Meirong has no time for niceties this morning. She thrusts her hand out. ‘Key card, Malachi. It’s been worrying me all night.’
I let out a dismayed, ‘Ah.’ I pat my pockets, flutter my fingers near my neck. I hit my head like an under-par, imperfect idiot.
Meirong picks up her fork, impales an unnaturally red vienna. ‘Get it straight after breakfast.’
Janeé bounces two of the viennas onto my plate.
Meirong asks me, ‘Tamba has told you we’re operating today?’
‘I told him,’ Janeé crows cheerfully. She has a huge white apron tied around her waist like she suspects there might be spatters.
Meirong throws a cutting glance at Tamba. She eats three red viennas in succession, pours herself a second glass of raspberry juice. Is it a boss’s thing, this passion for red colourant? She downs half the glass. It makes me itchy just to watch her.
Feeling sweeter, she briefs Tamba about the security status: ‘They’re motoring in circles, moving very slowly due south. They’re almost out of range. To be safe we’ll keep security tight for one more day.’
She tells Romano, ‘One last double shift.’
Romano crushes his viennas against his palate. He eats his toast more tenderly, gazing into space, honey dripping from his lips. The man will be exhausted by tonight. Surely.
Olivia breezes in wearing her white lab-coat and a long white skirt. Look at us. Did someone put out a memo saying wear white to breakfast?
She shrugs off her coat. Beneath it she is wearing a pleated blouse with fat, pink flowers. Her hair is unbrushed, she looks like a happy hippie. Her blue stains have turned purplish beneath her eyes as if her excitement is beating her up, killing her. She has slapped on some pink lipstick but missed and got her teeth. Olivia’s eyes shine weirdly as she boasts, ‘If everything works out, Timmy will get his lungs by seven tonight. They say he’ll only spend three nights in ICU. Isn’t that amazing?’
‘Fantastic,’ Tamba says sincerely.
‘Oh, oh, oh, I wish I was at home –’ Olivia stops, recovers her tact. ‘But I’m happy to wait here for six months. It’s nothing. My granny will take a photo and send it with Mr Rawlins.’ Olivia scoops her honey off her toast, sucks her finger noisily.
Did her granny not teach her manners?
I dip my spoon into the cup of honey. Janeé urges me on happily, ‘We’ve got a two-litre jar of it.’
‘It’s kind of Mr Carreira to share it,’ Meirong says primly. ‘Susan Bellavista sent it to him as a gift.’
So that was what was in the copper vase with the red ribbon. It looked like an urn for the ashes of forty corpses.
Tamba scoffs, ‘Yeah, like a pot of honey can make up for Dominic.’
‘Tamba,’ Meirong warns.
Tamba shuts up but I know what he means. Idaho State Penitentiary for Serious Psychiatric Disease.
Oh, God.
Will Dominic’s fate seem like a funfair compared to the disaster I am about to bring about?
I take a bite of honey toast. Yumm. Bees buzz in my head. Somewhere I think I can hear cuckoos.
Araba’s mother kept a blue cuckoo at the door to their hut. I made every excuse to take the footpath past their place in the hope of seeing my love eat her corn porridge or put on her socks and shoes. The cuckoo always burst out laughing and made me hurry past.
Seriously, Malachi. Cuckoos at sea?
Tamba shoves into my daydream. ‘Five subjects fewer today. The surgeries come back at . . . What time, Meirong?’
‘Eleven thirty.’
‘They’re too groggy on day one to hurt themselves with their nails.’
Meirong nods sternly. ‘Best to leave them to rest.’
It’s the kindest thing Meirong has ever said about the prisoners.
She twirls her spoon in the honey. She closes her eyes and sucks like a kitten.
‘Meirong?’ Romano says.
When she opens her eyes, Meirong looks drunk on honey. She gets clumsily to her feet. ‘Malachi, the key.’
I get up, my mind darting like a kankabi moth caught in a gas lamp.
‘Meirong,’ Romano repeats. She seems not to hear him. Romano jumps to his feet. ‘Meirong!’
Meirong swings. ‘Sit.’
But Romano towers above her shiny head. ‘You made me wait, the last harvest.’
‘Mr Carreira is still checking his emergency lists. He says he will try this time to allocate a heart for . . . for . . .’
‘Milja!’ Romano snarls the name of his reason for living. He sits down grudgingly. In my mind I can hear it, the high-pitched whine of Romano’s pain squeezing out, the frequency too fine for our logistics freak.
‘It’s half past,’ Meirong says. ‘Come, Tamba, we’ve got to winch those subjects up.’ She stabs her finger at me. ‘Give the key to me at lunch.’
She sweeps out in her pornographic white to supervise the winching of Shikorina, Lolie and three other unlucky prisoners through the roof.
Romano’s flesh still screams with silent misery, but he arranges his wiry limbs in a dignified exit. Janeé and Olivia get up in unison, bump into each other. Olivia disappears into Janeé’s clasp, so all that’s left is a thatch of blonde static under Janeé’s chin, a scrap of pink flowers under one armpit.
Olivia comes up, suffocated and pink. ‘God bless us,’ she breathes. She sails from the canteen.
Janeé stays to stack the plates, which stick together as if with glue.
In a little while, Shikorina will present Olivia’s baby with a spanking new pair of lungs, and a quiver of blood vessels for Janeé’s useless son.
How on earth will the child killer manage to climb from her cage after this, never mind hurry up a thousand metal stairs? What of the fat Australian? Surely he is not fit enough to run for his life?
A sinking feeling bolts me to my seat. It is too much. I am not suited to this heroism.
I ladle two spoonfuls of honey onto my last slice, take a bite. A sweet calm comes over me. The prisoners will have free
