With an oath, Felipe picks up a small handset and joins the chorus of disembodied voices discussing ETAs and alternative routes in every accent under the sun while the hard rain drives down, turning suddenly into hailstones the size of golf balls. The car slows to a virtual crawl and I let their words wash over me, let myself drift out like the tide.
I don’t know what Luc meant by countering science, but I know I have to try if I ever want to see him again; if I want to be free; if I want him to love me the way that he used to.
I dive down, following the strands of myself inwards, following the linkages and switchbacks and false trails, the broken pattern that I have somehow been cast into. It seems easier this time, this process of atomisation, of unbecoming. I know what to do now, what I’m capable of. There’s no pain, no resistance, no panic, as I cleave away from the flesh, shiver into a billion pieces behind Irina’s eyes.
I am light now, I’m pure energy, as I flow through the canals of Irina’s lymphatic and cardiovascular systems, her connective tissue, her muscles, the nerve endings and sinews, wet matter and bone of which she is made. As liquid as that poison I’m seeking. I chase it down. And where I find it — foreign, lethal, so concentrated it’s a wonder Irina’s not already dead — I break it down, molecule by molecule, atom by atom. Counter its dark science by turning it to vapour within my vaporous self, though it tastes to me like gall, like venom. I subtract it from Irina’s blood, Irina’s flesh, so that she’s left clean and whole.
Even though Irina’s soul is locked away, out of reach, I know that at some deep, animal level she’ll remember this feeling of burning, of purging, of healing. And she won’t be tempted to use again. My touch is electric. I have placed a mark upon her that cannot be seen by mortal eyes.
Abruptly, the weird sensation of unbecoming reverses, as if I’ve done all I can do. I’m pulled back, coalescing again inside Irina’s skin, behind her eyes, as if I am her, and she is me, and there’s no gap, none at all, between us.
I brace myself against the armrest with my elbows, feeling my temperature, my heart rate, fall. My sight grows clear again. The light, the air, no longer hurt me.
I’m on the point of sitting back up in my seat when I hear Felipe place the radio handset back in its cradle and murmur, ‘Usted es una estupida, una drogadicta, una puta. ?Ve que facil es poseer a otro ser humano? Ahora la poseo. ?Desea que continue? La primera cosa que haremos sera deshacernos de esta perra curiosa Basso.’
You stupid, junkie whore. You see how easy it is to own another human being? Now I own you. You want me to keep it coming? The first thing we’re going to do, is get rid of that nosy bitch Basso.
He laughs, and I know he doesn’t care if I hear him, because he thinks that by the time I come down I won’t remember.
I sit up suddenly, tucking Irina’s long hair back behind her small and perfect ears. Felipe catches sight of the movement, then my expression, in the driver’s mirror. Something he sees there makes his own eyes widen in shock.
The car swerves abruptly to the right, hitting the raised edge of a stone kerb. The limo mounts the footpath momentarily before Felipe swings the wheel hard left, over-correcting so that the entire car skids with a squeal of tyres through a slow-motion arc, throwing up a huge plume of water and sleet. A car coming the other way swerves wildly to miss us with a long blare of its horn. There’s the sound of rending metal as we take out the side of a parked car, before coming to a jerky stop hard up against a lamppost on the wrong side of the street, facing back the way we came from.
The hail keeps coming down. And that’s all I hear in the car for a long while. That, and the sound of Felipe’s chokey breathing.
‘Creo en Dios, Padre todopoderoso, Creador del cielo y de la tierra. Creo en Jesucristo, Su unico Hijo …’ he murmurs, looking curiously shrunken, his face in his hands. I realise that he’s praying.
The radio erupts with voices. I hear fingers scrabbling at the back doors of the limo and realise that the central locking is still on. The scrabbling turns to pounding, on the sides of the car, on the roof.
‘Irina!’ I hear someone roar. ‘Irina!’
I’m getting so sick of that name.
