Managing Death (22 page)

And there he is, a line before me,
Francis Rillman OM(F)
. Orpheus Manoeuvre Failed, I guess.

‘Really? Lissa says she pomped him.’

‘She must be mistaken, dear. He’s been to Hell and back but once. Have another scone, you’re far too thin.’

Wal reaches down to grab a scone, and she slaps him away. ‘You, on the other hand, could stand to lose a few pounds.’

‘Hey, I resent the implication. I’m a bloody cherub.’

‘Resent away, you look like a cherub who’s eaten a smaller cherub, after frying them in batter – and not just one.’ She winks at me. ‘Now, let’s just say that, hypothetically, Lissa
did
pomp Rillman and that he has come back somehow. Well, I’d not be surprised. You did something similar, after all.’

I shrug. ‘Similar, I guess, though I never really died. But Lissa did, and I brought her back.’

‘Not without help you didn’t.’ Aunt Neti’s laughter peals from her like a bell ringing. She slaps both my knees. ‘You’re an RM. You’ve died a dozen deaths, a hundred, a thousand, it’s all you ever do.’

I hate that line of reasoning. I’m really not all that different from my previous life as a Pomp. I certainly feel as confused as I ever have.

‘How would Rillman have made it back?’

‘Let’s see … Rage and lack of compromise. You should know they are potent enough. You had your share of those, I’ve heard. Don’t underestimate the efficacy of either.’

W
hen Lissa gets back into Number Four, looking exhausted, I drag her into my office. She vents, and I listen. Her day was long, another two stirs, and that after our assault on the Stirrers’ house. And surely it couldn’t get any hotter than this? Sure, her home city of Melbourne was hot, but it was a dry heat. People are dying, cooking and expiring, then cooking some more in the heat and the storms. And that’s not even mentioning the Stirrers crowding around them. I feel guilty, that as I’m her boss and her partner I’m responsible for most of her problems.

Then it’s my turn to vent. I talk about Aunt Neti. ‘She couldn’t give me much. None of them seem capable of that.’

‘It’s the way of upper management, and Recognised Entities,’ Lissa says. ‘They’ll never give you much. It’s not in their interest. I swear they love watching us feeling blindly about. They get off on it.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Give it time,’ Lissa says, her words remind me of Suzanne’s.

‘Neti’s certain Rillman is alive. She even showed me her book, the diary she keeps. If Rillman has died and come back, then he’s doing something new.’

‘Well, they say he was an innovator.’

‘Don’t sound so impressed when you say that.’

‘Believe me, you impress me more.’ She grabs her black bag. ‘Steve, I’ve had enough of work today. Can we … ?’

‘I don’t want to go home yet,’ I say. It’s been a long day, but I’m not ready to face a sleepless night in my parents’ place.

Lissa arches an eyebrow. ‘Well, where do you want to go?’

‘I think you’ll like it.’

The Corolla’s down in the car park. We pass people working the night shift. They smile at Lissa as we head towards the lift, and avoid eye contact with me. I don’t mind, as long as they’re working.

‘You’ve done well with this lot,’ I say as we wait for the lift.

Lissa sighs. ‘It sometimes makes me wonder if this isn’t the way we should have been working at Mortmax all the time. When it was just families you get people working the job who don’t really want to.’

That could have summed up both Lissa and I at one point. I’d like to think that we’ve come to some acceptance of our respective career arcs by now.

‘You’re happy being a Pomp aren’t you?’ I ask.

Lissa rubs her chin, an unconscious gesture that I always find charming. ‘I don’t know if happy is the word. For one I have a lousy boss … But, seriously, I’ve had to grow up a lot these last couple of months. I’ve realised that sometimes you don’t get what you want or, as the case may be, what you want isn’t really what you want. What about you?’

The lift pings. We get in, and I don’t answer. Just squeeze her hand, and when the lift stops at the basement car park I lead her to the Corolla.

I drive, Lissa lounges in the passenger seat, not bothering to hide her yawns. ‘Is this going to take long?’

‘No, you rest. I’ll wake you when we get there.’

She’s already out when we pull onto George Street. What an amazing ability to sleep she has. The city is bright around us. We pass the great green Christmas tree in the square and navigate our way through people staggering home from Christmas parties, dressed for air-conditioning and dining, not the soup that is a December evening in Brisbane.

