Лиана Мориарти - Nine Perfect Strangers

“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty! Relax! Excellent!”

Heather collapsed onto her stomach and looked up. Masha had pressed her face so close to the screen that all they could see was a magnified image of her nose, mouth, and chin.

“I’m just wondering,” said the disembodied mouth. “Can you smell it yet?”

It was Napoleon who answered in the calm, gentle voice he would use for a toddler. “Smell what, Masha?”

“The smoke.”

68

Tony

The screen turned to static but Masha’s voice continued to ring through the room.

“Deep transformation is possible but you must detach from your beliefs and assumptions !”

“I can smell smoke,” said Zoe, her face white.

“That’s right, Zoe, you can smell smoke, for this house, my house, is burning to the ground as we speak,” said Masha. “Possessions mean nothing! Will you rise from the ashes? Remember, Buddha says, ‘No one saves us but ourselves!’”

“Look,” whispered Frances.

Wisps of black smoke drifted sinuously beneath the locked heavy oak door.

“Let us out!” Jessica screamed so loudly her voice turned hoarse. “Can you hear me, Masha? You let us out right now!”

The screen turned black.

Masha’s absence was now as terrifying as her presence.

“We need to block that doorway,” said Tony, but Heather and Napoleon were way ahead of him, returning from the bathroom carrying dripping-wet towels that they were rolling into tight cylinders, as if this was their job, as if they’d been expecting exactly this situation.

As they got to the door the volume of smoke increased suddenly and frighteningly, pouring into the room like water. People began to cough. Tony’s chest tightened.

“Everybody get back!” shouted Napoleon as he and Heather shoved the rolled-up towels between the door and the floor, forming a tight seal.

The low level of claustrophobia Tony had been experiencing ever since they first discovered the locked door threatened to turn into full-blown panic. He felt his breathing become ragged. Oh God, he was going to lose it in front of all these people. He had no job to do. He couldn’t even put the towels at the door because Heather and Napoleon were already doing it. He couldn’t help. He couldn’t kick down that door because it opened inward. He couldn’t fight anyone. He couldn’t do a damned thing.

He coughed so violently his eyes filled with tears.

Frances grabbed his hand and pulled. “Get away from the door.”

He let her pull him back. She didn’t let go of his hand. He didn’t let go of hers.

Everyone huddled at the point in the room furthest away from the door.

Napoleon and Heather came and stood with them, their eyes already bloodshot from smoke. Napoleon pulled Zoe close to him and she buried her face in his shirt. “The door didn’t feel hot,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”

“I think I can hear it,” said Carmel. “I can hear the fire.”

They all went quiet. It sounded at first like heavy settled rain, but it wasn’t rain; it was the unmistakable crackle of flames.

Something heavy and huge crashed to the ground above them. A wall? There was a dramatic whoosh of air, like wind in a storm, and then the flames grew louder.

Jessica made a sound.

“Are we all going to die down here?” asked Zoe. She looked up at her father with disbelief. “Is she seriously going to let us die?”

“Certainly not,” said Napoleon, with such matter-of-fact grown-up assurance Tony wanted to believe Napoleon had special knowledge, except that Tony was a grown-up too, and he knew better.

“We’ll all put wet towels over our heads and faces to protect us from smoke inhalation,” said Heather. “Then we’ll just wait this thing out.”

She sounded as calm and assured as her husband. Maybe Tony would be the same if one of his kids or grandkids were here.

He thought of his children. They would grieve for him. Yes, of course his children would grieve for him. They wouldn’t be ready to lose him, even though he didn’t see them that often these days. This knowledge felt like a surprise, as if he’d spent the last few years pretending his children didn’t love him, when he knew they loved their dad, for Christ’s sake. He knew that. Late last year, Will forgot about the time difference and rang in the middle of the night from Holland to tell him about his latest promotion at work. “Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to tell you first.” Thirty years old and he still wanted his dad’s praise. According to Mimi, James was always posting pictures from Tony’s football career online. “He shows off about you,” Mimi said, rolling her eyes. “Exploits your fame to pick up girls.” Then there was Mimi herself, his baby, bustling about his house, setting things right. Every time she broke up with another dickhead she turned up at his house to “give him a hand.” She couldn’t lose her dad right now, when she was still dating dickheads.

He wasn’t ready to die. Fifty-six years wasn’t long enough. His life felt suddenly incredibly rich and abundant with possibility. He wanted to repaint the house, get another dog, a puppy; it wouldn’t be betraying Banjo to get a puppy. He always got another puppy in the end. He wanted to go to the beach, eat a big breakfast at the café down the road while he read the paper, listen to music—it was like he’d forgotten music existed! He wanted to travel to Holland and see his granddaughter perform in one of those stupid Irish dancing competitions.

He looked at Carmel, who he had written off as a kooky intellectual because of her glasses. He’d asked her how she came to teach English to refugees and she explained that her dad was a refugee from Romania back in the fifties and a next-door neighbor took it upon herself to teach him English. “My dad didn’t have any aptitude for languages,” said Carmel. “And he’s very impatient when he feels insecure. It would have been a tough slog. So my sister and I both teach English as a second language now. To honor Auntie Pat.”

Who the fuck did Tony honor? Who the fuck did Tony help out? He didn’t even give back to the sport that had given him so much joy. Mimi had been at him for ages to coach a local team of kids. “You might even enjoy it,” she said. Why had he been so against the idea? Now he couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than standing on a field in the sunlight teaching kids to see the music and poetry of football.

He met the frightened eyes of the woman whose hand he still held. She was as nutty as a fruitcake, talked too much, had clearly never seen an AFL game in her life. She wrote romance books for a living. Tony hadn’t read a novel since high school. They had nothing in common.

He didn’t want to die.

He wanted to take her out for a drink.

69

Frances

The nine guests huddled in the furthest corner of the yoga and meditation studio, wet towels draped over their heads and shoulders, while Tranquillum House burned to the ground.

Frances listened to the sound of the hungry flames and wondered if the crash she’d just heard was that beautiful staircase. She remembered how Yao had said on that first day, “We won’t sink, Frances!” and imagined ripples of fire consuming that beautiful wood.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” murmured Jessica into her knees, over and over. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

Frances wouldn’t have picked Jessica as a believer, but maybe she wasn’t, because she couldn’t seem to get any further than “hallowed be thy name.”

Frances, who had been brought up Anglican but lost religion some- time back in the late eighties, thought it might not be good manners to pray for deliverance right now, when she hadn’t even said thank you for so long. God might have appreciated a thank you card over the years.