Epiphany Jones (33 page)

And that’s how it ends for the terrifying and cruel Nico. The monster who trafficked girls all over the world. The murderer of my love. Killed by a Swiss dessert while wriggling in a pile of his own shit.

And I wait for it … the relief.

‘What’s going on in there?’ The voice from the other side of the door yells. ‘What’s all that noise? Are you … are you having sex?’

The relief that doesn’t come.

‘Someone get security! Matthew wouldn’t want something as base as sex in a public toilet happening at his party! Get security!’

Matthew’s thugs with their guns and their thighs like tree trunks will shoot me dead once they’ve seen I killed Nico. I make for the bathroom window again. But before I’m fully out, I stop. Soon the room will be filled with security guards and men with bloated bladders, and, well, I’d hate for anyone to think
I
did it. I turn back inside. I walk past Nico’s dead body. His expensive Italian shoes butt against the base of the toilet. That big piece of celebrity shit bobbing around the bowl? I give it a flush. I’m not gonna be blamed for that.

B
ela baby, I did it. He’s gone.

And I wait … I wait crouched on the windowsill. The six-inch width of the ledge to either side of it not as frightening as what isn’t happening inside of me.

‘He’s gone,’ I say aloud. As if voicing it will carry the pain away in the breeze that flows past me.

But the only thing that carries up here are the notes from the orchestra playing three storeys below.

The pain’s still there, inside me. The emptiness. The loss. The hurt.

And I know the pain, it’s still there because of Epiphany. Nico said she led him right to Bela. Epiphany’s as responsible for Bela’s death as he is. The devil. All of us are insignificant collateral damage in her world.

She’s like a goddamned cancer, Epiphany. You do the chemo, the carcinogenesis meds regimen, the bone-marrow transplants, the cell scrapes. You just want to stop hurting, so you do all that stuff, but Epiphany, it lays in you, dormant, slowly eating away at you. You think you’ve beat it. You hope. You dare to believe. But when you have Epiphany there’s always something more. Something hidden. She’s leukaemia and she’s devouring you from the inside out.

Behind me, back in the bathroom, there’s a loud scraping of the tall metal trashcan across the stone porcelain as someone forces the door open. Gripping the inside edge of the windowpane I slink my way across the ledge, out of sight of the window. As I release my hand from the window’s edge, the windowpane shudders as it slides shut with a
loud bang. That’s when I reach my hands toward the sky like I’ve found Jesus. It looked like I could grasp the upper ledge of the roof deck, but my fingers come centimetres short. The best I can do is brush the bottom of the deck’s ledge with my fingertips. I glance back through the window, hoping I can crawl back into the bathroom, but a security guard stands over Nico’s body. I see him mouth ‘What the hell?’ as he pulls his gun from its holster.

I retreat from the window’s view, balancing on my little ledge, three storeys above the garden, pressing my back against the wall of the villa. I’m spread-eagled, trying to balance on a ledge the width of a VHS tape, as my fingertips press against the bottom of the roof deck in an attempt to stop my body from wobbling.

The wind is picking up speed. Towards the red mountains that curve in the distance the storm clouds have moved closer. Now they block out the sun, causing the sky to form a premature grey-orange-purple dusk. I scan the villa to see if there’s a way in through another window. Towards the east wing I see nothing, but when I look towards the west wing, that’s when I see a group of girls – young girls – all huddled in a window on the third floor. They’re all taking furtive peeks into the garden below. And one of the girls, from this distance she looks like–

I crane my neck for a better view and my heart fires wildly as my body caves outward as gravity tries to pull me from the ledge. I pivot my hips back, desperately trying to regain equilibrium. Every inch of my back tries to bond with the wall behind me. I swallow hard, only having narrowly avoided falling three storeys to my death. I try to be as still as a gargoyle, sucking in my gut, flattening myself against the wall. But the damned wind, it isn’t doing me any favours. As the storm approaches, it blows my body hard. If I stay here I’m going to fall.

