Cosmo Cosmolino (23 page)

And
now
look at it. Look at the state of this room.

The white table under the window, where they used to eat, still collected the light; but the couch with the tartan rug, down at the far end of the long room, had sagged and grown shabby, and the walls were stained with red dribbles. A huge crack ran across the ceiling, right through the beautiful moulded rose, as if the foundations had shifted, and in the corner where the canary-yellow pianola used to stand there was only a mean little CD player and two lethal speakers.

He propped in the doorway, open-mouthed. All the colour had leaked away, the brightness. The truth of it was gone.

Serves you right, you stupid bastard. What did you expect. But it hurt him. His legs trembled with shock.

Steady on. He had been on the road all night: his eyes were crossing, the engine was still churning in his ears. He was probably hallucinating. Take it easy. Wash, eat, and look again.

Unbuttoning his jacket with clumsy fingers, he dragged himself across the room and headed for the stairs.

Under the doona, Janet heard slow steps come round the top of the staircase and trail away along the upper corridor. She cursed. Maxine's endless, dreaming showers were famous for emptying the tank of hot water, not to mention clogging the plughole if she shampooed her unspeakable hair. Janet allowed her
five minutes. Ten. Twelve. The water was still gushing and tapping in the pipes. She tossed away her magazine and dropped her feet off the edge of the mattress.

And smelt bacon.

Saliva rushed into her mouth. She smelt coffee. She smelt toasting bread. This could not be. It
could not be
.
Ray was cooking. Ray was rattling the pots and pans. He was down in the kitchen making breakfast.

She set off for the bathroom at a fast clip, whisking off her nightdress and dropping it as she went. Steam was billowing out under the door like dry ice at a bad gig. She drummed her knuckles against the panel and barged in.

The smell was wrong. The top layer was her own shampoo, her expensive skin soap, as usual—but behind the fogged-up glass screen was a larger, darker, lankier shape than Maxine's; and the deeper reek in the room was the smell of a man.

Janet turned to flee, but the dark form froze, with its elbows curved high round its head like a dancer's, and spoke.

‘That you, Raymond? Who's there?'

‘Alby,' said Janet. ‘Alby. Is that
you
.'

He stood rigid under the thundering cascade, wigged and shawled in perfumed foam. He should cover himself. He should cover, or turn—but Janet had never had any shame, and she had none now. Without a stitch on she stepped up to the side of the bath and
folded back the screen. Drops pattered on to her up-turned face. They stared at each other. They stared, and they saw. Alby dropped one hand to his genitals as if to shield them, but she stood there carelessly, her arms loose at her sides, and with a curious gentle smile she skimmed her eyes as soft as fingers up and down his filleted carcase; in a minute he would have to open the cold tap on to himself, although her body showed so sorrowfully what time can do to a thin woman: the boxy hips, the knotted knees, the little breasts hanging unevenly on the framework of the ribs.

‘Janet,' he said. He cleared his throat. ‘What happened to the piano?'

She brought her eyes to bear on his face, and kept them there. ‘Remember Philip?' she said. ‘It was his. He took it.'

‘Where
is
everyone?' he said. ‘There's nothing to eat. Where are the kids?'

There was a long pause. The water was hot, but he was shivering.

‘Alby,' she said. ‘It's ten years.'

‘I got a fright,' he said, placing his free hand over his heart. ‘Everything's the same—but changed.'

‘Yeah, well,' she said. ‘I didn't expect you to remember anything at all.'

‘You'd be surprised,' said Alby. He turned his front away, and pushed his face into the stream of water. ‘Pass us a towel, old girl. I don't have to do this any more.'

She laughed quietly. ‘Me either. You can use the
striped one. Call me when you've finished.'

The hall, as she ran along it and stooped mid-stride for the dropped nightgown, was rich with the smell of bacon frying.

Her room was stuffy. She zipped up the blind, threw open the lower sash, and, turning back to order the mess of bed and table, caught in the tail of her eye a large dense scarlet mass down there in the street: a truck parked under the bare tree, its flank blasted with cold morning sun.

She heard the taps snap off, and the air and water go chugging back along the ancient pipes.