Felipe looks up and around almost fearfully before releasing the central-locking mechanism. He does not look at me.
My passenger side door is wrenched open. Jurgen’s standing there holding a large black umbrella, melting sleet streaking his overcoat. Then Carlo materialises out of the grey atmosphere and beckons me forward. Both men are soaked through and look very pale. Their eyes scan the inside of the car quickly and thoroughly, before homing in on Felipe’s hunched figure behind the wheel, then flick back to me, raking me up and down.
Satisfied with what he sees, Carlo says, ‘You all right, miss?’ in a gentle voice, the way you’d address a frightened child. ‘Please, come with us. Felipe, he will handle this.’
When he looks back at Felipe for confirmation, something Carlo sees in the other man’s face makes his mouth harden. His voice is icy as he says, ‘Gianfranco wants to talk to you after you are finished here.’
I hear the splash of many footsteps converging on us, hear urgent shouts in Italian, an approaching siren. There’s the reflected glow of flashing lights through the open car door. The hail comes down as if it will never, ever stop. And I wonder why each life I’m being forced to live seems ever more unquiet than the last.
I gather up my hat, overcoat and handbag and hand them to Carlo as I prepare to step out of the car. Before I do, I turn to Felipe again, but he will not turn his head to meet my eyes. His cowardice causes a hot anger to rise in me like a rattlesnake striking.
‘Deal’s off,’ I hiss. ‘The product’s lousy. Stay away from Irina, you piece of shit, or I’ll track you down and force-feed you the same stuff you just gave a mentally unstable nineteen year old. ?Comprende?’
Outside the car, Carlo and Jurgen are huddled beneath the umbrella, talking loudly, while they hold onto Irina’s things. They do not wonder at the strangeness of my words because they did not hear them.
But the sound of the hail and of the sirens also masks Felipe’s reply. ‘?Demonio!’ he shrieks, making the sign of the cross in my face, his eyes wild, the whites showing.
Demon.
He’s still screaming ‘?Demonio!’ at me as I shut the door.
Jurgen holds the umbrella over us all as he, Carlo and I run for the cover of the third limo. Gia throws the door open and holds her arms out for Irina’s bundle of wet possessions. I clamber into the seat opposite hers and she leans across and slams the door closed behind me. But not before there’s a couple of bright flashes outside. Cameras. Someone’s taking photos.
Through the streaming windows, I see Carlo and Jurgen making a beeline for the nearest policeman in full wet-weather gear.
I stiffen as Gia grabs me by the upper arms, and turn warily. She doesn’t let go of my arms, just leans forward and stares into my face.
‘I thought you were going to die,’ she says sombrely. ‘I really did. I thought that the bad luck you carry around with you and sprinkle all over people like a bad fairy had turned on you this time. We saw Felipe suddenly accelerate and I thought he was going to flip the car. You couldn’t get any traction. You must have been so scared.’
I shrug. Time had seemed to slow while the car had carved imperfect circles through the sleet on the road. But it hadn’t been nearly as terrifying as anything I’d seen and experienced while I was Carmen, while I was Lela. And it hadn’t been nearly as frightening as my dreams can be. But I don’t tell her that.
Gia’s laugh is shaky as she finally lets go of me and sits back. ‘All I could think was — it’s the drugs that are supposed to kill you. I hadn’t even seen this coming.’
One of the passenger doors across from us is wrenched open and Carlo gets in, smelling of wet wool and leather, followed by Jurgen and the streaming umbrella. The interior of the outsized car suddenly seems too small to hold us all, and I shrink back against the door on my side so I won’t inadvertently touch someone’s bare skin and invite in the unwanted. I don’t want to know what’s running through their minds, I don’t want a potted history of their lives. I have enough going on in my head.
‘Drive!’ Carlo roars at the dark-haired man in the driver’s seat whose name I don’t know. ‘Drive!’ Then he levels an apologetic gaze at me. ‘One of the Agence Habituelle photographers got your picture. I’m sorry, but it begins.’
