Forever Shores (6 page)

‘Ow! Fuck! Will you
stop
that!' I yelped. As I turned I saw her in the big mirror, bat raised for a lethal stroke at my bruised skull. She was off balance for a moment as she brought it down; I sidestepped, kicked one leg of the corpse sideways to catch her next step. Lune fell into my arms. I was shockingly aroused, and tussled her into a sitting position on the lavatory. The seat was up, and she cried out indignantly as her bare backside hit the cold rim. One leg came up and her foot caught me in the thigh; something flashed, and I went shudderingly cold. From the heated rack I grabbed a thick, fluffy, warm towel and shoved it in her face, grasping her right foot and dragging it up so that she slid forward on the lavatory, banging her spine. There was a small row of silvery hieroglyphs carved into the instep of her foot.

She saw my shock, failed to recognise its nature.

‘The mark of the beast,' she said sarcastically.

‘Are you going to stay put, or do I have to hurt you? I'd rather not hurt you,' I said. Then: ‘What?'

‘My ID number,' she said, gibingly. ‘My use-by date. That's what you think, I suppose? Another stupid mutilation fad.'

I wasn't thinking anything of the sort, but it was a useful suggestion.

‘Yeah, well, it's preferable to a bolt through your tongue, I suppose.' I have nothing against body jewellery, but it seemed sensible to follow her lead up the garden path. I had the cricket bat by this point, and sat down opposite her on the edge of the bath. ‘How did you get in? Who's this?' I nudged the dead guy who lay with one leg stuck out.

‘The world is not as it seems,' she told me. She had wrapped herself in the towel, dropped toilet seat and cover and sat poised on it. I had never seen anyone so gloriously lovely, not at the movies, not on television, certainly not in this slightly down at heel suburb.

‘No shit,' I said.

‘What do they call you?'

‘They call me August, Lyoon. They call me that because it's my name.'

‘You've read Charles Fort, August?'

‘No.' What, now we'll have a Reading Group? I glanced at the locked windows, waiting nervously for the backup troops to come barging in, maybe waving copies of the collected works of Charles Fort, whoever he was.

‘He said, “I think we're property.” And you
are
, you poor goose, you and all your fellow humans. Property is what you are, all six billion of you.'

I didn't laugh, it was too depressing for laughter. Aunt Tansy downstairs drifting in senile delusions, this gorgeous person upstairs heading for the same funny farm. No, wait. Tansy
wasn't
delusional. There
was
a corpse, and so presumably one
had
been delivered on each of the previous six Saturdays. Delivered by naked women, for all I knew, then disappeared in the early hours of Sunday morning. It didn't bear thinking about.

‘So now that you've told me,' I said, ‘I suppose you're going to have to kill me.'

Lune was horrified. ‘Certainly not, what sort of immoral—You get your memory deleted.'

Someone had been priming Hollywood. Memory wipe—what was that,
Men in Black
, right? And people appearing out of thin air, or in this case through an impossibly high bathroom window, that went all the way back to
The Twilight Zone
. How come the scriptwriters and directors and actors didn't get their memories obliterated? There's always an escape clause in these mad conspiracy theories, and always a logical hole large enough to drive a tank through. Still—

‘I know it's hard for you to listen to this,' Lune said. I thought I saw tears welling in her eyes. ‘You're so brave and foolish, you humans. You invent one absurd creed and philosophy after another to persuade yourselves that you are the elect of some friendly deity. I'll say it bluntly: you're just a backdrop. You're the setting against which we play our parts.'

I shrugged. ‘You're deluded,' I said. ‘I've read that Phil Dick guy. He was crazy too, by the end.'

The air burned. I leaped so my back covered the door. Lune stayed where she was, perched on the toilet. She looked elegant, slightly sad. The same locked window blazed with blue flickering intensity, paint crackling. The glass crazed, vanished like steam. Maybelline shoved her stocky form through the gap, warily pointing a shiny steel tube at me, balancing herself with the other hand. She edged around the corpse on the floor, stood near Lune. I waited with my mouth open, expecting a blast of blue to swallow me down.

