He never really expected to hear back from either of them. He didn’t know why he’d written, except maybe to let people know that he was alive. If you could call working in the kitchens of a Chinese restaurant being alive.
The Wang Garden was like no Chinese restaurant he had ever seen. From the outside it looked like a bank (and with good reason, if Wayne was to be believed: ‘That guy,’ Wayne said, ‘he’s raking it in’). It had a façade of brand-new brick, a solid wooden door, and no windows. But walking inside was like walking into some hijacked piece of a South Sea island. Fake sunbeams played on tables of polished black wood. Guitars crooned softly against a rustling of surf. The real highlight, though, was the grotto, which took up most of one wall. If you looked past the rock pools and the exotic plants, past the miniature waterfall, you could see blue sky, a stand of coconut palms, and even, in the distance, a lagoon. Through hidden speakers came the rhythmic itch of cicadas. And, every twenty minutes or so, a storm broke: thunder rumbled, lightning flickered, and tropical rain came crashing down from the showerheads fitted in the ceiling. The man responsible for all this, the ‘guy’ who was ‘raking it in’, was Mr Zervos. Zervos had a huge dense beard that might have been a cutting from the grotto’s undergrowth. He stamped through the restaurant beating the pineapple air with his short muscular arms. Zervos was the only Greek in town. Everybody called him Adam’s Greek.
The Wang Garden was the only restaurant in that part of the country, unless you counted the Paragon Café, which served pizza and eggs and didn’t seem to know the meaning of its name. At weekends people came from up to fifty miles around. On busy nights like these Zervos paid Jed an extra $1.25 an hour to pack take-outs. He made it sound like a fortune, this extra $1.25, it was only because he liked Jed so much, he didn’t know what had come over him, maybe he had a fever, an extra $1.25, it was madness. And Jed would be smiling, not at Zervos and his torrent of language, but at the memory of the $10,000, the eight thousand $1.25s, that he had thrown in Creed’s face.
He spent most of his time in the kitchens, among blue neon flytraps and steaming silver vats. There was no door between the kitchens and the alley at the back, only a curtain of brown and yellow beads that clicked when there was a breeze, which was just about never because it was summer and the only time the air moved was when Zervos waved his short arms or a truck went past outside. It was one of the busy nights, a Friday, most likely, and he was just spooning some number 42 into a white take-out carton when a voice from behind him whispered, ‘Give me a bit of chicken, mister. I’m going to die of hunger otherwise.’
He looked up and caught his first glimpse of Celia through the beads. He saw some tangled blonde hair, he saw the white light of the kitchen catch on the rough edge of a broken tooth.
‘Go on, one of those little boxes, that’ll do.’
The curtain parted, clicking, and now he saw her hair all coarse and fraying like rope coming undone and her breasts pushing against an old green cardigan, and he knew who she was. He’d heard men in the bar talking about her. Men with nothing in their heads always filled them up with bits of women’s bodies.
‘You can’t come in here,’ he hissed.
She flinched, stepped back. The bead curtain closed behind her, closed over her like water. It was so sudden, so complete, that it unnerved him. He went to the curtain and peered out. She’d flattened herself against the outside wall like someone in a spy movie. She was facing away from him, down the alley.
‘Why don’t you go home to eat like everyone else?’ he said.
She kept her face turned away. ‘It’s my mum and dad. They locked me out while they throw stuff at each other. And I can’t buy anything because I haven’t got any money.’ Now she looked at him. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
He stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Your eyes, they’re pinned wide open.’ She grinned. ‘You look like an astronaut. You look like you just landed back on earth or something and it’s a real shock.’
He said nothing.
‘Where did you come from anyway?’ ‘From the coast.’
‘I know who you are. You’re the strange one who turned up in a top hat. I heard you shouting at it. In the cemetery.’
He handed her the carton of chicken. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks.’ When she smiled her two front teeth stuck out. One of them was chipped. She caught him looking. ‘My brother hit me with a stone.’
‘I’d better go back in,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I’ll see you around.’
