Текст книги "A Blessing From The Obeah Man"
Автор книги: Celina Grace
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 5 страниц)
Little Drops of Happiness
6.00pm
Friday night. You can feel the tension in the city already. Driving back through the clogged streets the lights seem brighter, the car horns louder. The daytime radio stations are fading away, the nocturnal DJs are warming up the airwaves. You can feel Friday night inside you, like a faint electric current running underneath your skin. In the gathering dusk, you can feel yourself glowing.
The phone starts ringing before you reach home. You yank it from your back pocket, check the number. Katy’s name is winking from the little screen. You toy with the idea of answering but, fuck it – time for a little Friday night refresher before business starts for real. The house looks just the same as it did when you left for work this morning but, paranoia always knocking, you glance around covertly before you unlock the front door. There used to be ragged overgrown bushes by the verandah but you uprooted those one sunny Sunday, after too many nightmares of some rabid junkie leaping out at you like something from a cheap horror movie. Now the front yard is neat, Spartan. The gravel that covers the ground still glimmers faintly in the dying sunlight. A solitary bay tree stands in the centre of the yard, like a leafy sentinel.
Inside the house and the phone is going crazy now. You’ve programmed separate ring tones for different people. One for your parents; one for your few real friends; one for everybody else. Every call now is ringing the latter tone; the latest cheesy club anthem bastardised into tinny mobile notes. You talk, laugh, promise, placate. It’s shaping up to be a busy one. There’s a rave on tomorrow and a big-name DJ playing one of the clubs tonight.
You walk through the house, phone pinned to your ear. Katy’s garrulous rattle is mere background noise – you punctuate the stream of gabble with the occasional ‘yeah’. The house is dark, curtains pulled against a curious world. You walk into the bedroom feeling as if it’s been more than nine hours since you were last here. The bed looks like an archaeological relic – it’s been too long since there was anyone else sleeping there with you. You think of Katy, Nadia, even Sue and dismiss them all. Too easy. You know that all you’d have to do is proffer the goods and they’d be in there like a shot – all three of them together, probably – and whilst the image is good for a momentary frisson, you know those last few remaining scraps of self-respect would vanish with the smoke of the post-coital cigarettes.
Those unwelcome thoughts linger just that bit too long – you need to wash that nasty taste out of your mouth. The phone is miraculously silent for five minutes and you take the opportunity to chop out three fat lines. One and the black cloud above your head whitens. Two and it begins to dissipate; three and it’s gone entirely. Feeling that welcome numbness you sit there on the futon, working out what you’ll need to take tonight. The surface of the bed starts to look like the counter of a sweetshop. An adult’s sweetshop. You pick up the newest pills, fat blue Nikes. Untried as yet, all the way from Sydney. What the hell, you think, and chuck one down, grimacing at the acrid taste.
There are lots of things to do but at the moment all you feel like doing is just lying here, feeling the coke sparkle through your synapses. Again, you’re struck by the need for someone else to be here. Rolling over, you hug a pillow to you but it’s not warm, it doesn’t move, it doesn’t hug you back. Astonishingly, you feel tears prickle the back of your throat. Only one thing will take your mind off the loneliness and it’s sitting in front of you in a plastic bag. Four, five. That’s better. The phone starts its insistent warble again and this time you grab it eagerly, relishing the fact that people need you.
9.13pm
Out and about now. The car growls its low approval as you steer it around the suburbs. The dark has enveloped the city now but the air is still warm. You use the control to move the windows down and let the night into the car. Steve’s house is up ahead, the usual assortment of beaten up cars littering what used to be the front lawn. You grab your jacket which doubles as a goodie bag and make your way to the front door. Steve opens it himself and lets out a howl of greeting. His head has been shaved again and the scar on his forehead bisects the stubble in a white lightning flash. You exchange the usual insincere hugs and handshakes but for once you can’t be bothered with it and make your way to the lounge room. The usual suspects are here; Steve’s pallid girlfriend Sandy, KT, Jason and Min. You’ve never worked out if the last three actually live here or just spend their lives coming over to get stoned and sit around on the stained carpet. They tend to wake up a bit when you appear. There is the usual scraping for credit, money reluctantly handed over and bags eagerly received. The room stinks even more than usual. You move to the kitchen, which will never make the front cover of Better Homes and Gardens. Sandy drifts after you and puts her arms around your waist from behind. She’s as thin as a ghost.
“C’n you let me have one?”
You turn around and she leans in and twines her arms around your neck, smiling anxiously.
