Faceless, page 3
As if in response to some primitive need, he turned the ignition, felt the vibration as the engine powered to life, thrust the car into gear and just drove. He had no destination in mind; he did not care. He had to get away, get as much distance as possible between himself and that apparition. The stereo was playing REM, and he cranked the volume up; unsatisfied, he cranked it up some more, to the very threshold of pain, to the point where the pounding of the bass overwhelmed the vibration of the engine. Still it could not drown out the turmoil in his mind, the constant questioning, the accusation, but it did transform it from a stream of dysrhythmic self-flagellation to the staccato stutter of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck echoing around his head in 4/4 time.
Max
For the first time in more years than he cared to remember Max actually gave a damn about the time of day. He walked along the semi-deserted pavements of Karangahape Road, peering into the windows of shops and bars, trying to catch a glimpse of a clock. He didn’t know what difference it would make to know the exact time, but it was a compulsion; and he felt so little compulsion nowadays, the strangeness of the feeling obliged him to follow it. It had been one of the small pleasures of his life on the streets, escaping the tyranny of the clock. When he thought about all of the pressures that had been brought to bear on him – work, home, life – the one item that he felt most acutely, and that had finally pushed him over the edge into his personal oblivion, was time. Where once the shrill electronic scream of the alarm clock used to haul him into consciousness to face the demands of the day, now his sleep cycles synched with his physical reality. If he slept at all, he woke with the sun or, more to the point, the cold.
He could hear the rising thrum of the motorway, the swell in noise as the roads filled up, the arteries of the city filling and clogging, each car another corpuscle fighting a way into its congested heart. His internal rhythm told him it must be around eight; the time on the dusty, off-white 1970s clock in the front of the tobacconist’s window said ten past. He wasn’t too far off. Leaning against the street-grimed wall was a series of wire-mesh frames holding the latest front pages of the Herald, and the Listener, the Dominion Post. It had been a long time since he’d bothered to look at those, as well. He hadn’t missed much. The Listener bleated on about the latest environmental scaremongering; the Herald, the failures of the Super City; and the capital’s newspaper headlined the latest MP spending scandal.
‘Oi, you, move on. You can’t stay here.’
They were pretty much the same headlines he remembered from when he’d last sat at a table with a plate of hot food on a placemat, cutlery, a mug of coffee on a coaster and company, even if he had chosen to read the paper rather than converse. How many months ago was that? Or was it years?
‘Oi. Yes, you. Shove off.’
It took him a moment to realise someone was speaking to him. When he looked up, he saw a rotund, middle-aged Indian man in the doorway, a towel in his hand, flicking it towards him in a shooing movement.
‘Bugger off, go on.’
Max felt a moment of confusion before his eyes were drawn to the reflection in the shop window. He tried to see around the gaunt vagrant in the way, before realising the derelict piece of humanity swerving his head around was him. He leaned in for a closer examination, his hand rising automatically to the matted beard on his chin, when he felt a sting on his leg. When he looked down there was nothing there, but then he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw the shopkeeper had flicked him, wet-tea-towel style, and was moving in for another shot. He dropped his eyes and moved off quickly, putting as much space as possible between him and the spectre he had glimpsed in the window, a wave of disgust and humiliation breaking over him. His self-examination had been brief, but it had been enough. The reflected eyes had been sunken and haunted. The unkempt beard had gone some way to hide the dirt-ingrained skin, but it didn’t cover it all. His hand drifted up to the crusted sore that festered near the corner of his eye. It felt crunchy and hard; a fleck of dried exudate dislodged and the needle of pain it caused made him wince. He looked at his fingertips, struggling to focus on them, having to move them further away until he could make out the ridges and whorls contrasted against the dirt. He slowly turned his hand over, examined the nails, yellow-stained, ripped and broken talons, with black impacted crud underneath. He ran his right index fingernail under the left thumb, flicking away the wedge of dirt and God knows what else. The person in the image had looked like the victim of one of those disaster scenes from a famine or war zone, or from a concentration camp. The mental image he had of himself was still the strong, fit, though mentally desolate forty-five-year-old man who had walked away from his life. He shook his head and wandered off, all imperative lost in the fog of equating his remembered self with that thing in the reflection.
Bradley
Bradley stood outside the door, sweating fingers resting on the cool metal of the handle, poised to enter, but he couldn’t, not quite yet. He closed his eyes and took several moments to breathe, trying to steady the reeling in his head. He had to steel himself, mentally prepare for what was on the other side of the door, but his mind was such a tangle of conflicting thoughts he didn’t think he was going to be able to go through with it. Defeated by his indecision he dropped his hand and took a step back, but before he could turn and walk away the door was suddenly pulled open. A missile of blonde and pink hurled itself against his legs.
‘Daddy, Daddy, you’re home.’
The missile was soon joined by an older and more measured version. The sight of his girls wrenched at his heart, and for a moment he didn’t know if he could breathe. A small, warm hand wriggled its way into his and started dragging him into the house. ‘You should see what I made. I baked you stars, I knew you’d like stars.’
