Exile m-2

by Rebecca Lim

  She glances into the kitchen at Sulaiman’s back, and I smile despite the tension I’m feeling.

  ‘Mr Dymovsky’s in his office,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll show you the way.’

  And then, I promise myself fiercely, I’m getting the hell out of here.

  Behind us, I hear Ranald say imperiously, ‘Where’s my coffee, Cecilia? What’s the hold-up?’

  There’s something a little bit off about Ranald today.

  But I don’t really care, because Ryan’s waiting for me, and I will shortly shrug off all the petty irritations of this life as a snake would shed its skin.

  Chapter 19

  I leave Justine and Mr Dymovsky chatting away together like old friends and return to the front counter. It’s 11.27. Wherever I am in the café, whatever I’m doing, my eyes keep returning to the window.

  Sulaiman turns up the volume on the Arabic station he always has playing on the radio in the kitchen. Begins to hum along to some incredibly complex tune that keeps rising and falling. It’s beautiful. Otherworldly. Like a muezzin’s cry; a call to prayer set to music.

  He looks at me through the narrow open window between us. ‘It’s too late to leave now.’ His tone is almost conversational; there’s no longer any heat in his words.

  I have no idea what he means and I snap, ‘But I am leaving now,’ unable to comprehend the man’s sudden interest in Lela’s comings and goings. ‘And no one — not you, not anyone — is going to stop me.’

  Sulaiman shrugs, as if he’s lost interest in the conversation. ‘Tell that to him,’ he says, pointing over my shoulder.

  I turn to see Ranald get up from his table and head to the front window, look out into the street. First to the left, then to the right, as if he’s about to cross a busy road or embark on a perilous journey. I wonder what he’s searching for on that familiar, congested streetscape, the building site nearby filling the air with dust and noise, the constant passing parade of foot traffic, vehicles of every size and description, the hypnotic lights of the theatre down the road.

  Then Ranald’s gaze settles on something in the middle distance and I follow his line of sight, catch Ryan speaking to a passer-by, a woman, on the street outside that bar with the black bull on its sign. I feel an involuntary smile curve up the corners of Lela’s mouth as Ryan throws back his head and laughs at something the woman says before she moves on with a small wave.

  Mine for the asking, mine for the taking, I think greedily as Ryan paces the street a while longer before disappearing inside the tapas place.

  But then something like melancholy steals over me. Because in no universe could Ryan and me ever work. We were not made to be together. We were not made for each other. Feelings are for humans and … well, you know the rest.

  As I tear my gaze away from the place where Ryan was standing and refocus on the dingy dining room before me, Ranald walks purposefully to the front door, turns the lock and flips the sign over to read Closed.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ I ask Cecilia, indicating Ranald with a jerk of my head.

  Cecilia looks at me, puts down the jug she is holding.

  Ranald turns and addresses all of us. ‘You know what it would take to get your attention, to get you all to really look at me?’

  Franklin doesn’t even bother doing that, just keeps reading his paper. Ranald shocks us all by grabbing him, suddenly, by the hair above one ear.

  ‘Hey! Wha—’ Franklin cries out as he’s pulled out of his seat, away from his paper, his half-drunk coffee, the neat, twinned crusts of his chicken sandwich.

  ‘My life is full of pricks like you,’ Ranald roars, ‘who won’t even do me the courtesy of looking me in the face when I’m talking! I said, do you know what it would take to get your attention, you asshole?’

  Franklin, his head pressed into the front of Ranald’s suit jacket, squeals, ‘No! What? What?’

  Ranald shoves his free hand into the front of Franklin’s jacket and pulls out the handgun. ‘Violence,’ he snarls, shoving Franklin away from him so hard that the older man misses the edge on, you aand falls on the floor. ‘In point of fact, Franklin, I was lost and you showed me the way. So did that slut and her lowlife boyfriend.’ He smiles. ‘A little violence, I’ve learnt, can focus people’s attention enormously.’

  He kicks Franklin so hard in one leg that Franklin shrieks in agony.

  ‘Get over to the counter, you fat-cat bastard,’ he orders, ‘and put your hands on it where I can see them.’

