I stare down at my plate. And I can’t eat a chicken that may never have stood on the earth. This flatty is too flat.
‘Malachi? Don’t you like your chicken?’ It is Tamba this time who busts me.
I take a nibble. My last supper. I must eat.
Frances slipped into the water like a carcass.
Across from me, Olivia chews on her chicken that looks like Oscar Pistorius, the guy with the metal legs who nearly won the Olympics, then shot his model girlfriend dead. Raizier should have stolen him from prison and made him grow beautiful new hearts, one after another.
My mind keeps slipping sideways into fiction. Flighty, like Hamri.
That’s when it hits me. Romano’s daughter. What about her heart?
I wave at Meirong, pull her attention from her chicken. I pat my shoulders, indicate Romano’s epaulettes.
Meirong frowns. I aim an automatic rifle at her, pull the trigger.
‘Romano?’ Olivia guesses.
I nod eagerly.
‘What about Romano?’ Meirong asks warily.
I thrust out my hand below shoulder height, sweep the air on both sides of my head. Plaits. Hair. Feminine. Have they not seen his heartbreaking photograph?
Janeé is the one who gets it. ‘His little girl.’
I tap at my heart, throw open both palms to ask clearly, Where is it?
‘It’s sorted,’ Meirong says.
Tamba becomes steely next to me. ‘Have you sent it?’
‘Tamba,’ Meirong warns.
‘Have you?’
‘It’s . . . earmarked.’
Olivia and Janeé’s smiles flap like wings. They dive back into their chicken. Tamba and I both glare at Meirong. Earmarked, like a notch in the ear of a cow? I take a bite of my Oscar Pistorius. Something in my heart rips.
Will a little girl die because of me?
The Aromat makes me thirsty, but I dare not take a drink. There is only fatal raspberry on the table today.
Olivia sniffs up her happy tears. ‘I’m never going to get to sleep tonight. Should we play Remote-Mo badminton later, Janeé?’
‘Ah, no,’ Tamba groans. ‘I hate that game.’
‘Okay then, Remote-Mo knitting,’ Olivia teases.
Tamba’s look of despair makes Janeé giggle. ‘Table tennis,’ he bargains. ‘The real thing.’
Meirong glances up at the orange glow shining through the portholes. She shakes her head. ‘Blackout again tonight. The rec room has windows. You can’t switch on that light.’
‘There are blinds on those windows,’ Tamba argues.
‘We’ll shut them,’ Olivia pleads.
‘No. No games tonight.’
Tamba holds up a finger, ‘One game.’ He forgets his fury about Romano’s daughter. ‘Come and play, Meirong. I need you on my team.’
Meirong laughs. ‘Okay. One game. I’ll come up to make sure those windows are sealed.’
‘Do you want to come, Malachi?’ Janeé asks me kindly.
I shake my head ruefully. Not me. I would love to watch Meirong playing table tennis in her white minidress, but I have some slightly more important things to do this evening.
I would love to give them all a big hug, stretch my arms around Janeé, send love to their loved ones and say, Thank you, thank you for this nightmare week.
I turn at the door, my imaginary tongue itching to speak. But they are scraping their chicken bones into a shallow grave, all of them helping so they can go and play ping-pong.
Next time, I tell them silently before I leave. We will play ping-pong in heaven. The real thing.
* * *
When I reach the bedroom, the sight of my soft pillow slaughters the tiny hero in me. Thousands of tons of sea smash me into a foetal position. I desperately want to sleep and let this last chance drift past. Instead I force my eyes open. Listen.
Four-way ping-pong taps at my cranium.
* * *
I roll off the bed, land on my feet like a panther. I flick off my shoes, peel off my socks. Barefoot, I pad silently down the corridor. The sudden three steps, I glide down them. The LED globes shine their dim, deathly light, sealed from the sea by the brutal design of the rig. I flit past the two fingers of moonlight poking near the canteen roof, past Olivia’s laboratory. I hurry past the women’s room with its smell of chemical perfume. Did Janeé spray her underarms before the ping-pong foursome? Is someone still in there?
The perfume tickles my nostrils. I want to sneeze. Here it comes. I pinch my nose, use fifteen years of practice to stifle my sound. A muted explosion detonates in my sinuses. I break into a run in case another sneeze attacks me. I shove on the door to the central stairwell. It howls like an unneutered cat fed on chicken intestines. It shrieks louder as I shut it.
I drop down the spine of the rig on the pads of my feet, which seem to have developed extra cushioning. The growing darkness finally presses me to stillness. I fumble for my cell phone, find the torch switch. Ah. A ray of clear, white light. I shine it down the stairs as I climb down, down, follow the echo of the eternal war between water and metal.
My torch finally finds the steel door to the shark pit.
Yes! The green light is still glowing on the door lock. I kill the torch on my Samsung, bury it in my pocket. I dare not use it out-side in case Romano is patrolling up there and spots the pinprick of light. I seize the steel handle. The heavy door opens like a dream.
* * *
I step onto the platform above the shark pit. White foam flies up from the black morass, but the moon is out of sight, perhaps seducing some rusted machinery higher up on the rig. Are the sharks sleeping?
I sidle onto the narrow ledge that runs past the sewage pump. Dark water rushes up to try and smash me off my perch but I grasp the flimsy
