hurt things that are even smaller and more defenceless than they are. I wouldn’t know. In the wider scheme of human history are Ranald’s childhood acts so heinous?
I look at the laptop open to a recent image of Ryan Daley and feel Lela’s heart leap again. I push the hideous squealing of the tortured animals, the smell of burning flesh and fur, to one side — I still need Ranald’s help and I can’t afford to be judgmental. A telephone on its own is no use to me right now; I know because I dialled Ryan’s number this morning before I left Lela’s house — the number I’d memorised when I was Carmen Zappacosta — and all I got was a pre-recorded woman’s voice telling me to Please check the number before trying again. I need access to this seething universe, this internet, that is wholly man-made, and Ranald can provide that. I just need him to show me how it’s done and I can take it from there.
If Ranald’s — how had the bus driver put it? — sweet on Lela, I can milk that. But carefully; I don’t want to mix Lela up in something she can’t back out of later. Engage, get what I want, disengage. I can be ruthless that way.
I pull my fractured thoughts together and reply as calmly as I can manage, ‘Of course I didn’t take it the wrong way, Ranald. And I shouldn’t have touched you, either. It was inappropriate. Overly familiar. I apologise.’
I hope he’s hearing me, because it works both ways, buddy.
‘You don’t need to apologise,’ he says, relieved, and gestures for me to sit down in the seat beside him.
I remain standing.
‘Look,’ he coaxes, ‘you don’t own a computer, right?’
I shake my head.
‘Tell you what, I’ll set up a profile for you and you can message the guy. You choose the password, everything. I’ll just fix you up and step away.’
I drift in a little closer, watching as he clicks a couple of buttons. Ranald fills in Lela’s first and last names, her gender, and makes up a birthday when I decline to provide him with one, his hands flying across the keyboard.
He stands and pushes the laptop across the table in my direction. ‘I’ll let you fill in the email address and password,’ he says. ‘So that you know everything’s private and above board.’
He knows it’s an offer I won’t be able to refuse. He can tell it from the way I can’t take my eyes off the machine, how every line of my body seems to yearn towards it.
As if to underscore his words, he grabs his empty coffee mug and heads towards the service area. ‘Give me another double espresso, Cecilia,’ I hear him say.
‘But it’s too early for your second coffee, Mr Kilkery,’ she says. ‘You always say you like you routine. You sure you want right now?’
I sit down hesitantly in front of the laptop and stare at the keyboard then back at the screen where Lela’s name is already filled in, the cursor blinking at me from the email line.
From across the room, Ranald says, ‘Don’t use your own name, birth date, telephone number or home address as a password, Lela, they’re too easy to crack.’
Easy enough for him to say. Some of that information is locked away in Lela’s brain. I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to access them, let alone type them in here.
When I continue to sit there unmoving, Ranald comes back with his double espresso. His distance is deliberate and respectful but his tone is slightly incredulous. ‘You don’t have an email address, do you?’
I look up at him, and I’m sure he sees bewilderment in Lela’s eyes because he says quickly, ‘How about I just fill mine in there and you can change it later, when you create an account for yourself? There are plenty of free webmail providers, it’s no big deal.’
Jargon, jargon, jargon. He lost me after create.
He spins the laptop back his way and inputs a string of numbers and letters, moving the cursor onto the create password slot when he’s done. Then he slides the machine back under my nose.
‘Now this really is something you can take care of on your own,’ he says. ‘Promise I won’t look. Just a word, or a word with numbers. Or just numbers. Something that’s meaningful to you that won’t make sense to anyone else. It’s to prevent people like me seeing what you get up to online.’
He laughs and walks away again, says to Cecilia, ‘Give me one of those salmon cakes, would you? Hold the sweet chilli sauce.’
I raise Lela’s right hand uncertainly, puzzling at the letters in front of me, then type with one finger: misericordia. A row of twelve anonymous dots appears there in place of the actual letters. Misericordia: Latin for ‘mercy’ — get it? The play on words brings a small smile to my lips. It’s an in-joke for an audience of one. You gotta get your laughs where you can.
‘All done?’ Ranald says, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. ‘Then just click sign up and you’re on your way.’
I do what he asks and am faced with a ‘security question’.
?What does it want now?’ I almost howl. ‘Why is this taking so long?’
Ranald rolls his eyes and flaps one hand at me. ‘Move over, you Luddite,’ he snorts. ‘Let’s do the rest of this together or I’ll never get back to work. Some of us are expected to save the world, you know, day in, day out, one firewall application at a time.’
I shift across to the other seat and he slides himself in front of the machine. He types and clicks, types and clicks.
‘Who do you want to add as a friend?’ he says.
I’m struggling to keep the impatience out of my voice as I peer at the screen. ‘I just want to send Ryan a message. I want to be able to talk to him right now. Is that possible with this . . .’ I use the word hesitantly, ‘website?’
Ranald nods, ‘You can even see if the guy’s online. We’ll check, in a minute.’
He quickly adds himself as a friend before pausing at the profile screen. ‘School, uni, employer?’ he asks.
I look at him blankly and he sighs and types Green Lantern cafe, Melbourne, Australia beside the word Employer.
‘You’re not giving me a whole lot to work with here,’ he says cheerfully. ‘But I can see that you’re about to explode with impatience, so let’s get you a profile picture and you can send that message.’
‘You want a picture of me?’ I wail softly. ‘Where do I get one of those?’
I feel as if Ryan and I are a heartbeat apart, like there’s a gossamer veil between us that I can almost reach up and rip down, but the mechanics and minutiae of ‘connecting’ with him are taking too long. I want to pick up that stupid machine in front of Ranald and throw it onto the ground with an anger so sudden and fierce that my left hand begins to ache. I jam it beneath my right armpit in quiet agony.
‘No sweat,’ Ranald chuckles, misreading my expression of pain for one of impatience. ‘I can take a photo of you with the webcam in my laptop and upload it right now.’
He turns the laptop screen towards me again. ‘Smile for the birdie,’ he says, tapping his finger against a small lens built into the top of the screen. I hitch up the corners of Lela’s mouth unconvincingly, exposing her snaggly front teeth.
Ranald clicks through a couple of extra functions as the manic grin on my face fades away. ‘Done,’ he says with satisfaction.
And just like that, the photo’s taken and Ranald has uploaded it onto the profile page he’s created for me. Welcome, Lela Neill is emblazoned across the top. Lela’s face and head of cropped, brown-red hair fill the entire image, with only a thin corona of brilliant light behind them; I must have moved when the image was captured. She looks blurry and young and gormless. Exactly the opposite of the way I feel inside.
‘We’re in business,’ Ranald says.
I lower my left hand, which no longer seems to ache, and lean forward, excitement flaring. ‘Just find him again,’ I say impatiently.
Ranald performs a few functions and Ryan’s profile fills the screen once more. ‘Send him a message now if you like. Take all the time you need,’ he says, and wanders away to engage Cecilia in further conversation.
The world shrinks down to the screen before my eyes. The noise of the refrigeration units and the
