'I just hope you don't have to use it,' he says. My face is raw. The only razor I could get my hands on was as blunt as a toy pocketknife, but I need to look clean-shaven. My stubble marks me more obviously than anything else, though I can't say I like the bare face beneath. At least the hair's looking good. I'm wired on adrenaline and cups of strong black coffee, and driving an old bomb out of Brisbane, following the Western Freeway. It's the fastest route out of the city if you want to head toward the low mountains that make up the granite belt. Up in the mountains, as low as they are, the air will be cool, even this late in spring-and the mobile reception should be terrible.
The car is older than I am, though Alex assured me it would run like a dream… Yeah, a patchwork dream. Lissa's already calling it Steven's Amazing Technicolor Dream Car. And I must admit that the car is running smoothly. Corollas from this era are about as unstoppable as the Terminator, and every bit as ugly.
'Any tunes?' Lissa asks.
I try the radio. Only AM. We get a couple of stations playing classical, and a talkback radio show, all leavened with a fair bit of static. Lissa sticks her head through the front windscreen, which is quite disconcerting.
'That explains it,' she says. 'The aerial's been broken off.'
The stereo itself is fairly new. I link up my mp3 and we have music. Radiohead, intercut with Midlake, is a perfect soundtrack for my mood.
The sun's setting. Brilliant in its suspension of red dust, it's the starkest, most beautiful sunset I've ever seen, and I'm driving into it like some character out of a movie, crashing into the apocalypse. Number Four and the Hill are sliding away from me. And while that should be some sort of relief, all it does is leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm deserting my city, and this is no movie. • • We stop at Stanthorpe, about 200 kilometers southwest of Brisbane. I get a single room on the ground floor of a boxy old hotel, best for a quick exit. The carpet is about the same era as my car, a combination of curlicues and some sort of vomit-colored flowers-why were the seventies all about vomit colors? It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen, almost hypnotically ugly. But it's a survivor; you can barely make out the cigarette burns, which is something you can't say for the bedside table or the tablecloth which, while perfectly clean, is dotted with melty holes. There's a no smoking sign on the wall by the door.
The first thing I do is mark the doors and windows with a brace symbol.
The second thing is open a beer from the fridge.
I'm sitting there, in my underpants and a T-shirt, counting the cigarette burns on the tablecloth when I look up and into Lissa's eyes. 'What do you do when I'm sleeping?' I ask her.
'Look at you,' she says, and I laugh.
'Seriously?'
'Seriously. I look at you and I think. You'd be surprised how patient you can be when all you are is thought.'
Thought is so fragile. A strong wind could blow it away like a dandelion. That fills me with a dreadful sorrow.
'How long's this binding going to hold?'
'I don't know. Do you want to break it?'
'No!'
'Are you sure about that? You've only had grief since I came along.'
'Less than some of my girlfriends,' I say.
'Girlfriend, eh?'
'It's more of a marriage. After all, we're bound together.'
'Well, at least you haven't started nagging me yet,' Lissa says, giving me a dirty look. 'And the only sex we've had resulted in your orgasm. You didn't even expect me to fake one. So I suppose it's a marriage all right.'
'Ha! I'll have you know we de Selbys are extremely generous lovers. Besides, you're a ghost.'
'I still have my urges,' Lissa says, a little defensively.
'Well, I wish you had more corporeality,' I say.
'So do I.'
We stop ourselves there. Our eyes meet, and we both turn sharply away.
I finish my beer, then walk to the bathroom and clean my teeth with a finger and some salt. I wonder if I'm being a dickhead. Probably. More than probably. I know it with deep certainty, and I'm suddenly ashamed. This girl brings out the best and the worst in me.
I've experienced more with Lissa, and with more intensity than with anyone else I've known, including Robyn-then I catch myself. It's the first time I've thought of her in what feels like days. Well, that's something at least. And here we are in this old hotel room which smells of smoke and cheap instant coffee, the traffic rumbling outside, the road's endless breath. It's the lovers' cliche, this.
I step out of the bathroom and look at Lissa. Those amazing green eyes hold me again. This time she doesn't turn away.
'You can have a quick wank if you want,' Lissa says, and smirks.
I grimace. 'I'm going to sleep.'
After switching off the light there's half an hour of restless tossing and turning on a mattress that's firm and soft in all the wrong places.
Lissa chuckles. 'Go on. You'll feel better for it,' she whispers in my ear.
'Shut up.'
22
I never sleep well in strange places, and that's all I've had these past few nights. At least the hotel is better than a highway underpass or a stormwater drain. My sleep is light and dream-fractured. There's a lot of running. I keep seeing the faces of my family and they're yelling at me, but I can't hear what they're saying. All I get is the urgency. And then there are a couple of nightmares on high rotation. I'm dreaming of:
Bicycles. They're tumbling from the sky.
Wheels spinning, gears shifting, and when they strike the ground they make skullish craters, the orbits of which cage vivid green eyes. Every death's head skull stares at me with Lissa's eyes.
It's not that far away, a voice whispers.
A bicycle strikes me hard. Gears grind down my arm. I drop to a crouch, cover my head with my hands. Warm blood trails from my wrist.
Duck and cover doesn't work anymore. It never really did.
I recognize the voice, it's-
I remember the first time I saw Mr. D. I was about ten and Dad had taken me to work. Even then I had a clear idea of what my parents did. Death was never such a big deal in my family. Cruelty, unfairness, rugby league- these were often spoken of-but not death, other than in the same way one spoke about the weather.
So I guess I was in something of a privileged position. Most kids my age were just starting to realize that such a thing as their own demise was possible, where I already considered it a natural part of existence.
Dad had told me it was time, but I hadn't really understood until he took me into Number Four. There was Morrigan, who scruffed up my hair. Number Four tingled around me with all the odd pressures of multiple worlds pulling and pushing at my skin like ghostly fingers. It was a peculiar sensation, and unsettling.
Then I saw Mr. D and he terrified me.
'Is this your boy, Michael?'
Dad nodded. 'This is Steven.'
'My, he's grown.'
I realized that he must have seen me before. Well, I knew that I hadn't seen him-how could I forget? His face, it shifted, a hundred different expressions in a second, and yet it was the same face. He crouched down to my height, and smiled warmly.
'You were just a baby when I saw you last. Have you had a good life so far? Do you want to be a Pomp like your father?'
I nodded my head, confused. 'Yes, sir,' I said.
