Exile (9 page)
I head through to Mrs Neill’s bedroom, and the nurse walks in wheeling a heavy medical kit. She takes one look at Lela’s mum and says quietly, ‘Do you want the dosage . . . adjusted today?’
I place my hand on Mrs Neill’s brow and shake my head. ‘She’s not in any pain,’ I say, wondering if my own inner turmoil is obvious in Lela’s voice. ‘She’s gone beyond pain.’
Zoe searches Mrs Neill’s features, places the wrist she’s been holding back down gently on the bed. ‘I think you might be right.’
Justine, in an oversized purple tee-sirt, peers in through the doorway, her wet hair down around her face, cartoon slippers still on her feet, munching on the sandwich I made her.
I step away, give her and Zoe a searching look. ‘Just stay with her, will you? Stay with her until I get back, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. I don’t want her to be alone. Not for a second.’
They nod, and I head down the corridor after one last lingering look at the still figure on the bed. I’m unable to rid myself of the strange sense that it is the last time I will ever see Mrs Neill. Well, in this life anyway.
I hear Zoe snap open the lid of her medical kit and Justine ask shyly, ‘Do you want me to help you prop her up?’, and close the door behind me with a sense of finality, with the certainty coursing through me that everything is about to change.
The bus ride into town seems to take forever.
I sit behind the driver and bid a silent farewell to Bright Meadows, to Green Hill, to the straggly, fragrant trees, to the powerlines and car-wrecking yards, the gambling dens disguised as family-friendly restaurants, the pharmacies, the bakeries, the banks, petrol stations and supermarkets, as if I will never see them again.
When we finally reach the stop across the road from the café, it’s as if I am crossing those four lanes of murderous traffic borne by wings.
He’s coming today.
He’s in the air right now.
He’ll be here in a few hours.
Mr Dymovsky smiles at me over the till when I explode through the plastic curtain smiling broadly.
‘Somebody is in the good mood today!’ he cries.
He doesn’t comment on the fact that the clock’s showing it to be 6.50 am. That I’m almost an hour early for work.
Tempus fugit
, they say. Time flies. Of all days, let it be true of today, I think, because it hasn’t been doing that so far.
I grab an apron and tie it on. Sulaiman suddenly looms up beside me in that silent way he has of moving around. I take from him the gigantic tray of bacon strips and fried eggs he is holding in his big hands, slide it onto the bench. He doesn’t head back to the kitchen immediately. Just stands there watching me cut the crusts off a couple of orders, butter slice after slice of bread.
After a minute or so of his silent scrutiny, I stop doing what I’m doing, turn my head to look him full in the face.
‘What?’ I say, refusing to let anything bring me down today. Today he can be as cutting, as dismissive, as disapproving, as he wants to be. I will meet all of it with a wreath of girlish smiles. ‘What am I doing wrong?’
A small frown creases the space between his strong, dark brows.
‘You should go home to your mother,’ he says in his deep voice, his words uncharacteristically urgent and uneasy. ‘Now. Right now. Ask Mr Dymovsky to give you the day off. He will understand. There is no time to be lost.’
I feel Lela’s brows shoot up in surprise.
‘Thanks for your concern, Sulaiman,’ I reply quickly, unable to comprehend his sudden interest in Lela’s private life. ‘But it’s under control. Someone’s with Mum, if that’s what you’re worried about. I intend just to work out the morning shift and head off around noon. I’m waiting for someone.’ I break into a grin that I can’t hold back. ‘He’s meeting me here and then we’ll leave together.’
Together
. Just the thought of Ryan walking through that door, looking for
me
, makes me feel like putting the bread knife down and hugging myself. I want to jump up and down on the spot like a Japanese cartoon character.
It’s almost as if Sulaiman can sense my underlying glee, my unalloyed joy, because he frowns harder, harsh lines etching the smooth, dark skin on either side of his strong nose and wide mouth.
‘I can’t be any clearer than this,’ he snarls, his face a mask of sudden ferocity. ‘Get out
now
. Go home
now
.’
He points one massive arm at the front door and something in the gesture triggers a memory in me wholly unrelated to this dowdy, dated coffee shop. Of a tall man with flaming red hair, emerald-eyed, more beautiful than the sun, extending a flaming sword in one alabaster hand. A gesture of anger. Of negation. For a second, there is a jump cut between past and present, so intense that I feel I could step from one to the other as easily as one would leap between stepping stones.
Then the vision of fury and beauty is gone and I am left looking up into Sulaiman’s dark, angry, mortal eyes.
‘Leave,’ he hisses. ‘Leave before it is too late, foolish creature.’