‘You don't have to kill me,' I started to gabble. ‘You're from a UFO, so you can take me back to your own planet, I've always wanted to travel, Illinois was interesting but space would be better. Roomier.' They stared at me. ‘All right, not a spacecraft. You're from the future, it's a time machine outside the window, right? This guy would have been the next Hitler, so you're cleaning up the past before it contaminates your own time, I can live with that, your information is undoubtedly better than mine.'

‘I told him they're all property,' Lune explained to her associate. ‘I think it's unhinged him.'

‘
What?
You stupid bitch, now we'll have to erase his medium term memory. The disposer will not be pleased.'

‘We've got to delete his short term recall anyway, Maybelline, use your brains. I felt we owed him an explanation. There's something these humans use called “politeness” that I think you could damn well try yourself.'

‘Shit, Lune.' Maybelline shook her head in remorse. ‘I know you're not a stupid bitch. You're not any kind of a bitch, even if you are so beautiful I could scream.'

Lune offered her an accommodating smile, shrugged. The corpse leered up at us all from the floor. With a noise like tearing canvas, a short man pushed his way out through the mirror, stepping lightly from the basin to the floor. He carried a huge bag over his shoulder. I was ready to throw up. There wasn't enough room in the place to faint, so I stayed pinned against the door. All this racket, and still no word from Do Good. I hoped violently that none of the bastards had harmed the dear old beast.

‘Here's a rum turn,' the disposer said, looking around. He was small cheerful fellow apparently in his fifties, with a bleary eye and a three-day growth of beard. On certain singers and movie stars that can be a cute look, if rather too last century for my tastes, but on this man it was distinctly seedy. On top of his tousled head sat an old cloth cap set at a rakish angle. ‘Who's this chappie, then?' He beamed at the women, whipped an ancient meerschaum out of his jacket pocket. His jacket sleeves had leather patches. He stuffed the pipe with flake tobacco from a pouch and started to light it.

‘Not in Aunt Tansy's house,' I said, and reached forward over the dead man and took the pipe from his mouth. He moved like a mongoose, had it back so fast my hand tingled. But he thrust it, unlighted, into his pocket, and put away his book of matches.

‘My apologies. Rules of the house apply, of course. Come now, lassies, I don't know this gent's face at all.' He peered genially at me.

Both women spoke at once, stopped. Lune said, ‘It's all right, sir, August got into this by mistake—'

‘
Aug
ust?' cried Maybelline. ‘You been sitting here exchanging
names
while I—'

‘Now, now ladies.'

‘Well, we'll be amnesing him, no harm done.'

‘Aye, it's a fair bastard,' the disposer said, fingers plucking at his pocket for the pipe, dropped away again, ‘when one of the humans gets into the wrong part of a Set. Ah well, a drop of the green ray and no harm's done. Now that you're here,' he said, rounding on me, ‘give me an 'and with this codger.'

Dazed, simply unable to think, I helped him get the naked corpse into the bag, then fold in his shoes and clothing on top. We zipped the bag shut, me zipping, him pulling the edges together, and he hoisted the bundle up on his shoulder. I was mildly astonished that such a small man could tote such a weighty load, but I had seen too many unlikely happenings too rapidly, it was like stretching an elastic band to the point where it gives up the ghost and just lies there, no spring left in the thing.

‘I'll be making a report about this fellow,' the disposer told the women, ‘but give him a dose of the green and I think the Director will let you off with no demerits.'

He raised his cap to me. ‘Good evening, sar, and thankee for your help with the props.' He clambered up on the basin, pulling out two drawers to make the climb easier, and tore open the mirror. He stepped into oblivion. The glass curdled, was once more still as a windless pond, golden tinted, slightly worn at its edges. I could see Maybelline's reflection, holding the tube trained on me. Blue flame, green ray, whatever. I just wanted to have a hot bath and go to bed and wake up from this rather pointless dream. But then all dreams are pointless, that's the thing about dreams.

