machine. The Neills don’t have anything like it at home — I know, because I combed the entire house this morning before I left: from the dust-covered, unlived-in formal rooms right through to the bomb-just-hit-them kitchen and laundry area. There’s nothing more high tech than a wall phone in the place.
Outside in the dining area, a phone rings loudly and insistently for several minutes before it’s picked up. I’m almost done. The dishwasher is almost empty. There’s just a giant basket of cutlery and cooking utensils left.
‘Green Lantern,’ someone barks finally. From the sound of things, Reggie’s returned and her temper hasn’t improved.
‘You’re kidding,’ she snarls, turning to glare at me through the serving hatch.
I see Cecilia wrestle the phone out of Reggie’s grasp and take over the conversation. She shoots me a worried glance before saying, ‘Yes, I understand, thank you.’
She places the receiver back in its cradle as Reggie exclaims, ‘I’m sick of her not pulling her weight! It’s not fair on any of us. He should sack her, find somebody else. This can’t go on.’
‘Reggie!’ Cecilia rebukes the taller woman, who just replies, ‘Well, he bloody well should,’ before turning her back on me and wielding her charmless hospitality on another sweaty punter who’s just wandered in.
I’m extricating the last pair of tongs from the dishwasher when Cecilia materialises inside the swing doors. She wipes her hands nervously on her black apron.
‘Uh, Lela?’ she says carefully. ‘You’re needed at home. Georgia called. Said it was pretty urgent.’ She looks at me strangely when I don’t move straightaway. ‘Your mother? It looks bad.’
‘Oh?’ I frown, then remember. The woman in the bed. Georgia was the shift worker. Some kind of nurse? From the look on Cecilia’s face, I know that my reaction’s off. I should be upset.
I rearrange Lela’s features hastily, then glance at Sulaiman, at the teetering piles of cookware beached there beside him in no kind of useful order.
He shakes his head and sighs. ‘Go to your mother. Take as much time as you need. Cecilia will help me sort this out. Again.’
Cecilia turns me around as if I am a child and unknots my apron strings, then lifts it over my head and hangs it on a nearby hook.
‘Take the side door,’ she says softly, ushering me through the swing doors and pointing down the dark, narrow corridor with the Toilets this way sign on the wall. ‘Go now, while Reggie’s not looking.’
I can’t help pausing for a moment to scan the dining area. Ranald’s already gone. The clock over the clattering refrigeration units says it’s just gone midday.
When I open the side door cautiously, the heat outside hits me like a sucker punch to the head. The stench coming off the waste bins is eye-watering. I stand in the laneway looking out at the road before me and realise I have no idea where to catch the bus home.
I’m moving uphill in the direction of the nearest intersection when someone behind me calls out, ‘Lela?’
I turn, shading my eyes. A tall fig, with long, dark, wavy hair, is walking up the slight slope towards me, the sun at their back and shining full upon them so they seem surrounded by a corona of hot, bright light, their white- clad figure shimmering slightly in the stifling heat. And, for an instant, it seems as if that hot light is inside me, too, and what I’m seeing is a distant memory made flesh again. Disorientated, head suddenly pounding with a terrible anticipation, I walk slowly towards the approaching figure as if hypnotised.
The illusion crumbles and I realise that it’s only Justine Hennessy. At some point during the day, she’s unbound her wild topknot of hair and put curlers through it to make it even wilder. She’s also sporting the heaviest, stagiest glitter eye make-up I’ve ever seen and consequently looks at least ten years older than she did this morning. Her face is a study of weird contrasts — the skin almost geisha white, lips a shiny blood red, brows too prominently drawn in an unnatural shade of kohl. She’s wearing false eyelashes with feathers threaded through them. From the neck up, she’s like a caricature of the woman who got on the bus with me this morning. Her body is covered by a shapeless white shirt worn unbuttoned over a strapless white terry-cloth maxi dress that’s elasticised across the bust, like the kind you’d slip on at a beauty spa. An outfit designed to conceal her form, detract from her natural beauty.
