Dad said.
‘Oh, you know,’ Harriet said. ‘Fifteen, sixteen. It’s a difficult time for a boy.’
A shoe bounced off his shoulder, and he looked up. Finn stood ten yards away, poised to throw the other one.
‘Lighten up, Nates,’ Finn said. ‘Lighten up or we’ll fucking tie you to a chair and paint you.’
Nathan looked round the room. Finn, Larry, Ade. They were all grinning and shifting from one leg to another. They were always so loose in their heads. If he’d been granted a wish right then, that’s what he would’ve asked for.
It turned into one of those nights. They all tumbled out of the clubhouse at the same time. Finn had someone’s black convertible. They drove through a sunset sky to the Vista Room on High Head. Finn knew the girl who worked behind the bar. They drank cold beer and played pool. Out in the parking-lot they smoked a joint that tied the two halves of Nathan’s brain together like shoelaces. He tripped and fell into the back of the car. They drove back downtown. Hard lights brushed across his face. They were talking about Tip. Words like loser. Words like sick. Laughter and he opened his eyes. He’d wanted to say something and couldn’t remember what. They were crossing the bridge now. Warm air. Arcs of metal dark against the brown sky. That harbour smell of concrete, vodka, seaweed.
Seaweed, concrete. Blenheim Point at midnight.
Sometimes he just had to get out of the house, and Blenheim Point was where he went. It was a floating jetty where you caught the ferry to the city. But at midnight the last ferry would’ve been and gone. There was never anybody there. He sat on one of the plastic beer crates that the fishermen had left behind and stared into the darkness of the harbour with its lights all prickling gold. Waves came from nowhere suddenly, and rocked the jetty: the tide on the turn. That place. It was his respite, his breathing-space.
And then, one night, a fat man in a dinner jacket and a black bow tie had lurched towards him out of the darkness, his appearance so unheralded, so unlikely, somehow, that Nathan almost laughed. It was like a magician’s trick, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to find a top hat in the vicinity. He watched the man bounce softly off a pillar; the man’s belly, barely restrained by a velvet cummerbund, seemed about to spill. It would have to’ve been a very large top hat.
‘How much?’ The man belched rather than spoke, his words reaching Nathan in a blast of alcohol.
‘How much what?’
‘How much for,’ and the man’s head swerved on his neck, ‘you know.’
‘No, I don’t know.’
The man leaned one hand on the pillar and swayed like a building in high wind. ‘Come on, sonny,’ he whispered, and he leaned down, leering, so Nathan could see the copper hairs bristling in his nostrils and the pale bumps on his left cheek, ‘don’t play games with me.’
Nathan tried to duck under the man’s arm, but the man chuckled and took hold of his shoulder carelessly and twirled him closer. Nathan pushed a hand into the man’s face. He felt the wetness of the man’s mouth, the sharpness of the man’s teeth. He pulled his hand back. Suddenly he noticed that the man was only six feet from the edge of the jetty, and he pushed the man again, in the belly this time, as hard as he could. The man staggered backwards, snatched one-handed at the air, as if the air was solid and might save him, and crashed on to his back. One roll sideways and he was in the harbour. It looked so casual, like an afterthought.
Nathan waited to make sure the man wasn’t going to drown. Then he bent close to the man’s face, but not too close, and said, ‘You’d better watch it, there’s sharks in there,’ and then he turned and ran up the steps to his bicycle and rode home. He hadn’t been back to the jetty since.
That fat man, he was like a flash from the past. A hallucination, courtesy of the Womb Boys. Guil-ty, Guil-ty. He could see Harriet smirking, all her suspicions confirmed. It seemed that no matter where he went he encountered the same innuendoes, the same violations. He felt hounded, quarried, cornered. There was nowhere left to go, and it was beginning to exhaust him.
‘It was only a joke, Nates,’ he murmured. ‘Only a joke.’
‘Now he’s talking to himself,’ someone said, and someone else laughed.
But it wasn’t a joke, whichever way you looked at it.