‘Go on, go on,' I said, ‘climb out through the window and fly away on your magic broomsticks.'

‘We have to—'

‘Yes, I know.' How would they explain away the window without its glass, the burn marks in the paint? Maybe they'd come back while I slept and fix those as well. ‘Well, get your nasty amnesia ray over with and let me catch some sleep, I've been on the road since six this morning.'

Lune looked at me, and took the tube from her companion. Maybelline wasted no time; she was out the window and gone. The beautiful woman stepped close to me, pulled down my head to her red mouth. I waited for her to bite me. A vampire element, perfect. ‘The Drama doesn't have a tight script, August,' she said very softly in my ear. ‘I'll come back and look in on you. Who knows?' To my amazement, she turned my face and kissed me. ‘Goodbye.'

She stepped away, touched the tube at two points. I was flooded with emerald light. It was cold; I tingled with mild shock, and the room faded into dream. I swayed on my stockinged feet, saw her climb carefully through the gaping window frame. Lune seemed to hang in the dark outside, breasts half-shadowed. She did something that might have been a recalibration of the instrument, and blue light painted the window; it was as it had been, glazed, painted.

I waited for blackness, loss, amnesia. What I felt, instead, was pins and needles torturing my flesh. I stumped haltingly to the basin, flung cold water in my face. I could remember it all quite clearly. True, what I remembered was absurd, laughable, impossible. I dragged off my clothes as the water gushed into the bath, steam rising to fill the room. No fan. I sat in the wonderful hot water, rubbing fragrant Pears soap into my armpits and other stinky places. I propped my right foot out of the foamy water, turned it so I could examine the silver carven hieroglyphs on my sole. Pretty much the same as Lune's.

I towelled myself ferociously as the bath drained, wanting sleep so badly it was like hunger. I picked up my clothes and my boots and trotted on the cold boards in the dark to my bedroom. The window was already open, screened against insects, and through the wire mesh the sky was clear and very black, no moon, no broomsticks, no UFOs, no high-hanging
Truman Show
spotlights. Stars shone, and the smell of fresh soil and leaves came in from the garden on a cool breeze. Why had they slipped up? Surely their Records must show one Actor missing from duty, one Character in their bloody great Drama lost in the sea of humans when his parents died tragically? I gave the sky the bird, finger quivering. Not so smart, then. They'd lost me for close to two decades, I'd stay lost until I found the bastards on my own.

The pillow was warm. Lune. Her beautiful nakedness. The burning of her lips. Beyond the window the world was huge and dark. There were doorways out of it. I slept.

Rain Season
Leanne Frahm

Garth Lorgan clutched the receiver to his ear, absorbed in the words of Lennie Bedlow's CEO, Jonathon. He stared sightlessly through the third-storey office window at the fading light of the city.

‘We want you to have this opportunity, Garth,' Jonathon was saying in his dry whispery voice, ‘because Mr Bedlow believes that big companies can be too big, lose sight of the big picture, you understand?'

Garth nodded intently. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean. You'll find we're the right size, compact but a real team, just the size Mr Bedlow is looking for.'

‘Yes.' There was a pause, Garth could almost hear Jonathon thinking. A clap of thunder sounded faintly in the distance.

‘Yes. Friday then? We'll get together on the site first, with Mr Bedlow. To give you exactly the scenario, before we get down to the basics, eh?'

‘Friday?'

‘That's not a problem, is it?' A touch of ice travelled with the words.

‘No, no.' Garth said. He made it sound confident. ‘God no. Friday's fine. The sooner we can get down to it, the sooner you'll find—Mr Bedlow will find—we're right for you.' He cursed the weak ending.