Three storeys below me, the orchestra plays ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’.

To my right, there’s a drainpipe no more than a foot from my ledge. If I can reach it I can use it to climb to the deck above.

But stuff like this, it all looks way easier on TV. As I stretch my hand towards the pipe, my foot slips and I careen sideways. The only
thing that keeps me from going splat on someone’s trombone is my tux sleeve. It’s caught on a retainer holding the drainpipe to the wall. My jacket shreds as I desperately wrap my arms around the pipe. I stretch my foot towards the window ledge, but my weight causes the drainpipe to buckle. A rivet pops from the wall and the pipe bends like a straw. My feet dangle in the air. I kick wildly, searching for traction. Then I glimpse a surface below my soles. I press my toes onto the crown moulding as hard as I can.

So here I am, arms wrapped around a crooked drainpipe, toes clawing crown moulding, leaning like the Tower of Pisa over gardens filled with the most recognisable people on the planet. And man, the thing about stars is they never look up. They never look up because they know they’re the ones to be looked up to. There is nothing above them. That’s why not a single person below notices a man in his tux hanging on for his life three storeys above the ground.

But I’m not alone up here for long. Above me on the rooftop deck, the most famous actor in the world has stepped onto the ledge. Hugh Fox. The forty-million-a-picture man. The actor that likes to fuck little girls. The guy who likes to be called ‘Daddy’.

A voice cries at him. It begs him to get down.

‘Please, baby, just come to me.’ It’s the Starlet’s voice.

‘No!’ Hugh cries. ‘My career will be ruined when this gets out!’

‘I didn’t see what I thought I did,’ the Starlet’s voice lies.

‘No. No, you’ll tell people about this! It’ll help your career. The coverage you’ll get for turning me in–’ Hugh looks towards the cliffs. His spittle, carried by the wind, mists my face. ‘I’ll be destroyed. I’ll go to jail! Worse! I’ll never get a major role again!’

And this is where Hugh does a triple-somersault off the rooftop. And on his way out of this world, he notices me hanging to my drainpipe. And in that space between free-fall and the ground, Hugh automatically flashes me that beautiful smile of his just in case the man hanging from the drainpipe has a camera with him. Then, splat.

Jordan appears at the edge of the roof. She screams and tears flood her eyes. And even from all the way up here, you can see the blood
begin to pool around Hugh’s body below. He’s more a work of art in death than he ever was in life. Looks like a Pollock. Nice use of red.

Below, the orchestra stops playing. A group of publicists stare at Fox’s body in stunned silence. Some of the partygoers in the garden begin to scream.

‘What the hell is going on in this place?’ a voice says. The security guard, he’s forced the bathroom window open. Fox’s is the second body he’s found in five minutes. But just as the guard thinks he’s seen everything, now the most powerful man in Hollywood comes trotting into the garden like he’s in a one-legged race. His pants circle his ankles and a bloody hand is cupped over his balls.

‘Help me!’ Matthew Mann screams, ‘Someone help me!’ Then Epiphany bursts into the garden. She’s lost her blonde wig and tiny blood bubbles dribble down her cream-white chin on to her cheap tea-dance-twenties dress.

There’s such a stinging in my chest. The walking cancer. The terminal disease.
You led him to Bela.

Below me, in the gardens, the crowd scatter like bowling pins at Epiphany’s approach. Epiphany rips the fake Arabian sword from the hand of
The Princess of the Sand’s
evil king statue and, like the reaper, she stalks through the bed of lilies where Matthew Mann has collapsed. She swings the sword wildly at someone who attempts to help him up. She’s scarier than death, she is. The blood that trickles from her mouth, it’s all come from Matthew’s penis.

And a celebutante faints.

A muscle-bound action hero screams like a little girl.

A conservative talk show host flees with a falafel balanced in one hand and a drink in the other.

In the bathroom window next to me, the security guard says, ‘I left South Central for
this?
’ and then disappears.