Cecilia, at the coffee machine behind us, darts a frightened look in our direction. Reggie pretends she’s not listening to our raised voices, but I can tell by the tilt of her head as she hands out coffees and bags of food that she’s hanging on our every word.
If Mr Dymovsky were here, he would find some way to defuse the situation, but he is moving around in the kitchen, whistling a folk song I do not recognise.
I pick up the knife again, something hard and spare, something flinty, rising in me. Who is Sulaiman to order me about in this way? If he knew what he was dealing with here, he would not be so imperious, so hasty.
My words come out more forcefully, more spitefully than I intended. ‘I know what you must think of me, of Justine, of Reggie, of all the women around you, with our loose western ways, our moral fibre that is so weak and wanting in comparison with your own impossiby high standards, Sulaiman. But I refuse to be judged by you. I am past anyone’s judgment these days. I am done with it.’
I brush back a stray lock of Lela’s hair with trembling fingers and force myself to speak more calmly. ‘Now,’ I say, ‘I am meeting someone here today and
we will be leaving together
.’
Sulaiman and I glare at each other fiercely, and I refuse to blink, will not back down. For a moment, I get the sense that I can see behind his dark eyes and am disoriented by the fleeting sensation that we have met before.
Maybe in a past life, I tell myself. Stranger things have happened — and frequently do, around me.
‘You misunderstand me,’ he breathes after a moment, looking away, backing down, and the sensation of familiarity dissipates. ‘Forget I spoke.’
He turns and pads back into the kitchen without another word, another glance in my direction.
Reggie looks at me speculatively as she jostles fried dim sum with a pair of tongs. ‘He’ll call a fatwa down on you if you’re not careful,’ she says. ‘What did ya do to upset him like that? That’s more than I’ve ever heard him say. To
anyone
.’
I shrug, past caring about his good opinion of me, or hers. What is it these people say in their broad, laconic voices? Ah, that’s right.
Like I give a shit
. I think those words sum up the situation both pithily and well. I’m leaving today. There’s no need to play nice any more.
At that moment, the door opens and Ranald enters, paler than usual, his short hair standing on end. He almost trips over in his haste to get inside, tightening his grip on his computer bag convulsively, as if it is an extension of his body that requires special protection.
And I go cold. I’d forgotten about Ranald altogether, and that stupid dinner date he’d startled out of me at an unguarded moment.
Mr Dymosvsky, back at his usual post behind the till, looks at him, looks at his watch, looks at the clock above us, which says 7.12 am, and I know that he’s thinking the same thing we all are.
Ranald’s over three hours early for his first coffee, but already he seems agitated, buzzy, as if he’s been pulling all-nighters for a week and is surviving on nerves and caffeine alone.
He sets up his laptop at the table closest to the counter. Today, strangely, he does not bring forth a multitude of doodads. Just the machine itself and a single device: small, grey, flat, the size of my thumb maybe. It has a cap, but he leaves that on. Turns the device around in his hands a few times, as if he’s studying it with fresh eyes, or seeing it for the first time.
He lines up the laptop precisely with the edges of the table, lays the small device beside it, exactly parallel to the side of the machine. Still, he does not remove the cap.
After snapping his fingers imperiously at Reggie, at Cecilia, calling for his usual coffee, he turns the laptop on. I see that the screen bhind the usual gaggle of icons is pitch black. On it is written, in brilliant white, the words:
Dies Irae.
And I feel the world tilt, for a moment, on its axis, hear a brilliant snatch of music, a requiem for the dead that I cannot name nor keep in my memory. Then the music is gone and the world telescopes, narrows, grows flat, becomes less than the sum of its parts again. But those words, they were the words set to that music. The music of genius, of madness, of death. And they mean, literally, the day of wrath.
Some would prefer the more common translation, I suppose, which is: Judgment Day.
Hours crawl by in which I am called on to make endless ham, cheese and tomato toasties, a Vegemite and cheese sandwich to go, nine more eat-in bacon and egg breakfast specials, and to cut up the ‘cake of the day’, which is to say, the cake of yesterday served with a generous side of canned cream. I am also instructed to take out three loads of garbage, help unload the industrial dishwasher twice, scrub the toilets, paying special attention to wiping down the sink areas, rearrange the contents of the ancient drinks fridges, and place the day’s salad special — tuna pasta studded with olives and cherry tomatoes — into a sea of takeout containers for the women workers in runners who come in looking for a lighter lunch option.
Jobs done, and conscious of Ranald’s glowering, agitated presence as he pounds away at his laptop, checking his email inbox incessantly, I collar Mr Dymovsky in his office and ask him quietly if I can leave as soon as my friend arrives to take me home this morning.
