Black Ice

by Leah Giarratano

  It never changes, she thought; bull elephants at the edges of the clearing, dicks in the wind, preparing to take out their rivals. She sighed. When it comes right down to it, she thought, they could have the bust – lord knew they needed some good PR, and she wasn't going to raise her hand for a media interview. The main thing that worried her, though, was the potential for casualties of war. She glanced at Lanvin and Genovese – the invisible man and the armoured tank. When they went in, she knew it would be heavy. She caught Gabriel's eye. He raised one eyebrow, smirked just a smidge. Yeah, the whole thing could be considered pretty funny, except that caught up in the middle of it all was Damien, a kid in way over his head. She wasn't sure what kind of punishment he deserved, but she knew it wasn't death.

  And then there was Kasem Nader. Right at the heart of the web. He'd be preparing for their dinner tonight, and here she was briefing the exterminators.

  47

  Saturday 13 April, 7 pm

  Seren left Marco and Angel with homemade plum pork ribs and store-bought fried rice. Before she walked out the door, Marco had let her kiss the top of his head without ducking away. He was pretty happy with the food. Angel smiled at her from the kitchen, one arm draped around his shoulders. Thanks, Seren mouthed at her friend as she pulled the door closed.

  She just hoped that the smells wouldn't entice any hungry neighbours. One in particular. Angel had told her that she'd seen Tready this morning, limping back from the mailboxes.

  'Did you say hi for me?' Seren had asked, falsely bright. Her stomach had dropped into free-fall at the mention of his name. 'How'd he look?' she'd asked, not wanting to know.

  'All fucked up.' Angel had laughed. 'His nose! Oh my God! And his eyes are completely black. Remind me, bitch, not to get on your bad side.'

  'You're talking!' Seren gave a flat laugh. She and Angel shared a look. They joked about the violence, but they both knew it wasn't funny.

  Within a week of meeting Angel in gaol, Seren had shocked herself by telling her new friend about her stepfather's violence. She hadn't told anyone since Alexandra, her best friend in Year 7. She even told Angel what happened to Bradley, her little brother, and she'd never told anyone that. How she used to hear him screaming and could do nothing. How she'd tried, smashing at her stepfather's back with her fists, as he leaned over her little brother's bed. How he hadn't even turned around while backhanding her across the room, before going on with the beating. How her mother's pleading and screaming had drawn his attacks back to her. Holding her stomach in the prison laundry, hunched forward with the pain of talking about this for the first time, Seren had told Angel how she hated her mother for not leaving that man, her heart tearing as she admitted it, because she had also loved her mother so much.

  Finally, Seren had told Angel how she hated herself – more, even, than she hated that pig. She hated herself for not killing him while he slept. Any night would have done; she'd planned it a thousand times, lying frozen in her bed, so taut with tension and fear that she felt her teeth would shatter in her mouth. But she'd never acted; not even when the cops had carried Bradley out of the house and into the care of the state. Not even the night she'd spent an hour trying to wake her mother from unconsciousness, pink fluid drizzling from her ear after yet another bashing.

  Angel had held her, quietly, while the washing machines sloshed and whirred around them. Somehow, Seren had known that Angel would understand. As it turned out, she did: Angel had repaid Seren's confidence by telling her about her husband, Danny. She'd loved him once; all she'd ever wanted was to have his children and look after a family. She told Seren about the miscarriages – giving birth, howling, to jellied globs, after being head-butted in her pregnant stomach, or rammed, belly first, into the corner of a lounge. She'd told Seren how she'd screamed for her babies to stay with her, not to die. And how Wayne had snored through it all, sleeping off his drunken slugfest. Angel had told Seren that she'd had the same murderous fantasies, every night. And how now she felt his brains on her hands, every night. And that she wasn't sure what was worse.

  Now, in a taxi yet again, on the way to meet Christian at his office, Seren closed the door on those memories. She checked her glossy, barely-pink fingernails, and angled her bare legs towards the door, away from the cabbie's eyes in the rear vision mirror. Every now and then, a spear of brightness from the streetlights lit up the shadows around her feet. Her patent stilettoes glinted like blades when they caught the light. She was a long way from her gaol-issue tracksuit in this outfit. And yet, so close. If Maria Thomasetti knew where she was going right now, and why, she'd be bunking with Crash and Little Kim tomorrow night.

  As the cab idled in traffic near Chinatown, she wondered why she hadn't told Angel about her blackmail plot. As far as her friend knew, while she was babysitting Marco, Seren really was working. Seren was aware that Angel didn't buy the whole story. Angel knew that Seren wasn't off to waitress, dressed like this. She knew what Angel thought she was doing: the kind of work most girls got into when released.

  Seren stared out into the dusk. She figured that Angel wasn't that far wrong. After all, Seren actually was giving Christian sex in return for money. But the cab vouchers, clothes and petty cash would only temporarily dull her self-disgust for sleeping with the man who'd sent her to gaol.

