Trust (26 page)

‘Irreducible.’

‘Irreducible, yeah. So they had to operate. Doesn’t even hurt, not now, anyway. Did before. But I saw my mum after that, after the op, I mean. Was I awake before? Was my mum here?’

‘Aye, she was just leaving when I arrived. She had to go back to the other hospital, where your sister is.’

Stella, not moving. ‘Is she okay? My sister?’

‘She’s in the ICU at St V’s. They’re looking after her, Sebastian.’

Seb kept looking at the guy’s eyes: nice eyes, steady; they’d kept him afloat in the flood.
Keep breathing
, he’d said. Seb took a deep breath in. ‘But Jeejee’s dead. My grandma. Isn’t she?’

Andrew made no reply, but his gaze didn’t waver.

For Seb, the silence confirmed it. ‘No one was helping her,’ he said flatly. ‘That’s how I know. ’Cause that was you at the window, right? And you were trying to talk to her. And after that …’ Seb’s face buckled and a kind of lost crooning sound came wandering from the back of his throat. Andrew sat there like a rock, like a lighthouse, like there was nowhere else he needed to be. ‘My mum’s gonna be messed up,’ Seb whispered eventually, and then for a while he seemed to float away.

A nurse entered, wheeling a trolley stacked with bed linen and cleaning gear. She proceeded to raise the bed next to Seb’s by stepping repeatedly on a foot pedal; with each step it protested loudly,
scree-ah, scree-ah
. They watched as she wiped down the rubber covering of the mattress and every inch of steel rail with disinfectant wipes. She didn’t once look at them.

‘Friendly, some folk,’ said Andrew when she’d left the room. Seb’s gaze flicked back to him.

‘Your accent’s Scottish,’ Seb said. ‘I went to school with a kid from Scotland.’

‘North of England, actually.’

‘Did you already tell me that? Yeah, you did. Hey, I just remembered: I had this dream. You know what I was dreaming?’

Andrew shook his head.

Seb licked his dry lips. ‘Can I have some water?’ When Andrew held the tumbler to Seb’s mouth, some spilled, but it didn’t matter. He felt like all he had to do was open his mouth and streams of words would just spill out, and he could watch them.

‘A volcano … I was dreaming this volcano had erupted, and all this lava was flowing down the street and I was trying to get my stupid sister out of the way. She was standing there with her hands on her hips just refusing to move. I was screaming at her, “Run, run! Get out of the fucking way!” But she wouldn’t. You wanna know
why
? Just because I wanted her to. That’s the only freaking reason. I just …’

The stream of words dried up; his eyes wandered the room, as far as that was possible given that he could barely turn his head. Of the four beds in the room, only one other was occupied. A middle-aged man lay watching the TV suspended from an angled steel stalactite above his bed. The man looked very tired.

‘She is the stubbornest little … face-ache,’ said Seb softly.

‘When I was trying to get you out of the car last night, you didn’t want to leave her. D’ye remember trying to punch me out, Sebastian?’

‘No! Fuck! Did I?’ Seb looked at Andrew, asking if this had really happened. Andrew nodded. ‘Sorry! Must be hard enough being an ambo without some idiot trying to punch you out.’

‘I thought it was very touching, actually.
Ste-lla
, you were yelling. Just like Marlon Brando.
A Streetcar Named Desire
.’

‘I saw that movie,’ Seb said. He felt like he could just float off now, into the cosmic river. ‘He was a knockout, that guy. So fucking hot. Not as hot as Clarence, though.’

‘Is that so?’ said Andrew, leaning back in the chair, resting his jaw in a propped hand. ‘Who’s Clarence, then?’

‘He was my doubles partner. We won everything. We were
more than the sum of our parts
. You know what that means?’

‘Tell me. What’s it mean, Sebastian?’

‘It means we were amazing. Fucking amazing.’ Seb’s sigh was as long and heavy as a steel cable being lowered to the seabed. ‘And now he’s gone.’

‘And where has Clarence gone?’ asked Andrew gently.

‘Hong Kong. His uncle had a massive stroke and now his dad’s gotta … Anyway. He’s not coming back.’

‘You miss him,’ said Andrew. Not a question.

‘Yeah.’ Seb lay his head back, looking up at the bright ceiling lights for a few moments before closing his eyes. ‘He’s beautiful,’ he said simply, and tears leaked out from below his lids. Andrew sat, silently watching.

