Black Glass (3 page)

‘Police are still investigating the cause of the explosion.'

‘An explosion like this, though — it would have to be a drug lab, wouldn't it?'

‘Police are still investigating the cause of the explosion.'

‘But what do you think happened?'

‘Give me a break.'

‘Okay. That's it.'

‘That's … You don't want any more?'

‘I can't do much more if we can't get a probable cause. They might not run it at all, in fact.'

‘After all that?'

‘You were great. We could just do a quick shot of you saying, “Possibly an amphetamine laboratory …”'

‘No thanks.'

‘Okay. Well I'd better be off. Good to meet you.'

‘Likewise. Will this run tonight?'

‘I certainly hope so.'

‘You like your job, right, Damon?'

‘Yeah, sure. Wouldn't do anything else.'

‘Me too. Not if you paid me.'

‘Ah, okay, I get it. Don't worry, you're safe with me. Can't afford to cause any grief. I've just applied for a transfer.'

‘Let me guess — the city.'

‘Right. Ever thought of working there?'

‘No way. Fake place, fake people. Trick you with lights and weird gases and god knows what. You're crazy if you think that's any place to spend your life.'

‘Well. I mean, turn around, mate. It's not exactly Tahiti out here either, is it?'

‘One man's meat, they say …'

‘True, another man's cake, sweet, whatever. Hey, do you think this place was really a meth lab?'

‘That camera's still on, isn't it?'

[Room 9, Interstate Motor Inn, The Regions: Grace]

The motel ceiling was painted with strange stains. Faces and animals bloomed in tea-coloured patterns across the low, shiny paintwork. Grace watched them with a rare concentration. In one corner a cheap plastic fan stirred the hot air back and forth.

Over the years, in between houses, they'd slept on borrowed couches, lounge-room floors, in old caravans, even in the car when there was nowhere else to go. But Grace had never stayed in a motel before, although she'd dreamed about them often: places you passed through between rehearsals and costume fittings, a series of mirrored rest stops in a life where you moved from one place to another according to a timetable.

She refused to be disappointed by the door's flimsiness, the rusty smell that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep beneath the carpet. Instead she washed her face, combed out her hair, lay back very still against the yellow bedspread and —
click
— slipped inside the imaginary film set in her head.

In the next room, behind the wall, an older woman brushed her dark hair again and again to make it shine. Down the hallway the director drank slowly, studied the script, reminding himself to maintain a professional distance from the new cast member — a quiet young woman (too young, perhaps?) whose ability to vanish into her character at will, without fuss, was proving distracting. And in the cheapest room, the understudy sat alone, playing a solitary game of doubt and reassurance.

A truck engine roared to life, loud and unexpected, and there she was again with the marks on the ceiling, only now their mood had taken a mean turn: blooms of dark smoke, slithering flames, faces melting and hair bursting alight. The ceiling was a write-off; none of it could be coaxed back into more gentle shapes.

‘There's a television,' she heard the director say from behind the wall. ‘Use it.'

But at this time of night there was nothing on the box but crime porn. Grace watched for a few minutes, flicking from body to body. The images made parts of her twitch in recognition, sparked by some vague and involuntary hunger, but the story was always the same and it left her feeling distant and shapeless. Then a female newsreader appeared, smiling in a reassuring way, and delivered a smooth series of reports — oil glut, military coup on small Pacific island, hostages shot in terrorist hijacking, prime minister's birthday cake, successful separation of Siamese twins. At the end of the bulletin the newsreader gazed straight at the camera, winked and touched her neck for a suggestive split-second. Grace winked back and replicated the gesture. (She checked it in the mirror: almost perfect.)

But the distraction didn't last: her mind kept looping back to the verge of horror. The Siamese twins were sisters. Both had survived the operation. Grace felt a panicky lurch in her stomach, then a great blank nothing, a whiting-out that felt as deep and familiar as sleep. A feeling that numbed almost everything, wiped the word
sister
from the newsreader's lips.

Tally
. A ghost word.
Erase
.

Breathe, strike match, light cigarette: inhale.
Ashes to ashes.
Then she was stubbing out her cigarette. She didn't remember smoking it; there was just a blank space in time, then the butt curled there, crushed into the saucer.

She should be tired. The bed was motionless, but she still felt the rock and sway of the train beneath her, the lonely clatter of miles being eaten away to nothing in the darkness.

The wall clanked: someone in the next room was running a shower. In the drawer next to the bed she found a bible and flipped through it, smoking as she read. Some of it sounded beautiful, some cruel; most of it made no sense.
May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaks proud things … Bondservants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.
The language was passionate, absolute. Whoever wrote this had felt something.

Grace returned it to the drawer and turned her face back to the flickering screen.

[Freightliner, vehicle licence plate RECO8862: Tally | unidentified long-haul driver]

Can I grab one of these? Yeah, sixteen almost. I just look young. Does this thing work? Marlborough, right? That's what my sister smokes, Grace. Only the light ones not these red ones. Whoa no I'm okay, it's just this cough … a cold I've had, hang on a sec. Phew …

Yeah, Grace. She just took off. To the city I think, well I don't know she just left. The kids round here they're mean as, and she's real pretty, you know how it goes, some people. Write stuff on the walls and that. Just shit, I mean stuff.

We got separated. By accident. But I know where she's going. I'll find her.

Don't need any. I like to travel light. Hey, who's that talking there, your friend? Do you say radio stuff to each other like ten-four big buddy, over and out, and that shit, I mean stuff like that, do you? Oh right, I always … I never been in a truck before.