‘I don’t think Mum is going to see out the day,’ I say, and Mr Dymovsky can tell from the expression on my face — unfeigned and genuinely sorrowful — that I speak the truth.
‘But of course you may go!’ he exclaims. ‘Go now, go whenever you wish.’
‘As soon as he arrives,’ I repeat. ‘And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t, uh, let Ranald know of my plans? We were supposed to go out for dinner tonight — he talked me into it, and I regretted it instantly — but that’s not going to happen now.’
Or ever
, says evil me.
‘I’m taking the coward’s way out,’ I add. ‘I’m going to slip out of here and hope he doesn’t notice. He’ll call again for me after five, but I’ll be long gone.’
It’s my fault — anticipation has made me careless. I just hadn’t factored Ranald’s stupid morning coffee ritual into my plans for today. Maybe part of me had been hoping that Ryan and I would’ve left already by the time Ranald arrived with his laptop bag. All I know is that he can’t see Ryan and me together. I don’t want to deal with the fallout. Not now. Not today. It’s kinder, in a way, if Ranald just never sees me again.
Mr Dymovsky nods understandingly. ‘He is a strange fish that one. Stranger than usual today, I think. We have a saying:
Ne boysya sobaki, shto layet, a bosya toy, shto molchit, da khvostom vilyayet.
’ He laughs at the confusion on my face. ‘It means, watch the quet ones. The dogs who are silent and wag their tails, you know?’
‘Uh, okay,’ I say. I’ve got one more thing to drop into the conversational mix. ‘After Mum, uh, you know, well, I might need some time off. To reassess things. Sort out our affairs. So don’t expect me back straightaway . . .’
He frowns at that. ‘I understand, Lela, I am not the hard-hearted man. But if you could let me know how long? We are always busy, and Reggie — well, she is not the most even-tempered or reliable —’
‘Justine could fill in for me,’ I say quickly. ‘She said so this morning. If you were serious about what you said to her, that is . . .’
Mr Dymovsky freezes for a moment at his desk piled high with papers in English and his native, ornate Cyrillic script that I can’t understand. ‘That dancer?’ he says incredulously. ‘She really would like to work in my little coffee shop? I would not have thought . . .’
I nod. ‘She’s a good person, she really is. And she can’t keep doing what she does. It will kill her. One way or another.’
His face is grim as he recalls the scene outside the café yesterday. ‘God protect us from such people,’ he mutters. ‘God and Sulaiman will keep us safe. I know I was right to hire that man.’
I push my point. ‘And she’s aware of the uniform policy around here. Black. No sequins.’ I grin.
Mr Dymovsky smiles back tiredly. Today he seems more seventy-five than fifty-five as he shuffles documents from place to place with his big hands.
After a while, he says, ‘You tell Justine to come and talk to me, and we shall determine if a coffee shop is where she belongs.’
Satisfied that I’ve put a few things out there that will make it easier for Lela’s work colleagues to rationalise her sudden disappearance, I am turning away when I remember something.
I ask Mr Dymovsky for a blank piece of paper. On it I write:
I, Lela Neill, of 19 Highfield Street, Bright Meadows, leave all my worldly possessions, both present and future, to Justine Hennessy, dancer, also of Bright Meadows.
I sign it with an indistinct, made-up signature, print Lela’s name beneath it, and push the paper under Mr Dymovsky’s nose and ask him to sign it, too. And date it for good measure.
‘Put in the time, too,’ I say. ‘So there’s no uncertainty about when it was written.’
Mr Dymovsky does what I ask without question, but hesitates before he pushes the piece of paper back towards me.
‘Are you sure you know what you are doing, Lela?’ he says, his expression deeply troubled.
I nod and fold the paper over. ‘I’m sane, and I know what I’m doing, Mr Dymovsky. No one forced mto do this. Remember I said that. It’s an insurance policy, of sorts.’
For Justine
, I think.
For Justine
.
He shakes his head at me uncomprehendingly.
‘It’s been a privilege working for you,’ I add. ‘Like balm for the soul. You’re a good man. Decent. I couldn’t have hoped for a better boss. And I wish you . . .’
For a moment, I am lost for words. The Latin is at my fingertips, but not its English counterpart, and the phrase tumbles out before I can catch myself.
‘
Bona fortuna
,’ I say. ‘That is what I wish for you.’
Mr Dymovsky’s answering smile is surprised.
‘Good chance, good fortune,’ he replies. ‘And to you, Lela. But you speak as if we will never meet again and that is not the case?’
