Star Sailors

by James McNaughton

  Jeremiah is pulled by the hand, conscious of little more than Karen’s strength and resolve in comparison to his own dazed inertia. She leads him into the hall, towards the horror-screams, issuing now from the purple chamber.

  She pushes him hard against the wall and holds him.

  ‘Karen, what’s happening?’

  She nods to an approaching figure. A tall, bare-chested and blood-soaked man in white gumboots walks with a slow and steady step, staring straight ahead as he makes his way down the emptied hallway towards them. A sterile contamination suit has been unzipped and tied around his waist, with the head of it hanging like a bulky tail behind him. His ruby-red eyes run with bloody tears and his smooth pale chest is stippled with blood. Late-stage terminal Ebola. Jeremiah holds his breath as the stranger passes them, his bloody eyes fixed straight ahead.

  Cries go up as the infected man enters the ballroom. The guests shrink back in terror against the walls. The bloody apparition stops in the centre amid the black puddles of discarded cloaks and looks around with his bleeding eyes, as if daring anyone in the gathering to speak. No one does.

  The doomed man says, ‘Klotch.’

  Many deny his presence.

  With the same measured step, the haemorrhaging man makes his way from chamber to coloured chamber, inflaming panic and consternation as he goes, and he speaks only one word into the breech of a horrified silence: ‘Klotch.’ And every time he is vehemently assured that the CEO is not among them.

  In his disorientation Jeremiah is grateful for Karen’s hand, the link to reality from his living nightmare, wherever she leads him. But he has no desire to follow the Ebola victim into the suffocating black chamber. ‘Karen. No.’

  ‘I’m a camera.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Attend to me, King Arthur.’

  Humid body heat and the stench of offal. Red light crawls and flares on the naked skin of the predominantly elderly assembly, on their black hoods, spiked collars and thigh-high black boots; on those among the throng compelled into complete stillness by manacle and pinion, or writhing to the limited extent afforded them by their masters; and the red light flings outlandish figures on the backs of those wielding the whip with sober exactness, and on those given over to the frenzied abandonment of intercourse. Among the cries that herald relief from the strictures of power and control come pleas and wails that suggest bitter regret at the impulse which has cleaved so violently every vestige of social propriety and control.

  Lost in the complex rituals of bondage and release that engage them so profoundly, the throng remain oblivious to the virulent newcomer at first. His presence is proclaimed by the rapid subsidence of full-throated cries. The steady whipping stops. Only a fretful, keening whimper remains, issued from those manacled most securely, or blind inside the confines of a close-fitting studded hood.

  Soundlessly, the haemorrhaging man advances in his white gumboots across the sable carpet. The masked guests draw back and shrink in terrified congestion against the walls, while those rendered motionless by the constraints of their apparatus make hitherto unseen violent attempts to free themselves. The blinded, and those unable to move their heads enough to see, fall silent.

  ‘Klotch.’

  Some of the guests make a slight rushing movement towards the impostor. But after a few steps their courage fails them. Something is wrong.

  ‘Klotch.’

  From the serried ranks steps forth a masked man of impressive proportions, naked and with his hands bound at the wrist before him. The rictus on his face is enforced by a black ball crammed in his mouth and held fast by two leather thongs. Yet the vigour and height and breadth of his body, bound though it is and betrayed somewhat by a rapidly diminishing tumescence, is informed with a proud demeanour that speaks of an unshakeable conviction so great that even now he finds himself at no disadvantage. The milk-eyes behind his black mask shine with an enamel lustre.

  ‘Ugh?’

  The ticking of the ebony clock becomes apparent in the hushed chamber, resoundingly so, sounding with a peculiar musical resonance the passing of each drawn-out second.

  ‘Ugh?’

  The ticking of the ebony clock sounds again.

  Jeremiah drops Karen’s hand.

  ‘No,’ she calls. ‘Wait!’

  ‘But I’m the host!’