  Seren held her mobile phone up in front of her face and in the reflective screen checked her lips for shine. Oh well, she was pretty sure that the million dollars he was going to pay would have a more lasting effect at cheering her up.

  48

  Saturday 13 April, 7 pm

  'You know, I really don't have time for this.' Jill angled her face towards Gabriel and her hair snagged on a twig in the grass. She tugged, and it snarled further. She snorted in frustration and sat up.

  'No! Lie back down,' said Gabriel. 'It's going to happen soon.'

  'But it's getting cold.'

  'Shh. Wait.'

  Jill scowled and reclined into the almost damp grass under the canopy of a massive Port Jackson fig tree. She had to admit that the fading autumn light around Mrs Macquarie's Chair was gorgeous. As she watched, the transparent oranges blushed into reds, bruised into purple, and then slipped, almost imperceptibly, into inky wine.

  And then it happened.

  The skies erupted. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces of the night exploded from the trees above her, and swarmed across the sky. She tried to exclaim, but found she had no breath, as though it had been sucked from her by the downdraught of the countless bat wings. The little bodies spun and circled, careening and twisting, silent, but for the shushing, breathy noise of their wings. Her hand on her heart, Jill stared as suddenly, almost as one, the bats soared away from the harbourside park and headed across the water for the city. She sat up on the grass, peering after them, her eyes straining against the darkness. When the cloud approached the lights of the skyline, it seemed suddenly to shatter, to splinter apart.

  The thousand dots of darkness spread out across Sydney to hunt for smaller, more defenceless things on Saturday night.

  49

  Saturday 13 April, 7.40 pm

  Feeling as though his shoulder would pop out of its socket, Damien reached even further into the manhole in the ceiling. Balanced on tiptoes on his bed, one arm shoved in up to his neck, he splayed his fingers, and scrabbled about with increasing desperation. There! Something. How had he pushed it so far in there in the first place? He scraped with his fingernails until he could feel the chain hooked around his finger. He pulled it carefully forward and grasped it in his fist before flopping back down on the bed.

  This would be his last night in this room. He sat back against the headboard of the only bed he'd ever owned. He hadn't seen any need to buy a new one when the money started rolling in. Whitey's room, on the other hand – Damien's mother's former bedroom – resembled a furniture warehouse. The first thing Whitey had bought was a waterbed, too big for the room even without the heavy matching side tables and mirror. Very Whitey:
it never occurred to him to measure up the room before laying down the cash for a bedroom suite.

  What would Whitey do without him? He'd lived here since Damien's mother left when they were both fifteen. Far as he could tell, Whitey's parents hadn't even noticed him go; they'd certainly never been over here to visit him.

  It was possible that Whitey might stay on if Kasem left him alone. Damien reasoned that when he left, there'd be no reason for Nader to keep muscling in when he realised that Whitey couldn't cook. Well, not properly anyway. Damien knew it would be better for everyone when he just disappeared. And he couldn't even afford to tell his friend where he was going. Whitey just didn't think ahead – he might tell someone and then Nader could find out. He'd have to tell him something about what was going on, though, why he had to leave. It wasn't just that he felt he owed Whitey that much before dropping out of his life forever – his friend had to know just enough to keep him safe.

  He sighed deeply, thinking about the worst part of all of this. Leaving uni. Of course, that would be the first pace they'd show up when he went AWOL. All he'd wanted since age twelve was to study at the University of Sydney. When he'd logged onto their site the January after his HSC and learned he'd been accepted to study chemistry, he'd put his face in his hands and cried. The notion that he would ever drop out had been preposterous until this week. He'd completed every class assignment, never handing a thing in late, and while some people didn't even open the core texts for the course, he'd read them cover to cover and borrowed every book on the recommended reading list from the library. After he was rolling in cash, he'd just gone out and bought them all.

  Damien shook his head and stared morosely at the huge stack of textbooks in the corner. He'd have to buy most of them again. In Oxford. The thought sent a thrill hurtling up his spine, but he bit back his smile. He had to get there first. He should have no problem being accepted as far as his grades were concerned. He'd topped every class except one, and that had only been because his lecturer's nephew was in his year, and she hated that he thrashed her sister's boy in everything. Bitch. No, the problem lay in potential background checks. He knew that he had no formal criminal record. Yet. Detective Jackson had told him his charges would depend upon his cooperation over the next couple of days. But he knew they'd throw everything at him when they found out he'd left the country. He had to just pray that the administration at Oxford wouldn't check with the police over here. He'd thought it through a hundred times. There was no reason that they should – his transcript from Sydney Uni was flawless. They should be able to just proceed with that.

  He tried to push the other worries from his mind – like the thought of taking that much cash on the plane. Had to be done. He had to get to Oxford and disappear quickly, pay for everything upfront.

