Epiphany Jones (15 page)

I feel myself moving involuntarily. I’m sobbing uncontrollably, on the floor.

Nico squats next to me and I scream again.

‘Shh. Shh,’ he says. ‘You want to keep your teeth, yes?’

All I can do is cry.

‘Answer me, perro.’

Through my tears and blurred vision, I shake my head up and down, grunting a ‘yes’.

‘You want your videotape?’

Grunt
.

‘Do you know where Hanna is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good perro,’ he says. ‘We both win. I need to make sure Hanna can never hurt my business again. You need your videotape. You will take me to her, I will make her give you your tape, and then you will leave. You can go back to your life, you can be Jerry again,’ he says as I sob. ‘If you refuse, perro, I will splinter your teeth.’

I begin to bellow so loudly.

‘Relax, relax,’ Nico eases, mocking sympathy for me. ‘I won’t cut your tongue. I won’t kill you. I’ll just leave this newspaper with our friends here and you can go back to your country and go to prison with a nice, gaping mouth.’ He pauses to let a sufficient image of life with a hole in my face form in my mind. ‘Or, you can bring me to Hanna.’ Nico rises and puts on his leather jacket. ‘Now, which would you like to do?’

Good perro.

I
walk along the pier, like a zombie slowly shuffling towards its prey. And there is a hunger I’m feeling.

My flesh is blotchy and grey like the dirty dishcloth used to clean ashtrays in hotel lobbies. Plugging up my wound, a blood-soaked rag makes the back of my shirt stick to my skin. A rotting-meat smell radiates from it.

Still, I move without feeling, without pain even.

I shuffle past the mesh cages and wooden crates meant for holding crustaceans, past the nets and hooks the size of your fist meant for hooking marlins. Epiphany stands in the moonlight, just at the pier’s end. Her little blue sundress looks almost black in the night. She’s crammed her cream hat into the yellow bag that sits on a pile of lobster traps made of wrought-iron rebars and green plastic mesh.

After Nico picked me up off the cell floor; after the police returned and gave me my clothes; after Nico handed me a cup of water and my red backpack, saying, ‘They’re keeping your gun’, I didn’t
want
to come here – even if it meant not getting the tape.

What he had done to me, the pain I had felt was absolute proof – absolute truth – that nothing good comes in this life. It’s a pain I will always remember. Not because it’s memory will always linger in my body, but because it’s a pain that wasn’t contained only to me. It will grow and leap to another person, and soon Epiphany too will awaken to the fact that no, nothing good comes from this life. And, as Nico and me and the lanky officer left the jail, I wept for her.

I wept for her because I’m the virus that shows the pain where she
is. And I wept for me too because you never want to believe you could be the Jew who gave up the location of other Jews to keep yourself out of the oven.

I saw what he did to LaRouche. Felt what he did to me. He did those things to both of us and we weren’t even the ones who burnt his orphanage to the ground. What he’ll do to Epiphany is going to make my wound-fucking look like a spanking.

Epiphany’s pale skin glows in the moonlight. And I think, who is this girl who I’ve just condemned to unimaginable suffering? Epiphany Jones or Hanna? How can one person have such extremes? To me a devil but, to the girls she saved, an angel. Those thirty girls will have a small chance at a better life because of the risk she took. But then I think, it was a risk to the girls as well. This woman I’m about to betray is the greatest conundrum of my life. How could she have known the fire wouldn’t kill any of them? And as I watch Epiphany breathe in a swath of night air in silent thought, I know what her answer would be.
My voices
.

In the cell, Nico pumped me full of the painkillers Epiphany got for me so I’d stop collapsing. The amount I took, all the little co-codamols and ibuprofens, I should be dead. Maybe I am.

In the cell, I showed him the tourist map with the docks circled. I begged him to let me go. I told him I’d just be a liability. I could barely walk after the finger-fucking he gave me. But he wouldn’t go alone.