  The blood-soaked, virulent back fills Jeremiah’s vision. He grabs the intruder’s hair and pulls hard. His scalp comes off in Jeremiah’s hand. No. It’s a mask. Jeremiah spins the figure around. It’s the Chef, clear-eyed and clean. In a moment they are surrounded by guests.

  Jeremiah gapes at the bloody mask in his hand. It was a performance? Satire?

  There is a feeling of relief similar to that which had succeeded the tolling of the hour, but there is anger too. The ring of guests about the Chef closes tighter. He is jostled. In reply the Chef’s mouth curves up in a smile, inciting threats of violence and retribution.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Klotch steps forward. He raises his bound wrists and claps with his fingertips. To further confirm his appreciation, he bows his masked and gagged head. The ghoulish chamber fills instantly with muffled applause as the guests (who are able to) follow their leader’s cue, as they do in all things. Jeremiah’s not sure why he’s clapping. The ticking of the clock is no longer audible, drowned by the ovation that accompanies the Chef as he strides away through the crowd, grim-faced, and mounts the black steps two at a time in his white gumboots.

  29

  Jeremiah and Karen sit on hard chairs, under a single blanket, in the little back porch by the second kitchen. Her crimson mask and his Norman helmet lie on the ground. Karen has shared her conviction that the party’s gone spectacularly well. For milk-eyes to be revealed? Sex between classes? Yes. Spectacularly well. She is certain. Even the Chef’s Ebola stunt came off, in the end. Klotch loved it. Upon hearing some of the countless compliments Karen received, Jeremiah says that while a certain amount of praise is obligatory, it doesn’t have to be so effusive. The Goldens really did love the party. Now Karen and Jeremiah have fallen silent and gaze at the rain battering the parking area, drumming on the cars and catering trucks.

  ‘It feels like we’ve pulled off a heist,’ he says.

  She removes her shoes, stretches and smiles.

  Neither of them wants to go back inside and face the orgy. If only we could stay here, he thinks, together alone on the little porch. It’s an area he had barely noticed until tonight. Nice in its simplicity. Darkness and water; how pure and elemental they are after the sensory overload inside. How soothing is the sound of overloaded gutters, the rhythm and silvery splatter of heavy water. Cool and invigorating. The smell of mud and mould has intensified. But it’s practically perfume, Jeremiah thinks, compared to the pooling odour of warm offal inside. We did it, he thinks, and inhales the rainy night deeply.

  He has the unexpected sensation that he’s in exactly the right place, a feeling akin to the deep satisfaction he has experienced upon achieving milestone career goals. It feels like a defining moment. There’s no place he’d rather be than here with Karen, on the back porch he hasn’t noticed before, watching the rain fall on the car park while an orgy rages inside. It’s the togetherness of it all, a confirmation of the rightness of their marriage. All their difficulties have been nothing but unusual spices thrown into the mix to create an unexpectedly exquisite flavour. So tender. He feels vulnerable in his happiness. He’d prefer Karen to verbalise his irrational personal feelings, so he prompts her into speech.

  ‘I sent St Tropez home.’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I sent St Tropez home in the Toyota.’

  ‘She was here?’

  ‘Yeah, as a nurse, sweeping up broken glass and stuff. Way out of her depth.’

  Karen smiles and kisses his cheek. ‘Like a superhero in disguise.’

  ‘So that’s why I’m a waiter?’

  ‘No, the super-elderly needed hot buns to check out. Yours are the hottest in the
Wairarapa.’

  ‘There was a grand purpose, right? And that was to experience being a non-entity in the eyes of the rich. I was to be humbled.’

  ‘Did King Arthur learn humility through his service?’

  ‘Well, no. He had it anyway. He learned about his court rather than himself.

  ‘They’re not really separate things.’

  ‘But what does pretending to have Ebola X prove?’

  ‘The Chef was meant to represent the Red Death. It was a reenactment of an old story by a writer named Edgar Allan Poe. The coloured chambers and everything are in the story. That was the satire. Rather than watching Malcolm perform in the kitchen, everyone participated in a recreation of this story. Klotch got it, apparently, but I don’t know much about it, to be honest. Haven’t read the book.’

