Gia’s mouth turns down in sympathy.
‘He’s worse than liquid meth,’ I mutter. ‘Boom, straight to the heart. Like a bullet. Every time.’
I don’t tell her that I know what that feels like, too. That the ache I feel for Ryan right now resembles a mortal wound.
‘That bad, huh?’
Gia’s eyes are so kind, I can’t bear it. I look out the window again so she won’t see the hurt and confusion on my face. Irina and I might actually be the same person, the way we’ve trashed every relationship we’ve ever formed with anyone.
‘The timing’s always been lousy,’ I mutter. ‘We’re never free to be with each other. Something always gets in the way. Like now.’
Something? More like everything. Every damned thing.
Why? I rail silently at the starless night sky. Why must you always, always, show me the things I cannot have?
‘So he’s seeing someone then?’ Gia asks. I hear disappointment in her voice and turn on her, feeling something evil rise in me. ‘Little young for you, isn’t he?’ I hiss. ‘You’ve got to be, what, pushing thirty?’
‘What do you care?’ Gia challenges. ‘You’re the one who dated a sixty-year-old rocker has-been — eeuugh, I might add — for a few weeks just to see what it felt like. Besides, you told Ryan to get out of your life — I heard you. So he’s fair game.’
I glower at her in silence.
‘And why’d he call you “Mercy”?’ she queries. ‘You’re about as merciful as the crocodile they murdered to make your handbag.’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ I reply tightly, kicking off Irina’s high-heeled shoes and looking back out the window so she can’t see my eyes shine with unshed tears.
‘Try me,’ Gia says. ‘I’m actually in the mood to hear you talk, for a change.’
‘Do you believe in angels?’ I reply tightly.
Gia looks at me quizzically.
‘Nope,’ she says, unzipping her leather jacket and stretching. ‘Biggest atheist out there. That new age stuff makes me want to laugh. Uncontrollably. What do angels have to do with —’ I don’t let her finish.
‘Everything. They have everything to do with it. They’re the reason we’re even here, talking together in this car.’
‘Uh, okay.’ Gia laughs uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t realise you were religious. Some of the stuff you’ve done —’
‘It’s not a question of religion,’ I snap. ‘Religion is what people call things they can’t explain, imposing order where there is no order. Let’s save the theology discussion for another day, okay? I’m tired.’
Gia sits back huffily, but there’s no point even getting into it, because she can’t help me. No one can.
So now it’s just a waiting game, and I hate waiting almost as much as I hate heights.
There’s a stony silence in the car for a few blocks, and the sense of panicky, edgy dread I’m feeling seems to be sucking all of the air out of the atmosphere.
I gesture at the smoky pane of glass between us and the driver. ‘Can you talk to him? Tell him I need him to open the sunroof?’
‘Irina, in case you haven’t noticed, it’s snowing outside,’ Gia exclaims. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’
‘I’m homesick,’ I say feverishly, when what I really want to scream is: I’m suffocating in here.
‘You live in the Bahamas, when you’re not working,’ Gia reminds me incredulously.
I screw up my face in confusion and Gia sighs. ‘It’s hot there?’
‘I want to feel the snow on my face, like I did when I was a child,’ I plead.
‘No shit?’ Gia frowns, before knocking on the glass partition.
It descends an inch or two, just enough for us to see Vladimir’s pale blue eyes, the top of his head.
‘What is it? What do you want?’ he says sharply.
‘She wants the sunroof open,’ Gia says, jerking her thumb in my direction. ‘She’s “homesick”.’
Vladimir’s pale blue eyes zero in on me for a second and I think he’s going to say no, but then he nods tersely.
‘We’re almost there, I see no harm in it. Do it,’ he says to the driver.
The opaque screen slides back into place. A moment later, the inner panel on the ceiling of the car shifts across and then the fibreglass sunroof itself slides away and the cold air outside comes rushing into the car. I feel small flakes of snow settle on my upturned face, then melt.
‘Ugh.’ Gia shivers beside me. ‘You’re mad.’
But she shifts across to allow me to stand up, and I wriggle my head and shoulders through the opening, placing my bare hands on the roof of the limo. They immediately begin glowing in the night air, as I’m sure my face and neck are doing, but there is no one to see it.
The wind is so strong that it causes Irina’s long hair to ripple out behind me, like a bright flag, a pennant. I bare my teeth to it, grateful for the relative solitude. The elements I can handle; human relations, not so much. I’m still an abject failure at those.
I turn briefly, catching the headlights of the second limo behind us. It’s at least five car lengths back and falling away slightly, as if our driver’s just been told to step on it. I look back at my hands on the roof of the car: the glow of my skin seems brighter tonight. Brighter even than stardust, than moonlight. Light seems to leak from me in faint wisps, in errant curls that blur and fade.
I look up as we turn into Via Victor Hugo and, at first, imagine that I must be seeing things.
There’s a man standing in the centre of the road up ahead, his back to us. I feel my skin prickle in warning as his dark shape grows clearer the closer we get to him. Our limo driver isn’t stopping, he’s actually picking up speed. I don’t think he’s seen the man in the roadway because he doesn’t have my eyes.
‘Move!’ I yell at the man, waving one arm. ‘Get out of the way!’
‘What is it, Irina?’ I hear Gia calling from inside the car. ‘What have you seen?’ She tugs sharply on the hem of my sweater to get my attention.
The man’s just standing there, looking down the road away from me, his arms loosely at his sides, posture straight, as if he was crossing and became lost in thought.
‘Are you deaf, man?’ I scream. ‘Get out of the way!’
From inside the car, I hear Vladimir and Gia shouting, ‘Irina! What is it?’, ‘Irina, what’s the matter?’ and I duck my head down a little and call through the opening, ‘Tell the driver to slow down! There’s a man in the road.’
‘A what?’ Gia yells.
‘A MAN IN THE ROAD!’ I roar.
But all our driver does is flick on his high beams so that I see the man turn, shielding his eyes against the light, his face full of fear as he registers, too late, the car bearing down on him, registers me looking down at him from the open sunroof, horrified, and in the instant his eyes fly wide, I see, I see —
Ryan.
It’s Ryan on the road. In the same beat-up leather jacket he was wearing when I last saw him in Australia. Layered tees, one blue, one grey; indigo jeans, scuffed boots. He might have stepped straight out of my memory into this place. And all I can think as he turns his head away from the car, the car that’s going to run him down, is: Oh God, he came for me anyway.
Ryan throws his arms up as if to shield himself from the impact. But it’s too late, it’s useless, he just goes under the front wheels.
I don’t think, I don’t even breathe, I just pull myself out onto the roof in one smooth action and somersault off the moving car and onto the road, screaming his name as I land on my bare feet — like a cat — looking around wildly.
