What You Wish For (17 page)

17

We’re standing by the automatic ticket barriers at London Bridge Underground station and Marie starts to tremble. Her Travelcard slips from her fingers and floats leaf-like to the grubby floor.

‘Are you OK?’

She nods, but she looks like a child on her first day of school, staring at the escalators ahead as they sink beneath the ground.

‘I think my blood sugar’s a bit low. Having a crash.’ She smiles at me, but it’s a nervous smile.

‘Do you want to get something to eat now? Or wait till we get to the other end?’

We’re on a day trip to London, something I suggested: a little shopping, a ride on the London Eye, which Marie is excited about, a wander around a couple of museums.

She bends to pick up her ticket. ‘No, let’s go now.’

The Tube is packed; there is no air, just second-hand breath and heat. We just manage to squeeze on, Marie hesitating until the final beep. The doors shut a few inches behind our heads. I hold her hand and pull a face, trying to make it seem funny. She doesn’t smile back.

As soon as the train pulls out of the station, Marie starts to hyperventilate. Her face turns the colour of old books. She clings to me, digging her fingernails into my skin, terrified like a cat suspended over water.

The train goes one stop, the doors open and she flings herself off, onto the platform, staggering and almost hitting the deck. I jump off after her and grab hold of her.

‘Get me out of here, please, Richard.’ She’s sobbing. ‘I can’t stand it down here. Please . . .’

I take her up onto the street and, slowly, her breathing returns to normal.

As we walk to find a bus stop, she says, ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I didn’t want you to think I was pathetic. I just . . . I can’t stand being underground. It makes me feel panicky and trapped.’ She grips my hand. ‘I hate . . . I hate being so far from the sky.’

‘This your first visit to the States?’ asked the cab driver. I
nodded
and told him that it was. Under different circumstances I’d have been bouncing in my seat, gawping at the landscape, so familiar from a lifetime of American movies and TV shows. But all I could think about was Marie. I kept remembering the time when she freaked out on the Tube.
I hate being so far from the sky.
Such a Marie-like statement. And it made me wonder: did I make her feel like that – trapped, claustrophobic, far from the sky? Did my failure to believe in the same things as her make her feel that I was clipping her wings, bringing her down? Is that why she fled?

I needed to find her, to ask her. I had to make her understand that the last thing I wanted was for her to feel trapped by me. But I also asked myself: is it possible to be with someone and allow them to be free at the same time? How can you ensure the person you love can spread their wings without flying away from you?

We crossed a bridge that gave a fantastic view of the city, pink and black office blocks rising against a backdrop of green where pine trees lined the distant horizon.

‘Portland’s a great city,’ the driver said. ‘Real pretty. On a clear day you can see Mount Hood right over there.’

I sat back and forced myself to admire the view: straight roads, pick-up trucks, traffic lights suspended from wires stretched across the road. We headed downtown.

Inside the hotel, I took a shower and went to bed. I lay down and closed my eyes, Marie’s face swimming into my mind’s eye. She was here. I could feel it.

The roar of traffic awoke me. Slats of light pierced the blinds and lay across the bed in fat, hazy lines. I uncurled my body and went over to the window. The sky was blue and I felt my spirits rise – today might be the day. I was excited and impatient, but I also wanted to savour the anticipation, to hang back and appreciate what today might bring.

Plus I was starving. I needed breakfast.

It was bright but chilly outside. I walked past a huge fountain, water running over connected rock cubes. Businessmen strolled between the tower blocks, and an equal number of people dressed casually in colourful outdoor gear.

I found a diner, went inside and was shown to a table. I was immediately brought a jug of water and a mug of coffee. I searched in my pockets to find the dollars I’d withdrawn at the airport and my cigarettes fell onto the table. I looked at them. When the waitress came to take my order – pancakes and scrambled egg – I handed the cigarettes to her.

‘Can you take these and throw them away? I won’t be needing them anymore. I’ve quit.’

She raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Sure.’

I ate my breakfast slowly. My coffee cup was refilled three times. By the time I’d finished I felt quite dizzy, on a caffeine and cholesterol high. I could see my reflection in a mirror across the diner. Skinny, unshaven and panda-eyed. I should have gone back to the hotel and smartened myself up. But a part of me that I wasn’t proud of wanted Marie to see what she had done to me.

‘Can you tell me how to get to this address?’ I asked the waitress when she brought my bill. She wiped her hands on the front of her pale blue uniform and took the flyer from me.

‘Southwest Thirtieth. Uh-huh, that’s in Multnomah County. My folks live pretty close to there. You visiting friends?’

‘My girlfriend,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen her for months, not since she came out here.’

‘Cool. That why you quit smoking? Because she doesn’t like it?’

‘Something like that.’ I had an urge to tell this friendly stranger the whole, strange story. But I resisted.

‘You got a car?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘In that case you’ll need to get a bus. Go to Fifth and look for a stop with a yellow rose on it. Get a number one or five. That’ll get you there.’

A little later I was on the bus. It had started to drizzle, but the city was beautiful: apartments stacked on the slopes of hills, framed by grand, plush pine trees; long, straight roads stretching towards the mountains and the ocean. The people sitting around me were quiet, staring at the rain or reading.

I had asked the driver to give me a shout when I reached my stop. He did now. ‘Second left past the church there,’ he said as I got off.

I walked on and turned into an unmade road. Detached houses stood several metres apart from one another. An unlikely place, it seemed, to find an alien-loving cult. But what would be an appropriate setting? Some tower perched on a hilltop, surrounded by high fences, a landing pad in the garden?