I shake my head quickly and leave his office, not trusting myself to say any more.
Ryan,
I think, as I stand by the service area surveying the dining room,
where are you?
I wonder if he looks the same. I wonder if he’ll recognise Lela, recognise me. If he’ll be able to adjust to the new face and form I’m wearing. I need to get to him before Ranald sees him. He can’t see us together.
It’s 10.53 am and there’s no one in here except Cecilia, Reggie, Sulaiman, and Ranald.
He looks up at me sharply when I slide back behind the counter to place the folded piece of paper into Lela’s rucksack for safekeeping, intending to hand it to Justine at the appropriate moment.
‘Do you want to check your messages?’ he says curtly. ‘There’s still time.’
Without waiting for my reply, he sets it all up for me, gesturing brusquely for me to sit as he gets up and heads to the bathroom. Given that he’s on his third double espresso for the morning, it’s a wonder neither Ronald’s bladder nor his heart have exploded yet.
I slide into the seat, made warm by his body heat, and there’s Lela’s profile page.
There’s a single comment posted on the wall beneath her photo and her name.
Lauren can’t wait to see you, and neither can I. They’re calling me to the plane right now. All that separates us is one day, Mercy. A day. Can you believe it? I’ll be there soon.
It was posted yesterday morning, and I think of Ryan taking the time to reach out to me at some anonymous airport computer termior safekend feel almost giddy.
Then there’s a flurry of movement outside — as if, by thinking it, I willed it into being — and the door opens. And Ryan’s standing there, a duffel bag in one hand. Wearing that beat-up leather jacket over layered tees, one blue, one grey, indigo jeans, scuffed boots. His dark hair is longer than I remember it. I suppose he hasn’t cut it since the last time I saw him.
He’s still lean, broad-shouldered, heartbreakingly beautiful; all the more so because it’s not what he’s about. There’s no vanity in him, just an instinctive athlete’s grace. His dark eyes darken further as they fall on me.
He’s dressed too warmly for the day, and he’s flown for hours just to get to me. His face is so pale with weariness that I move towards him instinctively, fingers outstretched, as if the touch of my hand might banish his fatigue. That familiar fringe of black hair falls into his eyes, and I reach up and brush it back as he looks down into Lela’s face and says softly, ‘Well, there you are.’
He seems so tall, taller than I remember him, even though Carmen is short and Lela is short and there shouldn’t be any difference in perspective at all. But something
is
different this time, because there’s no hesitation, no dancing around the truth. He just pulls me to him and murmurs, ‘
Mercy
’.
His arms about me feel so right, as if it’s always been this way.
But it’s never been this way. It’s only ever Luc who’s held me like this, whom I’ve allowed to hold me this way — arms about my waist, linked at the small of my back, chin resting atop my head, warm breath stirring my hair. So close, I can’t be sure whose heartbeat I’m hearing, his or mine.
Ryan tightens his hold on me, and I wonder how it is that I never even felt Luc’s iron grip over my heart loosen enough to let Ryan in. After all this time, out of all these lives, to find myself falling for someone when it’s the last thing I should be doing, when it screams
forbidden
? It’s terrifying.
In answer to everything unspoken that I’m feeling in the hard muscles of Ryan’s arms, I tentatively place Lela’s cheek against Ryan’s shoulder, and breathe in his achingly familiar, addictive, clean male smell before smiling up at him out of Lela’s navy blue eyes. And I know it’s the wrong response, it’s not what I want to do, but I don’t know if what we are together is even . . . allowed.
Ryan tips my face up to his, searching my eyes, wanting more. But I reach up with one hand and place a finger to his lips.
He sighs in resignation, kisses it anyway. And I pull my hand back from him so quickly — as if his touch has the power to burn — that he throws back his head and laughs.
He’s so tall
, I think again, dazed. Somehow I imagined us being equals when we met again — in every sense — but this is the real world, and in the real world I look like Lela. There’s no getting around that, though I can’t help wishing that he could see me the way I really am. And I woder whether he’d approve and like me even more if I was wearing my own face, if we were eye to burning eye.
He swings me around gently, the better to look at me, to see me behind Lela’s eyes, to imprint this new face on his consciousness. And I catch a glimpse of Cecilia smiling widely behind her coffee machine, Reggie’s open-mouthed, gobsmacked expression, Sulaiman’s dark, unwavering gaze through the serving hatch that frames him.
Then I remember.
‘There’s no time to explain!’ I exclaim, suddenly shoving Ryan back in the direction of the front door, so hard that he actually stumbles a little. ‘There’s a guy here — he’s in the bathroom — and he can’t see you. He just can’t.’
