—6—
'You can't,' I heard him say.
He was stalking—too far back for me to hit him, just close enough to speak in a conversational tone.
'They're no good to you,' he said, as I went into The Troppo.
My sheets were gone. Some bastard had nicked them!
The dunny was out back, so that's where I went, passing it and the chaos of rubbish, to open the back gate.
Lost him!
~
I walked the back alleys knowing that he would look for me at home, and then, not finding me, leave to hunt elsewhere.
By 3 am, I missed bed so much, I decided it was safe to return.
On the corner of my street, the same obnoxious but comforting streetlight shone. I slid the key in the door and the key turned smoothly, and I shoved the door and it opened. Nothing jumped out at me in the hall. No fiends lurked in my room.
I threw myself on the bare mattress without even taking off my shoes, to sleep the sleep of forgetfulness.
~
He climbed the stairs on all four feet, his tail slashing against the railing. At the top of the stairs, he stood, six feet tall, and his forefeet became hands, and he pulled a handkerchief out of his jeans and wiped it against the wall, and the pea-green paint blistered and gasped. He waved his cloth and flames galloped across the wall, galloped toward my room.
I woke to the sound of breaking glass. Rough hands grabbed me, knocking the wind out of my solar plexus as they flung me over a shoulder, like a sack of wheat. I was handed out of my window, to be loaded onto another shoulder and carried down a ladder.
A stretcher, noise. Flashing red lights. Suck, suck, suuuuck. My lungs finally pull in air, my mouth tastes the acrid bite of wet ash. City ash—eucalypt, plastics, electric wires. An oxygen mask grips my face, and I shove it away. Professional words urge me down, and hands shove me flat onto the hard stretcher mat. Medics slide my stretcher into an ambulance faster than a sheep into a race, but I'm no sheep.
'Hey!' I crack my skull rolling off the stretcher, but I have to be fast. They're closing the doors already, ready to drive off. Not soon enough to keep me in.
They're not insulted when I hit out, resisting their assistance. I'm just a situation that fixed itself. They walk toward the fire truck. I feel bad momentarily that I didn't thank them.
A cacophony of noise, lights, confusion, purpose.
Firemen aim hoses. Fierce water shoots, thudding into the house. One hose is firing into my bedroom window.
I recognize some of the people in the crowd, but not many. None are my housemates.
'I told you,' he says, into the back of my neck.
He sounds gentle, but his next words chill. 'Where do you want to go from here?'
I didn't dignify him with an answer.
'Come,' he says, and I let him lead me towards the crowd's back, and away.
~
'You didn't have to burn it.'
My teeth felt furred, my stomach contorted, I ached too much for this to be the dream.
We were sitting on the grass under a giant fig tree at the bay end of Bettawong Street. The sound of water lapping against the wharf was so pleasant, it was obscene.
I turned to him and didn't care what he did to me. 'Why did you!'
I didn't ask. I screamed. It didn't matter to me whether he would be angry—what my goddamn punishment would be. I didn't care about anything but screaming and crying and screaming some more.
So far, he hadn't answered. He had led us to this place and forced me to sit, to 'calm' me, he said. My head throbbed, and I wanted to hit something.
Now, I was too tired to do anything more than sit and try not to think of the present, the past, the future.
'You did it, Angela,' he said into the void.
I swung around but didn't say anything, as I needed to hear him say something I could understand, maybe for the pleasure of hating him.
'You didn't listen to me,' he said. 'You thought you could walk away.'
'But,'
'But nothing, Angela. The contract gave me a hell's week.'
He took my hands in his. I pulled away, and his hands tightened around mine like a Chinese finger pull—but this was no party favour. His grip only lessened when I stopped pulling away, but left a bruise of a promise that made my veins pulse with pain as blood flowed again. I lowered my eyes to the ants at the grass near my crotch, for lack of knowing where to look.
'Angela...' He cupped my jaw in his hand and tilted my head so that my eyes had to meet his. 'It isn't even a hell's hour yet.'
~
Fainting has never been part of my repertoire, but I wished I could then. As it was, all I could do was sit. Sit and think. Above us, fruit bats screeched in the fig tree, leather wings breaking figs from their stems as the bats squabbled. All around us, plops of ping-pong-ball fruits punctuated the gentler slaps of water against the harbour wall metres away.
All that stuff I'd read at the Higher Light suddenly became useful, as it helped me now to realize that things were possibly all arranging themselves for the best. But I could mull this later. Now was the time to say something. 'Did anyone get hurt?'
'Do you want?'
'Of course not!'
'Angela,' he said, a warning note in his voice. 'Tell the truth.'
I had to establish equilibrium again, so I asked a question. 'What did you do with Simone? And Andrew, for that matter?'
'You mean?'
'You know!' I hated his coy act. 'Did you let them ravish you? And how did you hide your, uh, tail?'
He seemed surprised at the questions, but answered. 'No to both, though they fought over me at breakfast.'
I was intrigued in spite of myself. 'How did you get rid of them ... or did you?'
'I did try to fend them off permanently, but,' and here he sighed theatrically, 'but I fear that I only whetted their appetites.'
He was such a ham I couldn't help grinning, something that made me almost more angry at myself than him.
'What story did you tell them?'
'Do you really want to know? Oh, only that I had fallen in love with you.'
He pulled a used tampon out of his breast pocket, dangling it between us like a warm dead rat.
I yanked away from him and smashed my skull against the tree's trunk. 'Where did you get that thing?'
His right eyebrow circumflexed. 'Don't you recognize it?'
'Mine?'
He ran it back and forth under his nose, like a Corona, and stuck it in his mouth and sucked.
I wanted to throw up.
'They had the same reaction,' he said.
'You ...?'
'Your essence, carried with me.'
Would they tell everyone they know? Wouldn't I? Could I stop them?
He broke into my panic. 'I asked you a question.'
'What?'
'They died in the fire,' he announced, casual as it rained yesterday.
'No!'
'Not yet, but they will have. Now make up your mind.'
'I don't want them to die! Of course not. I'm not a horrible person. But why did you have to ruin my life? I can't live in the neighbourhood now. Everyone here will know by tomorrow.'
He just sat there looking at me, his expression as animated as a dead shark.
Simone and Andrew's fate rested in the balance. And not just theirs. My head itched as my heart and my brain fought against each other. Even though this was his holiday, it was my life. It was important that I teach him compassion, even though my housemates were nothing to me—and in Simone's case, less than nothing.
'Well?' he asked.
'You haven't harmed Simone or Andrew, have you?' I answered, clutching his knee. 'Or Jason, or any of them?'
'Tsk, tsk,' he clucked. 'Now that I know your wishes, though I am not completely convinced ... no.'
'And the house?'
'A total loss, sorry to say.'
'Not so bad,' I said without thinking.
'Eh?'
'Insurance,' I explained. And then I felt remorse for people I didn't even know, and with the way my life was going, I was sure I would never know. I felt for the future of people wanting insurance. The more accidents, the more rates go up. Insurance companies must follow the rules of profit. No one I knew now would understand me in this silly remorse, but I learnt it at the bank, and it stuck.
But enough pity for them. I felt for my bag and something to blow my nose on. 'My stuff!'
I had to ask, hating having to. 'Where'd you put my stuff?'
He shook his head, and offered his hand. 'Ready, Angela?'
... everything ...? everything!
He stood and adjusted his crotch with an impatient jerk.
There was one thing left. 'The store. My job. I have responsibilities.'
'Sorry,' he said. That tone, I recognized. The same gentle élan I'd used on Gordon.