‘She’s not some dumb animal, perro. You don’t survive for twelve years on the streets without being clever and aware. You already missed your earlier appointment with her. She’ll be on guard. You don’t show tonight, she’ll know something’s up,’ he said. ‘Besides, if you’re lying to me, I’m going to take your nose.’ He handed me a dirty rag. ‘Now plug your hole up. I don’t need you bleeding to death before we get there.’

In another time, in another life, who I see before me would be just an ordinary woman looking out on to a beautiful sea on a moonlit night. But in this life, on this night, I don’t know who I’m looking at. A murderer and a saviour? How can one person be both? Why was Roland’s life expendable, but the girls’ lives at the orphanage valuable?
Is one life worth more than another? Is mine worth more than hers? Who is she to decide? Who am I?

I’m so close I can hear her mumbling to herself. Something’s different about her. She’s not on guard like she usually is. After I didn’t show this afternoon, I’d expect her to be clawing at her skin – or mine. Any time before this she would know if I were within twenty feet of her. Now though, I’m close enough to reach out and touch her shoulder but she hasn’t even noticed me.

And though my past pain and her future pain cause my empathy for her to grow, I know that I’m still going to go through with this. That hunger I feel? It’s called necessity. It’s called self-preservation. You’d do the same thing if you were in my position, so don’t you dare judge me for this.

I clear my throat and Epiphany breaks from her mumbling and turns to me. Her mutilated earlobe glows like coral in the moonlight. I’m quiet for a moment. How do you begin a conversation with a dead person?

‘What were you, um, talking about just now?’ I say, hoping the night hides the grey of my skin, the emptiness of my eyes.

‘A kiss,’ she answers, letting the word float between us for a moment before it’s carried off on the breeze. ‘Where were you?’ she asks, almost softly. ‘I waited.’

And her eyes. There’s something different with her eyes.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘My – my wound. I laid down in a park. Fell asleep. Only woke up an hour ago.’

I can hardly bear to look at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I knew you’d come.’

Over her shoulder, a quarter of a mile out on the moonlit Gulf, I see a three-storey freighter. Its hull is painted a dark red and ‘THE CAPRICE’ is written in white letters on the side.

‘Is that it?’

Epiphany nods. ‘The captain has arranged transport,’ she says. ‘It should be here shortly.’

In the distance the red light of a small tugboat moored next to the freighter blinks. I glance at Epiphany. What the hell is wrong with her eyes tonight? It’s as if they don’t belong to her. Like if you’d put your grandmother’s eyes into Charles Manson’s head, that’s what they look like.

‘You – you know, when you said we were taking a boat, I imagined it was one of those small fishing boats – like the one from
Jaws
or something.’

Epiphany looks puzzled.

‘The movie?’ I say.

She shrugs her shoulders.

Jaws
. I see LaRouche, bloody mouth gaping open, jagged teeth pointing in every direction.

What’s Nico waiting for? Is this part of his cruelty? To prolong the time I spend with the person I’ve betrayed?

Epiphany’s new eyes look into my dead ones. ‘I know this hasn’t been easy,’ she says, ‘but we’re almost done. It’s almost over.’ She turns towards the sea and I stand by her side. In the distance, the tugboat has just pulled away from the freighter.

On the pier, the moonlight casts soft, blue shadows over Epiphany’s face. And it’s then that I realise why her eyes look so alien. It’s because that freighter is the last part of the journey that takes us to her daughter. Her eyes, it’s not that there’s something wrong with them – it’s that they possess something they never had before. They’re full of hope.

And out of nowhere there’s an abrupt flash of movement in the moonlight. Nico, he steps from the shadows between two sets of crates. I must have made some sort of yell because Epiphany snaps around in an instant. Her figure is dwarfed by Nico’s six-foot-six frame.

It begins quickly. He raises something in his fist and swings it at Epiphany. She tries to duck, but she’s not fast enough. She’s knocked to the ground before I can blink. She tries to rise, but Nico lifts his arm again. This time I can see the thing he swings is a sock with something heavy in it. I press my eyes shut before he hits her again.

My stomach churns and rolls around, like it’s been cut loose from
the rest of my viscera. In my mind, Nico’s face warns, ‘Don’t interrupt, perro. I’ll take your nose. I’ll shatter your teeth. I’ll dump you in your country and your wound won’t be the only thing getting stretched in prison.’

