Nine Perfect Strangers

by Liane Moriarty

  ‘I see it!’ said Jessica.

  Frances followed her gaze. ‘I don’t actually see anything,’ she said. ‘My eyesight is terrible.’

  ‘It’s a sticker,’ said Tony. ‘A sticker of a gold star.’

  ‘What good is a sticker?’ asked Carmel.

  ‘There’s something above the sticker on the rafter there,’ said Zoe.

  ‘It’s a package,’ said Napoleon.

  ‘I still can’t see it,’ said Frances.

  ‘It’s wrapped up in brown paper.’ Heather took Frances’s hand and pointed it up to the ceiling, trying to get her to look in the right direction. ‘It’s jammed into the little triangle where the two rafters meet, camouflaged against the wood.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see it,’ said Frances, although she didn’t.

  ‘Okay, so let’s get it down,’ said Jessica to Ben. ‘Lift me up onto your shoulders.’

  ‘I’m not lifting you up, you’re pregnant,’ said Ben. ‘You’re possibly pregnant.’

  ‘Lift me up, Dad,’ said Zoe to her father. ‘You’re the tallest.’

  ‘I don’t think we’d get enough height.’ Napoleon tilted his head back, considering the distance. ‘Even if you stood on my shoulders you wouldn’t reach it.’

  ‘The obvious thing to do is throw something up to knock it down,’ said Lars.

  ‘I’ll jump up and knock it down,’ said Tony. He looked up at the rafter with a gleam in his eye. ‘I just need a couple of you guys to give me leverage.’

  ‘You cannot possibly jump that high,’ said Frances.

  ‘I got the mark of the year three times in a row,’ said Tony.

  ‘I don’t know what “the mark of the year” means, but that’s impossible,’ said Frances. It was like a joke to think of someone jumping that high. ‘You’ll injure yourself.’

  Tony looked at her. ‘Have you ever watched a game of Aussie Rules in your life, Frances?’

  ‘I understand that you leap about energetically –’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Lars. ‘We just need to throw something up there, dislodge it from the rafters.’

  ‘We leap about,’ repeated Tony as if to himself. ‘We leap about energetically.’

  ‘It’s very impressive leaping,’ said Frances. She remembered how she’d made the mistake of scoffing when Henry had started talking about how he wanted to learn to hang-glide at the age of fifty. All her friends had shaken their heads. Oh, Frances, you never tell a man in the middle of a midlife crisis that he can’t do something. Henry did three months of hang-gliding lessons and suffered a chronic hip injury before he felt he’d proved his point.

  ‘My highest mark ever was close to twelve feet.’ Tony looked up at the rafter. ‘I can reach that, no problem.’

  ‘Off the back of that Collingwood player, right?’ said Heather. ‘Jimmy Moyes? Napoleon and I were at that game.’

  Napoleon recited, ‘. . . the leap into heaven, into fame, into legend – then the fall back to earth (guernseyed Icarus) to the whistle’s shrill tweet.’

  ‘Is that a poem about football?’ asked Frances.

  ‘It is, Frances,’ said Napoleon in a teacherly way. ‘It’s called “The High Mark” by Bruce Dawe. It’s about how the mark is the manifestation of the human aspiration to fly.’

  ‘It’s really lovely,’ said Frances.

  ‘Oh my God, could we leave the poetry and the football and maybe just focus on getting out of here?’ said Lars, as he picked up an empty water bottle, aimed it like a javelin and threw it up towards the ceiling. It hit the rafter and bounced back again.

  ‘I’ll get that parcel,’ said Tony, and his chest swelled and his shoulders went back like a superhero emerging from a telephone box.

  chapter fifty-six

  Yao

  ‘What are they doing?’ asked Masha.

  ‘I think Tony is going to try to launch off their backs like he’s in a game of football,’ said Yao worriedly.

  ‘That’s crazy,’ said Masha. ‘He’s too heavy! He will hurt them!’

  ‘They’re hungry and tired,’ said Yao. ‘They’re not thinking straight.’