For a few moments, Seb seemed about to say something more, and then he squinched his eyes hard several times to push the teardrops on their way. ‘This is pretty fucked up, isn’t it?’ He laughed, a short harsh bark.

‘No,’ said Andrew. That was it, just no.

They held each other’s eyes, briefly. Seb gave a big snorting sort of sniff. ‘Anyway, Stella could wake up any minute. Couldn’t she? Maybe she has already. They’re gonna call me …’

He looked toward the door, and, at that moment, as though summoned, a nurse entered the room. But she went straight past Seb and Andrew to the empty bed next to his that had been cleaned and prepped. Behind her came other nurses wheeling a trolley; the young man lying on it gave Seb and Andrew a wave and a woozy smile as he was trundled past. One leg, bruised and stitched and swollen, was enclosed in what looked like a hideous medieval torture device. Seb had a glimpse of flesh pierced by metal rods before a nurse, giving them a brief and businesslike smile, flicked the curtains across. ‘What the fuck?’ he said softly, shocked.

‘Iliazarov apparatus,’ said Andrew in his matter-of-fact drawl. ‘I’d put money on a motorbike somewhere in that picture.’

‘Axillary nerve damage,’ said Seb. The words had just floated into his brain, each one in its bubble, and gone
pop, pop, pop
. ‘That’s what they said about my shoulder. Hey, Andrew, what d’you know about axillary nerve damage?’

‘Not a great deal,’ Andrew replied evenly. ‘Except there’s a lot can be done to repair it, these days.’

‘Yeah?’ said Seb. ‘That’s good.’ Every time Andrew said something, he felt like someone had reached out into the river’s current and steadied him. ‘But my dad’s gonna freak out,’ he said suddenly. ‘Oh, boy. He’s gonna really freak out. My tennis career’s prob’ly over before it’s really gotten started.’

‘I see,’ said Andrew. ‘And what about you, Sebastian? Are you freaked out about your tennis career?’

‘My tennis career.’ Seb stared at him, trying to concentrate. Weird; a big
whoosh
had come out of nowhere, almost swamping him; he was feeling too tired, all of a sudden, to keep swimming. ‘I have no idea,’ he said slowly. ‘I have no idea who I fucking am.’ His eyelids drifted down, fluttered up, drifted down again.

‘Sebastian.’

With a mighty effort, he cranked his eyes half open.

‘I’ve got a shift starting soon,’ Andrew said. ‘So I have to get going now.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Seb murmured.

‘Is it?’

‘Yeah. It’s really good, knowing you’re sitting there.’

Andrew reached out and curled his fingers round Seb’s hand, and held it. Just held it. ‘It’s really good,’ murmured Seb again.

‘I’ll come back, then, if you like. But I don’t know when that — Sebastian, listen: there’s going to be some extreme weather tomorrow. Highest fire danger Victoria’s ever had, they’re saying.’

‘Yeah? But I thought the heatwave was over …’ Seb’s eyes were closed now, his voice drifting.

‘It’s building up again. If it’s bad as they predict, I might not be able to come in for a few days. Till after you’ve gone home.’

‘No. I want to see you again …’

‘Do you? Really?’

‘Yeah … I do …’

‘Right you are then.’ Carefully, Andrew released Seb’s hand, stroking the back of it with the tips of his fingers, twice. ‘You will. Don’t you worry, Marlon. You will.’

TWENTY-FOUR

The instant he pushed clear of the revolving doors Gerry was rocked back on his heels by a wolfish blast that had arrived in New York direct from the Arctic. His face felt like it was being pistol-whipped with icicles, but despite the shock he forged ahead. Anything rather than go back inside that damn conference centre.

Gerry had just delivered his paper,
Mind the Gap! Reconfiguring Interstitial Space in the Public Domain
. His audience, sprinkled across a two hundred and sixty-seat auditorium, had consisted of less than twenty people. Seventeen, to be precise: he’d counted them as he waited to be introduced by a young conference lackey who read stumblingly from a publicity handout and mispronounced his surname – Gerry
Vise
r – twice. ‘Hey, no one walked out,’ said this genius afterward, and Gerry had smiled tightly, preferring to conceal his furious humiliation.