She smiles tentatively, hitching the strap of her nondescript black leather handbag higher on one shoulder. ‘I’m glad I caught you,’ she says. ‘You heading out for a break?’
I shake my head, still having difficulty framing any words. Justine had reminded me so strongly of someone I’d once known that I’d almost said that person’s name out loud. Almost. Except, like everything else in my head, it had slipped out of reach before I could utter it.
Lela’s voice, when it finally emerges, sounds weird even to me. ‘Was there . . . something you . . . wanted?’
‘Actually, there was,’ Justine replies, her smile faltering at the look on my face. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning, about your, uh, brain condition?’
I return her gaze warily. ‘Yes?’
She clears her throat. ‘Uh, well, I wanted to help you, even though it’s only a small thing. I’ve never been able to thank you properly. He hasn’t been around since . . . that day. Maybe you’re my lucky charm, eh?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ I reply, glad that Cecilia filled me in on Justine’s horrible back story, every woman’s nightmare, to have a person you love turn on you. ‘But that’s great news. I have told you before, haven’t I, to get out of the . . . business?’
Justine’s smile dies altogether. ‘Yeah, you and everybody else. Mum and me don’t talk any more because of what I do. But you don’t need any skills to do this. I’m too old, too stupid and lazy to do anything else.’
‘Believe that, and you really will be,’ I say.
Her answering laugh is brittle.‘Yeah, well, point taken. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that you got home safely.’
‘I was just trying to work out how,’ I reply, surprised. ‘You sure someone didn’t send you?’ It’s meant to be a joke, but as I finish saying the words I feel my confusion return.
‘Dressed like this?’ Justine snorts. She slips the elasticised band around the top of her chest down an inch or two and shows me the upper edge of a heavy, tacky-looking bra top that’s covered in multicoloured rhinestones and sequins. ‘It’s meant to be sexy.’ Her laughter is forced. ‘To a drunk old pervert maybe.’ She yanks the elasticised white dress back up under her armpits.
Then I remember something. Luc was there. In my dream. He offered to help me, too. Only I have to do something first. What is it?
Justine clears her throat and my train of thought vanishes like smoke.
‘I came out to grab a bite to eat,’ she says, ‘but I also wanted to show you where the bus stop is for when you go home tonight. I think you should cross at the lights — this old chookie won’t be around to haul you across the road later, and you seem a little confused today . . .’
‘But that’s just it,’ I reply, still troubled. ‘I’m leaving now. So you can walk me there, if you like.’
Justine gives me a sharp look. ‘Something wrong at home?’
I nod, and her face crumples a little in sympathy. She reaches out for one of my hands, but instinctively I take a step back and she does, too. Unwanted touching isn’t something she’s into, either, and she recognises the warning signs.
‘It’s this way,’ she says gently, pointing. I see that her short, natural nails of this morning have been replaced by long, baby pink, acrylic claws with crystals embedded in the tips.
Side by side, we head uphill about eighty metres to a major intersection. Justine points across another four lanes of busy traffic.
‘There’s a bus shelter just outside that hotel on the corner,’ she says. ‘You need to get on there.’ She gives me a quick smile and starts back down the street towards the Green Lantern, moving with unconscious grace, a dancer’s grace.
‘Wait!’ I call out, and she turns, her handbag banging against her hip. ‘If I wanted to find a place where I could access the, uh, internet, where would I find one?’
Justine’s face clears. ‘See that noodle shop on the corner?’ She points downhill in the direction she’s heading, one hand shielding her eyes. ‘Straight past the Green Lantern — the one with the happy bowl painted on it?’
I stare full into the afternoon sun without flinching. Farther down the busy road we’re standing on there’s another intersection, but this time with a narrow, one-way street. As far as I can tell, this city is made up of a