When I open my eyes blood from Epiphany’s skull falls in large drops onto the pier. She wobbles to all fours. Her eyes go wide as she sees I’m still here.

‘Run!’ she screams. That’s when I feel the lanky police officer brush past me. Epiphany barely has time to register that I haven’t moved before the officer boots her in the stomach. I snap my eyes closed again before I can see her fall for the third time.

And their viciousness, it’s nothing like you see on TV. Seeing someone beaten in real life … it’s the sounds. They aren’t as pronounced. When Nico bludgeons her face, there’s no THWACK or CRACK to go with it. You think, his strike
can’t
be doing that much damage. There’re no jarring jump cuts showing a close-up of the attacker sneering as his victim writhes in pain. There’s no camera in the face of the beaten woman highlighting her tears and blood. And when you see her lying still, you think, You don’t look like it hurt that much.

But you’re wrong. It hurts more than is believable. You don’t know how it is.

Even though it’s just barely, Epiphany, she still moves. She manages to lift her head.

‘Stay down, goddamn it,’ I want to yell.

As the lanky police officer forces Epiphany’s hands behind her back, Nico picks up the yellow bag. He digs through it until he finds a small, blue clamshell case. He flips it over in his hands, then tosses it to me. ‘You’re done here.’

The surface of my entire body is numb. I need to look to see if I’ve caught it. And though I don’t feel it, there it is, this little thing, in my hands. Inside is the videotape with Roland’s handwriting scrawled on it. I expect –
I hope
– to feel relief.

I don’t.

The police officer, he’s forced Epiphany into a bowing position – her
knees under her chest, the left side of her face pressed hard against the pier. It’s the same position I had the clone in. When our eyes meet, I expect hers to be glaring at mine with hatred. Instead they’re empty. Lifeless. Like the shark’s from my dream.

‘You’re done here, perro,’ Nico repeats, surprised I’m not halfway to the bus station by now. ‘Leave before I change my mind.’

I know I won’t get another warning. I don’t look at Epiphany again. I grasp the tape firmly in my hand and begin the long walk back down the pier. The sound of blood rushes through my head. I concentrate on the pain of my stab wound; on the feeling of the sopping rag stuffed into my grey flesh. I try to feel every millimetre of my body, soaking up every ounce of pain so I can focus on something other than what’s happening behind me.

But then … do you remember that rat I fucked up killing? Remember how its body was broken before I dumped it out the window? How I pictured Epiphany’s head on it? How I wanted her just as broken?

Be careful, sometimes you get what you wish for.

And despite every voice in my head screaming, ‘
Don’t!
’ I turn back around.

The police officer is sliding Epiphany’s blue dress over the top of her hips. He whips her across the spine with something that looks like a riding crop and, despite an effort not to, Epiphany cries in agony. And while she is being whipped again, Nico, he’s pulling a strip of black electrical tape from a roll in his hand like this is just some common weekend housework. ‘This is just the start,’ he tells her. ‘Enjoy it. It’s the nicest thing that’s going to happen to you.’

And I can’t tell you why; I can only say that this is where I knowingly do the dumbest thing in my entire life. This is where I slip the tape into my pocket. This is where I pick up a lobster trap the size of a kitty carrier and hope my heart doesn’t explode, because it’s beating like a hummingbird. This is where I charge at Nico with the lobster trap and bring it crashing down on his head with all the force I can summon.

And all the force I can summon isn’t much. Nico, he doesn’t even get knocked off his feet. Hell, he barely teeters. What he does do is
spin around and grabs my wrist in one hand while his other chokes my throat.

‘Perro,’ he says through gritted teeth, ‘I liked you. I really did. You reminded me of myself – when I was a child.’ His grip tightens as he walks me backwards. I think he’s walking me backwards. I can’t really tell. I’m feeling pretty lightheaded. It’s hard to breath. ‘But this is business,’ he is saying. ‘And you just broke the terms of our arrangement.’

