Afterlight (12 page)

‘See if you can find a light switch,’ Jordan rasped.

I almost leapt out of my skin when stage lights suddenly went up across the room,
centred on a narrow, wooden catwalk, painted a glossy reflective black.

‘Is that a, uh, stripper’s pole?’ I flushed, staring at the end of the projected
stage. Mum had described them, but I’d never seen one for real. The glittering thing
reached right up into the water-stained ceiling, anchored by two sets of heavy-duty
brackets at each end. Two more sets of stage lights flashed on and two more poles
were instantly illuminated, one on either side of the catwalk. The backdrop was
a swagged dark-red velvet curtain.

A woman dressed entirely in black suddenly emerged from a door hidden somewhere behind
it.

For a gut-clenching moment, I thought it was Eve, and I let out a high and breathless
scream. Same pale skin and oval face. Same long dark hair hanging loose and forward
over her shoulders, that busty hourglass figure.

But the figure shielded her eyes with one hand, barking in a voice that rebounded
throughout the cavernous room, ‘We’re closed.’

Not Eve then. Pissed off, too. I shut my mouth, deeply regretting screaming.

‘Monica sent us,’ Jordan called out gamely. ‘She wants what she left behind.’

The woman froze, one hand raised to shoo us out.

Jordan didn’t look at me. Instead, the untouchably cool expression he always sported
when Dr Southey tried to throw him a vicious curve ball in Biology slid into place.
There hadn’t been a trace of doubt in his voice even though I knew that, just under
the skin, he was all nerves, like I was.

The woman seemed to give herself a shake before moving down the catwalk hesitantly.
‘Monica?’ she said bewildered. ‘Monica wouldn’t send
you
.’

She stopped at the edge of the raised platform and frowned at us through the glare
of the footlights. ‘You’re just kids. Shouldn’t even be in here.’

Jordan started moving across the tiled floor, my hand somehow trapped in his again.
We made our way through the untidy nests of tables and chairs towards the spot-lit
woman, stopping just below her and gazing up.

At close range, she didn’t resemble Eve at all. She had deep-set hazel eyes, flecked
with pinpoints of deep claret. And it was clear her raven tresses had come out of
a Clairol bottle. She was smaller in stature, more fine-boned than Eve. Her tight-fitting,
low cut maxi dress was almost too big for her frame, the ends of it dragging on the
floor behind her like a Goth wedding train.

The woman’s pretty, weary face was alight with fear and hope. But she said again,
‘You shouldn’t be in here.’

She glanced back at the curtain behind her, adding, ‘Cops see you, they could ping
us just for you being here.’

‘We’ll go as soon as we get what Monica sent us for,’ Jordan said confidently.

The woman flapped her hands in his face before bunching up her dress in one hand
and climbing down off the podium in her teetering heels. She looked up into my face,
then Jordan’s, searchingly.

‘How do I know O’Loughlin didn’t send you?’ she said. ‘Everyone knows he’s looking
for her. He even came in here, asking. Even after what he did.’

I had to steel my face against wobbling in confusion and giving Jordan away.

‘You don’t,’ Jordan said quietly, his gaze never leaving hers. ‘But Monica’s somewhere
no one can touch her now. That’s why she’s asking. There’s something she needs to
do.’

The woman’s shoulders visibly slumped in relief until a voice, from behind the curtain,
roared: ‘Nadja!
I told you to get rid of them.
’

‘Got it, Roman, okay?’ she bellowed back, though her hands shook as she raked her
jet-black curtain of hair back off her face. ‘Follow me,’ she said quickly, weaving
across the room towards the bar.

Jordan and I hovered by the row of fixed, vinyl-topped red stools by the bar while
she dug around on the other
side of the counter. I could hear doors rapidly opening
and closing as she shoved things around, almost talking to herself.

‘Doesn’t tell me where she’s gone, doesn’t send texts, emails, nothing, then, like,
weeks later she gets youse two to pick up her shit?’ Nadja’s voice was disgusted.
‘
That
I believe. Mon all over. Selfish as.’

‘Nadja!’

I jumped, glancing back across the room to see a man in charcoal suit trousers and
a black, open-necked shirt standing on the platform. He had thick, curling, Italian-Stallion
hair cut short and the kind of even tan I’m genetically incapable of reproducing.
Somewhere in his thirties, I’d say, with every muscular inch of him screaming:
lifts
weights regularly
. And:
thug.
Gran and I knew the type, and they didn’t frequent
The Star unless things were desperate.