  She doesn’t know much about it, he thinks. That sounds familiar, like one of his nondisclosure statements. But they’re here together, despite their secrets and differences. That’s the main thing. They give each other space and things work out. He won’t poke his nose into her affairs and vice versa.

  ‘You know how the story ends?’

  ‘Oh, everyone dies from the Red Death.’

  ‘Charming. Even the help?’

  ‘Yes. There’s no King Arthur to send them home in the Toyota.’ She embraces him lazily. How warm she is beneath the blanket as the rain drums and hisses. Lightning flickers and sheets brightly beyond the pines. A peal of thunder rolls a giant barrel down black steps overhead. He feels very close to Karen. He wants her. Now. A stand-up fuck on the porch in the shadow-flinging lightning. Why not? Everyone else is at it like rabbits.

  After a moment, she pulls back. ‘The lies about Sam have to stop, Jeremiah. You can’t be involved. You’re better than that.’

  For fuck’s sake, he thinks.An overheard conversation comes to him, which he can reproduce pretty much word for word. ‘If Sam has been used to advertise corporate values and products,’ he tells Karen, ‘it’s the absolute height of corporate cynicism. Which is saying something.’ He decides against citing Bhopal as an inferior example of corporate cynicism, as the speaker’s interlocutor did.

  She straightens up. ‘Yes, exactly. It’s like Jesus returned with a disability and they made him do infomercials. It’s the height of cynicism.’

  He repeats the reply he heard—it’s a perfect fit: ‘Or the depth.’

  A flash of lightning illuminates her, throws her cheekbones into relief. Regal in her loosened velvet dress, tendrils of hair coming down, it’s a Karen model image. Darkness returns. Her wraparound eyes are squinting at him. He leans in close, out of scrutiny, and kisses her sweet and tender lips.

  She breaks off. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Jeremiah. This party has been secretly filmed.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t worry, the tape won’t ever be shown.’

  ‘What? It won’t?’

  ‘It doesn’t work. As satire, it’s too obscure. A bunch of masked consenting adults, who may or may not be Golden Gators, doesn’t add up to much. I mean, the fashion crowd are fucking with the best of them. The Chef missed the mark this time. It’s just a themed party.’

  ‘You were going to show it?’

  ‘Well, it was an outside possibility. Malcolm expected to be attacked in the black chamber and killed. But you saw what happened. Klotch applauded him instead.’

  Jeremiah doesn’t know what to say. It’s a gross betrayal, but so inept it hardly counts. The Chef expected to incite Klotch to commit public murder by use of a fancy-dress costume? How staggeringly stupid. How expensive and woefully misguided their whole project has been.

  ‘Jeremiah?’ She sounds worried. As she should.

  ‘You didn’t think this was worth mentioning to me?’

  ‘No. It was better you didn’t know. To be innocent.’ A tear wells up. ‘You never tell me anything.’

  ‘But this is our home.’

  ‘No, it’s our house. There’s a difference. Home is Wellington, New Zealand, the world; it’s all of us.’

  He sighs and rubs his face. ‘Give it a break. For once.’

  ‘We need to think of the bigger picture, Jeremiah, the long-term future. Not just dividends, quarterly reports and a single house inside a gated community. We need to think about the world.’

  ‘So you trick me, play me like a fish and then preach to me about the family of humanity?’

  She flushes and throws herself around his neck. ‘No longer. I promise.’

  A triumphant party, he thinks, whatever the nutbar literary enactment intention, and now this pledge of fealty from her. Proud and happy, he begins to jack up again. Her hand slides down beneath the band of his shorts. Hang on, he thinks, I’m making this too easy for her. He tries to feel victimised.

  A tall figure in a long, hooded coat is limping through the car park. A flash of lightning throws him into silhouette. He wears gumboots.

  ‘Oh God, this one probably does have Ebola.’

  ‘Hang on, isn’t that—?’