  ‘It’s so obvious what they should do,’ said Masha.

  ‘Yes,’ said Yao. Lars had the right idea.

  ‘Why are they not building a simple human pyramid?’ said Masha.

  Yao looked at her to see if she was serious.

  ‘They are just not that smart,’ said Masha. ‘This is the problem we face, Yao. They are not smart people.’

  chapter fifty-seven

  Frances

  Napoleon and Ben had positioned themselves beneath the rafter, their heads lowered, their bodies tensed.

  ‘Should we jump at the same time?’ suggested Napoleon. ‘Give you more height?’

  ‘No,’ said Tony. ‘Just stand still.’

  ‘I don’t think this is such a good idea,’ said Carmel.

  ‘It’s a ludicrous idea,’ said Lars.

  ‘Now that you mention it . . .’ began Heather, but it was too late.

  Tony ran from the doorway at full pace.

  He leaped up vertically, one knee dug into Napoleon’s back, the other into Ben’s shoulder. For a fraction of a second, Frances saw the young man within the old. The athlete he’d once been was there in the length of his body and the resolve in his eyes.

  He got up there! Impossibly high! He was going to do it! What a hero! One hand slapped the rafter, but then he crashed to the floor on his side with an almighty thud. Napoleon and Ben staggered in opposite directions, muffling curses.

  ‘That wasn’t at all predictable,’ sighed Lars.

  Tony sat up cradling one elbow, his face as white as toothpaste.

  Frances got onto her knees next to him, to be supportive, even though her knees crunched. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I think I just dislocated my shoulder.’

  Frances’s stomach turned at the sight of his shoulder protruding at a strange, distressing angle.

  ‘Don’t move it,’ said Heather.

  ‘No,’ said Tony. ‘I need to move it. It’s going to pop back in when I move it.’

  He moved his arm. There was an audible pop.

  Frances toppled in a dead faint straight into his lap.

  chapter fifty-eight

  Zoe

  Zoe’s poor dad clutched his back where he’d just borne the entire weight of one Smiley Hogburn. She was kind of surprised that her mother had allowed that little exercise to go ahead. Maybe it was the drugs, or her crazy fury over the drugs, or maybe it was just that she and her dad were starstruck by meeting an AFL legend.

  ‘Sorry, everyone,’ said Tony. ‘Last night I dreamed I was playing again. This felt . . . this felt like it would be easy.’ He gently patted poor Frances on the cheek. ‘Wake up, lady writer.’

  Frances sat up self-consciously from Tony’s lap and pressed a single fingertip to the centre of her forehead. She looked around her. ‘Did we get the package down?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Zoe’s dad, who never wanted anyone to feel like a failure. ‘Very close!’

  Zoe looked around for something to throw up at the rafter. She picked up a three-quarters-full bottle of water, held it in the palm of her hand and took aim.

  She hit the package straight on. It fell into Ben’s hands.

  ‘Nice shot.’ He handed it to her.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Open it,’ instructed Jessica, as if Zoe had been intending to just look at it for a while.

  The package had that firm, soft consistency of something encased in bubble wrap. She fumbled with the masking tape and tore at the brown paper.

  ‘Careful,’ said her mother. ‘It might be breakable.’

  Zoe pulled at the tape o
n the bubble wrap and was reminded of opening a birthday gift, surrounded by people at a party, all eyes on her and Zach. Tomorrow was their twenty-first birthday. It might be time to reclaim it. She thought that maybe, once they got back to Melbourne, she would tell her parents that she wanted to go to La Fattoria for pizza to celebrate her twenty-first. It felt suddenly as if it might be possible to do some of the things they’d stopped doing after Zach died. It wouldn’t be the same without him, it would never be the same, but it felt possible. She would still take off the olives and leave them along the edge of her plate for Zach.

  And now she really, really felt like pizza. Her mouth watered at the thought of pepperoni. She would never take pepperoni for granted again.

