Beyond Carousel (8 page)

The morning was blustery hot with the faint smell of bushfire. The Finns and I had been up for hours. Carrying out our routines of stretching, eating and washing the best that we could. The warehouse looked even more dismal in daylight. Like the worst sharehouse you can imagine, without any walls to shelter the mess. Molly, Joseph and co lay comatose throughout the space. I looked over at Molly's small, mousey face and wondered what filled her dreams. Her parents' inner-city townhouse. A full fridge and endless wi-fi. The basics of life sorted so that she was free to simply exist and be the artist she wanted to be. Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe she had arrived in the place she had always dreamt of. A society where anarchy reigns and self-expression is regarded above all else.

Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that Molly needed rescuing. It didn't seem possible that someone could be so unaffected by such a monumental shift in the world. And Molly wasn't in denial. In a way, she and
the band were more accepting of what was happening than anyone we had met. I felt a weird desire to be there when she finally succumbed. To offer her a shoulder and shelter from the inevitable floodlight of reality. To ignore myself because she was pretty and in a band and somehow these things made it justifiable. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be about me, rather than Molly or anybody else.

When she and the others still hadn't risen by midmorning, the Finns and I gathered out the front to debrief.

‘There's no point in waiting around,' said Taylor.

Lizzy and I looked at her.

‘You think they will be okay?' asked Lizzy.

‘They have up until now,' replied Taylor.

We stood in some weighty silence. None of us felt great about the situation.

‘Look, they need to get their shit together, but I don't see how we can really help with that,' said Taylor.

‘We could clean the place up. Try to fix the plumbing. Put in a garden or something,' said Lizzy.

She didn't sound overly keen.

‘It would be back looking like this in a week,' said Taylor.

‘Did they mention the Curator?' I asked. ‘Maybe he checks in on them.'

Taylor shook her head.

Lizzy sighed. ‘So what do we do?'

‘We can't take them with us. They wouldn't last a day in this weather,' said Taylor. ‘Plus we don't even really know if where we're going will be any better.'

‘It couldn't be much worse, could it?' said Lizzy in a mini stand-off.

I looked out at the dusty, barren street.

‘I don't think they want to come with us anyway,' I said.

The Finns looked at me.

‘What did she say to you?' asked Taylor.

‘Nothing really,' I replied. ‘I just don't think they care about growing a garden or living somewhere better. They want other things. Cred or status or something.'

‘To be famous, but still stay unknown,' said Lizzy.

Taylor and I nodded. It was true. They were hipster kids trapped in a bizarre ideology where success held a delicate line on the scale of popularity. You had to creep up on it, but never tip over into the mainstream. To be known was to be labelled, and to them to be labelled was to die.

Taylor and Lizzy hovered in silence and waited, Chess restless by Lizzy's side. It seemed to be up to me to make the decision.

‘Let's get out of here,' I said.

The Finns nodded and Lizzy put a hand on my shoulder.

‘We'll leave our food for them,' said Taylor. ‘It will keep them off the streets for a while.'

Lizzy and I agreed and the three of us emptied our bags and left a pile of supplies inside the door for them. Before we left I tore out the pages I had written about the band – actually more so about Molly – the night before, and left them with the food. They read like a review of her and her music and I thought there was at least a chance that it would offer the kind of validation she could stomach. At the top I wrote,
On Molly – of Kink & Kink
.

The suburbs changed not long after we left. As if the Kink & Kink warehouse was the final marker on Perth's outer suburbs. Cautiously we shifted ahead into new ground. There was a swampy nature reserve to the north of us. The bush looked thick and uninhabited. Probably full of Bulls. We skirted around it and got a glimpse of some towers that looked like they might have been part of the airport. Lizzy ignored them and kept on without a fuss. It was hard to tell how much she was putting her sister first in this venture to the city. For Lizzy the airport, operational or not, had always held the strongest link to home. Now we were bypassing it for the second time with no real plan to return.

By lunchtime we hit another highway, this one bordered by airport hotels and rental car outlets. It was ghostly and exposed. Rather than walk along it we crossed over to some small streets that ran parallel and followed the dirty green signs that now pointed us back southward to the city.

‘Is that like the main river?' asked Taylor.

‘Yeah,' I replied, and followed her gaze toward the Swan.

Pockets of shimmering water broke through the trees and houses to the west of us.

‘Are there many bridges?' asked Taylor.

I hadn't really thought about bridges.

‘I know there are some closer to the city,' I replied.

