Desolation (11 page)

Cain ran from the garden and across the road, forgetting to look out for traffic. Heaven stood before him in all its shabbiness, so out of place in this street and yet so at home, as if it had been here first.

He turned and looked for the woman, but she had vanished. His sketch of her thoughts had faded quickly, like a dream already forgotten at daybreak, but a sour taste remained in his mouth. He spat, tasted sex, spat again.

“Drink?” Peter asked. “You look thirsty.” He was standing in front of the run-down house, proffering a bottle of water. Cain had not heard the corrugated iron door being prized open, but he supposed he had been away on his own for a while.

“Thanks.” He took the bottle and drank, relishing the ice-cold water washing taste from his mouth and throat.

“Single mum,” Peter said.

“Pardon?”

“That woman you were looking at. Single mother, lives in a flat ten doors down from you. Nice girl. Very fuckable.”

“Well, I wasn't really thinking about that,” Cain said, an inexplicable blush burning his cheeks.

“Yes, okay, Cain. Anyway, I assume you were coming over for a social visit?”

“Just wanted to ask a few questions, really.”

“Sure, no problem. So are you settling in all right? The others not giving you too much of a hard time?” He smiled broadly. Cain wondered whether he would always think of himself as subject to someone else's mockery.

“They're fine. I've met them all apart from Sister Josephine.”

“And what do you think?”

“Well . . . Magenta is very nice.”

“She is, isn't she? Was she working when you met her?”

Cain was not entirely sure. “Yes,” he said. “She's very talented.”

“You have no idea.” Peter's smile remained as broad as ever, and it touched his eyes. Here was a man finding humor in his situation, and whatever the cause of that mirth, Cain could not help feeling self-conscious.

“So you live here?” he asked.

“Heaven? Yep. Nice pad, don't you think?”

“Well . . .”

“Ha! Don't let appearances deceive you, Cain. It's just a facade. Inside, everything is different. Glorious, intriguing, wonderful . . . different.”

Cain waited for an invitation to enter, but none was forthcoming.

“So!” Peter said. “Laundry room! I never did finish the tour, did I? Very sorry about that. I'm a busy landlord.” He strode past Cain and across the road, turning and waiting for Cain to follow. “Let's not be too long about it,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “It's a lovely day, filled with potential. I hate to let potential fade away.” He opened the garden gate and walked to the front door.

Cain heard the shrubbery rustling as Peter passed by, as if the things living under there were cowering away, or rushing to get a look at the man's legs. Either way, the landlord had caused a reaction.

 

“Sister!” Peter gushed. “You look ravishing today.”

“I'll pass by, if you please. I have business to attend.”

“More people to save?”

“Always.”

Sister Josephine glanced at Cain as she pressed past him in the lobby. Her habit flowed like oil, so black that Cain could almost smell the color on it. Her Mona Lisa smile was welcoming but formal. And her eyes were a stunning green, so piercing, so cool and intelligent, that Cain gasped out loud.

“Hello, Cain,” she said.

“H-hello.”

And then she was gone, pulling the front door shut behind her.

Cain turned to Peter and raised his eyebrows, not knowing what to say.

“She has that effect on everyone,” Peter said.

“She's a
nun?
”

“Either that or a stripogram. I've never seen her out of the habit. Though I'd like to, eh?”

“She's beautiful” was all Cain could say, and even through Peter's lecherous laugh he could not manage an impure thought about the nun. Later maybe, when he was over his shock. But right now, Cain could swear that he'd had something bordering on a religious experience. Her smile, so exquisite. Her eyes, so deep.

“Strange one, that,” Peter said. He turned and headed past Sister Josephine's front door. “But as I told you, they're all a bit strange in here. Right then, laundry room!”

He opened the door leading to the basement, stood back from it as if contemplating something, and then glanced at Cain. “You sure?”

“Sure of what?”

“Sure you want to see the laundry room?”

Cain nodded. “I have laundry to do. And I wouldn't want to misuse anything down there. Why, is there a problem?”

