The Five Gates of Hell (36 page)

‘Celia says you been,' a pause, ‘messing with her.'

They were obedient men. They had their orders, they were only doing what they were told. The rain, his christening, and now these men. It was right. Thinking about it, you might almost say that he had given the orders. He nodded. Yes, the orders had originally sprung from him.

The first blows didn't hurt. They were just surprises, even though he'd been expecting them. The streetlamp leaned over, then it blew, a yellow flower with long tapering petals, petals snapping off and dropping through the gloom, dropping on his body, on his eyes. Then a sudden white flash of pain in his ribs and his own voice crying out.

And then another voice: ‘Don't break anything. He's got to drive out of here.'

Still following orders. That was good.

They must've put him in his car. He woke at nine minutes past one. He pushed the door open and was sick.

Afterwards he sat with his head against the window. At ten to two he was sick again. Initiation always hurt, it had to.

When he looked out through the windshield he couldn't see anything at all. He glanced in the mirror. A few scattered lights, the slant of a roof, a gas pump. They'd driven him to the edge of town. They'd pointed him in the right direction. The rest was up to him.

He drove all night. It wasn't fear, it was completion. As the light spilled back over the hills, as the sun came up in a strange place, he pulled over to the side of the road and cried. That was normal, he supposed.

Now it was three days later, and the bruises were sunset colours: yellow, purple, brown. He'd been beaten like metal, like the edge of a scythe. He was sharp. All doubts, all fears, all hesitation, beaten out of him. He'd left them behind, along with that job in the ice-cream parlour and that rented room with its bright-green walls and its bedbugs and its carpet tangled with other people's hair and nails. They were outlived, redundant. More dead skin for the carpet, more
ghosts for the cemetery. He coasted down the centre lane, and the darkness seemed to cushion him. He felt as if he was tunnelling, as if he was going to strike it rich. The lights of other cars swung across his face, glinted on his glasses' steel frames, glinted on the battered satin of his black top hat. He was smiling.

In two hours he'd be switching to Highway 12 because he wanted to enter the city from the west. It would be about five in the morning by then. At that time, just minutes before dawn, the tall buildings looked like piles of ashes. The place would feel like his then, his for the taking. He squeezed the gas pedal and reached into his pocket for another piece of candy. These were new ones. He'd found them earlier that day. They were called Peppermint Surprises and they were very good. He wondered how he could've stood that ice-cream parlour for so long. He'd always had a sweet tooth. Maybe it was something to do with that.

In the end he timed it all wrong. It was after sunrise when he passed the famous billboard that marked the city limits. A girl in a bikini about to lob a multicoloured beach ball. The ocean, palm trees, white hotels. WELCOME TO MOON BEACH, it said. SUNTRAP OF THE SOUTH. He shook his head. There were more doctors in Moon Beach than anywhere else. More lawyers. More grief therapists. More rest homes. More obituaries. It was a place where people went to die. And yet, year after year, it went on pretending to be a beach resort. He remembered the time someone climbed the billboard scaffolding. They sprayed a line through the word SUN and sprayed the word DEATH above it in black: WELCOME TO MOON BEACH. DEATHTRAP OF THE SOUTH. For several days the famous billboard actually told the truth. It was after Vasco's time, but it was exactly the kind of action he would've taken.

He sensed the first stirrings of rush-hour, bright cars speeding past, as if by starting early and driving fast they could reach the weekend quicker. The wheel gripped tight between his fists, he released a few sarcastic words. He wanted candy now, he wanted to feel it splinter against his teeth, but when he checked his pockets he found nothing. He must've eaten them all. He glanced in anger at the empty wrappers piled on the seat beside him. They shifted, hissed. They looked like scales, he thought. As if, somewhere in the car, there had to be a naked fish.

CITY CENTRE 8.

Steam was lifting from the waterways. The moored launches glared
in the early sun. He waited for a stoplight, then he pushed his glasses up and rolled the bones in the back of his wrists against his eyes.

He stopped at Diana's Gourmet Diner. The air outside the car smelt hot and damp, as if the world was sweating. He clipped his sun lenses over his glasses, sighed as he descended into cool, deep green. He took one step and his leg buckled. Maybe those power-station bastards hadn't broken anything, but Christ, they'd certainly come close.