There’s a red light at George and Ann. I remember standing on the corner there, with the ghosts of my parents, wondering just how long I was going to live, and how the hell I was going to do it without them. Everyone faces that point in their life. Maybe you spend the rest of your days trying to answer it.

I don’t know if my parents would be proud. They certainly wouldn’t have approved of all the drinking. But I’ve done the best by them I could.

The lights change and someone beeps at me from behind. I put the car into gear, and head out of the city … or towards the city’s heart. Depends on how you look at it.

Ten minutes later, the Corolla lurches up the last section of winding road that leads to Mount Coot-tha’s summit. Lissa’s curled in the seat beside me. I brush the hair from her face and she smiles. It’s a beautiful smile, but every time I see someone sleeping a slither of jealousy burns within me. I shove it down. This isn’t Lissa’s fault, I have to get used to it. Besides, the guilt concerning just who I last spent time with up here takes the edge off.

I pull into a park at the top of the mountain, let the car idle. The lights of the lookout are burning. The air is cooler up here, but it’s still warm. There’s a storm building in the west, following a pattern that has extended over these last few weeks. Heavy clouds trail fingers of electricity across the horizon. Even with that nearing disturbance I can still feel the One Tree, though its presence is somewhat muted.

In the Underworld it would rise above me at this point, clambered over by the dead, those ready or those forced to take the next step into the Deepest Dark. Here, of course, there are just the living forests, scrubby eucalypts that sing and sigh with the approaching storm.

I’ve been working so hard and getting nowhere. Everything, despite my best efforts, seems to be slipping out of control. Can you really learn to be an RM on the job? Maybe this is just what being an RM is really like, and Suzanne and Co. merely put on a mask of calm efficiency as they scramble about trying to keep Mortmax running smoothly. That worries me far more than any lack that I might possess. A lot more.

The city below is luminous. Aeroplanes, their lights blinking, race towards the airport in the east, or rise from it, all of them veering away from the cloud front. Lissa wakes as I turn off the engine.

‘Are we there yet?’

‘Yeah.’

She smiles at me. Her face is too pale. And though I never think of her this way, in that moment she seems so frail. And I have to kiss her. I just have to.

I hold her head in my hands, feeling like a teenager again. The car park’s a popular make-out point, the city a carpet gridded with light beneath us. I kiss her and she’s kissing me. My hands trace the outline of her body. As the storm nears us, the ever-present veil of heartbeats falls away, and all I can feel is her racing heart beneath my palm. I stroke her breasts, awkwardly at first. It’s too open here, but then again, our first sexual experience was an embarrassing masturbation-based binding ritual in a car park.

Lissa pushes against me. Clothes can’t come off fast enough. Lightning streaks the sky as if in sympathy.

‘Now,’ she moans.

And it’s fast and difficult, in that tiny car, the gearstick getting in the way, not to mention the steering wheel and a seat that almost collapses beneath our weight. But we manage it. There are moments of clumsiness, moments of rhythm. We laugh at each other, forget where we are.

The storm is already heading out to sea. The darkness seems washed of impurities, the city’s lights burn brighter. I breathe in the smell of her.

‘That was different,’ she says.

‘But good?’

‘Insecurity isn’t very attractive, you know.’

With the storm gone, Lissa’s heartbeat is just one of the millions I can feel again, racing, slowing, stalling, failing. But hers is right here, by my heart; her lips so close to mine that I kiss her again.

Oscar’s Hummer pulls up next to us, followed by Travis in a little red convertible.

‘We might be in trouble,’ I say.

Lissa smirks. ‘We’re always in trouble.’

Oscar gets out of the car, taps on my window. I wind it down and look up at him as apologetically as anyone feeling as smug as I am can.

‘Look,’ Oscar says, ‘if you want to die, then that’s your prerogative, Steven. But if you are killed, who is going to pay me? And this business is very much word of mouth. Are you trying to ruin my business?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s my fault,’ Lissa says. ‘I wanted to come up here and watch the storm.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

Lissa and I exchange a look that lasts a little too long, and then a little longer.

Oscar is blushing when I look back at him. ‘Yes, we did.’

‘You’re coming home, now,’ he says. ‘Please.’