Peter shook his head, the normally confident smile slipping into something more nervous. It looked painted on, like a clown's. “Nah, not really. I'm just not that keen on being underground.”

“Don't like the dark?” Cain asked.

“The dark's fine. As I said, I just don't like being underground. It's the same as being buried.”

“Except that there aren't steps up out of a grave.”

Peter nodded, but he did not meet Cain's eyes. “Well, all right then, but we'll just pop down and up again. The stuff's easy to use, just basic washers and dryers.” He started down the timber staircase, still talking, words tumbling over each other as nervousness took over. “The washer's more of a commercial design, bigger, more hard wearing, so don't be afraid to use it as much as you want. Electricity's included in the rent that you're having paid for you by Afresh, so no coin slots or tokens needed, or anything silly like that.”

He flicked a switch, and a bright light flooded up out of the basement, blinding Cain for a few seconds before his eyes adjusted.

“Oh, the light's a bit harsh,” Peter said apologetically. “That's down to me.”

Cain paused halfway down the stairs, watching
Peter where he stood uncertainly at the bottom. The landlord looked around the basement, his eyes never resting, head jerking this way and that like a bird wary of predators.

“It stinks down here,” Peter whispered, and Cain was not sure whether the comment was meant for him to hear or not. He took in a breath, smelling only drying washing and the faint tang of electrical equipment, and something altogether more earthy.

The basement was surprisingly large. The staircase stood in one corner, and the room extended so far out that Cain was sure it was larger than the house's footprint. Perhaps it went under the front garden, providing scant bedding for the plants that grew there. It contained several washers and dryers lined along the walls, a couple of ironing boards, and some airing racks adorned with clothing. He wondered whose laundry this was, and smiled as he tried to attach items with their owners. An old woollen jumper, that would be Whistler. Combat trousers, Whistler again, or perhaps George. Several vest tops and narrow jeans, probably Magenta. Her rack also contained a few undergarments, functional rather than provocative, and Cain felt a surge of heat to his groin. Strange that she would leave her panties down here for anyone to see, touch, or take. Very strange.

“There's a spare rack over there for you,” Peter said, pointing across the basement.

Cain nodded, not looking. He was staring at one of the other full racks, trying to convince himself he was not seeing what he was seeing. He wanted to ask Peter, but the memory of that secretive laughter
came at him from last night, group laughter, planning games and laying clues for him to follow.

“Don't worry about the chairs. Sometimes the Sister holds a sort of communion down here, people off the street, that sort of thing.”

Cain barely heard. It had to be George's rack. It held a T-shirt, holed and still stained with blood. One hole in the chest, and others that were more like tears or gashes. And those wide terra-cotta stains, faded with several obvious washing attempts, but still there.

Peter glanced at Cain, followed his gaze. “People do tend to leave their washing out down here,” he said, very slowly, “but they honor each other's privacy. I'd fuck Magenta at a moment's notice, for instance, but I wouldn't dream of touching her underwear.” He stood in front of George's rack, obscuring it from Cain's view, and raised his hand toward Magenta's drying clothing. His fingers did not quite touch it, though they flexed and stretched. “I wouldn't dream of smelling it, either. Because there's respect down here. And it wouldn't smell of her anyway . . . not when she's been working.”

“She's an impersonator,” Cain said, confused now, unsure of Peter's shift from discomfort to issuing subtle threat.

Peter only smiled and nodded, glancing once more at the underwear he would never touch or smell, and then he pushed past Cain and rested his foot on the bottom step. “As I said, I don't like it down here, so I'm going back up. Any more questions?” And though his mouth made these words, his eyes spoke volumes:
There are no more questions
.

Cain made a point of turning away from Peter and looking around, trying not to see the clothing hanging there like secrets out to dry. He saw the chairs that Peter had mentioned—a circle of mixed dining chairs, settees, stools—and though he thought it odd having a gathering place down here, he did not dwell on it. It was dusty and damp and smelled of washing, but as Peter had said—and as Cain himself was coming to find—the residents here were a strange bunch. If Sister Josephine wanted to come down here and preach, that was her prerogative.