When he turned back into the kitchen, Zervos was scowling at him. ‘Where’s the take-out?’
‘Problem with the chicken.’
‘Problem with the chicken? What problem?’
‘It was bad, Zervos. Bad chicken. I had to throw it out.’
‘You throw out my chicken?’
‘It was bad, Zervos. You can’t give people bad chicken. People die of bad chicken.’
‘My chicken, my chicken.’ Zervos was dancing on the tiled floor and beating at the air.
‘Chicken’s a weapon, Zervos. You can murder people with chicken.’
‘Just fix me some more, OK? Good chicken, bad chicken, any fucking chicken. Just chicken. And fix it real quick, OK? I don’t pay you extra one twenty-five to throw my chickens in the garbage. Jesus God. I could get someone they do that for nothing.’
Jed didn’t know it, but Celia was listening on the other side of the curtain, her laughter stifled by a mouthful of number 42. The next time she said, ‘Give me some chicken,’ she said it in the vacant lot behind the Commercial Hotel, and it was a different kind of chicken altogether.
That first time, he couldn’t be sure, it was after midnight, too dark to tell, her belly and her legs lay like patches of moonlight on the ground, he couldn’t be sure, but as he lifted away from her he thought he smelt that rich, metallic smell. It was like scrapyards, old boats, money. He had to check. He jumped to his feet and pulled his pants up over his knees.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed.
‘I’ll be right back.’
He scrambled across the lot to a lit window, the men’s room at the back of the hotel. In the yellow light that fell all bleary through the frosted glass the blood showed up brown. It excited him so much, he had to fuck her again. He didn’t tell her it was the blood, though. Not then.
After the second time she stared up at him, her eyes wide.
‘Now who’s the astronaut?’ he said.
‘You remember everything,’ she whispered.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said. ‘Most things I forget.’
‘What about me?’ she asked him. ‘Will you remember me?’
He didn’t say anything.
One frog croaked, and then another, and then they couldn’t hear each other speak. That was why she’d chosen the place. It was dark, and there were two kinds of frogs, one fast, pitched high, the other deep and slow. Nobody would hear them fucking with all those frogs croaking, that was the idea. Nobody would know.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘You done this before?’
She grinned up at him. ‘Maybe.’
The next month they drove up to Blood Rock. It was a place that Jed had found by chance during his first few weeks in Adam’s Creek. You drove east, up into the hills. About ten miles out of town there was a turning on the right. The track was two miles long and ended in a precipice. It was a vantage point, marked on the map. The Adam’s Creek power station sprawled in the dust-bowl valley below, its chimneys lit as green as Mars. Smoke poured upwards, pale-grey and blurred, like make-up smudged by tears. Away to the east lay the cooling-water lake, known by local people as the Blue Lagoon. To the west you could see a sprinkling of town lights and, further west, the hills where the coal came from. West of the hills was the highway, a finger dipped in the dust of the mines and run all the way across the land to the horizon.
He parked two hundred yards from the precipice and let her walk the rest. She r
eached the edge and stood still for a long time, only her skirt fluttering, and the ends of her hair. It was obvious she’d never been before. Later she told him that she was surprised he’d found the place, grateful that he’d taken her. It said something about what he felt for her. It said something that she knew he’d never put in words.
The sun set in front of her. It seemed too bright that evening, almost chemical. A sulphurous yellow, the blue of gas. He went and opened the trunk. Lifted a sheet out and sent it billowing through the air. Watched it drift down, settle on the ground. Dusk made the white cotton glow.
‘What’s that for?’ She stood ten yards away, her chin tucked into her shoulder.
He knelt down on the sheet. ‘I thought we could fuck on it.’
‘But it’s my time.’
He liked the way she said that. ‘I know it’s your time. That’s why I brought the sheet.’
‘Don’t you mind?’
‘Why should I mind?’
‘Some people think it’s disgusting.’
‘Whose blood is it?’
Her forehead puckered. One finger curled into her broken tooth. It was as if she really didn’t know the answer.
