The Five Gates of Hell

by Rupert Thomson

  He closed the french windows and turned back into the room. There was something he’d been meaning to do and he should do it now, while he was alone, with no excuses. He climbed the stairs and walked into the bedroom that had once been Dad’s and was now his. He took a key out of the bedside-table drawer and unlocked the closet. Inside were two rows of clothes. Old suits, mostly. Blazers, coats. Frayed at the cuffs and buttons gone. Epaulettes of dust. This part would be all right, he realised. If Dad had worn these clothes at all, he’d worn them before Nathan’s memory began; they preceded him and wouldn’t hurt. He emptied the closet of everything except the wire hangers and the sheets of Christmas paper. All he kept back were two suits and a jacket. The suits were for him. The jacket was for Georgia. He thought she might like it. It was brown.

  The airing cupboard next. Here were the familiar parts of Dad’s wardrobe. Here, for instance, was the blue cardigan. Nathan lifted it out and touched it to his nose. It smelt so clean and warm, of talcum and vanilla, of his father. This was the cardigan Dad used to wear in bed. This was the cardigan he’d worn when he drank beer on the bottom of the sea. His face buried in the blue wool, Nathan thought of the nights he’d rubbed Dad’s back for him, that peculiar blend of smells, skin and eucalyptus oil, he could hear Dad’s voice rising drowsy from the pillows: ‘A bit further down, a bit further, yes, that’s it, that’s perfect.’

  He looked at the clothes arranged in such neat piles in the cupboard, then he looked down at the clothes already packed into boxes at his feet, already creased and growing cold. He had to look away, through air that seemed warped. He folded the blue cardigan, put it back in the cupboard. He put the heels of his hands in his eyes and pressed. The rest of the clothes he sorted briskly, mechanically, as if they belonged to a stranger. He left no room for thoughts to start.

  When the airing cupboard was empty, he dragged the boxes to the top of the stairs. He looked out of the landing window. Brown-paper skies and big silver raindrops sliding down the telegraph wires. No view of the harbour or the city, no sense of the time of day.

  He reversed the car out of the garage and round to the front door, then he carried the boxes down the stairs and out to the porch, and loaded them into the trunk. At the gate he had to brake and wait for a car to pass. It was then that he noticed the man standing outside their house. The man was wearing a grey suit and holding a large black umbrella. Something told Nathan that the man had been standing there for quite a while. He couldn’t be sure, the rain was falling harder now, jumping back off the sidewalk, it was like looking through smoke, but he thought he recognised the man. In that same moment the man realised that Nathan had seen him. One of his shoulders twitched. He spun round and hurried away. It must be someone who’s heard about the death, Nathan thought. Another coffin chaser.

  In ten minutes he was parking outside the local charity store. A sign hung in the window: CLOSED. He took his hands off the wheel, leaned his head back against the seat. He hadn’t expected this. It was more than dismay that he felt now. It was some slow disintegration; he felt as if he was gradually being crushed in someone’s fist. He couldn’t face taking the clothes back home again. He’d have to leave them on the doorstep and hope they were still there in the morning. He hated doing it, but he could think of no alternative.

  He stacked the boxes against the door in two piles and ran back to the car. He sent swift glances left and right. Nobody had seen him. The rain was still coming down and the streets were empty.

  Back inside the car he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even turn the key in the ignition. He could picture the clothes inside the boxes: how they were slowly losing their warmth, how they were slowly growing cold. Somehow it was worse than seeing Dad in that chapel. It was worse than seeing him dead. He reached up, touched his face. It was wet. He couldn’t tell where the rain ended and his tears began.

  He didn’t know what to do next. A drink, maybe. Wasn’t that what people did? He drove south through Blenheim. The main street widened into highway; water jolted in the harbour, the masts of boats duelled against a low grey sky. When the arrow showed overhead, left lane for HARBOUR BRIDGE and DOWNTOWN, he thought of Georgia and took it. On the city side he dipped into the shadow of the bridge and stopped outside the first bar he saw. He walked to the back and found a phone. He dialled Georgia’s number, waited. The window next to the phone was open. Some gutter must’ve snapped and rain was splashing down into the dark yard. It sounded like a massage parlour. Hands on fat.