‘We baked stars, not just you, Ellie. And I chose the stars. She wanted to make you angels, but I told her that daddies prefer stars to angels because angels are girls.’
‘No, I chose the stars second, after the angels, not you, Katie. You chose the blue icing, and I chose the silver balls.’ The words were spoken with the steadfast authority only a three-year-old could muster.
‘No, I chose the stars, you picked blue and Mummy picked silver balls.’ Even though she was only eighteen months older than her sister, Katie managed to get the ‘I’m more informed’ tone of condescension down just right. It was wasted on her sister, though.
Bradley didn’t resist being dragged through to the kitchen; his legs moved automatically as he was manoeuvred in front of a tray of garish, blue-and-silver-decorated star biscuits that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Christmas table. He had one girl tugging on each arm, and a constant wall of chatter drifted up towards him, but his mind couldn’t absorb any of it. He stood there, his brain grappling to reconcile the absolute normality of this domestic scene, this vibrant moment of the reality of his life, with the unreal, the unfathomable image of that girl. Daddies prefer stars to angels.
‘Daddy needs to go and get changed. They’re great, girls, beautiful.’ He heard his voice start to crackle. ‘Just give me a minute, will you?’ He didn’t wait for their response; he had to get away, away from their relentless cheeriness, their innocence. He shook off the reluctant-to-let-go hands and beat a retreat down the hallway.
Shit, Ange was walking down the hall towards him, her expression a mix of ‘pleased to see you’ with a hint of accusatory ‘what the hell are you doing here at this time of day?’ He brushed past her, bumping her into the wall, mumbled some apology about dying to go to the loo. He heard a snatch of ‘Watch out! Are you okay?’ before he ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him. He leaned back against the door, eyes scrunched closed, breath coming in great gulps. He hadn’t had to face her last night, she was already in bed by the time he’d found himself home. Not that he’d slept. He’d lain there for what seemed like hours, trying to control the confusion of thoughts and emotions flying around in his head, before giving in and getting up to drown out the head noise with some crap on telly. He couldn’t even recall what he’d watched. When morning finally dawned he’d had the convenient excuse of his usual 6.30 gym session to avoid any form of communication with Ange. Except he hadn’t gone to the gym, had he? He’d gone back there, to see if last night had actually happened, hoping beyond desperate hope it had all been some bizarre but horrifically realistic nightmare.
‘Bradley?’ The familiar voice from the other side of the door was weighted with concern and a hint of caution. The mere sound of her, the one he had betrayed, that bloody stupid betrayal resulting in the biggest fuck-up of his life, triggered an enveloping wave of guilt that manifested itself in a very physical and urgent way, and he dove at the toilet, barely making it before his stomach gave an almighty lurch and he threw up misery, bitterness and bile.
Max
It was the gnaw of hunger that pulled Max out of the darkness into which he had retreated. He was familiar enough with the sensation to ignore it, but it had broken the spell, and clarity made its return. With that clarity came one thought: Billy. He looked around and noted he was in an alleyway off K Road, sitting in a carport behind the shops. He wasn’t alarmed that he had no recollection of getting there – that was nothing new. When the darkness descended it was total, as if he somehow lost himself. Back at the beginning, when he’d first slid into his self-induced exile, he had tried to resist the darkness; but then, exhausted by the relentless attack of his memories, he had succumbed with gratitude to its pull. Billy had been the first person whose presence managed to halt that retreat. Other well-meaning people had tried – people from the City Mission and the Salvation Army – but they had swiftly given up once they saw the hopelessness of their endeavour. Even saints had limits. With her it had been different.
She’d appeared one evening, it must have been nearly a year ago. He remembered it well as it was a cold night, one of those nights when a grey pall of drizzle had blanketed the city, the kind of misty rain that smothered the streetlights and made them hum with an almost evil intent. The sound of car tyres swishing along the nearby road had been dulled by the deadened air. The cloying dampness had stuck to his clothes and then his skin, making him feel heavy and wooden. He’d smelled like dirty, damp wool, wool from the dag end of the sheep. He’d settled into his usual spot under the overhang of a verandah at the back of the abandoned theatre, dragging flattened cardboard boxes from out of the nearby skip as protection from the weather. There had been a couple of the other usuals who had taken up their evening residence further down the way: Grizzly Adams, a bearded and long-haired mountain of a man – well, Max imagined he had once been a mountain, but the streets and the years hadn’t been kind, and he now had the gauntness of someone a long time between meals, but not so long between bottles. Then there was Skeet. He looked wiry and mean and had about him a hint of rabid dog. He was a true loner: no one got too near to Skeet. Grizzly had long since shuffled off this mortal coil, but Skeet was still here, drinking himself into oblivion whenever he could.