Ryan digs his heels in, stands straighter, looks around, suddenly spoiling for a fight. ‘Who is he? What does he want?’
I shove him again with every muscle in my body, but now it’s like pushing an unyielding stone.
‘You don’t understand,’ I say urgently, tugging on the duffel bag in Ryan’s hand. ‘I promised I’d go out with him tonight if he helped me find you. I would’ve promised him the world, don’t you get it? He can’t see you. You’ve got to go.
Now
. Just wait on the other side of the road. Outside the tapas bar.’ I point through the window, through the plane trees in the middle of the road, to a sign with the outline of a black bull on it.
Ryan’s face is mutinous and he tightens his grip on me. ‘I’ll clear it up with him. He’ll understand. He’ll have to. How could he hold you to that if he sees us together?’
‘No time,’ I hiss. ‘No way to let him down gently. It’s too complicated to go into now. Just wait for me and I’ll come to you. I won’t be long. Wait for me?’
Ryan’s face clears and he bends and takes my face gently in both his hands.
And I know what he’s trying to do, what’s in his heart, and I freeze, fear and desire at war within me.
He sees the look in my eyes and smiles.
‘Only if you want to,’ he breathes, his eyes hynoptic as he inches closer. It’s something so longed for that I slide my arms around him again, amazed at myself, at my temerity, almost succumbing to the moment before pushing him away.
‘Not now,’ I mumble. ‘I need time to to work us out, and that’s the one thing we don’t have right now. You’ve got to go.’
He sighs. ‘I can afford to be generous, I suppose.’ But I can feel his reluctance to let me go even as he’s pulling away, out of reach.
‘Wait for me,’ I say again. And it’s not a question.
He smiles, a smile that crinkles up his eyes and makes him seem lit up from within. ‘Until the end of time,’ he says quietly, and leaves with another flurry of the plastic curtain, waving once at me through the front window before crossing the road.
When I turn around, Ranald’s standing silently beside the service area. I don’t know how long he’s been there.
I rush back over to his laptop on the table and log out clumsily, saying, ‘Thanks. All yours again.’
He glares at me and I look away, almost bumping into him in my haste to put some distance between us. There’s guilt mixed in with all this, too. I can’t bring myself to tell the guy that dinner tonight is out of the question; that it’s out of the question forever, because he and Lela will never have a future. Lela’s riding into the sunset with someone Ranald can never measure up to. Not in a million lifetimes. And he’s standing right across the road at this moment, probably hailing us a taxi cab.
Ranald’s eyes blaze into mine for an instant, as if he can pick up my thoughts. But then he sits back down and flicks impatiently between a couple of open windows on his laptop, as if he’s waiting for something to come through.
I feel like I’ve been dismissed, but also ridiculously relieved. He didn’t see. He can’t have, the way he’s staring so intently at his screen.
The postman bustles in and leaves a sheaf of mail with me for Mr Dymovsky. Unable to stop myself, I peer out through the front windows at Ryan’s waiting figure, before taking the post to Mr Dymovsky’s office. He looks up gratefully, but his thoughts are elsewhere and his thanks are distant.
‘The café’s still quiet,’ I say at the door, ‘and my friend’s arrived. I was thinking I might leave now . . .’
Mr Dymovsky nods and says in his usual way, ‘What you like, Lela, what you like,’ before returning his gaze to the correspondence in front of him.
I’m heading for the cupboard with my rucksack in it when Franklin Murray steps through the door, meeting my eyes sheepishly. He sits with his back to everyone, near the front of the café, and pulls the day’s newspapers towards him with a heavy air.
‘Ah, the prodigal bankrupt,’ Ranald says loudly, with satisfaction, and for a moment his fingers are still on the keyboard of his machine.
Reggie takes one look at Franklin’s back and flounces out of the shop with her lighter and cigarettes, eyes hard, head held high. I know she’s still holding a grudge against him and won’t be back until he leaves.
It’s also been bothering Mr Dymovsky that Franklin has kept coming in here since he took a pot shot at one of the ceiling panels, but the boss is still in his office, and lost souls need to eat. There’ll be no one to make Franklin’s sandwich and serve him coffee if I go right now. So I change direction away from my things and head back to the breadboard to set about organising Franklin his usual meal while he commences reading every word of the newspaper forensically, as if the answers to his misfortunes are somehow encoded there.
Just as x2019;m placing Franklin’s coffee down on the table, Justine bats her way through the greasy plastic curtain into the cool of the shop. She closes the front door firmly behind her, pushes her loose fall of heavy hair off her broad shoulders and looks around.