They hit the Oasis on C Street. They drank shots. Tequila, vodka, tequila. They met two guys who ran the ice-cream van on the pier. Their names drifted into focus and then out again. Larry and Ade evaporated with two blondes from a basement club called Six Feet Under. Finn was still around, still driving. Nathan took the front seat. A girl was sitting next to him, her eyelids two half-moons. She smelt like cucumber. So fresh and pale-green, so clean. He wondered what to say to her. Bottles knocked against his feet, as if shifting in the currents on the ocean bed. Every time Finn opened his mouth, smoke came out.
Her name, magically, was Lilah.
Have you done it yet?
‘Next stop the 22 Club,’ Finn screamed into the wind. More lights, Lilah’s eyes closed, his thigh against hers. It felt like the only part of him that was alive, that burning piece of skin, the rest of him was cold and nowhere. The 22 Club was a golden doorway framing a flight of stairs that was carpeted in red. Two men stood on either side of the door like pillars, one white, one black, both exactly the same height. Finn knew the black one. They were in free.
He was dancing. Two Oriental girls did delicate things with their feet. Their faces were blank. Like plates. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the place. A hand appeared on his shoulder. Ade. He was back. ‘Lilah says she likes you.’
He sat down. It was later, but not much. Their table was see-through, surfboard-shaped, its surface littered with ashtrays and drinks.
It’s a difficult time for a boy.
He reached out with his right arm and swept the table clean. Bottles and glasses shattered. There were screams. Through the crowd he saw the Oriental girls place their hands over their mouths like fans. Then he was seized by two men, one black, one white.
They dragged him across the Club, down the red stairs and out through the gold doors. They threw him into the gutter. He hit the base of a streetlight with his face and felt his lip split.
‘Don’t you ever fucking come back here again,’ the white man said, ‘all right?’
‘Don’t worry, he won’t.’ It was Ade. He must’ve followed them down. ‘This whole place stinks of shit.’
The white man turned. ‘And you,’ he said, levelling a finger. ‘I see your face again, I crush it in the ground.’
Nathan laughed.
Finn walked over. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘I never saw anything like that before,’ Ade said.
‘I saw it in the movies once,’ Larry said.
‘Where’s Lilah?’ Nathan asked.
Nobody knew.
Lilah could’ve saved him, but not any more.
It was time to go home, somebody said.
Colours everywhere. But there was only one colour he could see, and that was red.
Know Your Enemy
Jed stood outside the Central Theatre just east of downtown with a can of ice-cold soda. He was on his lunch-hour from the sound studio. He wore a black singlet, boots, fatigues. His baseball cap said AL’S BLANK TAPES. He took a long pull on the soda and sighed as it slid down.
Years ago he used to come here with the Womb Boys. ‘Let’s go down the Central, let’s go look at the dead people.’ Vasco always went on about how important it was. He called it Know Your Enemy. His eyes would flick across the corpses, across the theatre the corpses were in, out to the street the theatre was on, and he’d say, ‘This is what we’re up against,’ and he’d swing his arm so hard he almost dislocated it, ‘all this.’
The Central had pale-blue columns on either side of the entrance and big gilt doors. A white neon strip, like that above a cinema, announced the current attractions. Sometimes it was a famous person. A sports personality, say. Or a movie star. Other times it was an ordinary citizen whose family had paid for the honour. Once he’d imagined that his mother might be displayed here, smothered in make-up and bits of radios. Today it said simply IDENTIFY THE MYSTERY CORPSE. $100 REWARD. Jed peered through the toughened glass. It was a tiny, shrunken old woman. The hill her feet made in the sheet that covered her came only halfway down the coffin. Pathetic, really. Unknown corpses were put on display by the parlours in the hope that someone would recognise them and pay for the funeral. The parlours made a lot of money that way. If a corpse remained unidentified, companies often took pity and stepped in, paying for the funeral themselves. They could call it charity, and charity was tax-deductible. What seemed concerned and altruistic on the surface was in fact exploitative and shabby underneath. This is what we’re up against.