Beneath the harsh lighting the man’s black eyes glittered. ‘Who
are
you people?’
he shouted, jumping down off the stage, striding towards us.

Nadja sprang up above the level of the countertop like a Jack-in-the-box and hastily
shoved a bundled-up plastic bag into Jordan’s hands across the bar.

‘This was hers, this was all,’ she gabbled. ‘Now get out of here, okay? O’Loughlin’s
a murderous prick, but he’s got nothing on Roman when he’s angry. Don’t come back.
I
mean it. And tell her as well. I can’t protect her. She’s not welcome. Pissed off
a lot of people, vanishing like that.’

Jordan nodded his thanks, bundling the green plastic bag and me under his arm. But
then he hesitated for a moment and said, ‘Nadja? For what it’s worth, Monica just
wants you to know that she’s sorry. She meant to tell you herself before she…left.
But she never got the chance.’

‘Sorry for what?’ Nadja replied, genuine confusion on her pale, pinched face. ‘She’s
got my number. Tell her to use it. Now go. Just
go.
’

Jordan and I spun for the door, but not before Roman’s voice sounded out angrily,
‘Stop! I said
stop
, you little bastards.’

He crashed into something, swearing and kicking it out of the way as Jordan and I
began careening in earnest through the forest of abandoned chairs and tables towards
the door.

‘Hurry!’ Jordan rasped. ‘Almost there.’

But I couldn’t help looking back over my shoulder. As I watched, Nadja shot out around
the front of the bar, moving to head off her boss before he could reach us. My head
was pounding. The cold and flu tablets I’d taken this morning had finally worn off.
Even the slow stirring of air from the fan was beginning to hurt my skin. I slowed
for a moment, clutching at a bentwood chairback, dizzy.

‘Soph!’ Jordan urged, tugging on my arm.

Behind us, Roman began to shout at Nadja in a language I didn’t understand. There
was a scuffling sound, a woman’s cry, and then Roman was right on top of us, his
hand on Jordan’s shoulder. As he swung Jordan around, pulling us both off balance,
I caught sight of Nadja kneeling on the floor tiles near the bar, her long hair covering
her face.

‘You little
shits
!’ Roman snarled as Jordan pushed me into the space behind him,
the door close at my back. ‘You don’t just walk into my place and take stuff off
the premises without consulting with me first.’

Roman snatched the bundle of plastic out from under Jordan’s arm, shoving him hard
into me for good measure, before digging around in the bag and pulling out a guy-sized
black T-shirt with a Death’s head design on it, entwined with silver daggers and
red roses. Gran and I called the look
gay-designer-pirate
. Everybody who dressed
like that drank two doors down, at
Deezy’s
.

As the T-shirt slid free of the plastic, a greeting card, a cheap ballpoint pen and
a loose blue envelope fluttered to the ground. I bent, intending to retrieve them,
but Roman wagged a chunky finger at me.

‘Uh uh.’ He swept the card up off the ground, frowning over the cartoony
Thank you!
message on the outside, then the words scrawled across the inside in big, loopy handwriting.

Upside down, Jordan and I read:

To Carter K – for services rendered.

Always, M x

‘You Carter?’ He looked up, addressing Jordan belligerently. ‘Lots of people been
looking for Monny’s little friend. Didn’t think you was real.’

Jordan shook his head. ‘Just the courier,’ he mumbled. ‘Pick up, drop off. Owed someone
who owes someone a favour. Don’t know nothing.’

At the periphery of my sight I saw Nadja’s head come up sharply at Jordan’s words.
Roman’s gaze narrowed on me, mashed into the door by Jordan’s weight and barely breathing.

‘I
know
you,’ Roman said, frowning, dark eyes raking my face.

‘Don’t know you,’ I replied, shaking my head, my fat ponytail bouncing on one shoulder.
‘Never been here before, never seen you before, I swear.’

‘But I seen
you
,’ Roman said, dropping the card and T-shirt as he shoved Jordan out
of the way. He gave me a slow top-to-toe once-over that made my skin crawl. ‘Yeah.
You’re that skinny bitch they’re calling the
North Fitzroy Nostradamus
,
The Saviour
of Sancerre Street
. Say you saved all those people because you can
see the future
.’