  He waves the gun in Sulaiman’s direction. ‘You, too, big guy. And you.’ He points at Cecilia, whose eyes are huge in her terrified, little face.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to get caught up in this,’ he says to her almost kindly, ‘but I need you to witness what happens to people who betray and belittle me and insult my intelligence.’

  ‘What is this noise?’ Mr Dymovsky snaps, emerging out of the dark little corridor at the back of the shop. Justine is behind him, her eyes wide. ‘Who insults whom?’

  Ranald stops them both in their tracks by levelling the gun at Mr Dymovsky’s chest. Mr Dymovsky’s resemblance to Humpty Dumpty is more pronounced than ever: his rounded eyes and rounded mouth, his too-tight, slightly shiny pants worn a little too high.

  ‘Do what I say and you won’t get hurt,’ Ranald murmurs silkily, using the gun to wave them both over to the front counter where the others are clustered, hands outspread. ‘Only those who have hurt me get hurt today. So be a good sport, Dmitri, and you’ll see out the rest of your life comfortably.’

  Justine gives a muffled whimper as Ranald pushes her into place beside Mr Dymovsky, Cecilia and Franklin. He strokes the back of one of her soft hands with his fingers and her face goes pale and tight at the movement, as if she wants to throw up.

  ‘Someone like you wouldn’t even look at me unless I was paying, would you?’ he says, running the barrel of the gun down the side of Justine’s bare arm.

  She turns her bruised face away, twists her body, every action a rejection. Ranald raises the handgun sharply, as if he’s going to hit her with it, and Justine cringes. But he laughs and lowers it again.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he mutters. ‘There’s only ever been one girl for me, and I’m done with the playing hard to get, with waiting around. Done with being treated like ratshit by everybody in my life, especially by her.’

  He looks at me with his burning gaze and I realise who he’s talking about.

  ‘You can’t mean me,’ I exclaim.

  I recall Lela’s journal. It was Andy this and Andy that; Ranald hadn’t even entered her headspace. He’d been nothing to her. Nothing. And I’d done nothing to encourage him, had I?

  Nothing, says evil me, except agree to have dinner with the little turd

  I move towards him now, more ticked off than afraid.

  ‘You mean you’re doing this,’ I wave my hand at our surroundings, ‘because I’ve hurt your feelings in some way?’

  ‘In some way?’ he yells, incensed. ‘Clementia would have been a better password than misericordia, don’t you think? Remember, I speak Latin. You said you spoke none at all. Just one more lie in a litany of lies. How do you explain what you said to Franklin? About death being the final limit? I heard you. You’ve lied to me from the beginning.’

  He waves the gun around and everyone ducks and cries out, except for me. I look at him, stunned, as the meaning of his words begins to sink in.

  His tone grows almost conversational. ‘The connotations are so much less negative, I would have thought. Clemency versus the cry of the miserable damned. Why choose the latter and not the former?’

  ‘How did you know?’ I say stupidly, and in that instant, I realise. I should have seen it before. I’d been too blinded by making contact with Ryan to take in what else was going on. It was Ranald who’d set up Lela’s profile page for me, who logged in for me on his way to the damn toilets this morning. He’d known the password I’d selected, had even entered it for me, although it was
supposed to be something that I’d come up with, for my eyes alone. But what was worse was that I’d never changed the email address Ranald had inputted in the first place. It was his email address. I’d been using it ever since; had had no idea that he might be able to monitor my messages, that he’d even want to do that.

  ‘I’ve seen every single exchange between the two of you,’ Ranald spits. ‘I’m a software developer, remember? It’s my job to think like a hacker, act like a hacker. Even if you hadn’t been a stupid bitch and left my email address attached to your account as your point of contact with the entire world, I would have been able to get in and read everything you wrote. Nothing you could do online is safe from me. You’re pathetic, Lela, you really are. Did you get off doing some kind of weird role play with a stud who’s based overseas while you strung me along? Home-grown guys not good enough for you?’