I walked up the road, squinting at the numbers on the fronts of the houses. There was nobody around, just a couple of crows and some thick-tailed cats.

I found the place I was looking for. It was one of the smaller houses on the street, a single-storey, white timber house. There was a red sports car parked out front, beside a neat little lawn.

I stood on the path and gathered myself. I had my story worked out – had thought about little else on the plane. I walked up the path and knocked on the door.

My heart felt like it was made of lead I looked through the screen door at a tidy living room: blue sofa, pamphlets piled on coffee tables, a scattering of floor cushions. A girl came out of a back room and opened the door.

She had long, pale red hair. She was small and pretty. For a split second – the briefest flicker of time – I thought she was Marie, and my heart jolted.

‘Can I help you?’

I realised I was staring and mumbled an apology. I showed her the now-crumpled flyer that I’d taken from Andrew’s flat. She looked at it and beamed in recognition.

‘I’ve come to join,’ I said.

Half an hour later I was sitting on the sofa, sipping a chamomile and honey tea, which I pretended to find refreshing. The girl, whose name was Zara, knelt on a floor cushion at my feet. She looked so much like Marie, it was eerie. Only her eyes were different. They were dark grey, almost charcoal, and she stared intensely, never breaking eye contact.

Her voice was a semi-stoned drawl. ‘I’m so happy you came, Richard. All the way from England! That’s awesome.’

I gulped tea. ‘Is there no one else from England among you?’

She chewed her lip and thought about it. She had an attractive gap between her two front teeth. Again, like Marie. ‘Hmm, one or two, I think. I find it hard to keep track. There are a ton of us now. Like, thirty at the Oregon Embassy alone.’

This house, it transpired, served as a ‘gateway’ for people who wanted to join the group. They called themselves the Loved Ones. Zara lived here and vetted people who wanted to join, to make sure they were genuine and ‘worthy’.

‘How can you tell?’ I asked.

‘It’s, like, a gift I have,’ she replied, smiling proudly.

The other Loved Ones – or this chapter, anyway – were based in a large house on the Oregon coast.

‘It’s the coolest place,’ Zara told me. ‘And we’ll be heading out there soon.’ She looked towards the window and I couldn’t help but follow her gaze. ‘The time’s so close now, Richard. They’ll be coming for us. It’s going to be beautiful.’ Her voice dropped. ‘So much love.’

I nodded. ‘I can’t wait. You know, this is all I’ve ever wanted. Since my first contact.’

She stared and listened as I spun her a tale about a teenage abduction, stringing together bits of stories I had heard from Marie. Zara gasped and cooed, playing with a locket that hung on a silver chain around her neck.

‘And did you feel it?’ she asked. ‘The love, radiating from them?’

‘Oh yes.’ If my intent wasn’t so serious, I would have found it impossible to keep a straight face. ‘That’s what I want to feel again. The love.’

I was disappointed that Marie was not here in this house, but she had to be at the house or coast. Maybe Cherry was there too, and Samantha. Zara, it seemed, was already convinced I was
genuine
so we would soon be on our way. I was desperate to get going.

‘What about you?’ I asked, trying to stay cool. ‘Have you made contact?’

She nodded solemnly then spoke like she was reciting a passage she’d memorised. ‘They come to me at night when I’m in bed. I feel a great warmth enveloping me, like breath on my skin, like I’m being wrapped in a blanket of soft air. The feeling goes right through me, starts at my toes, up through my middle, across my breasts and neck, and ends on my lips. I see them around me, shimmering figures. I feel them caressing my soul. It’s so beautiful,
Richard
. The best feeling.’

She looked directly into my eyes. ‘Like the most blissful orgasm you’ve ever had, times one thousand.’

‘Oh.’ I swallowed.

‘We’re going to feel that ecstasy forever,’ Zara said, ‘when they come for us.’

She started to sway, her eyes closed, legs crossed, her hands resting lightly on her knees. A sigh came from her throat. I stared at her, wondering what she’d been smoking before I arrived.

‘Zara, when . . .’

A key scratched in the door and it banged open. I jumped to my feet.

A tall, bearded guy in a white T-shirt with the words THEY LOVE US on it entered the house, carrying a brown paper bag full of groceries. He looked at me quizzically and blinked behind thick glasses. ‘Hello?’ he said.

Zara stopped sighing and jumped up, bounding across the room. ‘Rick,’ she said, ‘this is Richard. Hey, Rick and Richard, that’s funny . . .’

Rick nodded at me, frowning.

‘Richard’s come from England. Isn’t that extreme?’

‘Very,’ said Rick. He stuck out his hand. I shook it. ‘I’m Rick. From Seattle.’

‘Rick joined us last week,’ Zara said. ‘He’s coming out to the Embassy with me too, so we can all go together. Isn’t that cool?’

‘Very,’ said Rick.

He stalked off to the back of the house, taking his bag of groceries with him.

Zara said, ‘Rick’s not the most talkative guy in the world. But he makes the best soup.’

That evening, Rick proved his culinary skills, producing an incredible meal from the cramped kitchen: lentil soup, crusty bread, a vegetarian chili that burned my mouth but tasted sublime.
Suddenly
, food made sense to me again. We ate the chili with beer and lots of water. Zara moaned and groaned with pleasure and then, as I held my swollen belly, she told me more about the group. I couldn’t ask too many questions because I had to act like I knew a lot about them already. While Zara spoke, Rick sat and munched tortilla chips, staring at the table.