Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

Jed moved that same week. To reach his new apartment you had to use the old tradesmen’s entrance: past the service elevator, down four flights of stairs, along a corridor with a linoleum floor. The basement of the Palace was a lost kingdom of storerooms, washrooms and boiler-rooms. Fat grey pipes hugging the ceilings, dull yellow walls. The air smelt of lagging, paint, damp. And also, ever so faintly, and inexplicably, of marzipan. In the end you came to a door that said (and this was equally inexplicable) 3D. There was no 3C and no 3E. There wasn’t even a 3 A. 3D was unique and without context. It was another dimension. It was Jed’s new home.

There were two rooms, both painted a tired pale-green. There was a bed, a TV, a phone. There was air-conditioning. That was about it. If you parted the net curtains and peered sideways and upwards you could see one tiny piece of bright blue sky, but you might pull a muscle doing it. A constant clash and tinkle came from the kitchens across the courtyard, like the percussion section of an orchestra from hell. At night the boiler took over, roaring and trembling until dawn. During his first week in the Palace he hardly slept.

It was during the second week that Carol asked him to dinner at her parents’ place. As the taxi moved down off the harbour bridge and into the suburb of Paradise, he remembered what Vasco had said, and turned to her.

‘Your father,’ he said, ‘is he really the chairman?’

Carol looked embarrassed. ‘Yes.’

He sat back. Jesus. So her father really was the chairman. Her father was Sir Charles Dobson.

‘Why?’ Carol said. ‘Didn’t you know?’

‘No, not really. Vasco said something about it, but I didn’t believe him.’

‘I thought everyone knew.’ And she gave him a smile that resembled gratitude. It was as if, in not knowing, he’d paid her a great compliment.

Sir Charles and Lady Dobson lived on Pacific Drive, a road that wound its way through the canyons, then doubled back towards the ocean to link, eventually, with the South Coast Expressway. The house was one of the white, wedding-cake mansions in the 10,000-block, high wrought-iron gates and video security, and just the hills rising in silence behind.

Jed paid the taxi and stood still. You needed millions to breathe this air. This air exactly, right here. Millions. And suddenly he took the rumours and put them on like a coat. Lifted and dropped his shoulders a few times, he’d seen people do it when they tried on clothes in stores. Not a bad fit. Maybe he really was a cunning son of a bitch, just like Vasco said he was. Certainly he was thinking all those thoughts. Jed Morgan, he was thinking. Chairman.

Dinner was plate after plate of food he’d hardly ever set eyes on, let alone eaten: caviar, bortsch, salmon, duck. And then, as if that wasn’t indigestible enough, the conversation turned to the subject of advertising. The new Paradise Corporation commercial had just aired the previous night. Jed had seen it. It opened with a black screen and a voice that said, ‘This is probably the most frightening place in the world.’ It pulled back slowly to reveal a fringe of green around the black. You were looking into an open grave. The voice went on to say that, when you were faced with something as frightening as death, you needed the right people around you, and the right people were the Paradise Corporation etc. etc. One of the papers had attacked the commercial for being too emotive. People at the dinner table were springing to the commercial’s defence, using words like ‘honest’ and ‘bold’.

‘Well,’ Jed said, speaking up for the first time, ‘at least there weren’t any tolling bells in it.’ All the talk around him suddenly subsided; he felt strangely shipwrecked in the silence. ‘I used to work on commercials for funeral parlours,’ he went on. ‘I used to think that if I heard one more tolling bell, I’d go out of my mind.’

After the laughter had died away, he told a story about one particular commercial that he’d worked on. It was a testimonial for a funeral parlour which had dealt with the victims of a forest fire. He needed the sound of a forest fire running under the voice-track, but he couldn’t find the effect on file. It was seven at night and the commercial had to be presented at breakfast the next day. In the end he had no choice. He had to create the effect himself.

‘How did you do that?’ Lady Dobson asked.

‘I’ll show you,’ Jed said, ‘but I need absolute silence.’

Out of his left pocket he produced a handful of candy-wrappers and, during the hush that followed, he created a forest fire for the Dobsons and their guests in the Dobson’s very own dining-room.

It was a great success.

‘And these are only Liquorice Whirls,’ he said. ‘In those days I was eating Almond Toffee Creams and they came in much cracklier paper.’

Either Sir Charles had forgotten what Jed did, or else nobody had bothered to tell him, because he now leaned forwards and, impressed, it seemed, by Jed’s ingenuity and verve, said, ‘Perhaps, young man, you should come and work for me.’

All eyes locked on Jed.

He waited three seconds. You have to time things.

‘But Sir Charles,’ he said, ‘I already do.’

He looked round. People were weeping with laughter. He caught Carol’s eye, and winked. His skin had picked up a glow from the lilies on the table. The candlelight had taken his cheap suit and made it over in some priceless fabric. The vintage wine had anointed his tongue with new and seductive language. He could do no wrong. When the meal was over, Sir Charles escorted him into the library.

He watched Sir Charles cut the tip off his cigar. Being old had done something to Sir Charles’s face, something that being poor sometimes did. It had sucked the colour out. Eyes, hair, skin: all different shades of grey and white. Distinguished, yes. But colourless. And cheeks with folds in them, like old wallets. He wondered how much Sir Charles was worth.

But now the cigar was lit and, turning to Jed, Sir Charles spoke through billowing smoke. ‘So who exactly do you work for?’

‘I work for Mr Creed. I’m his driver.’

Maybe it was only a coincidence but, as soon as Jed pronounced the name of his employer, the cigar fell from Sir Charles’s fingers. It bounced on the carpet, shedding chunks of red-hot ash.

‘God-DAMN.’ Sir Charles spread his legs and stooped. He flicked the ash towards the fireplace with the back of his hand. Then he stuck the cigar between his teeth and slowly sucked the life back into it.

‘Let me ask you something, Jed,’ he said, when the smoke was billowing once more. ‘Have you ever been to head office?’

‘I have, yes.’

‘What did you think of it?’

The head office of the Paradise Corporation, as Sir Charles knew perfectly well, was just about the most famous building in the city. Built entirely of black glass, it marked the beginning of what was known as Death Row, a stretch of downtown First Avenue where most of the big funeral parlours had their offices. All night long lights burned in the central elevator shaft and in the windows of the twenty-fifth floor. The result was a white cross that stood out among the familiar neon logos of airlines and oil companies. The cross was a landmark. You could even buy postcards of it. Jed had only been inside the building once, and all he could remember was the angel. She was part sculpture, part fountain. Her head and body were metal and her wings were water, water that was forced through holes in her back and lit from beneath so it looked solid, like glass. He remembered the hiss of those wings, the lick and swish of revolving doors, the warble of phones. All tricks a hypnotist might use. Forget your loss. Forget your grief. He remembered drifting, drifting close to sleep.