And, still holding my throat, he grabs his little sock thing and whacks me in the head with it. And when he lets go, I have a falling feeling. Then I smack a surface, hard. And, as my view of Nico goes wavy, I sink into the cool Caribbean water.

L
aRouche, Roland, my father – I envy them. They have no suffering. They have no pain. They got living out of the way. They’ll never have heartbreak or loss again. They’ll never have to go to a job they hate. They’ll never fear anything else. When everything is said and done, the dead are the winners. You and me – we’re the saps. We still have to get through each day.

Well, you do anyway.

I’m just about done.

They say before you die your life flashes before you in a split second. I guess this is my second.

Jerry, this is your life:

I was born in 1982 to Jonathan and Margaret Dresden. The birth was an emergency Caesarean section. And that little C-section should have been a big tip-off: life with this one isn’t going to be easy.

But life for my family did move along uneventfully for the next three years. That’s when Emma was born.

Emma, my beautiful little sister.

When I started kindergarten at six, I was a shy and introverted boy. While the other children became friends, it was quickly evident that I was
that one
. You know what I’m talking about. Every class has one – the kid no one wants to talk to. It doesn’t matter why it’s you. Once it’s apparent that you are the one, everyone knows to stay away, lest they become
that one
through association.

Kids don’t really bully you in kindergarten. They wait until first grade to do that. During break one fall day, Keith – a real alpha male,
if you know what I mean – he snatched my GI Joe action figure from my hands. He twisted it at the torso until the little, black rubber band holding the Joe’s hips to his stomach snapped.

‘You,’ Keith said, pointing to the dismembered Joe, ‘unless…’

That was the day Keith first taxed my lunch money.

When I got home I ran straight to the backyard and cried. It wasn’t only because of Keith, either. I wondered, was it normal to feel as sad and lonely as I did every single day? Was something wrong with me?

As I buried my broken GI Joe in the sandbox, Emma came scurrying around the fence with two Joe’s in her little hand. She knew I had been crying, but didn’t ask why. She just handed me one of the Joe’s and asked if she could play with me. Her smile told me it would be the thrill of her day. So she played with Scarlet and I played with Firefly in the sandbox until the sun went down.

Being only three she could never realise how such a simple act had held me up that day, but I did.

Over the next four years, when the kids at school picked on me it was bearable because I knew that at three o’clock I would be going home to that glowing smile of hers. Anything bad in my life became tolerable because I had Emma. She was my friend when no one else wanted to be. And I loved her how a brother should: by ignoring her sometimes; by teasing her; by not telling her just how much she meant to me.

When I was sick she’d pick dandelions from the front yard and bring them to me. When I came home from school, crying on days the bullying was bad, she would run and hug me and ask me to play outside. And she never asked what was wrong. Not once. Even at that age she knew the bad shit should be left in the past so you could have room for the happy stuff in the present.

Every winter I counted the days until the start of Christmas break. For other kids the holiday break meant toys and hanging out with friends. But for me, I loved it because I would have two weeks of doing nothing but hanging out with my one and only friend. My one true buddy. The only person who I ever felt really loved me for everything I was and everything I wasn’t.

Jerry
, this is your life:

It’s 1992 and Mom tells me Emma is sick with leukaemia. I expect Emma to be coughing and all snuffles and stuff. When she’s not, I think it’s no big deal – especially when Mom promises that nothing bad will happen to her.

Over the next year Emma tires easily. We stop playing outside. She asks me to stay in with her. She asks me to read to her while she lies in bed. And I do. Throughout that year, I read every book in the house to her. When we run out of kids’ books I read her the Bible. When that is done I read the books in Mom’s den. Imagine being an eleven-year-old and reading Nietzsche to your dying eight-year-old sister. After a while I don’t think Emma even hears my words make sentences. She just wants the sound of my voice by her. She wants not to be alone. She knows she is dying.

Jerry, this is your life:

It’s March 1994. I’m twelve, Emma is nine. Her bedroom has become the place where books go to die. They’re stacked by the dozens in every conceivable location. Every book in the house has been read. Some twice.

