Olivia turns too late. ‘What was that?’
Meirong bounds into the room as if she might fly into a triple somersault.
‘Engineer’s oversight,’ she declares triumphantly. ‘Quenton –’ She corrects herself: ‘Mr Carreira says it’s not Maintenance.’ She nods at me. ‘You can go in there now, Malachi.’ She swings to Olivia, ‘Tell Janeé I’ll take Romano’s lunch up at two.’ Meirong vaults after the swishing white figure.
‘She’s pretty,’ Olivia says, as if this is relevant.
I rise just as Janeé lands on the opposite bench. Her side seems to sink. I leave Olivia in suspension, go after the fireproof engineer and the green Chinese nymph, in pursuit of one thing: this day’s ending.
* * *
I open the door cautiously. The hall still stinks of flammable gas. As I reach the trolley, a cranking sound starts above me. The man in the white moon-suit is sliding on a harness along the roof. Behind him, a square hatch has opened in the wall next to Tamba’s glass station. Meirong crouches in the opening, a trapeze artist about to leap into the voluminous space. But the caged audience are not watching her with bated breath; they are watching the cranking astronaut like their life depends on it. His suit must be fireproof. I glance back, eye the slim opening I have just come through. How many seconds would I take to reach the door? I gather my courage, collect my grooming tools. I ignore Samuel carefully, refuse to look at Vicki. I turn my back on Shikorina, whose children loved her too much, start on the toes of cage number twenty-one. I am relieved to have the prisoners’ attention off me, but Meirong is taking this chance to monitor my activities. I clip and clean, meticulous yet nimble. The prisoners give me their extremities absent-mindedly, stare up at their only entertainment since Malachi the tongueless first walked among them. As I work, the engineer tugs a tube from the roof and snips it with his own cutting tool. He fiddles with a wrench, smears on something that may be glue.
After five prisoners, he shuts his toolbox. Every single member of the audience exhales. I even catch a smile from Charmayne, the island beauty.
‘Thank God.’ The social worker with the silver wings breathes. ‘We get a second chance.’
The giant smiles wryly. ‘A few more weeks to live.’
I glance up at Meirong’s perch, but the trapeze artist has moved to a different stage, perhaps an afternoon matinée in the forbidden wing.
I wash Andride’s feet, rub roughly at a beauty spot as the man in the moonsuit cranks back into the tunnel next to Tamba’s kiosk. The panel in the wall grinds shut. Tamba’s dreadlocks create the silhouette of a rain-spider’s hairy legs as he gives me a lazy thumbs-up, smiles a smile as slow as mashed potato.
Did he smoke weed through his raspberry juice? I let the brace drop from Andride’s beauty spot.
* * *
Is this my second chance? Is God, fireproof and cool in heaven, amusing himself with some cruel symmetry?
The only God I know is the one who cut out my tongue and said, Look, Malachi. You’re the only one who lived to tell the tale.
The only God I know is the God of irony.
It feels like someone has poured liquid lead into me.
If this job is a second chance from some pyromaniac in the sky, I am not interested. Keep your dirty deal! I want to shout at the roof, where the yellow paint has hardened in sloppy creases like the skin of a mammoth, thick and stupid.
* * *
I groom a tall man with conjunctivitis, report his infection to Tamba. There is nothing I can do to fix his pigeon chest. I trace the plastic tubes below his cage, winding in, winding out. There will be no leaks because of me. I have come this far without the help of heaven. I will shut up for six months, take my tongue and run, run, run. Escape the bad grace of Jesus or Allah or any of God’s favourite sons.
* * *
When I reach Charmayne, she whispers to me, ‘Just me, Malachi. Leave the others if you have to.’ Her angry scar splits her solar plexus, steals beneath one creamy breast. ‘Save me, please.’ Her pubic bush looks straight at me. Her palm-frond lashes sweep towards the floor, carpet it with luscious grief.
The desert strangler asks, ‘Why are you whispering?’
All eyes swing to Charmayne’s hunger, her knees spread wide.
She says the words I have heard too many times today: ‘I don’t want to die like this.’
What’s the difference? I want to scream. What does it matter how you shitting expire? I throw her towel in the bucket, shut Charmayne’s cage. These killers have no right to choose their cause of death. Did their victims get a chance? Did they give them a menu?
Did my classmates raise their hands and ask, Please can you rather do it another way?
I slam my bucket down, start on the next subject. My blood is hot and dark, my skin threatening to split. I work through eight deserving killers, bite on my breath to contain the lava that might escape if I dare to breathe out.
* * *
Madame Sophie, on the contrary, is as serene as if she is relaxing at the beautician’s. She has no idea she might be buried in position any moment like the people of Pompeii. She doesn’t seem to notice that the wrath of Satan is busy trimming her nails. She watches me, says wistfully, ‘I did my girls like this. Nails, blusher, lipstick. They loved it . . .’
Josiah throws his head to the enamel heaven, laughs hard enough to let loose all the demons the angels have tied up for centuries.
‘Shut up, Josiah!’ Madame Sophie kicks at his cage. She turns to me, as