‘It’s your blood,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’
She was grinning now, and once she’d grinned, of course, she had to let him. She was too intrigued not to.
It wasn’t actually called Blood Rock, that was just their private name for it, because it was there that Jed made his confession. About what excited him most. He’d timed that first drive with such care. It occurred exactly four weeks after the frogs. He’d been counting the days.
The summer passed. Every month they drove up into the hills, their sheet folded neatly in the trunk, their lust, by contrast, scarcely containable. One evening in August – it was their fourth night in a row; her blood kept flowing that month – he turned to her and saw an expression on her face that he didn’t recognise. It was like wonder, and he couldn’t guess the root of it.
‘You know the weird thing?’ she said. ‘The weird thing is, you take my pain away.’
She told him how she used to dread her time. There’d be one night every month when somebody took a knife to the softest part of her. She’d twist and turn, she’d fold herself double, she’d cry out. Nothing helped, not even aspirins. It just had to be gone through. Since she’d met him, though, it didn’t happen any more. It was because he fucked her at the beginning of her blood, she said. It was like he loosened her inside. Her look of wonder deepened. It was like they were made for each other, she said, wasn’t it?
He was sitting on the edge of the sheet now. In the valley below the power station was lit up like a tangle of pearls, like some romantic gift.
‘I wish I could give you that,’ he said.
She saw where he was looking, and laughed and kissed his face.
Soon afterwards he left the Wang (though Zervos tried to tempt him to stay by offering him an extra, wait for it, thirty-five cents an hour!) and started working days at the ice-cream parlour on Main Street which belonged, coincidentally, to Celia’s uncle (or maybe not so coincidentally since, in a town like Adam’s Creek, population 2,200, most people ended up being related sooner or later). It was a move that sealed him in Mrs O’Neill’s affections: he now brought her free ice-cream as well as the traditional Rocky Road.
One morning in October he was wiping the counter down when he heard a motorbike approaching. He thought nothing of it at the time. Two of the power-station boys had bikes. They held races out by the railway tracks on Saturdays. But he looked up all the same and saw the bike pass by, the rider wearing an unfamiliar black helmet and black leathers, the motorbike low-slung, bulging, making a noise that made him think of someone beating cream in a bowl with a wooden spoon.
Five minutes later the door jangled and the man in the helmet and the leathers walked in. He looked at the card on the counter. It said WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF 45 FLAVOURS.
‘Give me all 45,’ he said. ‘Large cone.’
Jed smiled. Mitch took off his helmet. There were streaks of vanilla in his hair.
‘You’re getting old, Mitch,’ Jed said.
‘Is that a nice way to greet someone who’s ridden three thousand miles to see you?’
‘You wouldn’t ride three thousand miles to see anyone,’ Jed said. ‘That’s what I always liked about you.’ He vaulted over the counter and wrapped his arms round Mitch. They didn’t reach. He smelled the dust and oil of three thousand miles on Mitch’s jacket. He spoke into the smell. ‘It’s good to see you.’
Mitch sat down on one of the fancy white chairs with the scrolls on the back and the dainty feet. ‘I was doing a trip, coast to coast. Thought I’d call in.’
After work Jed took Mitch to the hotel for a drink. He introduced Mitch to Wayne and Linda. ‘He’s an old friend of mine,’ Jed said. ‘Haven’t seen him for years.’
‘I heard you come in,’ Wayne said. ‘Sounded like a jet plane’d landed on the street.’
Mitch nodded. ‘It’s not built to go that slow. Place to hear it is on the highway. Sounds real sweet out there. Sounds like sugar being poured in a dish.’
The door slammed open and Celia walked in. She was wearing her short fluttery pink skirt with the flowers on and her denim jacket and a pair of pink hightops.
‘Hey, missie,’ Wayne said. ‘Why don’t you bust right through the wall next time.’ He looked at Mitch and Jed, and shrugged.