Above me, from the rooftop deck, a teardrop from the Starlet hits my hand. Is she crying over losing a fiancé or over how much his death will affect her career?

Below me, three security guards approach Epiphany, guns drawn.

Just shoot the bitch. She’s got a plastic sword, for God’s sake. Shoot her and put us both out of our misery.

A searing pain flashes through my shoulder blades. I press my eyes shut so tight I see red between my lids. And Bela, I see Bela.

The pain trails off and I open my eyes. Over by the circular gravel drive, you can hear limo after limo speed away.

Back below me, one of the security guards is down. Epiphany must have done something. His arm shouldn’t look like that.

Another teardrop hits my hand. Jordan Seabring. The beautiful blonde actress again. The Starlet. The non-fiancée. So many names for one person. As I watch her cry, she reminds me of Bela. It’s because of their lips. They both have full lips. But one’s were real and the other’s are due to three collagen injections a year.

Back on the ground again, the second guard is down. Epiphany hovers over Matthew like the angel of death. No. Not the angel of death. She hovers over him like a fallen saint. A misguided Joan of Arc. She fights fearlessly because she believes she has God on her side. She fights with one purpose, one goal. Her own.

Ask her, ‘What about what I want? What about me?’

She’ll answer, ‘What
about
you? You don’t matter.’

Fuck Epiphany.

The Quester.

The Devil.

And as I speak Epiphany’s name in vein, pain sparks through my body like hellfire. Hanging from my drainpipe, I try to think of anything else to block the pain, but my biceps still spasm. My fingers lose all feeling. My body is done. I’m done. I crane backwards as my hold on the pipe begins to slacken. Below, the last guard on the lawn is down. The prop sword is sticking out of his throat. And Epiphany? Epiphany and Matthew have both disappeared.

My feet slip from the crown moulding, sending my body swinging away from the villa.

Jerry, this is your life.

These are its final seconds.

The last of my fingers slips. As my body enters free fall, time virtually stops. It’s like you’re given a slight stay of execution to take in the wonderful world that wasn’t. And, after blaming Epiphany one last time, I fill my mind with thoughts of Bela and Emma. And I even see Emma. She’s watching me from that window in the west wing. And even though I know she’s only a figment of my imagination, brought on by the inevitable onslaught of my imminent death, it’s nice to have someone you loved with you when you’re about to die. You’ll understand what I mean one day.

And, as Emma stares back at me from that window in the west wing, someone appears by her side. Someone appears by her side … and takes her hand.

Oh God.

This person that takes her hand, it’s Phineas.

His words, they echo in my mind:
‘Jonathan only ever used one girl … A real stunner … like a young Audrey Hepburn … No one else was allowed to touch her.’

This figment of Emma I see? She’s not a figment at all.

She’s Epiphany’s daughter.

And I say, ‘
Please
–’

As my body speeds on its collision course with the ground, I pray.

I say,
‘Oh, Saviour, please–’

I pray to Epiphany that she does what I was never able to. I pray that she saves my little sister.

T
he landing feels exactly like it does when you wake from one of those dreams where you’re falling. The unrelenting speed. The beats of your heart as you plunge. The sudden stop that jolts you awake.

Of course, there are differences too. A femur breaks. A rib cracks. I look to my side and there’s an ulna sticking through torn flesh. Everything goes black.

‘Damn it! How many people are going to jump off the roof today?’ a voice is saying in slow motion.

Another voice, it takes on regular speed as I open my eyes. ‘My God! My God! Whose
bone
is that?’ a guy holding his shoulder says.

I’m looking up towards the sky. The drainpipe sticks out from the side of the villa. It sways in the wind. Massive, angry storm clouds float overhead.

I’m jumbled on a pile of bodies in the garden next to the abandoned orchestra’s stage. The bodies belong to the group of publicists that came over to see what a suicided Hollywood star looks like, all splattered on the ground. They’re the only reason I’m alive. They broke my fall. One publicist holds his arm as another helps him from the ground. The guy with the ulna sticking out refuses to move. It’s a moment before I realise that none of the breaking or cracking belonged to me. I pick myself up and the guy below me screams as I grab his leg to steady myself.