On that gloomy night Max had watched the nervous steps of the newcomer. He’d initially thought it must be some teenage boy, the figure was so slight, hoodie pulled down tight against the rain. The kid kept to the shadows, moved with an air of indecision, wavered; it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he was scared. He’d looked up and down the alleyway then hunkered down in the recess of a doorway directly opposite where Max sat watching. The kid had wrapped his arms around himself and started rocking slowly, backward and forward. It looked less a movement to keep warm than a means of solace, the kind of self-soothing of someone at their wits’ end. The rocking stopped dead, and the head turned slowly towards Max, as the boy became aware he was not alone. His eyes met Max’s, and Max had realised with a shock he’d been mistaken – it was no boy, the kid was a girl. A girl with huge eyes and a panic-stricken look on her face. In that locking of eyes it was as if something clicked within him; he felt a visceral turn in his guts. Was it recognition? It couldn’t have been that: although the light was dim, he was sure he’d never seen her before. Her skin was dark, and her facial features were Polynesian rather than Māori, but that was irrelevant. What ripped at his heart the most was her abject look of terror. Some deep instinct called on him to reassure her, allay her fears. His face had curled up into a sort of a smile; it had been so long the sensation had been foreign, the muscles pulled in ways long forgotten. But it must have appeared somehow sincere, as he was certain she looked a little less likely to flee. His next action surprised even him; he found himself rising to his feet. She immediately tensed, as if she was about to bolt out of the hole, but as he moved across the alley towards her, he extended the boxes, made it clear they were a gift, a token of something, of shelter, of safety. He didn’t get too close, just held out the boxes and let them fall against the wall near to where she huddled. The boxes were huge compared to her, enhancing the aching sense he had of her vulnerability. He’d then backed away several steps before turning up towards the dumpster, where he burrowed down to extract a couple of dry replacements. Her eyes were on him the whole time, an itching between his shoulder blades. He saw her head track his passage as he walked back to his spot. He’d settled himself back into his corner, shaking off the rain and pulling the boxes in tight around him. There was a noise like a clearing of the throat, and when he glanced up he saw her watching him.
‘Thank you,’ she’d said. He thought he saw a tear tracking its way down her face, but it could have been the rain.
He’d made sure she had an undisturbed night, telling Grizzly to piss off when he’d come down to investigate the newcomer. But he’d slept fitfully, his radar on full alert, waking with every noise that could be a threat, someone or something coming their way.
The girl had left at first light. She’d stopped a few feet in front of him, given him a curt nod, before dropping the boxes into the skip on the way out to the main street. A tidy teenager. He hadn’t expected ever to see her again, but come sundown the slim form had slunk back down the alleyway, picking up boxes on the way like she was an old hand at sleeping rough. Again there was the cautious acknowledgement of him, and with it an unspoken pact. He had known he would look out for her, and she knew someone had her back. There had been no question in his mind.
And there was no question in his mind now. She was in trouble. It was like some little mass of dread was weighing down his guts. There could be some perfectly innocent reason why she hadn’t shown up last night, but in his heart of hearts he knew that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t pessimism or defeatism or even paranoia. It was the simple truth. He could feel it. But where did he start looking?
Bradley
‘You’re working yourself too hard.’
‘I’m okay, really.’
‘How many times have I told you you’ll make yourself sick if you carry on at that pace?’ Ange sat on the edge of the bed, looking at him as if she didn’t believe a word of what he said – a look he had seen laid upon the girls with great effect. The cold facecloth on his forehead wasn’t doing anything for him. She’d insisted on it, the cold facecloth being her treatment of choice for any bump or bruise for the children. Its clammy dampness wasn’t about to cure his condition, but it made her feel better. Ange always needed to feel she was looking after everyone and everything, a mother hen clucking and fussing over her chicks, and anyone else who fell within her jurisdiction. Most of the time it wasn’t worth putting up a defence; the force of her character ground away even at the most resistant.
The truth was he had been working himself too hard. Just look at the weekend gone and all the grief that had caused. He’d been putting in huge hours of overtime just trying to get through the bare minimum of his workload. He was barely treading water. He’d survived the last round of restructuring, but at what cost? They called it ‘efficiencies’. Those at the coalface called it inhumane. He wasn’t the only one feeling that way, but what could you do? Speak up? He knew what the result of that would be. There were plenty of others out there eager to take his job. Hell, there were eight people who’d step in, the moment they could – the eight staff who had been shaved off in the restructure. The eight whose workloads had been spread out across the remaining ten. He was beginning to think they were the lucky ones. But when you had an enormous mortgage, several so-called investment properties not paying their way and a family to feed you didn’t have the luxury of whinging about the conditions. But that was by the by. It sure as hell wasn’t work that was making him feel sick.
‘Maybe you should go see a doctor. You’ve been under a lot of stress lately; I’d feel better if you got checked out. Make sure there’s nothing else causing this. You’re not getting any younger, you know.’ She smiled, and it held such warmth and affection his heart cringed at his duplicity. ‘There are a myriad of things that can sneak up on people our age. You should probably get your cholesterol and blood pressure checked out, and your prostate.’ She knew just how to tip it over the edge from concern to badgering. She’d been harping on about him getting that PSA blood test for years; it had only made him more determined not to go. And as for her bringing it up now, Jesus, the last thing he felt like was being prodded by a well-meaning doctor. There wasn’t any health professional who could cure his affliction.