Celia walked right over. She gave Jed a slow wink and then leaned back against the bar, the points of her elbows resting on the old brass rail. ‘Who’s this, Jed?’
‘This is Mitch,’ he told her. ‘He’s an old friend.’ He turned to Mitch. ‘This here’s Celia.’
Mitch’s chin dipped an inch and then lifted again. ‘Pleased to meet you, Celia. How would you like to come for a ride?’
Celia just looked at him, running her tongue back and forward through that chip in her teeth, then she looked at Jed. ‘You say he’s a friend of yours?’
‘Yes, he is.’
Celia looked at Mitch again. ‘What kind of bike’ve you got?’
Mitch smiled. ‘Harley.’
‘What the hell.’ She pushed away from the bar and linked her arm through Mitch’s. ‘Let’s see what it does.’
Jed played pool in the back with one of the power-station boys. He was just losing for the third time when Celia walked back in, Mitch behind her. She looked as if the wind had blown everything except sheer joy clean out of her head.
‘Oh Jed.’ She was still breathless and there was air in her words. ‘We went right out to the Blue Lagoon. We did a century on the power-station road.’ She put an arm round him and kissed his neck. The buttons on her denim jacket were cold. She smelt of speed, cool dust, high blood. She broke away from him again. ‘Can I get you a drink, Mitch?’
Mitch smiled. ‘Beer.’
‘You, Jed?’
‘The same.’
Mitch sat down at the small round table in the corner. Jed leaned his cue against the wall and joined him.
‘You better get a bike, Jed.’
‘Looks that way.’
‘So how long you been here now? Five years?’
‘Close enough.’
‘How much’ve you told them?’
‘Nothing.’
‘They don’t know anything about you?’
‘All they know is stuff I made up.’
Celia was returning with the beer, three glasses in between her hands, her tongue wedged in that chip in her teeth.
Mitch watched her. ‘Not even her?’
Celia put two of the beers on the table, then she stood back, knuckles of her right hand on her hip, and said she had to go and talk to someone.
Jed waited until she’d left and then he said, ‘Not even her.’ He swallowed some beer. ‘You seen Sharon?’
‘I seen her.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s fine. She married some guy.’
Mitch turned his beer can on the table, made a few new rings. Then he said, ‘I heard a story that might interest you.’
Jed lifted his head.
‘You remember Vasco?’
‘Of course,’ Jed said. Fear suddenly. It had come from nowhere, out of a long silence, like something fired from a gun.
‘I did a tattoo for him. One of those tombstones he always has, you know. Only this time it covered half his back.’
‘What was the name on it?’
‘Francis.’
Jed looked down into his drink. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Two days after I did the tattoo they found him on a street in Los Ilusiones. It was sometime after midnight. He was all curled up in the gutter, naked. No sign of his clothes. It was in the papers. They took him to that private clinic, the one in the hills. Far as I know, he’s still there.’
Jed sipped his beer. It tasted sharp and frothy. He could see Vasco on the street, fourteen years old, face like a guitar. It’s not my time.
‘Seems a parcel was delivered to his house on Christmas Eve. To be more specific, a box was delivered. Seems his brother’s head was inside it.’ Mitch glanced at Jed. ‘Kind of an interesting Christmas present.’
When Jed didn’t say anything, Mitch went on. ‘And here’s the really interesting part. Seems the box was delivered by none other than Mr Neville Creed. In person.’
Jed could see it. A ring on the doorbell and Maria’s tights hiss their way across the hall. A postman’s standing on the doorstep. ‘Special delivery, ma’am.’ Maria’s never seen this postman before, but it’s not so strange, they always take new people on at Christmas. She signs for the parcel. ‘Happy Christmas, ma’am,’ the postman says and, as he steps back into the darkness, she notices he’s wearing gloves. If anything’s strange, that is. Because it isn’t cold. Not cold at all.
Jed shivered. He was imagining what happened next. Christmas morning. The tree’s all lit up. It’s the moment everyone’s been waiting for. It’s time to open the presents –
The Five Gates of Hell Page 23