‘Who are you?’ the publicist holding his arm says.

‘He’s not my client. Who cares?’ the shoulder guy answers. ‘Where
is
my client?’

‘Can we focus here?’ the ulna publicist grits from the ground. You
can see his marrow dribble from his split bone. It looks like dried meat sauce. ‘We’ve got to decide who we need to pay off to make this go away.’

Priorities.

All around us people are running and screaming and looking guilty.

When I stand it feels like the whole world is moving. The sky is grey as clouds swirl and a loud wind howls from over the cliffs. The tables in the garden slide like they’re pucks on an air-hockey table. They slide, then pause and slide again, before completely blowing over on the lawn. China dishes and crystal glasses and food and real silver silverware go everywhere. Even the statue of the princess has been knocked over; she’s landed between her evil stepbrother’s legs. How embarrassing. The Party of the Year is a disaster. Celebrities flee like children as their PR handlers shout at them. A martial-arts hero pushes a Best Actress winner to the ground and dives into her limo, which speeds down the gravel drive without her.

I hear thunder, but it’s only in my head. I look up to the third-floor window, the one in the west wing, the one where I saw Emma. There’s blood on the pane now.

My head reels. Emma? No. Not Emma…

In my mind it feels like it’s a cold November night in California. I stumble into the grand foyer. I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the large mirrors. My tux jacket is shredded where it caught on the drainpipe’s retainer. My face is beaten.

On the grand staircase there’s blood that dribbles up the stairs. I follow it to the second-floor art gallery.

‘Did you see the gun she had against his head?’ a woman shrieks as she passes me on her way down the stairs.

‘The gun?’ the man guiding her by the arm says. ‘Did you hear her say she was going to
pull
the rest of his cock off?’

My head thumps like someone’s put a pressure cooker inside it. Every floor of the villa is in chaos. Public relations people bark orders at their celebrities like they’re scolding five-year-olds.

‘You were never here!’

‘You had the stomach flu and couldn’t make it!’

‘We’re going to have to release a sex tape to get the public interested in something else! We’ll anal it if we have to!’

The celebrities, some look more culpable than others.

The trail of blood continues to the third-floor ballroom, which was once buzzing with Hollywood’s hottest stars feeling self-important and admiring all the movie props that sit in glass cases. Now the room is abandoned. One of the buffet tables has been knocked over. Food is everywhere. A horrible smell emanates from the corner of the room by the
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
poster next to the bathroom door that’s been forced open. It’s the smell of Nico’s shit.

My head throbs. The window. It was on the third floor – this floor. I race from the ballroom to the west wing. But this floor of the west wing, it’s just another gallery. A very narrow gallery. Where the room should be, the one that owns the window where the girls are, there’s a wall. Muffled screams come from behind it. The wall, I pound on it. I yell, ‘Emma! Emma!’ I don’t know what else to call her.

I claw and pull down every painting in the hall. None of them are hidden doorways. Then a muffled shriek comes from behind the wall. And me, I see myself sitting in the cold Hollywood hills on that November night. I see myself letting Emma die again.

I dash back into the ballroom, past the cinema. Maybe the roof? I start towards the stairs leading towards the rooftop and that’s when I notice them: a pair of legs wiggling from behind the tipped-over buffet table. He’s lying right underneath the poster of my dad’s favourite actress.

‘Phineas!’ I yell. I kneel by his side. I clutch his shoulders. ‘How do you get to the girls?’

On the
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
poster there’s a streak of blood running down from Audrey’s knees to just behind Phineas’s back. His white shirt is cranberry red. His head lolls side to side as he speaks. He says, ‘It’s her, you know? Jonathan’s girl. She’s here…’

I ball my shredded jacket into his stomach to try to stop the bleeding. ‘Phineas, please. I need to get to the girls. My sister. How do you get into the room?’

