morgues. But the job picks you, and it sticks in the blood. Anyway, in my family it does, whether you want it or not.'
I'm not sure if she's making fun of my family's rather high Black Sheep to Pomp ratio-Aunt Teagan, my late Uncle Mike, Tim-so I just nod, and go along with it. 'It makes sense, though, could you imagine pomping cold? Shit, that would really screw you up.'
It was different in the old days, there was something of a cultural scaffold. If you started to see weird shit, everyone knew what it was. Well, it's not like that anymore. Without family guidance those first few pomps would be nightmarish. I wonder how things are going to work now, who's going to pass on all this information to the next generation. Surely not me.
'I was stubborn, though,' Lissa says. 'Finished my degree.'
'Good on you,' I say.
Lissa glares at me. 'Anyone ever told you you're a patronizing shit?'
'Yeah, but I'm serious. I only got through the first year of my BA-if you can count four fails and four passes as getting through.'
Lissa shakes her head.
'Neither do I.'
'You can always go back.' I love her for saying that, talking as though there might be some sort of long-term future.
'Nah, I'm scarred for life.' The sun's been down a while now and the city's luminous, a brooding yet brilliant presence to our right. 'Which isn't going to be too much longer, anyway.'
'Don't say that,' Lissa says. 'You can't think that way. You mustn't.'
'Well, it's true. You spend your life around death like we do, pomping and stalling Stirrers, and it tends to make you numb. Hell, it numbs you a lot. You know it does. I have plenty of free time, and what do I do with it? I accumulate things. Not ideas, just things, as though they're ideas. Shit, half the reason I gave up at uni was that I decided it was easier not to think.
'And when you decide it's easier not thinking then you're only a short step away from deciding it's easier feeling nothing. I can't remember the last time I cried before today.'
'I remember my last tears,' Lissa says. 'Like I said, I never wanted to do this job. I cried whenever I thought about that too much.'
'See, I envy you your pain,' I say.
'Don't.' Her eyes hold mine in that electric gaze of hers.
'But at least you strived for something, even if you failed at it. That's incredibly heroic, as far as I'm concerned,' I say.
I tried my hand at non-Pomp work, the regular trades as we call them. I gave up the mobile and the pay packet, and it just didn't fit. Honestly, though, I really didn't try that hard. What I did learn was that I wasn't really a people person-I'm too much of a smart arse for one thing. Anyway, you get hooked on the pomping, the odd hours, the danger. It's certainly more exciting than working in retail: it didn't matter if your clientele weren't always cheery as there was no follow-up, you didn't have dead people coming to see if their order had arrived, there weren't any secret shoppers, and you never had to clean up the mess (a blessed relief in some cases).
For me, pomping was the perfect job. There was no real responsibility, and it was good money. I had few friends, other than family, and a few people whose blogs I read. There I was, walking and talking through life, not having much impact, not taking too many hits either.
The problem with that is that it doesn't work. The universe is always going to kick you, and time's waiting to take things away. If my job hadn't made that obvious, well, I'd deserved what had happened to me.
In my case it had taken everything at once. And put in front of me the sort of woman I might have found if I'd actually been in there, living.
I realize that I've been staring into her eyes.
'Don't fall in love with me,' Lissa says.
Too late. It's far too late for that.
'You've got tickets on yourself,' I say softly. 'Fall in love with you? As if!'
I look up. The bus driver's staring at me. Half the people in the bus are. I didn't realize I'd been talking so loudly. Talking to myself, as far as they can tell.
'I'm serious.' Lissa turns her head, stares out of the window.
'Too serious,' I say, not sure that she is even listening. We sit in silence for the next few minutes until we're a stop away from the heart of Albion. I jab the red stop signal like it's some sort of eject button. The bus pulls in, the doors open and I'm out on the street, in a different world. Restaurants are packed to the rafters with diners. The place is bustling.
That's not where Don and Sam are, though.
'Aha,' I point west. 'I can already feel them.'
We wander down the street, a steep curve, the traffic rushing by, desperate for whatever the night has on offer.
There are some nice parts of Albion. On the whole it's a ritzy part of Brisbane, but no one's told this bit of the suburb. The restaurants are behind us now, and we're descending from the urbane part of suburbia to the sub. It's no war zone but there's a burnt wreck of a bikie club a few blocks down, and a couple of brothels nearby. You can smell petrol fumes and dust. The city's skyline is in front of us, high-rises and skyscrapers bunched together, lighting the sky. You can't see Mount Coot-tha from here but I can feel One Tree Hill, just like I can feel Don and Sam. They must be able to do the same.
They're holed up in an old Queenslander which would have been nice, once, with its broad, covered verandah all the way around, big windows and double doors open invitingly to catch afternoon breezes. Not anymore, though. You could describe it as some sort of renovator's delight-if they had a wrecking ball.
'Absolutely delightful place,' Lissa says. We both have a little chuckle at that.
The corrugated roof dips in one corner of the front verandah like a perpetually drooping eye, as though the house had once suffered some sort of seizure. Some of the wooden stumps the building's sitting on have collapsed. It's a dinosaur sinking into itself.
'Still looking at about half a million for it I reckon.'
'Real estate, everything's about bloody real estate,' Lissa says. 'That's the problem with the world today.'
'Well, it's a prime location.'
Lissa grimaces. 'If you want easy access to pimps and car washes.'
'The train station is just up the road, don't forget that.'
'And what a delightful walk that is.'
I make my way gingerly up the front steps. One in every three is missing. The front porch has seen better days, too, and that's being generous. The wood's so rotten that even the termites have moved on to richer pastures, and whatever paint remains on the boards is peeling and gray, and smells a little fungal.
As I reach for the door, something pomps through me, another death from God knows where. Not again. There's more of that far too frequent pain, and I'm bent over as the door opens a crack. I'm too sore to run, so I push it and find myself staring down the barrel of a rifle. I know the face at the other end of the gun, and there's not much welcome in it.
'Hey,' I say. 'Am I glad to see you.'
'Stay right there,' Don growls.
'Don't be stupid, Don,' Sam says from the corner of the room. I can just see her there. She's holding a pistol and not looking happy. 'It's Steve.'
'How'd you find us?' Don demands.
'Morrigan,' I say. 'He's alive.'
'Of course he is,' Don says, his face hardening. 'He's the bastard who betrayed us all.'
14