“You got any money?”
She looks up at you from under her eyelashes and smiles again, coyly this time. At the same time, you feel her skinny thigh move between your legs to press against your groin. She’s wasting her time – it takes a lot more than that to get you hard these days.
“Come on Sandy, you know the score.”
She pouts and takes her leg away.
“Steve won’t let me have one of his.”
Steve’s got the right idea, you think. And then, relenting, reach into your pocket and slip her a pill. She grins like a Cheshire cat and comes back to your arms.
“You’re great, y’know that. I’d like you even if you weren’t our dealer, you know?”
You slide your hands down to her non-existent bum. Warm bone, she may be, but she’s still warm.
“I’m not a drug dealer,” you say, your mouth against her forehead. “I’m a social pharmacist.”
12.34am
The city streets are clogged with cars, all doing the Friday night cruise. You curse as a metallic blue Subaru looms up behind you like a fume-belching demon and nearly takes out your rear wing. At times like this the car feels like a little oasis, a cosy metal cage that locks out the outside world. In here, you can watch the rest of them, but they can’t watch you back. But you can’t stay here any longer, not with a dozen hungry punters waiting for you in the pubs and clubs of Adelaide. Miraculously there’s an empty space outside the Crown and Sceptre and you wedge the S2000 against the kerb. The line-up snakes back from the doorway but you saunter up to the bouncer, blipping the remote locking on the car. You can feel the ray-gun intensity of resentful gazes, feel the envy wafting out from the crowd along with the smell of hot skin, sweat and perfume.
At the doorway, you change your mind. Inside is a pulsating, feverish beat, wall-to-wall smoke, bodies lining the walls and the dance floor. For a wild moment, you want to turn and run, pound away down the street past the waiting queue, making for – where? There’s a thumping in your head, echoing the bass that seeps out from the pub. There’s no escape for you tonight. With the knowledge of that, calmness comes back and you clutch the bag inside your jacket. The slippery plastic moulds to your fingers and beneath it, you can feel the reassuring grind of the white powder.
There’s a shout behind you and your heartbeat accelerates another notch. You turn and there’s Laurie, blonde crop dazzling under the streetlights, tanned skin stretched over muscles. He comes over and gives you a bone-crushing hug.
“Alright?”
“No worries.”
He knows the score. He dances to the same tune as you and you are almost friends. There’s still that faint vacancy in his eyes when he catches yours. In another world, another life, you would be soul mates. Here, a line separates you still. A white powdery line, scored across a mirror.
It’s still a relief to see him. With him and only him, you can relax. Almost. There is always an ‘almost’.
“You going in?”
“Who’s in there?”
He grins. His teeth are still white and fairly even. With all the pills he does, he should just have a row of stumps. You run your tongue over yours automatically.
“The usual suckers. Nadia’s looking for you.”
You roll your eyes and he grins again.
“Gotta just grab something from the car – coming?”
You glance back at the Honda, shiny beneath the streetlights. Laurie will have parked somewhere more secluded.
“For sure.”
The nos canister gasps. Beside you Laurie exhales loudly, a blank white strip of cornea visible beneath his eyelids. The gas escapes from his mouth in an almost invisible blue sigh. His hand falls into his lap and the canister begins to slide to the floor. You retrieve it quickly, drop in a bulb with a metallic little clink, screw it in. As you suck it down, he comes round.
You finish up the box between you and both sit there for a while, dreamy and quiet. Slowly the nitrous recedes, like a wispy tide withdrawing and you sit up and reach for the bag. Tonight won’t work as a pill night, you’ve decided, and then chuck another one down anyway, just in case you were wrong.
With three fat lines inside you, you can face the music. Literally. You can feel the grin on your face already, stretching your skin over your cheekbones. You fake a yawn, just to feel the ache in your jaw.
Inside you lose Laurie almost immediately. You need a piss and begin to wade your way towards the toilets at the back of the bar. There’s a scream in your ear, loud enough to shatter your eardrum. Nadia materialises in front of you, shimmering in a silver vest. She screams your name again and flings herself at you. You stagger a little, even under her slight weight. The pills are making you unsteady.
“I thought you’d never get here! Everyone’s waiting for you! Come with me.”
She seizes your hand and tugs you along. For a fleeting moment, you wonder what it would be like to know this many people who’d be like this even if you didn’t sell them drugs. Then someone stumbles into you and the thought is gone. You follow Nadia’s pert white-jean-clad behind out into the tiny beer garden.