‘Excellent,' said Jonathon with finality.

Garth gripped the receiver more tightly, as if to pull at Jonathon's sleeve, holding him. ‘Just a minute,' he said. ‘I should give you my mobile number, just in case …'

‘No need,' said Jonathon crisply. ‘Friday, on site.'

‘Certainly. Right. Well, goodbye—I'll look forward to seeing you on Friday—' The line went dead.

Garth sat motionless, holding his breath. Then he relaxed, exhaling. He slammed his fist on the desk savagely. ‘Je-
su
s
!' he said loudly.

This was it, the big chance. He'd
known
it would come, dammit! Years of running the agency on a shoe-string budget, advertising franchise boutiques in shopping centres for fat women who didn't think they were and championing shonky used car yards in the suburbs; reading the trade mags and envying Saatchi and Saatchi, Clemenger, all the big names; pouring over other ads for what made them work, feverishly making contacts and networking in the right places. Just to have that one big chance …

Bedlow's resorts.

The room brightened, and he glanced up at the window next to his desk (carefully placed in the Feng Shui Dragon Position; he didn't know if it worked, but potential clients might be impressed, and impression was everything). The afternoon sun had disappeared and in the sudden exterior dimness the fluorescent lights glowed more strongly. He leaned forward to look out across the buildings and office blocks of Fortitude Valley, towards the highrises of Brisbane.

Masses of black clouds were piling up in the east, the ocean, scudding towards the city. He heard another peal of thunder, closer. An afternoon storm, he noted abstractedly, his mind still with Lennie Bedlow and the big chance. He grinned and stood up abruptly, the chair rolling back on silent castors across the plush wine-coloured carpet. He'd tell the staff, get them to start thinking.

A sheet of rain dashed the window pane, vicious in its suddenness. Below him, Constance Street blurred in the early darkness, washed with streaks of primal colours as the running water caught the rainbow of neon signs. He opened the door.

‘Listen up,' he said, striding out into the main office, and stopped.

The office was empty. The screens were covered, the work-stations bare.

Cara entered from the passageway that led to the toilets with her bag slung over her shoulder. ‘Are you looking for Dee Dee and Mike, Mr Lorgan?' she said. She sauntered over to the reception desk and put some loose biros in the drawer. ‘They've gone,' she said. ‘It's after four-thirty—nearly.' She flicked a quick glance at him, twitching at the clinging skirt that barely covered the small mounds of her buttocks.

‘Great,' said Garth, putting his hands on his hips. ‘They knew that call was coming. They should have been here.'

‘I'm sorry, Mr Lorgan. I didn't know—'

‘All right, Cara. Where'd they go—the Dead Rat?'

She nodded.

‘You finish up here. I'll chase them up and give them the good news. Excellent news, Cara.' He looked at her pretty, bored face with satisfaction. She went with the decor, with the jade green walls and the comfortless minimalist couch under the Dali prints. ‘You're working at a prestigious agency now.'

She looked blank, uncertain of her response. ‘That's nice, Mr Lorgan,' she said finally, fiddling with the strap of her bag. As she moved her arms her breasts became even more prominent under the silky fabric.

‘Very nice,' he said. ‘So nice we should celebrate. Why not come down to the Rat with us?'

She shook her head. ‘I don't think so, Mr Lorgan. I would've, but with the rain … The traffic's going to be awful. It's really heavy, isn't it?'

Garth turned. The rain was lashing down in a steady deluge, driving hard against the windows. He shrugged. ‘It's undercover most of the way. But that's okay, go on home. And diary that I'll be out most of Friday. With Dee Dee.'

‘All right, Mr Lorgan. Have a nice night.' Her skirt hem rose to her panty-line as she turned to leave and she pulled absently at it as she closed the door behind her.

‘I will,' Garth said to himself. ‘I will.'