I don
'
t have to do this any more
.
Me either
.
Put like that, it was quite a simple proposition. It had dignity. It was a relief. Janet laughed. Waiting to be called, she glanced up at the bride where it hung, hooked by its cape to the corner of Maxine's invisible pastel. Janet raised her hand to take it down. Her reflection too reached up towards itself, out of the blurred lake of black. The glass gave back to her, tilted, her whole length, foreshortened, naked, with one arm stretched upwards in a mysterious gesture—drowning? volunteering? Her fingers touched the grass of the doll's wild legs. She paused—and behind her left shoulder, just outside the range of the reflecting glass, the column of darkness shimmered into position.

She felt it manifest, towering, svelte, featureless. If she took one step to the right it would follow: she
would be able to see it in the glass: but if she looked, if she acknowledged it and turned to face it, her defences would be breached: without a word being spoken her swaddling of scepticism would burst open, and some appalling and total submission would be demanded of her, a surrender of self with no hope of back-tracking. In terror, she closed her eyes.

The column hovered nearer, almost singeing the skin of her shoulder. She dropped her arm and clung to the table edge with both hands. Tears of bliss pressed behind her eyelids and she clenched, she clenched them back; she held them in. She heard herself panting, roughly, like a wrestler, like a labouring woman: she stitched her lips shut with her front teeth and hung on. How long did she struggle? She felt the vast patience of the thing, its utter imperviousness to argument; but she fought it, with a mad pugnacious hubris she pitted herself; and at last a tremor rippled through the pillar, a slow, long shudder; and then it thinned, faded, and was gone.

A stream of cold air was pouring through the open window, but feathers of sweat burst out of her, all down her back. Something was tapping behind her, outside the door, very light and quick. A man's voice was softly calling her name.

‘Janet! Janet! I've finished. All yours. I'm going to wake up Raymond.'

‘All right,' she said. ‘Coming.'

Her voice sounded composed, but she was as weak and trembling as if she had just run a mile. She let go of the table. A tram went racketing across the intersection. In the bare tree outside the window a sparrow curvetted, and flipped away. The room was full of sun. It was a winter morning.

The bacon was for the visitor, of course. Maxine had given up meat. She couldn't touch it, with a metabolism like hers, this squeamishness in the mornings. Oh, perhaps a skerrick, the merest shred of curled rind, to check that it was cooked: otherwise, no. Really. Well—to trim off the ragged edge . . . Picking and nibbling, she heard the two men's heavy steps on the stairs, and began with guilty swipes to lavish butter on to the toast.

‘Maxine,' said Ray from the kitchen doorway. ‘I'd like to introduce you to—my brother Alby.'

Maxine turned, and made a little bow. ‘How do you do,' she said. ‘Actually, we've already met.'

‘That's right,' said Alby, running a pocket-comb through his thin hair. ‘We introduced ourselves. At dawn.'

Maxine saw Ray's hastily donned clothes, his sleep-stunned eyes and expression of sober pride, and the treadmill inside her whirred again.

‘Yes, we did,' she said. She flashed her most brilliant smile, and beat at her hair with the backs of her wrists.
‘Alby's come to stay, he was telling me. For a while.'

Ray swung round to Alby. ‘No,' he said. ‘That's not what we planned. We'll find a place today, won't we, Alb? We'll be moving out today.'

‘Take it easy,' said Alby cheerfully. He stowed the comb inside his leather jacket and gave his chest a pat. ‘We'll be off as soon as we find something decent.'

But Ray's face, turned away from Maxine, was rippling with unreadable grimaces. He shirt-fronted Alby back through the door into the living room and grabbed him by the arms.

‘I have to get out of here,' he whispered. ‘They're crazy. They both want to fuck me. I'm not
safe
here. They're witches. They're lezzos. They
do
things.'

Alby stared at him. ‘Sit down here, Raymond,' he said. ‘The woman's going to serve us. What's the matter with you? Don't you know when you're on to a good thing? Be thankful.'

Maxine streamed into the room with a piled dish held high. She placed it between the brothers and stood back, clasping her hands loosely in front of her. Her lips gleamed with bacon fat.

‘Ask a blessing, Alby,' said Ray. He lowered his head.