Emma is white as a ghost tonight. I’m lying in bed with her, reading her one of Mom’s Joan of Arc books. It’s her favourite one. She has me reread a passage to her over and over and over again because, she says, ‘They’re the most beautiful words ever written.’

Her lips are pale, but they mouth along as I read:

‘She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one. She was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule, and honourable in an age which had forgotten what honour was; she was unfailingly true in an age that was false to the core; she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation – she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes. And for all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine and indifferent while French priests took the noble child, the most innocent,
 
the
most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and burned her alive at the stake.’

Emma reaches for my hand. I stop reading. She looks at me with her pale face and says, ‘I wish I could be just like Joan of Arc.’

And I look at her and say, ‘You are.’

Jerry, this is your life:

It’s September 1994. Emma has been in this hospital for four months now. Mom and Dad rarely speak without fighting anymore. They’re only civil when they’re in front of Emma. I’m waiting in the hall for Emma to get out of an MRI scan. The room she went into is sterile and white like Cloud City in
Star Wars.

Back in her room, I read. She’s got so many tubes in her now I can’t lie next to her anymore. I sit in the chair beside her bed and hold her hand with my left as my right one grasps tonight’s reading. The nurses know our routine and bring any books they can find. But tonight all they could manage is a pamphlet on resuscitating a drowning victim. ‘Optimal time to save a victim of drowning is in the first forty-five seconds,’ I read to Emma as a machine helps her breath.

Outside the room, I hear my dad say, ‘We need a miracle.’

Jerry, this is your life:

It’s October 31st, 1994. I am that miracle. My parents tell me the doctors say I’m a perfect genetic match for something called a bone-marrow transplant. It’s what I have in me that will save my sister’s life.

Jerry, this is your life:

It’s November 1994. It’s been an unusually chilly fall. As the time to the operation approaches I get nervous.

It’s two days before the transplant. Mom is at the hospital with Emma. I’m waiting at school for Dad to pick me up. He’s running late because he’s at a press conference for the foundation of a dead star named Audrey Hepburn. When my dad was my age, Audrey was his on-screen crush.

The other kids waiting outside for their parents ask why the teachers say I won’t be in school for a while. I tell them. Then they tell me how some kid they knew had the same operation. They say how the
doctors stick a straw in your legs and suck your bone blood out like it’s a strawberry shake. They say how kids who have it done walk all wobbly the rest of their lives; how the kids who have it done never stop crying from the pain, even when they are old men. And as they walk all wobbly around me, screaming, ‘
It hurts! It hurts!
’ I run. I run across the parking lot and into the woods. I run up into the Hollywood hills and I hide there, clutching my unwobbly legs.

I wake up, shivering. I begin to walk. I come home at four a.m. I come home to police in our kitchen and my mom frantic. I come home with pneumonia.

Jerry, this is your life:

The doctors, they tell my parents the thing about sleeping in nature is you don’t want to sleep on the naked ground, even with a winter coat on. The ground is fifty-five degrees. You want to keep your body at ninety-eight point six. If you have to sleep outside, even if you have heavy clothing, put something between you and the ground – like a cut log, or even just prop your body up so there’s space between you and the earth. That extra buffer keeps the ground from sucking the heat from your body. That extra buffer will keep you from getting pneumonia.

The doctors, they say I’m too sick now. My immune system is too weak. The operation would be too dangerous for me. They say, ‘We’ll have to postpone until the New Year.’

Jerry, this is your life:

Emma dies on December 24th, 1994. I stop reading after that.

Jerry, this is your life:

You never mention it to your mom or dad. You never talk to your family about how you killed your little sister. And they never blame you. Not to your face anyway. How can they? You were just a shit-scared, stupid kid. A cowardly little fuck. They can’t blame you, so they fight with each other. At work, Dad volunteers for more and more assignments out of the country. Sometimes he’s away for weeks. Mom, she loses herself in her lectures about a dead saint. She enrolls you at Sunday school because she’s been told it helps with grief. But you don’t
show grief ever again. You turn to movies and TV. You veg out and slowly forget about everything one commercial break at a time.