The gutters along Constance Street ran deep with stormwater as the slanting rain splattered the concrete footpath. Garth moved through the after-work throng, as close to the buildings as possible. Despite the rain, the air was hot and perspiration pooled in his armpits.

The Dead Rat Hotel was crowded with the usual Friday night people, mostly from the offices along Fortitude Valley, a few tourists. He said hello a few times to faces he thought he knew, smiling. You always smiled in public, it went with success. He found Dee Dee and Mike planted on stools at the bar, flushed and laughing hard.

‘Hi,' he said, pushing his way up to them. The noise was overwhelming.

‘Yo, boss,' said Dee Dee, giggling.

‘Garth,' Mike acknowledged.

‘So,' Garth went on. ‘Couldn't stay around to hear what Bedlow had to say?'

‘Well—' said Mike.

Dee Dee's smile vanished. ‘How did it go?' she muttered into her glass.

‘I've got it,' he said triumphantly.

‘
Got
it?' said Mike. The graphic designer looked incredulous.

‘Just about. As good as,' Garth said. Dee Dee snorted and turned back to the bar.

‘Listen,' he said angrily, ‘It's there for the taking. Bedlow really wants us, and it's up to us to take it. As soon as we come up with a good concept, it's ours. And once I've got Bedlow and his resorts, they'll be knocking the doors down for us. You—' he pointed to Dee Dee ‘—start thinking this weekend. No, now. We'll be seeing Bedlow on site on Friday, and I want to be talking proposals to him straight away.'

‘What about Alfonso's?' said Dee Dee.

‘What
about
Alfonso's?' Garth said.

‘Alfonso's. The delicatessen chain. We were meeting
him
on Friday to look at the launch of the new branch at—'

‘Shit. We don't want to lose accounts, even a bloody delicatessen, not yet.' Garth thought for a moment. ‘Okay. You call him and change it.'

Dee Dee rolled her eyes, but said nothing. Mike grinned nervously.

‘Right!' Garth slapped his hand on the bar. ‘This is the big one, folks. Let's celebrate. Glen Fiddich all round.'

‘Er, who's buying?' asked Mike cautiously.

Garth grinned at their suddenly interested faces. A gust of wind drove a torrent of rain through the door. The crowd surged back to avoid it, laughing and squealing.

‘I am, Chucky. I am,' he said, and his laughter sounded big and confident, the way he knew it should.

Garth's Saab (second-hand, but good) crawled through the downpour, hugging the gutter. He squinted through the streaming windshield at grey bitumen and greyer rain, barely able to separate the two in the enfeebled glare of the headlights. There was little traffic at this hour. He was grateful for his renovated colonial cottage at New Farm, which had cost a small fortune, but it was close, handy to the office when the weather was bad (he could jog to work if he really wanted to) or when he might be a little over the limit … His grin was lop-sided.

Garth pulled up beside the high brick fence that screened the house, under a street-light illuminating the swarming arrows of rain. He opened the door and lurched up the path. He was soaked in seconds, shocked by the intensity of the drops on his skin and the eerie feeling of thin trickles running down his face from his flattened hair. There was a light in the living-room, shining through the mullioned windows. He blinked water from his eyes and hurried up the steps to the verandah.

Dry. He shook himself and water showered across the timber floor. As he unlocked the door a small white dog threw itself at him, yelping.

‘Hi, Conan,' he said, picking up the prancing Lhasa Apso, and carried it through the foyer into the living-room, feeling its fur become draggled with the wetness of his clothes. He let it slip to the floor where it shook itself vigorously.

‘You're soaking.' His wife, Lauren, sat curled up on the sofa by the trellised bar.

‘It's raining,' he said.

‘I know that.' She straightened her legs and sat up. ‘You're dripping. On the rug. Everywhere.'

Garth looked down at the growing puddle around his feet. Conan sniffed at it, lapping tentatively. ‘Sorry. I—'

‘I suppose you've been at the bar again,' she said. The tiny lines around her mouth seemed more pronounced every time he looked at her. He nodded. ‘Actually it was a celebration.'

