I burst the skin of my pork sausage without even wincing. I eat it with exaggerated confidence, but there is only Janeé to witness my miraculous healing. Her pumpkin face glows orange in the sun filtering from the two glass eyes above us. If I could make small talk, I would ask her something frivolous like, How did your parents decide on your name, Janeé?
Janeé nods.
‘It’s good that you eat,’ she says sincerely. ‘You must be strong for Meirong.’ She bends her sausage and bites the middle like a papaya. ‘The way I stay strong is, I sleep.’ She chuckles. ‘They can dance on me, I don’t wake up. Olivia says she plays music, she keeps the lights on, I only snore louder.’
I don’t want to think of Olivia in her panties and bra dancing on Janeé’s belly, pummelling it. I smile at the cook. In the quiet before the others come, Janeé and I develop our first friendship.
Meirong arrives, wearing black-and-white checks. What, must she lie flat before Quenton for him to play chess today?
She perches uneasily on the bench. ‘Feeling better, Malachi? I hear you aren’t eating.’
I nod emphatically, fix my gaze on Meirong’s dress, but the chess squares take turns to jut in and out of focus.
‘He ate all his sausage,’ Janeé tells Meirong proudly. She sends me a secret message over Meirong’s head, Be strong for the lady boss. I sense it in the careful way she steadies herself to pass me tea.
‘Hi guys.’ Tamba bounces a sausage onto his plate. ‘What’s happening?’ He seems to have recovered some of the good humour he showed before his sleeping pills were ripped from him. ‘Whoa, Meirong, you look stunning today.’ But his eyes jitter like mine, trying to still the optical effect of the squares.
Romano enters stealthily. Olivia trails in behind him, still sleepy. ‘Mor-ning,’ she sings.
I forgive Olivia for her selfish worry last night. This woman has buttery sun stored somewhere in her marrow. When she is happy, Olivia shines like a place that has never seen rain, like the thirty-third clear day at the equator. Araba and I counted during our last summer in Bhajo.
Olivia’s two front teeth tease the skin off a sausage like a mother cat with her newborn young.
‘I had this lovely dream. We were floating on the sea, me and Timmy. We were on this plastic thing with a little see-through window. You know those old blow-up things? But instead of reefs there were these beautiful flowers growing in the sea.’ She giggles. ‘Lilies.’ Now that the sausage is free of its skin, Olivia nibbles it awake lovingly. ‘And the sun!’ She stares up at the golden light above us, hushed with reverence for the fire in the sky.
Meirong ignores her completely. ‘Romano, still no sign?’
‘No.’
‘What, the Spanish Armada?’ Tamba teases.
Meirong bans all jokes with her tone. ‘The tanker convoy passed safely. But we got a report at eleven p.m. of a solo sailor lost at sea.’
‘All alone?’ Olivia says.
‘She was in a yacht race with her father.’
‘A girl?’ Tamba says.
Meirong nods, nips merciless pieces off her sausage.
‘How old is she?’ Romano asks.
‘Nineteen.’
We all stop chewing, all feel the vulnerability of a young girl alone on the hostile sea.
‘It’s an Éternité Insurance boat. It’s absolutely critical we stay out of this. Imagine the search parties.’ For a moment Meirong looks utterly desperate. ‘Imagine the press. Let’s pray she doesn’t drift towards us.’
But she would rather kick Buddha’s fat arse than ask for help, wouldn’t she?
I push my plate away, stand up briskly. I am, after all, the only one in military colours. The only one fighting on the front line. Yes, I took a hit. Last night I stood wavering, choking on a piece of sirloin steak. But I did not fall, did I?
‘Already?’ Olivia squeaks.
I nod in a manly manner. I have devised a weapon that can defeat forty enemies with a single stroke. I have it primed in my pocket. If it were a time bomb, it would be ticking.
‘Um, the bucket’s done but it’s inside, on the counter . . .’
I put up my hand, invite Olivia to stay and complete her sausage midwifery. I nod politely at the others, cleave briskly from these people weakened by lilo dreams and the petty fears of civilians.
‘I’ll be there in a minute, Malachi,’ Tamba says.
‘Now, please,’ Meirong orders him.
Tamba gets to his feet. As I reach the corridor, I hear him slur through his baked beans, ‘What did I say? I said he’d be okay.’
* * *
I open the door to Olivia’s laboratory. My bucket of white towels waits on the desk next to a row of transparent sacs draped over the edge. Testosterone inhibitor, says a white sticker.
As I pass the canteen, Tamba falls in behind me, my appointed landmine-clearance deputy. But Tamba is not my comrade today. I have stolen from him.
He climbs the spiral stairs to his perch, choking on his toast.
I hesitate at the door, suddenly watery in the area between my shoulder blades. Scapulas, according to Basic Anatomy. I pop the ear clip from the body of the Samsung. A mute-speaker sign comes up immediately. I put the clip to my ear, swipe the screen. Who will help me?
Joey. Geraint. Eric. I tap on William.
I type, Will you speak for me? Touch the Talk icon. William repeats the question into my ear in smooth, sincere American. I hide the audio chip as I practised last night. Make a digital knuckle-duster. I shove open the door like this is a bust.
* * *
My trousers hiss with friction as I collect my cutting tools, walk swiftly towards Samuel, the journalist. I pray to the God of technology, please, please let him recognise what on earth this thing is. I procrastinate, check his piping painstakingly.
Samuel is compassionate on this auspicious day.
‘Hey, Malachi. Are you okay?’
Stop with the kindness. This is no way to meet your damned nemesis.
I feel sweat springing between the fingers of my locked fist. Will