  Georgia wasn’t answering. He walked back through the bar. He wanted a drink, but not here. In the car he remembered the man on the promenade. What was his name? Reid. He looked at his watch. It was just after six. He could drive to Necropolis and have a drink. If Reid turned up, then he’d have someone to talk to. If Reid didn’t turn up, he could try Georgia again.

  Necropolis was a blood-and-sawdust bar on the waterfront. High ceiling, low lights. Tables the shape of tombstones. Famous names cut into the marble. Nathan ordered brandy, a large one. He sat on a stool and looked around. Always a real mix in here, everything from whores to millionaires, but no sign of Reid. In a way, he was glad. He’d wanted the advantage of arriving first. This time, perhaps, he could do some watching of his own. Those few seconds before someone sees you, they can give you leverage, they can let you into secrets.

  He was halfway through his third drink when the door opened and Reid walked in. There was a glimmer of gold as, pausing just inside the doorway, he placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. It would have been hard to mistake him for a priest again, and yet he had this presence, he shone around the edges, it was as if he’d been standing at God’s right hand on high and some of that power and glory had rubbed off. When he walked towards the bar he seemed to occupy the air above his head, you might almost have said that he owned it. He passed close to Nathan, brushing Nathan’s left thigh with the tail of his jacket. He ordered bourbon on the rocks. Then, on second thoughts, a double bourbon, no ice. He skimmed a hand across his short black hair. He was still wearing those gloves of his. Nathan felt a slow fizzing begin inside him, as if he’d swallowed sherbet: an effervescence.

  ‘I didn’t frighten you off then.’

  Nathan finished his drink. ‘Did you think you might?’

  Reid ordered him another. There are people who know exactly what you want, and when. There are also people who time their evasions perfectly.

  ‘You must’ve used binoculars,’ Nathan said. Then, when Reid didn’t seem to understand, he said, ‘To see me from your window.’

  Reid smiled.

  ‘Do you make a habit of watching people like that?’

  ‘Habit? No.’ But the word prolonged Reid’s amusement. ‘Sometimes there’s distance, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Sometimes that’s as close as you can get.’

  ‘Not much distance any more.’

  Reid was still looking at Nathan, still amused. He lifted his glass to his lips and drank. He set his glass down again. ‘Why did you come?’

  Nathan shrugged and looked away. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been here for ages.’ He looked at Reid again. ‘I suppose I felt like a drink.’

  ‘What else did you feel like?’

  Nathan smiled to himself. He didn’t need to answer that. It wasn’t the kind of question you answered.

  ‘I mean, do,’ Reid said. ‘Do you feel like.’

  Nathan’s smile lasted, but he was thinking now. This was a risk he was taking. Out on a limb and what if it was amputated? The future? It could be reward, it could be punishment. He no longer knew what he deserved.

  Afterwards he couldn’t remember how Reid achieved it – a jerk of the head? a gloved hand on his forearm? – but suddenly they were leaving together. Outside the bar the night felt padded. Air so rich and dark, you could’ve cut it into slices like a cake. He felt his veins swell. A limousine slid past. The lick of tyres. Through open windows came staccato laughter, music, smoke.

  He was steered towards a lo
w car. Black or blue, he couldn’t tell. It looked fast. It could split the air in two.

  ‘Get in.’

  He obeyed. The perfume of new leather. And, faintly, cigarettes. Reid lit one, switched the engine on. The car hissed like a jet. Turbo. Money. Death.

  They were heading west on Paradise Drive. They took the long curve inland at the Delta, the knitting-needle click as the gear stick shifted in its metal gate, the engine spitting, fighting the drop in speed. They approached the Palace Hotel from the rear, dipped down a ramp, it was like being swallowed by an open throat, they were underground.

  They crossed the parking-lot, footsteps echoing on concrete. They reached an elevator. Reid turned a key in a silver panel. The doors slid open.

  ‘My back door,’ he explained.

  Once inside, he pressed 14. They didn’t talk in the elevator. Nathan tried to see his reflection in the scratched stainless steel of the walls. All he could see was a blur. The doors lurched open on the fourteenth floor and Reid stepped out. Nathan followed. He stopped just outside, looked round.