His clothes were becoming uncomfortable, the material wet and stiff, chafing against his skin. He shoved the dog away with his foot. ‘It looks like I've finally cracked the big time. Remember Bedlow? Remember his resorts?'

Lauren's gaze was expressionless, and that reminded him that he didn't quite have the account, not yet. He decided to be conciliatory. ‘I'm sorry, I should have called you. You shouldn't have stayed up for me.'

‘I didn't,' she said. ‘I'm waiting for the girls.'

‘They're still out? In this weather?' The night's drinks made it hard for his brain to focus. ‘Where?'

Lauren looked away. ‘At a rage, or rave, or whatever they call it this week. I don't know where.' Conan leapt on the sofa and snuggled into Lauren's side. She stroked the dog's silky dampness absently.

Garth was suddenly angry. ‘My God, they're only fourteen,' he said loudly. ‘What do you mean, letting them go to something like that, with drink and drugs and god knows what else! You're letting them run wild!'

‘Fifteen,' said Lauren.

‘What?'

‘Fifteen. The twins had a birthday two weeks ago. Didn't you notice?' She stood up, shaking Conan to the floor. ‘Perhaps I could control Melisah and Emilyjane better if I had some help.' Her voice quivered. ‘Like from their father. If you weren't so busy promoting yourself, chasing after people you think are important,
celebrating
.'

He felt hot, the blood thudding in his forehead. ‘It
is
important. I mean, they
are
important. This time it's the best chance yet, Bedlow
wants
me—' He stopped, suddenly conscious of Lauren's twisted smile and the rain drumming on the iron roof overhead.

‘I'm going into the bedroom,' she said. ‘For God's sake, dry yourself off.'

Next Friday morning saw rain falling from the low, leaden sky as inexorably as it had been all week. The trip had been impossibly slow; culverts washed out, creeks flooded. Snarled traffic crept along the highways and stopped altogether for minutes on end.

‘The bloody weather bureau can't even say when it'll end,' said Dee Dee.

Garth didn't reply. He drove hunched forward, staring intently at the road, trying to distinguish the bitumen from the water-filled potholes. Dee Dee shrugged and turned her head away in silence.

When they turned onto the dirt road leading to the site, the low-slung Saab ground through the slush uneasily. Garth imagined the mud-encrusted paintwork and gritted his teeth. A high wire-mesh fence appeared from the blur of rain, separating scrubby bushland and vast areas of cleared land, all in shades of grey.

They drove through an open gate. ‘Here already?' said Dee Dee brightly, and her sarcasm was as palpable as the humidity in the air around them. He ignored her.

The road led on to a concrete-block site office, where a Jeep Cherokee was parked. Garth pulled up beside it. ‘
That's
what you need for this sort of thing,' Dee Dee said. He nodded, feeling a stab of envy. ‘Right, we're here,' he said, distracting himself.

As he switched off the motor, he heard the low booming of distant surf beyond the heavy patter of rain on the car's roof. He looked around. The misted distortion of the windows made the huge expanse of levelled ground surrounding them shimmeringly unreal and depressing. All colour was washed from the scene, with the exception of random groups of brilliant orange earth-moving machinery, like herds of gargantuan grazing beasts, oblivious of the rain.

Dee Dee nudged him sharply. ‘Is that the legendary Bedlow?' He turned his head and saw a man in the doorway of the office block, gesturing at them.

‘I don't know,' he muttered, feeling a spasm of excitement. He unbuckled the seat belt and opened the door. ‘Come on.'

Rain soaked them warmly. ‘Shit,' said Dee-Dee.

Garth and Dee Dee huddled under big black umbrellas on a small knoll some distance from the concrete office, trying to catch what Jonathon (‘I'm sorry, Mr Bedlow is unable to attend in this inclement weather.') was saying under the fusillade of drops on the taut fabric.