  She unrolled the bubble wrap. Inside was a small hand-painted wooden doll of a little girl wearing a scarf around her head and an apron around her waist. She had red circles on her cheeks and quizzically angled eyebrows. She seemed to be saying to Zoe, ‘Uh, hello?’

  Zoe turned it around and held it upside down.

  ‘It’s a Russian doll,’ said her mother.

  ‘Oh, right.’ Zoe twisted the top and bottom halves of the doll in opposite directions to reveal the smaller doll inside.

  She handed the halves to her mother, and opened the next doll.

  Within moments there was a row of five dolls of increasingly smaller sizes on the floor between them.

  ‘Wait, is that the last one?’ said Carmel. ‘It’s empty. Normally there is a tiny final doll that you can’t open.’

  ‘No message?’ said Frances. ‘I thought the security code would be inside the last one!’

  ‘So what the hell does that mean then?’ said Ben.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Zoe tried to suppress a yawn. She was all at once exhausted. She longed for her own bed, for her phone, for pizza, for all this to be over.

  ‘Okay, this is really starting to piss me off now,’ said Lars.

  chapter fifty-nine

  Masha

  Masha saw Yao’s smile of relief fade from his face as he watched the screen.

  ‘But wait, why isn’t the code in the doll?’ He turned to Masha. ‘The plan was to put the security code in the doll!’

  Masha lifted up the last tiny doll from where it sat on her keyboard and held it between her fingertips. ‘Yes, you’re right, that was the original plan.’

  ‘So . . . but why isn’t it there?’ Yao’s eyebrows were drawn together just like those of the doll.

  ‘I had an epiphany,’ said Masha. ‘While I was meditating. Suddenly I knew what needed to be done in order for them to achieve true transformation after their psychedelic experiences. This – what is happening to these nine people right now – is quite literally a koan. It is a koan in practice.’ He must surely see the brilliance of it.

  Yao stared at her without comprehension.

  ‘A koan is a paradox that leads to enlightenment!’ said Masha. ‘A koan demonstrates the inadequacy of their logical thinking!’

  ‘I know what a koan is,’ said Yao slowly.

  ‘Once they surrender and accept that there is no solution, well then, they will be free. That is the central paradox of this koan,’ said Masha. ‘The solution is no solution.’

  ‘The solution is no solution,’ repeated Yao.

  ‘Exactly. Do you remember this koan? A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain was asked by a man, “What is the way?” and the master said, “What a fine mountain this is.” The man felt frustrated. He said, “I am not asking you about the mountain, but about the way!” The master said, “So long as you cannot go beyond the mountain, my son, you cannot reach the way.”’

  ‘So in this case the mountain is . . . the security door?’

  ‘Take detailed notes,’ said Masha impatiently. She pointed at the screen and at his notepad. ‘Don’t forget. This is very important for the book we will write.’

  ‘They’ve been in there for too long,’ said Yao. ‘They’re hungry and tired. They are going to lose their minds.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Masha. She herself had not eaten now for more days than she could remember and she had not slept since the night before the therapy sessions. She touched Yao lightly in the centre of his chest with her finger. She knew the power of her touch on him. She had not yet fully exploited that power but she would if necessary. ‘Exactly. They must lose their minds! You know this. The self is an illusion. The self does not exist.’

  ‘Sure, okay,’ said Yao. ‘But, Masha –’

  ‘They must surrender,’ said Masha.

  ‘I think they’re going to report us to the police,’ said Yao.

  Masha laughed. ‘Remember the Rumi quote, Yao. Out beyond the idea of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Isn’t that beautiful?’

  ‘I don’t think the justice system is interested in fields,’ said Yao.

  ‘We can’t give up on them, Yao.’ Masha gestured at the screen. ‘They have all come so far.’

  ‘So how long are you planning on keeping them locked up?’ Yao’s voice sounded thin and strained, as if he’d become an old man.

  ‘That’s not the right question,’ said Masha tenderly, her eyes on the computer monitor as some of the guests gathered around the door to the studio. They were taking it in turns to punch in different combinations of numbers. Lars punched the door with his fist like a spoiled child.