There is an immediate change in the atmosphere. Those who are most desperate come forward and start talking to you; the absolutely frantic come straight out with their requests. The ones better able to hide their need continue with their conversations, with just a slight pause as they clock your entrance and the occasional glance around to check that you’re still there. Those are the ones who will wait until you want to leave and then corner you by the stairs, by your car, in the toilets. You clench your jaw – you feel the need for another line already. You spot Laurie making his way over to the table and the shift of a few people from you to him. As always, there’s that momentary sting of rejection, until you remind yourself that both of you are just providing a service, that’s all.
Nadia sits down by you. The smoke from her cigarette stings your eyes; her voice rattles on in your numbed ears. You look at her, marvelling that someone so beautiful can be so empty. She hasn’t got a bad personality – she has no personality. She’s a personality sink. You can feel a little of yours leach away every time you’re near her. You always come away greyer, thinner, more insubstantial.
3.17am
The club is close and hot and steamy, an urban jungle realised. You stand by the purple painted wall, condensation running down it. You press your palm into the thin stream of moisture, relishing the brief moment of coolness. That Nike is roaring through your bloodstream, the charlie chasing it in a faint white trail – you think this as a coherent thought and start laughing, thinking of all the tiny specks of coke, all the little Charlies, running through your blood, chasing that Nike – yeah, just do it…
Oh God. You start praying to something you don’t believe in as you find yourself bent over the scummy toilet, feeling yourself empty out. There seems to be more than your stomach contents spattering onto the dirty porcelain. How can there be anything lost, when there’s nothing there in the first place? You shove that thought away, flush it away with the tug of the chain. You sit on the dirty tiled floor, throbbing head resting on your folded arms, staring at the filthy floor.
There’s a warm, heavy hand on your shoulder and you look up. Laurie’s face bends down from what seems like an impossible height.
“You alright, man?”
You can’t do much more than nod. Conscious of a little dart of shame, you haul yourself to your feet, wade towards the door. Your bed has never seemed so appealing. But you know you would just lie there, big-eyed in the darkness, feeling your heart hammer against the thin walls of your chest. Lying there, counting the beats. Counting down towards death. No way.
“I’m OK.” You reach for the bag as you say it. Laurie finally smiles, a little uncertainly. You produce an answering grin, from somewhere you can’t go too often.
“Sure?”
You wave the bag in answer and he grins again and doesn’t ask any more questions.
5.26am
The dawn light is creeping in through the windows of the club, a shy gold finger of light testing the smoky darkness inside the walls. The beat is as thunderous as ever but is beginning to sound bleary, too insistent. You bend over a sink, rinse your mouth with water, spit it back into the cracked bowl.
Back in the corner, sat on the sticky carpet, you look out over the sea of bobbing heads. As always there’s that pocket of emptiness inside you, that constant unending ache that no amount of powder can wipe away. You look at the sunlight, battling against the thickness of the dark and feel that pocket gape open a little further. One day it will open completely and you’re scared of what will come out.
There’s a figure in front of you suddenly, a white figure. It’s Nadia, in her shimmering vest and white jeans. The light behind her suddenly intensifies until she is irradiated in light. The smoke coils behind her; sunlight beams out in a circlet of fire around her head. You feel your heart leap up suddenly. She is so fierce, so splendid – for a moment you are drowning in the sight of her, in awe of her and you lean forward, yearning. There’s nothing lost that can’t be found – is that how is goes? Salvation is standing there, angel wings invisible in the darkness.
Then she moves and the light dims and she’s just Nadia again, beautiful and empty and boring. Your heart stutters, falters, limps along. It’s the same old shit, as it always has been, as it always will be. You feel a sliding trail of wetness move down your cheek, a sheet of wetness overlaying your face and realise that ache in your throat is a huge wave of tears, built up behind your eyelids. There’s one lifelong sob caught in your throat. Pressing a hand to your chest, you sigh. The morning light is out there, golden, molten, beautiful. But you – you are lost in the darkness, clawing for clarity, drowning in this sad, grey excuse for a life. That angel has flapped its wings . There’s no real sunshine, no golden morning waiting for you out there. There’s an empty house, a cold bed, a faltering heart. It’s nothing but dark and smoke for you, from here on.
~~~
Wave Goodbye
New Year had come and gone before Simon noticed that people were disappearing. Christmas had been the usual blare of tinsel glitter and family noise and he’d not been down to the beach once. So it was on his first day back on the surf that he realised the pink-haired guy who usually surfed just along the beach wasn’t there anymore.