Jerry, this is your life:

Your mother cheats on your father. Your father dies in a car accident. You become addicted to porn and television and go through life like a zombie. And it is an addiction – a cover for your misery – but you lie to yourself and call it a ‘hobby’. You take a job you couldn’t care less about. You lie to people about relationships you can’t have because you’re too apathetic to even try. You lie to them so they don’t silently judge you behind your back like your mom and dad did. Each day is just another perfect example of the spectacular nothing that is your existence.

Jerry, this is your life:

You see people who aren’t there. Until, one day, one of them is. And she frames you for murder and blackmails you into coming to Mexico. Then you’re on a pier watching two men beat this woman in the warm moonlight. And before you know it, you’re sinking in the water, waiting to drown.

Jerry, this is your life
. This is your sad, pathetic life. It’s so sad, it’s flashed before your eyes in just half a second. Real lives – good lives – take at least a whole second.

My back gently hits the sandy bottom of the bay. The moonlight shines bright into the clear water, illuminating everything in a hazy blue flush. Shallow shadows ripple over the submerged masts of the pier; over the seaweed; over the fish as they slowly scatter from my faltering limbs. Down here, everything is calm. The madness is on the surface.

I release my final breath and my lungs burn as they flood with salt water. This is where I think, ‘
See you soon, Emma
.’

And this, this is where I see Emma standing over me on the sandy sea floor, shaking her head. Her arms crossed disapprovingly. ‘Optimal time to save a victim from drowning is in the first forty-five seconds,’ she says.

‘This is for you,’ I say to my figment of Emma. ‘So I can be with you again. It’s all for you.’

Emma shakes her head. ‘No. This is all for you.’

A splash echoes from the surface and my figment of Emma dissolves in the water as the lanky police officer’s body sinks, softly landing in her spot. Blood seeps from his neck in smoky plumes. They’re almost relaxing to watch, the plumes are. His body sways gently with the current on the sea floor. Then, without warning, the officer jerks to life. His eyes go wide and his hands reach around his neck. That’s when I see it: one of those big fishing hooks that are scattered around the pier has been pushed clean through his throat. And as he silently screams, he manages to rip the hook right from his neck. His mistake. Now the water has two holes to enter through.

‘Twenty seconds,’ Emma’s voice says.

And me, I kick off the sea floor and aim for the wavy moon floating above me. My lungs are heavy and bloated. When I break the surface, I expect immediate relief, but I get nothing. There’s too much water in me. As I paddle to the pier’s ladder, black patches appear in my vision.

‘Fifteen seconds.’

In the hospital room I read the pamphlet to Emma. ‘
A person can expel water from their lungs by forcefully falling over an object just below the diaphragm
.’

‘Ten seconds.’

The water in my lungs makes my body dense as I struggle up the ladder. I stumble towards the closest mast and belly flop onto it. My insides shift. I vomit water. Collapsing to the ground, the rawest breath of air I’ve ever tasted shocks my lungs. It’s what a newborn must feel when the doctor rips him from the womb and slaps his back. Lying on the pier, the moon above me, it’s never felt so good to simply breathe.

Lying flat on my back on the pier, just behind me, just north of my head, I hear a struggle. When I tilt my head back I see everything upside down. The sky below, Epiphany pressed up against the ceiling of the pier with Nico between her legs. His fists are raised as if they’re pummelling the night stars.

Suddenly a blinding light illuminates both of them. I totter to my feet as Nico shades his eyes from the light. Through my dizziness and
black spots I manage to grab a heavy, rusted tackle box tucked between some crates. And as I approach Nico from behind I glimpse a long cut on the back of his neck. Epiphany must have tried to hook him, too.

Raising the tackle box, I hammer Nico’s skull. On the second hit the box pops open, scattering lures and sinkers and bobbers everywhere. Then, silently, a steady stream of blood flows from underneath Nico’s black hair. It’s like I’ve struck red oil. Nico, in an instant his body stops moving. He just stands there and sort of sways. Then his body, it collapses to the pier like it’s suddenly discovered gravity. His body, it lands next to Epiphany’s, which hasn’t moved since I crawled out of the sea.