  Such quiet corridors. The carpet was a burgundy red, interrupted every ten feet or so by a black oval containing the letters PH in ornate red script. All the doors were black. Glass globes fizzed overhead, leaking a low-voltage yellow glow. In the distance, the word EXIT in weak red neon. He’d always wondered what the inside of the Palace looked like, but something seemed held back: it was as if, in the act of revealing itself, it had become still more mysterious.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  Nathan had almost forgotten he wasn’t alone. He turned, saw Reid standing ten yards away, one hand fitted casually into his jacket pocket, a man in a clothing catalogue. ‘No,’ and he smiled, ‘nothing’s wrong.’

  It was a long walk to Reid’s apartment. Every time they turned a corner they were faced with the same view, the same silence; each new length of corridor was like an echo of the last. They stopped outside apartment 1412. He waited as Reid unlocked the door. Inside, the air smelt warm, slightly acrid, a smell that was like new dollar bills. Lamps bloomed in the corners, showed him the room. Sofas of dark velvet and walls papered to resemble marble and mirrors with no frames. There were windows on two sides. One looked down on the promenade: car headlamps, lights looping through the palms, a white line where the waves broke. The other faced west: the harbour bridge spanning the narrow stretch of water that separated the western suburbs from the city; a golden clasp on a head of smooth black hair.

  ‘Some champagne?’

  Nathan took the offered glass. ‘Thanks.’ He moved back to the centre of the room. It seemed to contain nothing that was personal. No books, no pictures, no flowers. It was an expensive hotel suite, somewhere you passed through, somewhere you never actually changed or even touched. It went with the gloves. This man leaves no trace of himself behind, he thought, not even fingerprints. If he was a criminal, he’d never be caught.

  Reid leaned over and placed a white capsule beside Nathan’s champagne glass. ‘That’s for you.’

  ‘What is it?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘It’ll make you feel good.’

  Nathan hesitated.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Reid said. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  Nathan smiled. ‘I don’t know you. Why should I trust you?’

  ‘You’re here. You might as well.’ Reid leaned forwards, opened his capsule and tipped the contents into his champagne. He raised his glass to Nathan and drank the champagne down. He poured a little more champagne into his glass, swirled it round. He drank that too.

  Nathan nodded. ‘You’re right.’ He did exactly what Reid had done. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

  Reid showed him.

  When he switched the light on, it multiplied. There were mirrors everywhere. He could see himself from every side at once. If he stood in a certain position he could see clones of himself vanishing into misty green infinity. He felt an excitement building in him now. He’d been in this situation before, in the water. Sometimes you got taken by a current, a rip that ran at an angle to the beach. You didn’t fight the current, you went with it. You went with it, waited for a wave and then, when the wave came, you took it. You rode that wave right out. Out of the current, back to the shore. He’d done this kind of thing before. He could relax.

  When he walked back into the room he was smiling. Reid was smiling too, his head resting against the back of the sofa, his face almost parallel with the ceiling. Smiling with lips that even now, somehow, Nathan knew he’d kiss. He sat down. The champagne had risen in his glass. He drank some.

  ‘You all right?’ Reid asked him.

  Nathan sat down. ‘I’m better than all right.’

  ‘Is there anything you want to know?’

  It was a strange question. Nathan couldn’t think. He looked at the man on the sofa instead. His hair, his tie, his smile, his suit, his gloves. ‘Those gloves,’ he said. ‘Are you trying to hide something?’

  ‘Not hide,’ Reid said, ‘protect.’

  ‘Protect?’

  Reid rose to his feet, moved towards the drinks cabinet. ‘I’m a hand model. I have to protect my hands. And also,’ and he smiled, ‘I like the way things feel when they’re on.’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘Yes,’ Reid said, ‘things.’

  He opened another bottle of champagne and brought it to the table. ‘You’ve probably seen my hands a hundred times without even knowing it. Holding an electric razor, lighting a cigarette, slipping a diamond ring on to a woman’s finger.’ His smile widened. ‘Nobody sees my hands,’ he said, ‘except the general public.’