Oscar’s driving behind us. I have Okkervil River on the mp3, Will Sheff’s voice, shouting out the lyrics to ‘For Real’, filling the Corolla. It’s all menace and yearning but right now it sounds as romantic a thing as you could ever imagine. Another storm is building. It’s going to pour again soon. The Brisbane River is beside us, shining with the reflected glow of the city. The skyscrapers rise up to our left. Southbank’s massive ferris wheel is a circle of fire to our right across the river. The water calls to me a little. I’ve been an RM for such a short time, but I’m already aware of just how many things are connected to death, how many places act as interfaces or linkages between the Underworld and the living world.

The rear-view mirror shows me Oscar hunched over the wheel of his Hummer. His face is hard; then a lightning burst in the sky above conceals it. Travis is driving a little way ahead. I don’t know what they think they’re going to achieve if something actually happens on the freeway.

I take our exit from the M3.

And then I sense it. Something wrong. A force or a presence that didn’t exist a heartbeat ago. And it’s coming from beneath us. I rest my left hand on the dashboard. There’s an odd beat, a rhythm, running counterbalance to the song.

‘Bomb! Out!’ I’m already slowing the car. I can feel it building, racing towards a crescendo of shrapnel. There’s a little piece of me, the Hungry Death, I guess, that’s loving it.

Lissa looks at me. She opens her door: the road is streaking by. There’s no time. Up ahead, there’s nothing coming, the road is clear. I yank my seatbelt free. The car’s slowing, but not enough. The vibration shifts, increasing in pitch. The explosion, all that potential energy, is about to be exhaled in fire.

Lissa leaps and I do something I didn’t believe was possible. I visualise it, as Suzanne must have with me, capture the movement in my skull, and then I shift beneath her. Fold her in my arms. She doesn’t struggle against me, merely accepts that I can take this punishment. I hold her, bind her in me. She’s warm and still against my cold flesh.

We’re out, and rolling. The ground is hard and toothed. My clothes tear. The road bites, it digs its dirty teeth in deep. And ahead of us, the Corolla, slowed almost to a halt, explodes in a series of sharp detonations. Bits of our little car are tumbling from the sky.

I lie on the road, panting. Lissa gets to her feet; there are cuts all over her arms but I’ve taken the worst of
it, thank Christ. She grabs me by the wrist and drags me from the oncoming traffic. When we’re at the edge of the road she drops next to me. And then the storm unleashes all that rain, that blinding rushing rain.

Oscar’s already pulling in behind us, windscreen wipers racing, hazard lights flashing. Cars are slowing, but Travis is out directing traffic. I’ve never seen anyone do it with such panache. When a man’s that big, people pay attention.

‘You all right?’ I shout at Lissa. Things are leaking within me, even as I feel flesh and bone knitting. The rain’s soaking me. Lissa crouches down, kisses me hard and squints; our communication is more lip-reading than anything else.

‘Did you leave the fuel cap off or something?’ she mouths at me.

Bones shift. Ribs slide back into place, organs repair themselves: I’m getting better at this. It itches like hell, though.

‘Yeah, and I also left a bomb in the glove box. Sorry.’

We look over at the Corolla. It’s a flaming wreck billowing black smoke. I feel that it saved our lives.

‘Jesus!’ Oscar says. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine. We’re both fine,’ Lissa says. As though none of this is new to us. And it goddamn isn’t.

Solstice is down among the wreckage almost before the ambulances and fire engines get there, his face set in
a grimace. The storm has come and gone; the air’s so thick you could serve it with a ladle.

Traffic creeps past. Gawkers mostly, peering at the wreck, and the various hues of flashing lights.

‘Jesus, de Selby. It just goes from bad to worse with you, doesn’t it?’ He kicks at the wreckage with one steel-capped boot. ‘I’d understand it if you had a car worth blowing up, but this piece of shit …’

That offends me more than it ought. But at least with Solstice on the scene, I don’t have to answer too many stupid questions: just put up with his jibes. Alex is here, too, keeping in the background, looking worried. He’s talking to Lissa. Taking notes, and studiously avoiding Solstice.

‘Are you getting anywhere with Rillman? Isn’t that your fucking job?’ I demand.

‘The guy’s a ghost. The records just stop. No surprises, I suppose. But you know all about ghosts. Do you think this Rillman could be a Stirrer?’