‘What are you doing here?’ I say, wide-eyed. ‘Is everything all right? Is she . . .?’
‘No!’ Justine responds hastily. ‘She’s just the same as when you left. Sorry if I scared you, coming in like this.’
She walks over to me, oblivious to the way Franklin stares, sandwich paused halfway to his fiftytwo-year-old mouth, the way Ranald’s eyes follow her around the room greedily. She’s modestly dressed in a denim, knee-length skirt, gladiator sandals and the same oversized purple tee from this morning that just skims her curves. Not a scrap of make-up to hide the bruises on her face. But she looks in control today, bold, tough as nuts.
‘The nurse said it’d be all right if I ducked out for a couple of hours just to sort out my pay situation and maybe speak to Mr Dymovsky,’ she tells me. ‘See if there’s really a job going. It’ll mean taking a huge pay cut, but it’ll give me a chance to get my shit together. The hours are better, too. And there’s plenty of muscle on the premises to keep Bruce off my case . . .’
She glances into the kitchen at Sulaiman’s back, and I smile despite the tension I’m feeling.
‘Mr Dymovsky’s in his office,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll show you the way.’
And then
, I promise myself fiercely,
I’m getting the hell out of here
.
Behind us, I hear Ranald say imperiously, ‘Where’s my coffee, Cecilia? What’s the hold-up?’
There’s something a little bit off about Ranald today.
But I don’t really care, because Ryan’s waiting for me, and I will shortly shrug off all the petty irritations of this life as a snake would shed its skin.
I leave Justine and Mr Dymovsky chatting away together like old friends and return to the front counter. It’s 11.27. Wherever I am in the café, whatever I’m doing, my eyes keep returning to the window.
Sulaiman turns up the volume on the Arabic station he always has playing on the radio in the kitchen. Begins to hum along to some incredibly complex tune that keeps rising and falling. It’s beautiful. Otherworldly. Like a muezzin’s cry; a call to prayer set to music.
He looks at me through the narrow open window between us. ‘It’s too late to leave now.’ His tone is almost conversational; there’s no longer any heat in his words.
I have no idea what he means and I snap, ‘But I
am
leaving now,’ unable to comprehend the man’s sudden interest in Lela’s comings and goings. ‘And no one — not you, not anyone — is going to stop me.’
Sulaiman shrugs, as if he’s lost interest in the conversation. ‘Tell that to him,’ he says, pointing over my shoulder.
I turn to see Ranald get up from his table and head to the front window, look out into the street. First to the left, then to the right, as if he’s about to cross a busy road or embark on a perilous journey. I wonder what he’s searching for on that familiar, congested streetscape, the building site nearby filling the air with dust and noise, the constant passing parade of foot traffic, vehicles of every size and description, the hypnotic lights of the theatre down the road.
Then Ranald’s gaze settles on something in the middle distance and I follow his line of sight, catch Ryan speaking to a passer-by, a woman, on the street outside that bar with the black bull on its sign. I feel an involuntary smile curve up the corners of Lela’s mouth as Ryan throws back his head and laughs at something the woman says before she moves on with a small wave.
Mine for the asking, mine for the taking
, I think greedily as Ryan paces the street a while longer before disappearing inside the tapas place.
But then something like melancholy steals over me. Because in no universe could Ryan and me ever work. We were not made to be together. We were not made for each other. Feelings are for humans and . . . well, you know the rest.
As I tear my gaze away from the place where Ryan was standing and refocus on the dingy dining room before me, Ranald walks purposefully to the front door, turns the lock and flips the sign over to read
Closed
.
‘What’s he doing?’ I ask Cecilia, indicating Ranald with a jerk of my head.
Cecilia looks at me, puts down the jug she is holding.
Ranald turns and addresses all of us. ‘You know what it would take to get your attention, to get you all to really
look
at me?’
Franklin doesn’t even bother doing that, just keeps reading his paper. Ranald shocks us all by grabbing him, suddenly, by the hair above one ear.
‘Hey! Wha—’ Franklin cries out as he’s pulled out of his seat, away from his paper, his half-drunk coffee, the neat, twinned crusts of his chicken sandwich.
‘My life is full of pricks like you,’ Ranald roars, ‘who won’t even do me the courtesy of looking me in the face when I’m talking! I said, do you know what it would take to get your attention, you asshole?’
Franklin, his head pressed into the front of Ranald’s suit jacket, squeals, ‘No! What?
What
?’
Ranald shoves his free hand into the front of Franklin’s jacket and pulls out the handgun. ‘Violence,’ he snarls, shoving Franklin away from him so hard that the older man misses the edge on, you aand falls on the floor. ‘In point of fact, Franklin, I was lost and you showed me the way. So did that slut and her lowlife boyfriend.’ He smiles. ‘A little violence, I’ve learnt, can focus people’s attention
enormously
.’