‘I was in the room … She came in and shot me. Not going back,’ he says with a far away look in his eyes. ‘Came up here to hide.’

I say, ‘Please…’

He says,
‘Epiphan
… after all these years…’

‘Phineas, please. The girls–’

Phineas’s eyes are bleary. ‘Your dad gave her that name, you know? Always called her
“my little epiphany”.’
He gurgles a little laugh. ‘I thought it odd, but Jonathan said that’s what she was to him – an epiphany. He said he realised that she was saving him from a life of hurt.’

‘Phineas–’

‘When he had brought me in he said that when he first found out what Matthew was up to … noticing really young girls at private parties … he confronted him. But Matthew made him feel complicit. So instead of going to the police … he tried to
manage
the situation. He told me, “I was trying to keep the girl problem under control”.’

My throat tightens. ‘Phineas, how do I get in to the room? Is it the roof?’

Phineas’s face pales. ‘No room on roof…’ His eyes shift. They look like they’re staring at something only he can see.

‘When I told Matthew I met you in the bar, he told me to lie to you and not reveal that he asked me to invite you here.’ A laugh of shame weakly escapes his lips. ‘He was being so secretive … I feared he might be thinking of giving you my job, like your dad always wanted.’

A succession of quick inhalations shakes his body.

‘This world keeps you paranoid about everything,’ he says. ‘But the thing about all this – the most frightening – everything we’ve done … I can’t remember when it stopped bothering me.’ He breathes deep. ‘It’s troubling how quickly you can get used to anything … join in on it, especially when the people around you think nothing of it.’

‘Phineas–’

But Phineas, he doesn’t speak after that. He doesn’t breathe after that either.

My whole body feels like it’s being attacked. Like I’m losing to that
November night again. Thoughts swirl in my brain like snow in a globe. I look at Audrey on the movie poster. Her face is so confident, so knowing. Her eyes look to the left as an orange cat balances on her shoulder.

Then it hits me.

Phineas said he came
up
here to hide from Epiphany. He came
from
the room.

I follow the trail of blood with my eyes back to the staircase. The blood going to the third floor: it was Phineas’s, not Mann’s. All that snow swirling in my head, it freezes in place now. I know exactly how to get to the room.

I race back down the stairs to the second-floor art gallery. Sure enough, there’s a trail of blood leading towards the west wing where Hugh Fox was. I enter through the Degas painting and stumble along the padded passageway until I find the ladder I saw earlier. Its rungs are wet now. The dim red lights mix with the liquid’s true colour, making it look like maple syrup.

I climb the ladder until I’m on the third floor. The ladder leads to a platform the size of a phone booth. I press against every wall until one of them gives. The room I stumble into has racks full of clothes – everything from evening gowns to nurses’ outfits to Sunday church-wear. Beneath the blood-stained window, the one that overlooks the garden, Matthew Mann mutters incomprehensibly, his pants still down around his ankles. His penis sits at an odd angle on his thigh, barely attached to his groin by a thin flap of skin. Just out of his reach is the gun Epiphany took from one of the security guards – the gun she shot Phineas with when she forced Matthew up here.

‘Jonathan’s son…’ Matthew says, when he sees me.

He’s dying from the blood loss.

Hiding between the racks of clothing, behind the tables full of makeup, are little girls in various stages of dress. Some already sport the gowns that resemble what you’d wear to your First Communion service. The girls – the older ones, they look like robots. No expression. No emotion. It’s the younger girls – the seven-and eight-year-olds – that’s where you see the despair.

I look around wildly. Where is she? Has Epiphany taken her? Then I hear a sniffling and pull a rack of clothes out of the way. Behind it, in the centre of the room, a girl is clutched in Epiphany’s arms. This girl, she looks like she’s just gotten the shock of her life. And Epiphany, the look in her eyes is the look of twelve years of longing, twelve years of pain, seeping away.

‘My baby,’ she cries.
‘Mojo dorogaya malishka, bog soedinil nas vodno celeo.’