Well, she's got this red hair, real long, she looks like a movie star, wants to be a movie star, will be too, I reckon. What, I mean pardon? She's fifteen, two years older than me, I — Ah well okay right busted. Thirteen. So what that's close enough, I said I was nearly sixteen not far off, eh. No. Right, Bob. Hi Bob.

Okay it's … they call me Tally … Well, Tallulah. Yeah I know girlie name, ha-ha. But I look like a boy with a toothache right, yep I know, that's what they say. Right. I know that's not what you said, look just don't worry about it okay, can I have another one of these?

Course I do, I always hold it like that, that's just how I do it. Got my own way of smoking.

Eh? My cheek? Yeah well maybe I got … just some dirt from moving some boxes out of the garage, it's … well, maybe not soot, I think there was some ash and dirt and stuff … Look, are those, are they bulls or cows do you reckon?

Whoa strong cigarette huh, sorry, no really I like them strong. Pah …

So. What's it like in the city? How big — like is it hard to find someone? Sure yeah I got money don't worry about it … Jesus, I mean sorry, I mean I can take care of myself. Got a camera, might pick up some work taking photos or something, gotta get another phone, lost mine when the — Hey what's this song? That old group right, with the short guy used to dress in a school uniform and just rock out, like go crazy playing guitar on his back what's their name? AC/DC, yeah. It's good music it matches the road, don't you think it matches the way the road just rolls under the wheels like one of those things at the supermarket, what do you call them … conveyor belts.

Okay. No I don't mind I thought you wanted to talk. Yeah I like quiet too, helps you think. I'll just sit back here and watch the road, right good idea. Right. Mind if I just grab another smoke?

[Service entrance, Howzat Donut kiosk, Southern Cross Station: Grace | unidentified security guards]

‘Ask her again.'

‘I told ya, no use ringing this one's bell — lights are on, but nobody home.'

‘Ask her.'

‘Hey, kid. You gonna move or what? Cos you can't sit here all … See? Told ya: bing-bong, no one home.'

‘What a pretty thing. Check out her hair, that's auburn that is. Nice. I could dye mine that colour.'

‘Hair schmair, I'm checking out the legs.'

‘That's not funny, Carl.'

‘Alright, don't get all femmo on me. Hey. Kid. You got ID? You know we can get the jacks down here in about two minutes if you don't shift?'

‘Clap your hands or something. Hey! Hello? Ah, Jesus. Poor love. Sad, huh?'

‘Yeah, sad for us if we don't move her. My contract says shift 'em outside within four mins, not have a little clap-along.'

‘That's real harsh, Carl.'

‘No kidding. Don't shoot the messenger.'

‘Let's just leave her. No one's watching this late anyway.'

‘See that? Up there? Manned twenty-four hours, sweet-cakes.'

‘Don't call me that.'

‘Aw. You way too serious, Marie.'

‘Come on, let's just go. These kids get me down.'

‘Get used to it, toots. Not our fault. Here, you take that arm. Come on, kid, you can't stay here. Find somewhere else to go.'

[Overpass 19, off-ramp 4, Hume Highway, city outskirts: Tally]

It soared up against the morning sky just like Tally had imagined: every dream of a city, every TV show and magazine ad. Light leaked in from a low angle and the skin of the buildings shone, rectangle upon rectangle, pink air repeated in a hundred thousand mirrors. Behind the towers the shadow of a plane blinked upwards.

The city had always been their shared destination: that had not changed. Long conversations about what they'd do when they got there, about the life they'd lead, Grace waitressing until the auditions worked out, Tally doing her photography and earning money as a bike courier, maybe, or selling tickets in the cinema; the apartment with the pretty lamps, the teapot for two, the friends they would make. That was where they'd both been headed. And like everyone else who came here, Grace would leave tracks.

Tally climbed the cement lip of the freeway overpass. The roads were scrolled together in a sailor's knot, slick ribbons woven over and under one another; this was nothing like the worn flat stretches out in the Regions, the gravel roads and bare horizons she was used to. Where were they all going? The cars zinged past, a multicoloured swarm making the structure rumble and moan beneath her feet:
red-white-red-green-blue-white-yellow
. A woman tilted her rear-view mirror and ran lipstick around her mouth, one hand steady on the wheel as her car sped along, the bright string of vehicles snaking towards its destination. As the sky grew lighter, Tally saw that a brown haze hovered over the city, like a thick smudge of cigar smoke.

Sleep last night had been brief and broken. She had found a triangle of space down there, between the concrete and dirt, a wedge where a small body could wriggle away to almost nothing. She'd slept to the hum of the freeway: a slight vibration, like moths against a window.

No one was paying her any attention. The cars passed in an elegant stream, the drivers' sunglasses all facing in the same direction. The city was still a long way off, beyond a maze of flyovers and construction sites — she would have to zigzag to reach it. She scanned the distant towers, and there it was: the first sign. The seventh tower from the left, one of the tallest, shaped like a sharpened pencil. Like the silver pencil Grace had rattled against her teeth, back amongst the morning-glory vines, humming ‘Summertime'; the pencil that had calculated the cost of their escape. It was all about signs: when Grace saw this skyline, she would recognise that shape.

Tally checked her pockets. Tucked far down, the camera was safe and sound, the bruise of her impact with the ground marked in deep purple beneath one bony hip. But their precious mobile phone, which had been stashed in her back pocket, was lost, vanished, gone. This small machine had been their connection — they'd chanted the number back and forth between them until they had the digits memorised, as if it were a joke, a times table for international spies. But the phone had been flung aside in the explosion. Tally felt its absence every waking moment, like grief or a bad toothache.