Jed tossed his empty can of soda in the bin. What Vasco had been up against, at any rate. After all, it had been Vasco’s private war. To the other members of the gang, it had been a flirtation with danger, an excuse for violence; it had given them a cause, the semblance of a purpose. Where were they now? Cramps Crenshaw worked in hotel management. PS had joined a record company. Tip had recovered from his overdose and, the last Jed heard, he’d been taken on as an attendant in the aquarium. The Womb Boys had been aborted long ago. The Womb Boys were dead. Long live Moon Beach.
‘Well, well. Ugly as ever.’
The man who’d spoken to Jed had broad shoulders and black, wavy hair. He wore a lightweight camel coat. The face seemed different. Wider. Heavier. The guitar had become a double bass.
The man gestured at the mystery corpse. ‘Thought it was going to be me, did you?’
Jed smiled. ‘How many tattoos’ve you got now, Vasco?’
Vasco unfastened his cuff link and pushed the cuff back up his wrist. Jed saw the base of a gravestone just where a watch would normally be.
‘All the way up?’
Vasco nodded. ‘Both arms.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Jed asked.
‘I’m in the business.’
‘That’s a bit of a turnaround.’
‘Yeah, well. Went to so many funerals, thought I might as well start getting paid for it.’
Jed just stared at him.
Vasco slapped Jed on the shoulder. ‘Joke.’
‘Ha ha.’ But something was making Jed uncomfortable. ‘So you’re in the business,’ he said.
‘Everybody who’s anybody. What about you?’
Jed shrugged. ‘This and that. Bit of work in a sound studio.’
‘Still recording people fucking or’ve you moved on?’ Vasco laughed for both of them. ‘Listen, you want a real job?’
‘What’ve you got in mind?’
Vasco pointed at the long black car idling by the curb. ‘There’s a body in there. Right now it’s nice and cold, but if I don’t get it back to the parlour, it’s going to start getting warm again. You like to come along? We can talk.’
‘Sure.’
Vasco climbed in. Jed followed. There was enough space for half a dozen people in that car. There was a bar. There was air-conditioning. A whisper up your spine. Give me a job this cold. Give me a job with air-conditioning.
He looked round. There was a man sitting in the corner. The man had a shaved head and the long, pale fingers of a surgeon. He wore mirror shades.
‘This is McGowan,’ Vasco said. ‘A colleague.’
McGowan tipped his head back an inch and bared a set of sharp, uneven teeth.
As they drove through midtown, Vasco described the set-up. He worked for one of the directors of the Paradise Corporation which, as Jed probably knew, was the most prestigious funeral parlour in the city. The director’s name was Neville Creed. ‘You may’ve heard of him.’
Jed hadn’t.
‘He’s chief administrator,’ Vasco said. ‘His field’s co-ordination. Efficiency. The way things run.’ He stared out of the window, shook his head. ‘He’s rising so fast, sometimes it seems like there’s no oxygen. He’s going to be the first man to live for ever.’
Jed remembered the word spelled out in silver studs on Vasco’s back: IMMORTAL. ‘I thought it was you who was going to live for ever.’
But Vasco didn’t seem to have heard. ‘He’s going to freeze himself,’ he said. ‘While he’s still alive. It’s the only way, apparently.’
‘You mean, if you want to live for ever, you’ve got to kill yourself first?’
‘You could put it like that.’
‘How will he know when to do it?’
Vasco smiled. ‘He’ll know.’
Jed looked over his shoulder at the rectangular box in the back. ‘Shame he didn’t think of that.’
‘He didn’t have time. It all happened a bit too fast –’
‘Vasco.’ It was McGowan. A warning.
Vasco studied the rings on his left hand. ‘Keep your hair on, McGowan.’ Then he glanced at the man in the corner. ‘Oh sorry. You haven’t got any.’ Vasco turned to Jed. ‘McGowan’s so tough he never uses more than two words –’
‘Shut up, Gorelli.’