He pushed through the door and took a stool at the counter. The waitress set a cup of coffee in front of him. He drank it right down. He asked her for a second cup, then he ordered eggs, wheat toast, and orange juice. A rustle next to him and an old guy in baby clothes sat down. Yellow towel shirt with blue stripes. Pale-blue shorts. A gurgle every now and then. These old Moon Beach guys, they were all the same. They'd lost their wives, they drove big cars too slowly, they talked about gambling and operations. His focus shifted from the old guy to the old guy's morning paper: WIDOW SUES FUNERAL PARLOUR. GANG-SLAYING IN RIALTO. HYDRO-CARBONS POLLUTING CITY AIR. It didn't seem like much had changed.

The old guy snapped him a look. Pretty fast, considering. ‘You got a problem?'

‘Just tired, that's all. Been driving all night.'

The old guy looked Jed over. His head flicked up and down a couple of times. It was like someone painting a wall. ‘You're one of them funeral guys,' the old guy said, ‘ent yer?'

‘Used to be.'

‘You ent gonna get me, young fella.'

Jed smiled. ‘I wouldn't count on it.'

‘Oh no, you ent gonna get me. I'm gonna live for ever, I am.'

Jed eyed the old guy carefully. ‘I'd say you've got about another eighteen months.'

It would've been hard to say which way the old guy was going to tip. At last his mouth cracked open and all this dry laughter came rustling past his teeth. Old newspaper, the shed skin of snakes, fallen leaves.

‘Another eighteen months,' the old guy said, ‘I like that. Hey,' and he flapped a hand at the waitress. ‘What's yer name?'

‘Alice.'

‘Alice?'

‘Alice. Like in Wonderland.'

‘You hear what he said, Alice? He said I've got another eighteen months.'

Alice eyed him. ‘I'd say he was being kinda generous.'

The old guy had so much laughter in him, he couldn't get it out. He was looking at Jed and tilting a thumb at Alice and making a noise like a needle stuck at the end of a record.

You ought to be careful, Jed thought, or you're going to do something in those baby clothes of yours.

Turning back to his coffee, he dipped his long neck down to the cup and sipped. He traced the veins on the formica, the dents in the silver sugar bowl. He studied their flaws with silent ferocity. He could feel a smile spreading through his insides. OK, OK, so maybe he was crazy to come back. But being here was such defiance. Just being here.

‘Hey,' the old guy said, ‘you know what day it is today?' Jed had to think. ‘It's Thursday.'

The old guy shook his head like a rattle. ‘Today is the Day of the Dead.'

Jed glanced at the calendar. Christ, the old guy wasn't kidding. He thought of Celia and her omens. If this wasn't an omen, nothing was. The smile reached his face and spread.

He turned and saw the old guy standing at the cash desk with his check. The woman gave the old guy the wrong change and the old guy noticed. The woman had to apologise.

‘That's quite all right,' the old guy said. ‘I'm glad you make mistakes. Know why?'

The woman didn't have a clue.

‘Dead people don't make them.'

The woman just stared at the old guy.

‘Mistakes,' the old guy said. ‘Dead people don't make them. See?' And he turned to Jed and opened hs mouth. And there it was, the needle at the end of the record again. And the woman with a smile like a swallowed yawn.

Jed tipped the rest of his coffee down his throat. He paid up and left. No time for jokes. Leave that to the old guys in baby clothes.

At the first set of lights a black woman pulled alongside him in a yellow Plymouth. A holy bible sat on the dash. A twist of black lace hung from the mirror. She beat him away from the green light, and he saw the sticker on her bumper: BEAM ME UP, JESUS. He'd driven all night, mile after mile sliding beneath his wheels, and now he was back in the place where death was part of the scenery, as much
as houses were, or trees. They spoke a different language in Moon Beach, and he'd forgotten that. It had been six years. He'd have to learn it all over again. Though there'd be some, he was sure, who'd tell him he'd been gone too long.