  He straightened on the bed, took a look at his watch. Almost seven forty-five. He had to get out of there. If he was going to buy his ticket when he got to the airport, he needed some time to make sure he could get on the next flight. He reached for the backpack under the bed. It had been packed for the last week. Just his uni stuff, some awards from school, a few scraps of paperwork his mother had bothered to hang onto. All he really needed to keep from his life so far. Everything else he could buy on the road.

  He opened his other hand. The necklace sat like a small, golden puddle on his palm. This was the only thing his mother had left him before taking off to work for Jehovah. And even this was almost an afterthought, he thought, twirling the chain around his index finger, rummaged from her handbag before she left him at the customs gate at the international airport. Jehovah will take care of everything else you need, she'd told him.

  Yep, he's doing a great job at the moment, Ma, he thought, sliding the necklace into an envelope and dropping it into his backpack.

  Whitey had said he would be here just after eight pm, but he'd never been on time in his life. They'd arranged to meet Byron in the city at ten.

  Damien wondered if he'd ever see them again.

  50

  Saturday 13 April, 7.45 pm

  Cassie waited in Christian's office wearing a belted white trench coat and white knee-length leather boots. And that was it. It was a cliché, she knew, but she didn't think anyone would be complaining.

  Another lawyer, leaving for the night, had no problem letting her wait in Christian's office. He'd seen her there with Christian plenty of times. And Cassie generally got what she asked for. She sat now in Christian's recliner with her feet crossed on his desk and thought about greeting him with a Sharon Stone moment. Now that would really be a welcome-to-Saturday-night-I've-missed-you-baby greeting. She laughed aloud, and stood to look out at the view.

  Nope, I can't do it, she thought, that's just too slutty. At least it is without any party favours on board. And that's why she was here after all.

  Cassie's mood plummeted. She leaned against the glass and thought about her motives for coming here tonight. It wasn't to see her boyfriend. She'd known when she woke up at St Vincent's that this guy was not the love of her life. No way did she want to make babies with a man who would dump her, overdosed and naked, at a hospital.

  Now where did the baby thoughts come from, she wondered. She'd always been certain that she'd never have kids; could never imagine herself giving her life over to someone else so completely. Not to mention what popping out a baby did to the figure.

  But is this all there is, she wondered, watching the night winking into life in the eastern suburbs below her. Since the fight with Jill, she couldn't shake this glumness, or the guilts. It wasn't so much regret about their argument, but more just feeling bad about the way she lived. It was so weird. She'd always loved her life, or pretty nearly always. And when she didn't, there was always a friend on tap to tell her why her life was so great.

  Usually at a time like this she would go home to make herself feel better. A weekend in Camden at her parents' house was always good for the soul. She saw such breaks as like a detox retreat: she never took along more than a handful of Valium – well, a girl's gotta sleep, and it was so quiet out there, who could sleep with all that nothingness? But isolation aside, there was her mum to feed and fuss over her. And little Lilly, her niece, squealing over the make-up she took for her to play with. Best of all, she'd always put in an appearance at the local supermarket: that was as good for the ego as a school reunion. She'd play Spot the Former Classmate. Most of them did a runner when they recognised Cassie. She guessed she wasn't too hard to remember; she hadn't changed a whole hell of a lot. But whenever she'd spot a panic-stricken, big-bottomed woman dragging a couple of kids down an aisle, she'd be willing to bet that she'd gone to school with her.

  And the guys! Most of them close to bald at thirty, and not letting go gracefully. Shave it off, she wanted to shout at them. Bald can be sexy. But those guys would need more than a Vin Diesel haircut to salvage them. Too much sun, too many beers and no time in a gym. And she could see the effect of their mortgages stooping them forward at the shoulders. She pictured them almost as snails – it seemed as though they carried their house and kids on their backs. These cocksure boys, once so full of life and so certain of themselves, were now well on their way to their fathers' cynicism and a midlife crisis.

  But this time she didn't want to go home. She felt too embarrassed to face her family just yet. They knew her lifestyle was glitz and glamour, but she didn't think they would ever have suspected that it also included cocaine and meth. Ugh! She couldn't believe she'd smoked that shit.

  And yet here she was, alone and pretty much naked, waiting for the drug dealer.

  Her stomach turned at the thought, startling her. It wasn't just a feeling of guilt this time, but also of disgust. She wanted to cry, but the thought of being a junkie, a whore, and a snivelling wimp dried her tears.

  You can always walk out of here, she told herself. It was finally sinking in that she couldn't beat this shit alone. There's always rehab; she remembered her father's words in the hospital.

>   She moved away from the window, walked towards the door. Towards nothing. There's nothing out there for me, she thought, and took a step back. But there's nothing in here for me either. Cassie waited on the threshold of her future, feeling empty and cold.