‘Well, sometimes,’ Vasco said, ‘on very special occasions, he uses three.’
A hiss from the corner of the car. The sound of brakes being applied to fury.
Then silence.
Efficiency, Jed thought.
He had questions, but he decided to store them for the time being. Your memory’s tape. Record now, play back later.
He stared out of the window. Mangrove West merging with the gritty downtown streets. Pawn shops, sex bars, drugstores. Windows glittering with guns and watches. Cops dressed as dealers. Drunks hardly dressed at all. Kids.
Suddenly he realised what had been making him uncomfortable. He shifted on his seat. ‘Vasco,’ he said, ‘about your brother –’
Vasco cut him off. ‘That’s all right. I know about that.’
‘You know?’
‘She didn’t let you see him. I know that. I checked it out.’ His eyes were soft, a strange contrast with the hand that gripped Jed’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, anyway.’
Another silence. The car floated across a canal bridge. Its engine sounded like air.
‘Can you drive?’ Vasco asked Jed finally.
Jed said he could.
‘Creed’s looking for a chauffeur. I think I could get him to see you. You be interested in that?’
‘I’d be interested.’
‘You’d be on the outside,’ Vasco said, ‘but who knows? Maybe you could work your way in. It’d be that kind of job.’
A glimmer from McGowan, a fractional tilt of the head. It was one of those looks. Over my dead body.
‘I’ll take it,’ Jed said.
‘You didn’t ask about money,’ Vasco said.
Jed fingered the sleeve of Vasco’s coat. ‘You look as if you’re doing all right.’
A grin split Vasco’s mouth open like water melon. ‘Fucking old Jed,’ he said. ‘Who would’ve thought it?’
Vasco talked some more about Creed. The facts, the rumours. The future. He gave Jed some advice on how to interview. Then they drew up outside a tall building of black glass. The Paradise Corporation. Vasco said they’d have to drop him here. He told Jed to expect a call. Sometime in the next two days.
‘Someone’ll be in touch.’ Vasco shook Jed’s hand through the window and the car moved down
a ramp and into the darkness of an underground parking-lot.
From the little he’d heard about Creed and the little he’d seen of Vasco, Jed imagined that the interview would take place on the top floor of some high-rise office block downtown. Instead he was given the address of a funeral parlour in Mortlake, a suburb on the bleak northern edge of the city. When he first saw the place he felt conned. From the street it looked like a fast-food restaurant. White stucco walls, bright red-tile roof. All it needed was a giant Paradise Corporation logo on the sidewalk and a sign underneath that said 63 BILLION BURIED.
He pushed through double doors of glass and into a beige lobby. A rhinestone chandelier chinked and chattered in the draught. Red letters zipped tirelessly across a digital read-out screen above reception: SMOKING IN THE LOBBY AND CAFETERIA ONLY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION. Jed scowled. He didn’t like being thanked for something before he’d even done it.
His appointment was for nine. It was only quarter to. A girl with ginger hair and a small mouth asked him for his name.
‘Take a seat, Mr Morgan.’
There were sofas of brown vinyl, arranged at right-angles to each other. Tall cylindrical ashtrays made of stainless steel stood in between. The place looked like an airport lounge. He counted the sofas. Fourteen. He counted the ashtrays. Twelve. They must do a lot of business, he thought. And the business they do must smoke a lot.
After ten minutes the girl directed him to Mr Creed’s office. ‘Down the corridor, last door on the right.’ It was a plain wood door. All he could think of was the word ‘efficiency’. Otherwise he was blank. He looked at his watch. One minute to nine. He waited. Thirty seconds to nine. Twenty seconds. Ten. He tightened his hand into a fist, knocked twice and walked in.
It was a small office. Wood-panelled ceiling, wood-panelled walls. There were no windows. One desk, one framed photograph of head office. One chair, which he sat in while Creed finished his call.
Creed.
The Five Gates of Hell Page 11