Of course, Simon didn’t actually think he’d disappeared, not then. Despite the headlines in the local paper and the tentative interest of that intestate TV crew, the recent spate of vanishings had more or less passed him by. There were other things to worry about after all; Stacey, his lack of a job and the resulting state of his finances, his father’s failing health, the lines etching themselves ever deeper into his mother’s face. Too many things to waste time worrying about why people, young people like himself, had dropped out of sight. Had disappeared.
So, on that warm morning on the freshly washed beach, Simon just noted the absence of the guy vaguely, before paddling out to where the waves were breaking in foamy white crests. He’d caught a few and was splashing his way out again when he noticed the surfboard, garish red and yellow under the sun, its nose wedged into the sand. Only then was he aware of a small chill, a tiny finger of cold nudging his stomach, remembering the shark attack on the beach last year.
The board was sound, though, when he got to it. Foot strap tightly velcroed. No bite-marks, no blood stains. What was that guy’s name, anyway? Steve, that was it – his board, for sure. Simon hadn’t really known him but they’d shared the odd 6am conversation, several of the last sunset waves, a few spliffs at one of Stacey’s parties. A quiet guy, as Simon remembered him, but a nice one. So where was he?
He’s gone, Simon thought. Another one. He thought back to the headlines. Missing Teens. Where Have Our Young People Gone? Mother’s Anguish as Daughter Vanishes. How many had gone he couldn’t remember but it was a lot for a small town on the coast of South Australia and for those with short or long memories there were words like Truro and Snowtown to stir up fear for the safety of those who’d disappeared. Not yet really believing it, he tucked the board under his free arm and set off towards the police station. Behind him, in the sighing waves, a dolphin leapt and splashed.
“It’s getting weird now.”
Stacey lifted her head from his chest. Simon could see the dark roots in her hair smudging the blonde halo of curls. Her eyes looked black in the dim light of the candle.
“Matt asked me where Tim was the other day.”
“Who’s Tim?”
“That tall guy, you know. I used to go out with him.”
Simon frowned, shifting his arms beneath his head. ‘Go out’ was Stacey speak for ‘used to root’. As if sensing his mood, she bent her head and began licking the salt off his stomach. He gripped her chin, lifting her face to his.
“That pink-haired guy’s gone too – that Steve. I found his board on the beach this morning.”
She looked impossibly young in the candlelight. Momentarily it flickered and she was almost lost in the dark. He felt a clutch of panic that this was how it happened, this was when people just got lost, in the dark. But the flame strengthened and she was back in the light, hands moving lightly on him.
“Where’s everyone going, Si?”
He hesitated. What were the explanations? Killings, driftings, drugs, debt…all of these seemed like a whisper of a reason. To paddle out to sea, he thought dreamily, that’s where I’d disappear to; swim out into that endless blue, rolling ceaselessly under the mirroring sky. There would never be a last wave, ever; just the surf, eternally unfolding under the hot gaze of the southern sun.
“Simon?”
She looked at him, a small crease appearing on her young forehead. He pulled her down onto him, wanting to forget the vision of that endless wave that, even now, echoed on the inside of his skull. She sighed and in the hiss of her breath he heard the swell breaking again on the glittering sand.
Back on the hot beach again, walking into the water, heading for the white horses on the horizon. Simon felt the tug of the undertow against his calves as he straddled his board. The shore seemed so far away out here, a distant smudge of golden sand and the hot glitter of sun on metal as the cars inched their way across the promenade.
He felt rather than saw the shadow rise beside him. The tall fin sliced through the wave and in an instant of melting panic he thought he saw the gaping jaws parting the waves in a frenzy of teeth and foam. But as his heart made a stuttering leap for his throat he realised the shape beside him was a dolphin, smiling through the water at him, its all too human eye fixed upon him, unblinking. Its rubbery side brushed against his leg and he looked down at those appendages, which suddenly seemed so out of place in this flawless element.
The dolphin looked at him, holding its place in the water.
“It’s your wave,” Simon said.
As his mouth closed over the sentence he looked back at the shore. Behind him the sea called, rolling endlessly. In front, the town looked like nothing but a mirage, shimmering on the horizon. He understood then, why the choices were made.
He reached out to the grey shadow beside him, knowing whom it was. All that he’d left behind on shore seemed as grey now, distant in the way that faded memories were. Time to choose now, to stay or go? The sun cast its golden glance over the scene, omnipotent, oblivious.
~~~