On his way out he passed the crowded bar where one of the giants of architecture was throwing a cocktail party.
That’s
what his session had clashed with. He had an invitation – every single person at the conference had an invitation, to judge by the whooping and hollering crowd – but even though he was in great need of a consoling Scotch, Gerry stalked regally out into the sub-zero blast. In less than a minute his face was aching, right down inside the cheekbones, as he tried unsuccessfully to hail a cab. In imminent danger of being frozen solid if he stood still, he started walking back to the hotel, his unsuitable shoes slipping sickeningly on the ice.
That’d be all I need, to go arse over tit and end up with a fractured skull
.

He’d imagined that winter in Manhattan would be glamorous. He’d indulged, god help him, in fantasies of a scintillating reunion with the lovely Marianne Zavos from the Prague conference of a few years before. Walking arm in arm into the Palm Court at the Plaza, laughing, brushing snowflakes from each other’s hair; holding her hips as he fucked her while looking out at the spire of the Chrysler Building glowing against a steel-grey sky; rocketing her to another yowling climax via the combined pleasures of his cock and a few selected toys from the little bag he always packed for conferences.
Ha!
He might as well have left the toy bag locked up in the filing cabinet back in his office in Melbourne, because Marianne Zavos had said no.
No!
Flashing her wedding ring at him like a crucifix at a vampire, shocked, as though that hot little wanton of Prague had been someone else entirely; as though she hadn’t responded warmly to the friendly email he’d sent her a few months ago. ‘Deceitful bitch,’ he snarled into the unpleasant, humid woolliness of the scarf wrapped across his mouth.

Just like Justine
. Gorgeous, smart, ambitious Justine, whom he had loved to distraction. Yet when he proposed to her – held a bloody diamond ring out to her, sitting in a tiny black box on the palm of his stupid hand – she said she needed to think about it.
Think about it!
Even walking down this freezing Manhattan street, dark already at five o’clock in the afternoon, Gerry grew hot with rage and shame.

Shit, what street’s this?
He blinked hard, slitted eyes watering from the cold, at the sign. Fifth Avenue.
Damn.
He turned around and a guy immediately behind nearly collided with him; they had to grab each other’s arms to prevent a fall. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Gerry said, feeling like a hick. Without a word, the guy manoeuvered away and walked on.
Where’s the bloody hotel?
He spotted it, half a block away, and felt a disproportionate surge of relief. A hot shower before frostbite set in, and a change of clothes. And then that drink.

Half an hour later he was in the bar, warmer, calmer, and halfway through his first Scotch, when a woman walked up and put her glass down on the granite counter beside his.

‘Your paper,’ she said without preamble, ‘was excellent.’

Gerry’s head jerked up. ‘Why, thank you. You – ah, you heard it?’

‘I did, Mr Visser.’ She was about his own age, and as well-maintained: black and silver hair cropped elegantly short, a gym-toned, full-breasted figure. Her black pants and jacket, her sleek silver jewellery, all were understated and expensive.

‘Gerry,’ he told her, half-rising from his bar stool, extending his right hand. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t —’

‘Susanna Delgado,’ she said. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that his wife’s name was Susanna, but — no.

‘That auditorium should have been full,’ she said, sliding her trim backside onto the stool beside his. ‘Their loss.’

‘I didn’t expect much of an audience,’ Gerry shrugged, doing offhand self-deprecation. ‘Who’s heard of some Aussie with a thing for using what’s already there, eh?’

‘
Yet
,’ she appended, and he inclined his head, acknowledging her compliment. She took a sip from her glass, and he noticed that she too was a Scotch drinker, and that she wore no wedding ring. ‘One must make allowances for Americans,’ she said. ‘Despite being so thrilled with themselves for electing Obama, they’re desperately parochial. And New Yorkers, of course, don’t really want to listen to anyone else but themselves. I —’ she tapped her sternum, just below the silver necklace, ‘— am Canadian. And
I
find your ideas extremely interesting.’

They had their second drinks sitting in comfortable leather armchairs in a quieter corner of the bar. Susanna Delgado, he soon learned, was a senior policymaker in the Canadian government’s civic planning authority, whose current brief was to explore means of extending the useful life of aging public buildings – hospitals, prisons, museums and galleries, colleges – thus, the government hoped, saving billions. ‘Your concepts – utilising the interstices, revitalising infrastructure, creating new forms of connection – appear to be a
very
good fit with our project priorities.’

Sleek, alert and intelligent, she put Gerry in mind of a raven. She was clearly a woman of considerable energy and, he suspected, considerable influence. The humiliation of his poorly attended session was already being reconfigured into a very different story. Could that be a bunch of Canadian government commissions for Visser Kanaley he saw on the far horizon?