Alby flicked a glance at Maxine. ‘I'm a bit out of practice,' he said. ‘Is that the way things are done here?'

‘It could be,' said Maxine, gliding forward. ‘It could be any way you want it.'

Ray recoiled; but Alby looked up with interest. He seized a chair and pulled it out for her.

‘Sit down, Maxine,' he said. ‘Join us. What do you do, in life?'

Maxine blushed, and sat on her hands beside him. ‘I make things out of wood,' she said. ‘Furniture, mostly.'

‘Ah,' said Alby. ‘A carpenter, eh. That's the spirit. Good for you, love. Lord! Our thanks for these thy gifts.'

He heaped bacon on to a slice of toast and took a comprehensive bite. He was so thin that when he chewed, the ligaments of his jaw popped in and out like rivets. ‘And,' he said, swallowing voluptuously, ‘I guess that as an artist you'd have a hot line to the Almighty?'

Maxine's hair was as dishevelled as a bird's nest. She flattened it, racking her brains for an answer.

‘Yep,' continued Alby, ‘I've always thought that real artists don't need to go to church. The whole principle of creation is acted out through them, every day. That's
my
theory, anyway.' He stuffed the rest of the slice into his mouth and munched with abandon, keeping his sore-rimmed, sparkling eyes fixed on her face. ‘Would there happen to be a coffee available, out there, at all?'

Maxine leapt up and dashed away to the kitchen.

‘And Max?' Alby called after her. ‘Heat the milk,
darl, will you?' Grinning, still chewing, he looked at his brother and winked.

Ray dropped his eyes, trying not to laugh. ‘You ratbag,' he said. ‘How do you do it?'

‘What?' said Alby.

‘I haven't had a square meal since I got here. You've been here five minutes and already they're running round waiting on you.'

Alby shrugged. ‘It's simple,' he said. ‘I like 'em. And they like me. She's all right, don't you reckon? Whatsername? Maxine?'

‘All
right
?'
Ray lowered his voice. ‘She's
trouble
,
mate. She's not a “real artist”. You should see the stuff she makes. It's unscriptural. No one'll buy it. She's been driving me crazy. She's sort of'—he glanced at the door—‘in love with me. Or something.'

Alby raised his eyebrows, and cackled.

‘
You
can laugh,' said Ray. ‘She's a monster. She stalked me. She wouldn't take no for an answer.' He bit his lip and examined his nails through half-closed eyes.

Alby flicked him under the chin with a hard forefinger. ‘What have
you
been up to?'

Ray bridled, unable to control his smile. ‘Never mind that,' he said. ‘I'm telling you I have to get out of here.'

‘I can see that,' said Alby. ‘I think you'd better.'
He stretched both arms back behind his head so that a crackling ripple ran all the way down his spine, then dropped them to his sides and gazed into Ray's face with refreshed attention.

‘She even tried to con me into one of those yuppy pyramid schemes,' Ray went on. ‘The aeroplane game.'

Alby sat up. ‘That scam!' he said. ‘You didn't fall for that, did you?'

‘Course I didn't. What do you take me for?'

‘Phoar,' said Alby. ‘You had me worried there, for a minute.'

‘So don't let's hang around,' said Ray. ‘I've been having a shocking time here. You wouldn't believe what these women get up to. I saw them yesterday. In Janet's room, with their clothes off.'

Alby burst out laughing. ‘Oh, come off it,' he said. ‘No—really.'

‘That's not all,' said Ray, warming to it. ‘They ripped the sleeve off my only good shirt. They used it to make a doll's dress. They don't care
what
they do. They're loose. They're all over the place. But I don't care now. I don't have to live here any more. I'm on my way. I'm going to shake the dust from my feet.' He made brisk trucking movements with his bent arms.

Alby yawned. ‘Don't rush me,' he said. ‘I'm not ready yet. I'm buggered. I like it here. And I want to talk to Janet.'

Ray struck himself on the forehead with his open hand. ‘Oh
no
.
You're not going to socialise, are you? Come on, Alb! Let's say goodbye and get out of here.'

‘Settle down, Raymond. There's coffee coming. Look—we'll have a coffee with the girls, and then we'll buy a paper and work out what to do next.'