He didn’t realise she had a limp until they went out after work one day. Creed was out of town. He’d flown north for an international convention. Jed had a free night and no plans. Carol suggested a walk on the pier.
At first he thought her heel had snapped or something. Then she looked up into his eyes and told him that one of her legs was shorter than the other, and she was sorry if it embarrassed him. She’d had three operations, she said, all without success. Her father had taken her to specialists, physiotherapists, even a hypnotist once, but there was nothing anyone could do. Jed’s eyes scanned the faces of passing lovers, scanned the dark ocean beyond, but he was listening. He was definitely listening. It was like hearing a story about himself. Like looking at himself in one of those distorting mirrors. It was like some strange form of vanity. He recognised exactly what she was talking about. She mistook his silence for compassion, and tightened her grip on his upper arm.
They reached the end of the pier. It was a clear night. He could just make out a few faint lights in the distance. Those lights had names: Angel Meadows, Coral Pastures, Heaven Sound. The ocean graveyards, twelve miles out.
Carol shivered. ‘How do you like working for Creed?’
‘I like it,’ Jed said.
‘He scares me.’ She saw Jed’s face. ‘I know. I’m stupid.’ She shook herself, and turned her back on the ocean. ‘What about a drink?’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’ She pointed to the sign they were standing under. ‘The Starlite Bar.’
She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, so she was leaning away from him, and her lips tipped upwards, they were so red and stitched in the white light of the naked bulbs that looped above their heads, they were the only colour in her face, but he looked away, it wasn’t embarrassment he felt, it was a kind of tortured fascination, but he didn’t want to kiss her, or even touch her, it would’ve felt like incest.
‘Let’s have two drinks,’ she said, ‘or maybe three.’
He smiled. She was making light of a moment that had been a risk for her. He took her arm and lowered his voice. ‘You forgot. I don’t drink.’
‘I never knew.’
He told her about the Towers of Remembrance. Thirteen floors up, misty plastic tacked over broken glass. Flap, flap, flap in the wind all night. Dreams where the skin was lifting off your bones. Ghosts above and ghosts below. He told her how he’d lost his seventeenth year completely. How the Towers of Remembrance became the Towers of Oblivion. A mixture of vodka, speed and glue. He’d been down and through and out the other side. He wasn’t interested in losing control any more. He wanted a mind that was sharp the way a diamond cuts glass. He drank soda now and ate candy, and that was it.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Your pockets crackle when you move.’
He laughed.
‘Coca-Cola,’ she said. ‘You can drink Coca-Cola.’ There was a power-surge behind her eyes, as if the voltage had increased. ‘It’s supposed to be very good here.’
They walked into the brash red and chrome of the Starlite Bar. Someone was playing an electric organ, and old couples twirled on a horseshoe of polished wood. He ordered a gin and tonic for her and a Coke for himself. They sat in a booth.
‘How come I never noticed before?’ he asked her. ‘That you’ve got a limp.’
She grinned. ‘Special shoes.’
‘So how come you’re not wearing them now?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged, sipped at her drink. ‘I don’t see why I should hide it all the time.’
Halfway through the second drink she said, ‘Do you want to look at my leg?’
A wave of heat rose through him. He glanced round.
‘You want to, don’t you? I can tell.’ And, lifting an inch off the seat, she eased her black tights down, so her legs were bare. Her right knee was ringed with scar tissue. It looked like a piece of red barbed wire.
‘Can I touch it?’
She nodded, her lips tight.
It felt like dried glue. Taking his finger away again, but still looking, he said, ‘They really fucked it up, didn’t they?’ but the way he said it, he might’ve been paying the surgeons a compliment.
She looked at it dispassionately, as if it was a ring on her finger, a ring she was trying on, a ring she might or might not buy. ‘I think it’s because they always cut in the same place.’ She emptied her glass. Ice-cubes knocked against her teeth.
‘They’ve tried to fix it three times,’ she said, ‘but I think they’ve pretty much given up now.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘You told me.’
During the third drink she cried.
He dropped her at the taxi-stand outside Belgrano’s. She lived on the west shore, over the harbour bridge, and he had to drive east. She stood on the sidewalk, her wrists pressed tight against her thighs. She looked like a child, lost or shy.
He leaned across the passenger seat and looked up at her. ‘You going to be all right?’
A sniff, a nod.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He watched her limp towards a taxi, then he shifted into DRIVE and pulled away.
On his way home he had to stop for gas. As he was paying he noticed someone wheeling a Harley into the yellow light of the pumps. The owner of the bike had a pigtail and a black leather jacket with a death’s-head on the back. He couldn’t see the face, but he thought he recognised the jacket. He pocketed his change and walked over.
‘Mitch. That you?’
Mitch stared at him.
‘I came into your tattoo place once. With Vasco. It was years ago.’
Now Mitch’s face tipped back. ‘Fuck me, the blackmailer.’ His eyes travelled the length of Jed. First down, then up. ‘What’s the fancy dress?’
Jed grinned. ‘I’m driving for the Paradise Corporation.’
‘Same place Vasco works, isn’t it?’
‘He got me the job.’
Mitch had this way of squinting at you, as if he was looking directly into bright sunlight, as if he was having his picture taken. It was hard to tell exactly what it meant.
‘This is a bit out of your way, isn’t it?’ Jed said.
Mitch scowled. ‘Bike’s fucked.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. Leave it here.’
‘You want a ride home?’
Mitch looked at his boots. They were smeared in grease and spilt gas. A breeze shuffled through the nearby palms. ‘You could do that?’
‘Sure.’
Mitch wheeled his bike to the back of the gas station and chained it to some railings. When he came back, Jed said, ‘You still living in the same place?’
‘I moved.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Rialto.’
Rialto was out by the river. North of Mangrove, west too. It would have taken anyone else half an hour, but Jed knew the shortcuts. He drove it in fifteen minutes. If Mitch was impressed, he didn’t let on.
As they turned on to Rialto Parkway, Mitch pointed through the windshield. ‘There it is.’
Mitch was still using the sign he’d used on Central Avenue all those years ago, the old gold sign that made Jed think of circuses. He pulled up outside, left the engine running.
Mitch shook his hand and opened the door. ‘Come round for a beer sometime. You know where I am.’
When Jed drove into the parking-lot behind the Mortlake office the next morning, Vasco was standing on the asphalt, hands in his pockets, black hair shiny as a polished shoe, the beginning of a wide grin on his face.
Jed leaned out of the window. ‘What’s so funny, Vasco?’