He kicks Franklin so hard in one leg that Franklin shrieks in agony.
‘Get over to the counter, you fat-cat bastard,’ he orders, ‘and put your hands on it where I can see them.’
He waves the gun in Sulaiman’s direction. ‘You, too, big guy. And you.’ He points at Cecilia, whose eyes are huge in her terrified, little face.
‘I’m sorry you had to get caught up in this,’ he says to her almost kindly, ‘but I need you to witness what happens to people who betray and belittle me and insult my intelligence.’
‘What is this noise?’ Mr Dymovsky snaps, emerging out of the dark little corridor at the back of the shop. Justine is behind him, her eyes wide. ‘Who insults whom?’
Ranald stops them both in their tracks by levelling the gun at Mr Dymovsky’s chest. Mr Dymovsky’s resemblance to Humpty Dumpty is more pronounced than ever: his rounded eyes and rounded mouth, his too-tight, slightly shiny pants worn a little too high.
‘Do what I say and you won’t get hurt,’ Ranald murmurs silkily, using the gun to wave them both over to the front counter where the others are clustered, hands outspread. ‘Only those who have hurt me get hurt today. So be a good sport, Dmitri, and you’ll see out the rest of your life comfortably.’
Justine gives a muffled whimper as Ranald pushes her into place beside Mr Dymovsky, Cecilia and Franklin. He strokes the back of one of her soft hands with his fingers and her face goes pale and tight at the movement, as if she wants to throw up.
‘Someone like you wouldn’t even look at me unless I was paying, would you?’ he says, running the barrel of the gun down the side of Justine’s bare arm.
She turns her bruised face away, twists her body, every action a rejection. Ranald raises the handgun sharply, as if he’s going to hit her with it, and Justine cringes. But he laughs and lowers it again.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he mutters. ‘There’s only ever been one girl for me, and I’m done with the playing hard to get, with waiting around. Done with being treated like ratshit by everybody in my life, especially by her.’
He looks at me with his burning gaze and I realise who he’s talking about.
‘You can’t mean
me
,’ I exclaim.
I recall Lela’s journal. It was Andy this and Andy that; Ranald hadn’t even entered her headspace. He’d been nothing to her. Nothing. And I’d done nothing to encourage him, had I?
Nothing
, says evil me,
except agree to have dinner with the little turd
I move towards him now, more ticked off than afraid.
‘You mean you’re doing this,’ I wave my hand at our surroundings, ‘because I’ve hurt your feelings in some way?’
‘In some way?’ he yells, incensed. ‘
Clementia
would have been a better password than
misericordia
, don’t you think? Remember, I speak Latin. You said you spoke none at all. Just one more lie in a litany of lies. How do you explain what you said to Franklin? About death being the final limit? I
heard
you. You’ve lied to me from the beginning.’
He waves the gun around and everyone ducks and cries out, except for me. I look at him, stunned, as the meaning of his words begins to sink in.
His tone grows almost conversational. ‘The connotations are so much less negative, I would have thought. Clemency versus the cry of the miserable damned. Why choose the latter and not the former?’
‘How did you know?’ I say stupidly, and in that instant, I realise. I should have seen it before. I’d been too blinded by making contact with Ryan to take in what else was going on. It was Ranald who’d set up Lela’s profile page for me, who logged in for me on his way to the damn toilets this morning. He’d known the password I’d selected, had even entered it for me, although it was supposed to be something that I’d come up with, for my eyes alone. But what was worse was that I’d never changed the email address Ranald had inputted in the first place. It was
his
email address. I’d been using it ever since; had had no idea that he might be able to monitor my messages, that he’d even
want
to do that.
‘I’ve seen every single exchange between the two of you,’ Ranald spits. ‘I’m a software developer, remember? It’s my job to think like a hacker, act like a hacker. Even if you hadn’t been a stupid bitch and left my email address attached to your account as your point of contact
with the entire world
, I would have been able to get in and read everything you wrote. Nothing you could do online is safe from me. You’re pathetic, Lela, you really are. Did you get off doing some kind of weird role play with a stud who’s based overseas while you strung me along? Home-grown guys not good enough for you?’
Sulaiman says quietly, as if thinking out loud, ‘For length of days shall not be theirs.’
‘Shut up!’ Ranald screams, shaking the gun in Sulaiman’s direction, cocking the hammer. ‘Shut up, or I will shut you up permanently, you religious fanatic.’