I’ve never heard her speak Russian before.

I stare at my sister like it’s the first time I’ve seen her; like she’s not the same girl Hugh Fox had in that room. I want to grab her tight, just like Epiphany. But I don’t. My hands are covered with blood from the ladder. I don’t want to scare her any more than she already has been. And as Epiphany embraces her – my sister lets out a tiny smile. And I crack. Pools of water form in my eyes. I see so much of Emma in her now.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ my voice breaks the air.

Epiphany wipes her red, puffy eyes. I think it’s the first time she’s noticed I’m here.

‘Would you have believed me?’

I shake my head, but I know Epiphany already knows my answer.

Somewhere in the background, Matthew Mann mutters, ‘My cock…’

Epiphany whispers to her daughter,
‘Eto tvoiy brat.’

Matthew mutters, ‘You bitch…’

‘Brat?’
her daughter says. Epiphany nods and my sister looks at me. Epiphany’s just told my sister who I am.

I don’t know what to say. I stare at her with dopey eyes and smile the kindest smile I can.

‘My cock, you bitch,’ Matthew yells. This time his voice is so loud we all turn.

The gun is in his hand. It wavers between Epiphany and my sister. Matthew’s face flushes with fury and vitriol. The raw chill that seizes my body lights up every nerve in it. And in a moment of fear and hope,
love and redemption, I push Epiphany to the ground and snatch my sister from her arms. I clutch her to my chest and spin around, using my entire body to shield her in its embrace. I squeeze my eyes shut. The sound of the shot is deafening. And in this instant everything, my failure with Emma, my cowardice in the Hollywood hills – everything is absolved. This sacrifice is the second chance I’ve always needed. And my sister, I feel her heart beat against my chest. And as I wait for the bullet to sting my body like a molten bee, I smile.

And even though time feels differently in intense situations, causing dramatic events to slow for the person experiencing them, the sting has still not come. I force my eyes open, suddenly fearful that physics has failed and the trajectory of the bullet has curved around me and hit her. I pat my sister’s body. I push my fingers through her hair looking for a wound. She’s in shock, but her body is fine. Then I feel my chest and my stomach and my back. There’s no wound anywhere.

Behind me, Epiphany stands upright, facing Matthew. There’s not a mark on her.

But as I’ve said before, guns act differently when they’re around Epiphany Jones. And I breathe a smile. I smile because this is a genuine miracle.

‘We’re fine,’ I whisper with relief to my sister as I kiss her forehead. ‘We’re fine.’

I turn to Epiphany. She’s still facing Matthew and I begin to wonder what she’ll do to him. She’s already grabbed the gun from his hand and thrown it clear across the room.

‘We should get out of here,’ I say. ‘Call the police. Let them handle the other girls.’ I look at my sister. ‘But we need to get
her
out of here now.’

But Epiphany, on the side of her little tea-dance-twenties dress, a dark blotch grows.

‘Epiphany?’

She turns to me. She smiles slightly. The front of her dress looks like a red ink blotter. And as she collapses, I hear myself stammering
‘No, no, no…’

Behind her, Matthew Mann is saying, ‘Got, you … bitch … my cock…’

Then there’s a scream and, Matthew Mann, he’s begging me to stop. I don’t even remember starting. I’m straddling his stomach, beating his face with my fists. His begging only causes me to thrash harder. I pound his face even after a knuckle cracks and a sharp pain splinters through my hand. Spasms run across my face. I beat him for what he made my dad become; for what he’s done to my sister; for Epiphany. When it hurts too much to hit anymore, I club him with the bottom of my joined fists like I’m hammering a stake into the ground. Matthew struggles to raise his meaty hands to my face. He pleads with me to stop.
‘Please,’
he gurgles, blood pouring from a gap where some of his front teeth used to be. Only then do I catch a reflection in the window of the looks on the girls’ faces. Only then do I relent. And only when I relent do I realise how hard I’m crying.