He thought of driving to his mother's house, but then he decided against it. She was like static. She would fuzz his signals. He drove south instead, over the old swing bridge and down into Rialto. There were more bars open than there used to be, there were more closed churches. He slowed as he passed Mitch's tattoo parlour. It looked closed too. He parked further up the street and walked back. The door was locked. He hoped Mitch hadn't taken off on another trip. He'd kind of been relying on Mitch.

He thought of Sharon next. It was a holiday. She ought to be home. As he drove across the Moon River bridge he couldn't help remembering that night. The cop car in the safety zone. The rain bouncing two feet off the road. Rising back into the air, thick as mist and full of shapes, like raw material for ghosts. Some nights all the bad things networked. Though it was 85 degrees and six years later, he found that he was shivering.

He took the first exit after the bridge. It swept him round in a long curve, then he was under the expressway, heading south. The tenement blocks of Baker Park held the sun on their scarred red-brick façades, their windows dark as blind men's glasses. He'd had this feeling all day. He was doing the rounds, but nobody could see. He was here, but he wasn't here. It was partly the city itself. It seemed to face the ocean, face away from the land. Driving in from the west, you felt as if you were doing something behind its back, as if you were creeping up on it. He'd had the same feeling all day: the city's blind.

He reached the street where Sharon lived. The washeteria on the corner, caged in wire-mesh. The stunted dusty trees. He rang the doorbell. A shadow moved behind the panes of frosted glass. The door opened six inches, shackled by a chain. Sharon eyed him through the gap.

She'd put on weight. He could tell just from the thin slice of her that he could see. Her skin looked drier, dustier than he remembered. The years; but also, he suspected, kids. She'd told him once that she'd had five abortions. You couldn't keep that up. Sooner or later a child would slip through. One that really wanted to.

‘Sharon,' he said. ‘How've you been?'

She was still staring, she was like those windows up the street. ‘My
Christ,' she said. ‘Jed.' Her surprise quickly turned to wariness. ‘You can't stay here.'

‘Who said anything about staying?'

‘It's just it's lunchtime. Max'll be back soon. What are you doing here, anyway?'

‘Max?' he said. ‘That the guy you married?'

‘How do you know that?'

He shrugged.

She unhitched the security chain. The house smelt of pepper and sweat. He remembered her sweet nothings, her sour breath. He remembered her flesh, blue at the edges and flickering, like gas.

She saw him looking beyond her. ‘Don't even think about it.'

‘It's all right,' he said. ‘I just came back to see the place, that's all. Memories, you know. To see you too.' Not the truth, maybe, but lies never hurt.

‘Bullshit. Not a word out of you for six years.'

He smiled. ‘Didn't you get my card?'

‘One card. Right. That made all the difference.'

‘I had to leave town.'

‘Sure.' She fitted one hand on her hip. Copied his smile, made it sarcastic. ‘Sure you did.'

He said nothing.

‘So where've you been?' The way she said it, she was getting ready for a tall story. It didn't matter what he said.

‘In the desert.'

‘Which one?'

He told her. She'd never heard of it.

‘Not a word for six years,' she said. ‘And what about the last time you were here?'

He hadn't seen her for weeks and then he'd gone round at one in the morning. It was only a day or two after Creed had told him what he had to do. He had to take a break from that. He wanted to see her and forget the rest. But she'd been drinking, rye straight up and sweet white wine, and she had started right in on him. He was never around, he lied to her, he didn't care. It was true, most of it, but he hadn't come to her for that. She began to push him in the ehest. He had to shove her away. She fell and hit her head. It didn't knock her out, it just slowed her down a bit. He left soon afterwards. That was the last time.

‘I was edgy that night,' he told her.

‘Edgy?' She looked at him. He'd have to do better than that. But
he couldn't. ‘Yeah, well.' He took a step backwards. ‘Max'll be back soon. I'd better get going.'

She seemed to be about to say something, but he didn't wait. He reached the gate and she still hadn't said it.

‘See you around,' he said.

He saw her in the mirror as he pulled away. She was standing on her doorstep, one hand still welded to her hip.

Driving back across the bridge, he smiled. The way he'd cut that meeting short. He was on the edge now, and when you were on the edge, you had to sharpen up. His thoughts were sparks leaping off a blade.