With his free hand, Ranald grabs my shirt and pulls me across to the table that has his laptop on it. Training his gun on me, he lets go of my shirt before uncapping the little grey device resting on the table and jamming it into a slot on the side of his machine. He flicks open a draft email, then opens the window for the device. There’s only one file in it. He attaches it to the email, all with one hand.
‘I’ve spent all morning crafting an emergency anti-virus update email for P/2/Pnd its entire list of clients,’ he says, ‘each one run by truly incompetent twits who wouldn’t know how to spell “Trojan” let alone recognise one or appreciate the indignities I suffer — the bullying, the finger-pointing, the backstabbing — to keep the reams of crap they generate safe from people like me. Press
send
, Lela. Their networks all across the country are going to
implode
, and you’re going to set it in motion. From here. From the Green Lantern. I said I’d take P/2/P down with me one day, and now everyone’s finally going to believe it.’
His laughter sounds like despair to my ears.
‘What if I say no?’ I reply. ‘The police are outside. A whole pile of witnesses.’
I point through the window. While Ranald’s been busy unleashing his narcissistic inner demon — that small boy who found it amusing to douse his pet mice with petrol and set them alight just to see what would happen — he’s failed to notice armed police officers erecting plastic construction barriers across the front of the coffee shop, redirecting traffic. Ranald didn’t see fit to draw the blinds when he decided to pull his own hostage crisis in the middle of the city, and now a crowd is beginning to build, because it’s human nature to want to stare at the car crash, count the injured and the dead. Ambulance personnel are moving into place on one section of the street, and there are news crews gathering.
‘I know they are,’ Ranald replies tonelessly. ‘I told them to come.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Franklin blusters from across the room, but I don’t hear Ranald’s reply because one face in the crowd has drawn my gaze: ashen and familiar, eyes shadowed from a long-haul flight during which he probably did not sleep. Someone who’s six foot five and built like a line-backing angel.
Ryan.
My hands fly up to my mouth, all the fear I feel for him in my eyes. Why didn’t he stay inside that bar? What if Ranald sees him?
When Ryan’s eyes meet mine over the heads of the people in front of him, something flares in them and he pushes his way forward immediately until he is standing right up against one of the plastic crash barriers. The width of the footpath away.
I shake my head at him, mouth at him to
go, go away
, but he stands his ground stubbornly.
‘What’s happening?’ he shouts at me through the glass.
I shake my head again, my face telling him that it’s too hard to explain, my eyes telling him to
run
.
The harsh midday sunlight is reflecting a little off the surface of the windows; he probably can’t see Ranald standing just behind me with a gun in hand, levelled at my back.
I see Ryan turn and collar a policewoman who’s standing nearby. He points in my direction. She turns and squints at me through the glass, shakes her head.
‘You can’t goin there, sir,’ she says. I hear her clearly, though she’s standing outside.
‘That’s my girlfriend,’ Ryan yells. ‘My girlfriend in there. I need to get inside.’
And without thinking, I walk away from Ranald, the psychopath holding the gun, towards the front window. I touch my hand up against the pane, my heart so full I almost can’t contain it.
Ryan smiles at me but there’s a terrible fear in his eyes, which grow wider, more fearful, as Ranald approaches quickly and wraps one arm around my neck from behind, the other hand still holding Franklin’s gun, his breath foul with coffee, sleeplessness, adrenaline.
I’m rarely afraid. And I have no sixth sense, no ability to foretell the future. But everything about this bright morning — this morning in which everything seemed more beautiful than it was possible to be — is going badly wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be this way when Ryan and I found each other again. It was only meant to be the first step.Today was supposed to be all about the silver lining, not the cloud.
‘Give yourself up, sir!’ a policeman shouts at Ranald through a loudspeaker. ‘All the entries and exits are blocked off. There’s nowhere to go. Give yourself up quietly or we’re coming in.’
I wonder how someone who looks like Ranald does on the outside — composed, professional, pleasant — can hold so much vitriol, store so much rage and affront and envy inside. How he could blame Lela Neill for tipping him over the edge when all his life he’s been poised to fall; poised to explode like a catherine wheel, raining fire down on everyone.
‘You’ve done what you came to do,’ I say. ‘Sent out your hydra made of code and malice, your virus strong enough to bring down entire companies. Let everyone here go. Let
me
go. You may not wish to live your life, but I do. I’ve travelled so far to get to this point. A long time ago, I was standing in the place you now occupy and I was not destroyed. I chose life, or had it chosen for me, and I have stuck with it. It may not be the life I would have wanted for myself, and yet I embrace my future. And it is out
there
.’