  Sulaiman says quietly, as if thinking out loud, ‘For length of days shall not be theirs.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Ranald screams, shaking the gun in Sulaiman’s direction, cocking the hammer. ‘Shut up, or I will shut you up permanently, you religious fanatic.’

  With his free hand, Ranald grabs my shirt and pulls me across to the table that has his laptop on it. Training his gun on me, he lets go of my shirt before uncapping the little grey device resting on the table and jamming it into a slot on the side of his machine. He flicks open a draft email, then opens the window for the device. There’s only one file in it. He attaches it to the email, all with one hand.

  ‘I’ve spent all morning crafting an emergency anti-virus update email for P/2/Pnd its entire list of clients,’ he says, ‘each one run by truly incompetent twits who wouldn’t know how to spell “Trojan” let alone recognise one or appreciate the indignities I suffer — the bullying, the finger-pointing, the backstabbing — to keep the reams of crap they generate safe from people like me. Press send, Lela. Their networks all across the country are going to implode, and you’re going to set it in motion. From here. From the Green Lantern. I said I’d take P/2/P down with me one day, and now everyone’s finally going to believe it.’

  His laughter sounds like despair to my ears.

  ‘What if I say no?’ I reply. ‘The police are outside. A whole pile of witnesses.’

  I point through the window. While Ranald’s been busy unleashing his narcissistic inner demon — that small boy who found it amusing to douse his pet mice with petrol and set them alight just to see what would happen — he’s failed to notice armed police officers erecting plastic construction barriers across the front of the coffee shop, redirecting traffic. Ranald didn’t see fit to draw the blinds when he decided to pull his own hostage crisis in the middle of the city, and now a crowd is beginning to build, because it’s human nature to want to stare at the car crash, count the injured and the dead. Ambulance personnel are moving into place on one section of the street, and there are news crews gathering.

  ‘I know they are,’ Ranald replies tonelessly. ‘I told them to come.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Franklin blusters from across the room, but I don’t hear Ranald’s reply because one face in the crowd has drawn my gaze: ashen and familiar, eyes shadowed from a long-haul flight during which he probably did not sleep. Someone who’s six foot five and built like a line-backing angel.

  Ryan.

  My hands fly up to my mouth, all the fear I feel for him in my eyes. Why didn’t he stay inside that bar? What if Ranald sees him?

  When Ryan’s eyes meet mine over the heads of the people in front of him, something flares in them and he pushes his way forward immediately until he is standing right up against one of the plastic crash barriers. The width of the footpath away.

  I shake my head at him, mouth at him to go, go away, but he stands his ground stubbornly.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he shouts at me through the glass.

  I shake my head again, my face telling him that it’s too hard to explain, my eyes telling him to run.

  The harsh midday sunlight is reflecting a little off the surface of the windows; he probably can’t see Ranald standing just behind me with a gun in hand, levelled at my back.

  I see Ryan turn and collar a policewoman who’s standing nearby. He points in my direction. She turns and squints at me through the glass, shakes her head.

  ‘You can’t goin there, sir,’ she says. I hear her clearly, though she’s standing outside.

  ‘That’s my girlfriend,’ Ryan yells. ‘My girlfriend in there. I need to get inside.’

  And without thinking, I walk away from Ranald, the psychopath holding the gun, towards the front window. I touch my hand up against the pane, my heart so full I almost can’t contain it.

  Ryan smiles at me but there’s a terrible fear in his eyes, which grow wider, more fearful, as Ranald approaches quickly and wraps one arm around my neck from behind, the other hand still holding Franklin’s gun, his breath foul with coffee, sleeplessness, adrenaline.

  I’m rarely afraid. And I have no sixth sense, no ability to foretell the future. But everything about this bright morning — this morning in which everything seemed more beautiful than it was possible to be — is going badly wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be this way when Ryan and I found each other again. It was only meant to be the first step.Today was supposed to be all about the silver lining, not the cloud.

  ‘Give yourself up, sir!’ a policeman shouts at Ranald through a loudspeaker. ‘All the entries and exits are blocked off. There’s nowhere to go. Give yourself up quietly or we’re coming in.’