  ‘I think I should let them out now,’ said Yao.

  ‘They must open that door themselves,’ she said.

  ‘They can’t,’ said Yao.

  ‘They can,’ said Masha.

  She thought about the sunny Australian lives these people had been handed at birth. They had only ever known supermarket shelves that overflowed with choice. They had never seen an empty grocery store with nothing but boxes of Indian tea. They did not need attributes like ingenuity or resourcefulness. The clock struck five and they turned off their computers and went to the beach because they did not have a hundred university-educated candidates all too willing to take their job off their hands.

  ‘Oh yes, I did that for U2 tickets once,’ an Australian woman at Masha’s work had said when Masha described the horrendous queues that lasted for days at the embassies and how she and her husband took turns to wait, and Masha had said, ‘Yes, very much the same.’

  She remembered how, when they were right in the middle of the application process, her husband received a card in the mail to report to the KGB office.

  ‘It will be fine,’ her husband said. ‘Do not worry.’

  It was like he was already an Australian, the phrase ‘no worries’ built into his psyche before he even knew the words, but in the Soviet era people had received those cards and never come back.

  When Masha dropped him off outside that tall, grey building he kissed her and said, ‘Go home,’ but she didn’t go home; she sat in that car for five hours, the simmering terror in her heart misting up the windows, and she would never forget the relief that detonated through her body when she saw him walking down the street towards her, grinning like a boy on an Australian beach.

  Only a few months later she and her husband stood at the airport with American dollars hidden in their socks while a sneering customs office upturned the entire contents of their carefully packed suitcases, because they were traitors betraying their country by leaving, and her grandmother’s necklace broke and beads scattered like pieces of her heart.

  Only those who have feared they will lose everything feel true gratitude for their lucky lives.

  ‘We must terrify them,’ she told Yao. ‘That is what they need.’

  ‘Terrify them?’ said Yao. His voice quavered. He was probably tired and hungry himself. ‘I don’t think we should terrify our guests.’

  Masha stood. He looked up at her; like her child, like her lover. She could feel the unbreaka
ble spiritual connection between them. He would never defy her.

  ‘Tonight will be their dark night of the soul,’ she said.

  ‘Dark night of the soul?’

  ‘A dark night of the soul is essential for rapid spiritual progress,’ said Masha. ‘You’ve had your own dark night of the soul. I’ve had mine. We need to break them before we can make them whole again. You know this, Yao.’

  She saw the flicker of doubt in his eyes. She stepped closer to him, so close that they were almost touching.

  ‘Tomorrow they will be reborn,’ she said.

  ‘I just don’t know –’

  Masha stepped closer still and for the merest fraction of a second she let her eyes drop to his lips. Let the darling boy think the impossible was possible.

  ‘We are doing something extraordinary for these people, Yao,’ said Masha.

  ‘I’m going to let them out,’ said Yao, but there was no conviction in his voice.

  ‘No,’ said Masha. She lifted her hand tenderly to his neck, careful not to reveal the silvery glint of the syringe. ‘No, you’re not.’

  chapter sixty

  Frances

  Frances twirled an empty water bottle on her finger, round and round, until it flew off and skittered across the floor.

  ‘Stop that,’ said Carmel severely, and Frances could tell that was the voice Carmel used when one of her little girls was being annoying.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said at the same time as Carmel said, ‘Sorry.’

  It was, according to Napoleon’s watch, 9 pm. They had been in here now for just over thirty hours. They hadn’t eaten for over forty-eight hours.

  People had begun complaining of headaches, light-headedness, fatigue and nausea. Waves of irritability swept the room at intervals. People bickered, then apologised, then snapped again. Voices quivered with emotion and skidded into hysterical laughter. Some people drifted off to sleep and then woke with a loud gasp. Napoleon was the only one who stayed consistently calm. It felt like he was their unofficially appointed leader, even though he wasn’t issuing any instructions.