“And now that you've met everyone, I don't need to tell you anything about them,” Peter said, climbing the staircase.

Cain had a brief idea that the landlord would shut the door and lock him down here, and though the dark never scared him, the thought gave him a second of panic.
Like being buried
, Peter had said. Cain hurried up the stairs, and Peter closed the door behind him. He smiled at Cain again, his confidence returned after their brief, strange sojourn downstairs.

“So now that's over with, if you'll excuse me I have a few things to do.”

“Of course,” Cain said, wanting to ask so much more. The door next to his, scratched as if something had tried to get in? George and his nighttime excursions? Magenta? But though the questions begged asking, Cain had begun to suspect that Peter was just as strange and involved as the others. He may live over the street in Heaven, but he was far from innocent.

 

Cain spent the rest of that day in his flat. He found some pots of paint under the sink. They were all old and mostly dried out, but a couple were salvageable, and he set these aside. The colors were brash and bright, nothing like the subdued cream that the whole flat was painted with now. Perhaps beneath the surface were shades and tints he could only guess at; those he had found in the kitchen, and others. This could be many flats in one, suiting various people, happening only now to suit him. The black-and-white paintings, the neutral-colored furniture, all was as he would prefer . . . and yet there was that idea growing in his mind, the thought that he could experiment on himself if he so desired. His father was long gone, and that torturous siren was still there only in his head. His brief forays into rich food and drink had come with a price, perhaps, but it was
his
body,
his
future and life, the Voice had told him that all the time. He was in control.

Cain took a knife, removed a picture from the hall wall, and scratched at the paint. It peeled away and fell to the floor like shed skin. There seemed to be several layers of the cream color, and Cain despaired of finding anything different, but then he saw the reason for the many coatings. The color beneath was a rich blood-red, heavy and dark. He removed a patch of paint the size of his hand and stepped back to admire the exposed color. He tried to imagine the whole hallway painted like this, but he could not. It was not fear of the siren or the indoctrination of neutrality by his father. It was simply
that he was not capable of realizing such extravagance.

He scraped at the red, and beneath that was a light green. More scraping, and he uncovered a layer of terra-cotta, warm and orange. It reminded him of the bloodstains on George's T-shirt. The next scraping took him through to the plaster, but even that pinkness was more colorful than the bland cream. The peeled paint lay on the floor like a shattered rainbow.

Cain rehung the picture and stared at it for quite some time. It was a landscape of dead trees. Yes, there was something about dead trees. These were in black, white, and gray. Back in the kitchen, he scooped some of the usable paint onto a plate—there was red, blue, and some thick, stodgy yellow—and went back to the hallway. He would bring the dead trees to life.

The Face would have called it rebellion, but to Cain it felt like coming to life again.

In the end, he barely touched the painting. Once removed from the frame it felt like vandalism, and a few brief kisses of paint to its printed surface convinced Cain that he was doing wrong. He blew on the paint to aid its drying, reframed the picture, and hung it again. But even with only a slight touch the picture was transformed. The hint of color drew the eye, negating the bland grays with its surreptitious spread. His father would have hated it. Cain was pleased.

Several times that afternoon he walked into the hallway and simply stood and stared. There was so
much color beyond the window of his flat, so much sensory input to sample, so many ways to steal himself away from the life his father had tried to create for him. Pure Sight was seeing clearly, and Cain realized now that his father had never understood even the basics of that.
Pure Sight is truth
, the old man had said,
it's seeing past the lies
. But for Cain, seeing past the lies was everything he had been trying to do since his father's death. His father was the greatest liar, the worst kind of thief, denying him the basic rights that any child should have. The right to run and play in the woods; the right to revel in wild imagination instead of staid histories; the right to explore food, music, the feel of damp grass on his feet and the sun on his face.