  I wonder how someone who looks like Ranald does on the outside — composed, professional, pleasant — can hold so much vitriol, store so much rage and affront and envy inside. How he could blame Lela Neill for tipping him over the edge when all his life he’s been poised to fall; poised to explode like a catherine wheel, raining fire down on everyone.

  ‘You’ve done what you came to do,’ I say. ‘Sent out your hydra made of code and malice, your virus strong enough to bring down entire companies. Let everyone here go. Let me go. You may not wish to live your life, but I do. I’ve travelled so far to get to this point. A long time ago, I was standing in the place you now occupy and I was not destroyed. I chose life, or had it chosen for me, and I have stuck with it. It may not be the life I would have wanted for myself, and yet I embrace my future. And it is out there.’

  I point at Ryan through the flystruck window, feel the surge of that sea I carry inside me. I meet his gaze; his heart in his eyes, too.

  ‘Let me go,’ I repeat softly. ‘Please.’

  Ranald clutches me more tightly to him, sticks the point of the gun into the hollow between Lela’s collarbones, for effect; to see the devastation it wreaks on Ryan’s face. On mine.

  ‘You were never going to go out with me tonight, were you?’ he says calmly.

  I shake my head, and the cold muzzle follows my every movement as if it has become one with me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘but we would never have worked, not in any life.’

  When he continues to hold me, saying nothing, I can’t stop myself remarking peevishly, ‘ou’ll never get out of here alive, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ he whispers, placing a kiss on the top of Lela’s head of red-brown, choppy hair.

  I see Ryan blanch; feel Lela do the same.

  Ranald pulls me in closer, pushes the muzzle harder into the base of Lela’s throat. ‘And neither will you.’

  Then he shoots me. Us.

  The crowd outside shrieks with one voice. No doubt leans forward, all the better to see.

  I feel myself fall backwards to the floor, numb with shock. Fall upon his body, already dead. His soul already departed; Azraeil not here to reap it.

  Blood, like a fine rain, a gentle mist, seems to fall upon us, and I hear Ryan screaming through the glass, ‘No! Mercy, no!’

  Chapter 20

  Ranald shot Lela through the base of the neck, a shot that exited her body through his heart
. He did that deliberately. He wanted her to see him die, then die in terror herself, air and blood mingling in the cavity he’d made in her chest. He wanted her to be entirely conscious as her life ebbed away.

  Except that I, not Lela, am the one bearing witness. I can feel her inside, locked away tightly, like a kernel, a hard knot, within her own body, her soul twisted, turned in on itself, like a Möbius strip. It’s highly likely she feels nothing, sees nothing, doesn’t even realise that she’s dying. And that, itself, is a mercy.

  The pain I’m feeling from the gunshot wound is visceral and immediate but tolerable. Easily subsumed by someone with my strange … abilities. But Lela’s spinal cord has been severed, her lifeblood is leaching out and mingling with Ranald’s on the floor. Even as I try to coalesce inside her, push all of myself into those ruptured, crushed and cauterised areas of skin, bone, nerve and muscle in order to knit them together, in order to staunch the bleeding, purge the wounds of cordite and infection, make her rise, make her walk again, make her whole, I know that she is failing. That I have failed. That I cannot heal Lela, as I could not heal her mother. For a moment, I imagine that Ryan is here beside me, holding my hand. But it must be an illusion thrown up by Lela’s dying mind, for I hear Ryan outside screaming, ‘Christ, please! Let me go to her, please!’

  There are footsteps all around me, but the world is growing dark and I am more entombed, more earthbound, than I have ever been, for the body I am shackled to is growing cold.

  My inner demon, always one beat ahead of my waking self, says: This one is meant to die. This one cannot be saved. There is nothing more to be done.

  And I recognise that for the truth, want to tell them all — Mr Dymovsky, Cecilia, Sulaiman, Justine, Franklin — that there is no point separating Lela from her murdeer, no point throwing open the front door, screaming for help. The stretcher, the defibrillating machine, the tourniquet, all the medical marvels of the age, are wasted on Lela now. But I cannot make my voice work. For her body is dying, and her senses are fading, and I am mired in them.