He mimed talking marks in the air, his laughter unamused.

‘You got the wrong person,’ I whispered.

‘She’s just my girlfriend,’ Jordan interjected, and it sounded so real tripping off
his tongue that, even now, I ached for it to be true. ‘We’re not even here, okay?’

Roman ignored him, placing a hard finger under my chin and lifting it so that I couldn’t
look away. I had at least a couple of inches on him, but his menacing presence, his
virulent cloud of aftershave, seemed to fill my entire world.

‘The Reavers like to drink here,’ he said slowly and clearly. ‘It’s almost a home
away from home for Keith O’Loughlin and his boys. That’s all I’m saying.’ He thrust
his jaw in Nadja’s direction. ‘She’s his favourite. Likes his women to look like
women, look like
her
. The tits, the long black hair. Very particular on that score.
Has a type.’

The man’s laughter was harsh.

‘Take a good look into your future, girly, and you’ll see Keith O’Loughlin and his
mates standing in it if you’re not careful. Everyone knows where you live. All it
would take would be one word from me that you were here on Mon’s behalf, and you’d
be dead. O’Loughlin’s not a forgiving man.’

Roman shoved me away so hard the back of my head smashed into the door. Then he turned,
on the verge of walking away, when he suddenly spun back around,
jabbing his finger
into my breast bone. ‘
Today Tonight
—is that what this is all about? You miked up?’

Deliberately keeping me out of Jordan’s reach, Roman put his hands around my waist
and I stood very straight in the tight circle of his grip, trying not to shudder.

‘Is it?’ he murmured, his hands moving up and down my sides, drifting down across
my hips and up my spine. He followed the meagre curves of my body in a parody of
a shake down, knowing it would revolt me.

I shook my head, feeling hot and sick under his touch, gazing at a point to the left
of Roman’s head as his hands continued their lazy exploration. ‘Mon owes me money,
and a lot more besides,’ he murmured intimately. ‘You see her, you tell her she’d
better be ready to pay up.’

‘Hey,’ Jordan snarled, gripping me by the arm and pulling me back into his body so
hard that Roman was forced to let go. ‘Hands off,
buddy
. We were just supposed to
pick up a bag. That’s all. Not cop a free feel.’

Roman leered into both our faces. ‘So pick it up then,
buddy
, and piss off. Neither
of you got the goods to work here. Get.’

He threw his head back and laughed, striding away in Nadja’s direction as I scraped
the T-shirt, card and envelope off the ground, stuffing them into the plastic bag
with trembling hands.

‘Let’s go,’ I hissed, still feeling the man’s hard fingers
on the sides of my breasts.
‘Jordan,
please
.’

I bit the insides of my cheeks to hold back my tears as Jordan pulled the door open
to let us out. Before it even had time to swing closed on the Maximus Lounge, we
were half running, half stumbling down the reeking, silent upper hallway, laughing
in sheer terror.

11

When we were both safely inside the car, accelerating away, I started dry heaving
in shock, sprawled lengthways against the door. Jordan wisely kept his silence until
we reached the outskirts of the city.

‘Want me to stop the car, Sophie?’ he asked.

But I managed to slide back up into a sitting position and fumbled back into my seat
belt.

‘I’d just like to go home, please,’ I replied, my voice very small. I crossed my
arms tightly over my chest. All Roman had done was touch me through my clothes, but
I still felt dirty. How had Mum stood it all those years she was a ‘dancer’?

I sniffed, blinking back the urge to sneeze and cry at
the same time, and Jordan
shot me a white-faced look. The rolled up plastic bag was nestled on his lap like
a small, sleeping animal that could turn feral if provoked.

‘It’s my fault,’ he muttered, pushing a fall of brown hair out of his eyes.

I shrugged, trying to show him I was totes cool with hard fondling from a perfect
stranger. ‘What? That I’m a prude? How could it be?’

Jordan shook his head. ‘Once the lights went up, once we knew what that place was,
I should have had you wait outside. I should have known.’

‘Your expertise extends to reading the dead, not the living,’ I said hollowly, ‘don’t
sweat it, mate.’

Jordan renegotiated our original route in reverse, tossing me the plastic bag at
one of the intersections. I pulled out the men’s T-shirt and held it up for him at
the next change of lights.

He wrinkled his nose. ‘That’s it?’ he said. ‘That’s not an answer, that’s a fifteen-dollar
shirt.’