  Jeremiah stands up. ‘Bill!’

  The hooded figure changes course, holds his up his hand to shade his eyes from the house lights.

  ‘Jeremiah? Karen? It’s me, Bill. I was passing by. I’d forgotten you were having a party. What a night for it! Is Trix inside?’

  Jeremiah steps out into the rain and shakes his hand. ‘Bill! So great to see you. What a surprise. Yes, Trix is inside, somewhere.’

  ‘She is?’ The hood goes back as Bill steps up into the porch, revealing his familiar thatch of white hair. Karen kisses his cheeks.

  ‘Well, it’s a masked party, Bill,’ Jeremiah says, ‘as you’ve probably gathered. So you can’t go in. I could try to find her, but there are a lot of people. She’ll be very hard to find.’

  ‘Everything okay?’ Bill asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jeremiah says, ‘just having a bit of time out. Is that a baby’s bottle?’

  ‘Indeed, it is. I need to make up some baby formula and heat it in your microwave, Karen. Simon spilled the thermos on the way down.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Jeremiah, go and put some clothes on and pack a bag. You can come with me to Wellington now. I’m back on the job. We’ll fly out for Hokitika at first light.’

  ‘Back on the job?’

  ‘Hang on,’ Karen says. ‘I want to ask you something, Bill. We were discussing Sam when you arrived, actually. What do you make of his last message?’

  ‘Karen!’

  Bill waves Jeremiah’s objection away and replies easily. ‘“Don’t allow yourself to be separated from your brothers and sisters by the digital divide.” That one?’

  ‘Yes. Did you write it?’

  There is alcohol and serious trouble on Bill’s breath. Jeremiah feels that everything he loves has become a house of cards to be demolished with one winey puff. It will be impossible to build a house with Karen again, impossible to get everything back. ‘Trix!’ Jeremiah declares. ‘I think I know where she is.’

  Bill blinks. He teeters a little. ‘No, Karen,’ he tells her carefully. ‘I didn’t write it.’

  Jeremiah exhales and sits down heavily.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Karen demands. ‘What’s happening?’

  Bill steps back out into the rain and a flash of lightning illuminates his smiling face. His eyes are pits of shadow. He raises his hands triumphantly, bearing in one the empty milk bottle aloft.

  ‘Sam’s woken up! He’s sitting up and writing again!’

  PART V

  31

  Joel Urban, account manager, 50. Broad-shouldered, his arms are crossed and his hands tucked under considerable biceps. Thumbs drum on rock-hard pecs. His tight navy-blue shirt, bearing the Venture Group logo on the breast pocket, is open at the collar. His square jaw features three days’ salt-and-pepper growth, the pepper forming remarkably well-defined triangles amid the salt on the cleft of his chin and down from the corners of his mouth. He has a sailor’s squint.

/>   Michelle Gonzales, thought catalyst, 46. Has a great mass of piratical jet-black wavy hair. Her broad, open face is energetic. Under black brows that might be fierce are dark and adventurous eyes.

  ‘I felt honoured,’ Michelle says. ‘I felt very privileged. Even though it was only 60 seconds, I—’

  ‘It was 53-ish,’ says Joel.

  Michelle laughs, delighted. ‘See what I live with?’

  Joel nods toward the camera, drums his thumbs on his pecs. ‘Reality,’ he says.

  She guffaws. ‘That’s on video! Thank you.’

  Joel shakes his head and draws his fingers across his throat. He wears a men’s platinum Venture Group ring. ‘Cut.’

  There’s a cut. The couple are settled on the couch.

  Michelle continues. ‘While it was only 53-ish seconds, it was long enough to get a sense of something very special.’ She frowns. ‘It was humbling. I felt awe. There was a different worldview in that room. Like, take an ancient cultural artefact. Of itself, as something you can hold, it might feel familiar, like stone that’s been carved. But what it suggests is not familiar. I mean, there’s a vast, complex and mysterious culture behind that carved figure. One which believed and did things we don’t.’