  Nathan was about to return the smile when something happened to the wall. It bulged as if it was only paper-thin and there was a great weight of water behind it. Or not water, maybe, but a heart. Because the wall was moving in and out. Some kind of massive heart sluggishly beating. Then darkness poured inwards from the corners of the room, until only he was lit, nothing else. ‘It’s dark,’ he said, ‘it’s getting dark.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ came a voice, ‘it’ll soon be light again.’

  And instantly the darkness began to lift. He could see the sofa again, his glass on the table, the man across the room. It was as if the voice had worked a miracle.

  ‘That was really strange,’ he said.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The way you said that, and then it happened. That’s what I do when I save lives. Someone’s drowning and I swim out to them and I say, “Don’t worry, I’m here, you might drink a bit of water, but you’re going to be all right.” That’s sort of what you just did to me.’

  ‘I’m surprised the parlours haven’t made that illegal,’ Reid said.

  ‘What, lifesaving?’

  Reid smiled. ‘It’s not exactly in their interests, is it?’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Nathan said.

  ‘The last time I saw you down there, on the beach,’ Reid said, ‘you were with a guy in a top hat.’

  Nathan laughed. ‘Oh, that’s Jed.’

  ‘Kind of strange-looking.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Nathan had a sudden vision of Jed driving over the bridge at night. A dark-purple car, its pale driver wearing a top hat and a radiator smile, its back seat heaped with dead skin.

  ‘He a friend of yours?’

  ‘No, not exactly. I knew him years ago, when I was about twelve. I didn’t see him again till last week. Ran into him in a bar on Second Avenue.’

  ‘Small world.’

  ‘He acted so weird that night. He kept saying he’d got plans.’

  ‘To do what?’

  Nathan shrugged. ‘He’s after someone’s blood or something. He came out with all kinds of stuff. Seemed like most of it was bullshit.’

  ‘He sounds like a pretty desperate character.’

  ‘You should’ve heard him. He stayed over last weekend. Told some big story about how he’d killed someone. He had this tattoo on his wrist. Said it was the date he did it. The h
and he did it with.’

  ‘He’s not still staying, I hope?’

  Nathan smiled at Reid’s concern. ‘No. We threw him out. Same day I met you. I expect he’ll be in touch, though. He owes me eight dollars.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t be in touch,’ Reid said.

  Nathan grinned. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ Reid said, ‘some people just fasten on and you don’t feel a thing.’

  Nathan leaned forwards, reaching for his drink. That feeling had returned. His head moving much slower than his body. He sat back again, without his drink. He felt dizzy, as if he’d stood up too suddenly. It was just another rush, he told himself. It would pass. He stared at the sofa. It was some dark colour, there were no patterns, it couldn’t play any tricks on him.

  ‘You know something else I noticed when I looked through the binoculars?’ came Reid’s voice.

  He couldn’t look. He could manage only one word. ‘No.’

  ‘I noticed how beautiful you were –’

  He could look away from the sofa now, back into the room. The blood was sprinting through his veins, it was like a relay race, he saw a runner kick off a curve, hand the baton to another runner, who kicked again, a relay race all round the tight circuit of his blood.

  ‘Your body–’

  The room ballooned away from him, the walls were sails filled with wind.

  ‘– and your face –’

  His skin beneath his clothes, so comfortable. And Reid standing over him. Hair like a cloud. Dark like a storm coming. The ceiling above him concave, domed, and one gloved hand reaching down.

  And down again, on to a bed. He lay back, passive. Cool sheets under him. A gloved hand moved to his fly, he felt the metal button give, he heard the rasp as the zipper threads split open. He held his breath. Felt his cock lift and the caress of leather. And then, almost as if he had passed out, maybe he had, he was naked. He shut his eyes and listened to the passage of those gloves across his skin. It was so hot. He looked down. The gloves, their palms were dark, it must be the sweat from his body. He whispered it, and Reid said he’d never noticed that before; he liked it. Nathan lay back again, saw an open window with a surf beach beyond, it was somewhere that he’d been, it was the same sound. He saw the tops of trees hurled by the wind and didn’t remember this. And now Reid’s mouth closed over him, a tightness, slow and tight. A flickering, like leaves, on the soles of his feet.