Taylor looked at me for a moment, then nodded.

We kept onward between the river and the highway and at dusk we came across a racetrack. We walked our bikes through the patchy, overgrown grass of the track, past a series of windblown marquees and an ageing grandstand. The whole place felt sad and not part of a world just gone, but something of another age entirely. Where people rode horses in great circles so that others could dress up, drink and trade money.

‘Old World,' said Lizzy.

I nodded. It was the term we had started using for places like this that seemed totally normal just years ago, but now felt somehow ancient and strange.

No breeze had come that afternoon and the night felt as hot as the day. We slept out under a skewered marquee and woke with mosquito bites spread dangerously across our arms and legs. We were inadvertently playing a numbers game where the more bites meant the more chance of a virus. No big deal in our previous lives, but out here things might be different.

Taylor hovered restlessly as Lizzy and I yawned and fumbled about with breakfast. She was eager to keep moving. As if every minute that passed lessened her chances of finding her painter. Maybe the heat was slowing us down. Maybe Perth was bigger and more sprawling than I remembered. Either way, our progress was slow. We trudged our way forward, then spent the night in a soulless, box-like motel shouting
Free Foxtel
on every surface. I didn't feel so bad kicking our way into one of these places. Not like somebody's house or business. But it was quiet and eerie as hell. We were desperate for our own space, but too scared to spread out into separate rooms. The beds were still made but covered with dust, so we stripped them back and started over with sheets from a housekeeping trolley. Not that we needed any. It was muggy and unsettled outside, and breathless in.

We hadn't found anywhere with power or running water since the warehouse. Lizzy and I had climbed to the top of the motel to see if there were any pockets of light in the surrounding suburbs. The view wasn't exactly panoramic, and we found nothing. An Artist-free zone.

Still the highway kept on southward. Occasionally we would get a glimpse across the river to the city. At the conclusion of each lightshow, it had remained black and mysterious. No towers of light or giant mining logos. But now, during daylight, it seemed grey and steadfast, and no different to any other day.

The only stores we passed were service stations, where cars were still attached to bowsers. We pillaged tepid water, Gatorade and whatever else we could stomach without cramping too badly.

As the sun finally dipped into a murky bank of storm clouds we settled on a narrow high-rise of self-contained apartments peering east or west, depending on your budget. I volunteered for the sofa, hoping that the Finns would crash out early in the bedrooms and I could sit up and write. Taylor stayed up for a while and the two of us played Bullshit by torchlight with a deck of cards from the bedside table. At first it felt forced but after a few hands we got into it and had a couple of laughs.

Taylor gathered the cards for one final hand. She started working away on her longwinded shuffling routine.

‘How was it hooking up with a girl again after all this time?' she asked.

I hadn't spoken to either of the Finns about making out with Molly, but somehow, as always, they seemed to know everything about me.

‘It was weird, mostly,' I replied.

Taylor nodded. ‘It's been almost two years. That makes sense,' she replied.

‘Actually a little while before that,' I replied, for some fucking reason.

‘Oh really? How come?' she asked.

‘I don't know. Bad timing, maybe,' I replied. ‘I guess I
was kind of in a rut before Carousel.'

‘Not writing much?' she asked.

I shrugged. I hadn't been writing at all.

‘I finished uni and was just working. Not going out much,' I replied.

‘Because of that Heather girl?' she asked.

‘Maybe. I haven't really thought about it.'

Taylor rolled her eyes.

‘What?' I asked.

‘Come on. We were stuck in a mall with nothing to do for like forever. Don't tell me you didn't rehash every single tiny event in your life a thousand times over,' said Taylor.

‘Nope. That must just be you I guess,' I replied.

‘Fuck off, Nox.'

We both smiled and Taylor was finally ready to deal the cards.

‘What about you and this painter girl?' I asked, without thinking.

Taylor looked at me carefully.

‘Do you think we might run into her somewhere out here?' I backtracked.

‘I don't know,' replied Taylor, casually. ‘Tommy said the more time that passes, the less people he sees,' said Taylor.

‘What do you think is happening to everyone?' I asked, slightly alarmed.

Taylor shrugged.

‘It took us so long to get out of Carousel,' said Taylor. ‘For a while people were probably looking around, trying to figure out what the hell happened. But eventually people start to accept things. They settle down and find a place in the world. Whatever the hell it looks like.'

I looked at her. Taylor was a realist and right on the mark with most things. Probably this, too.

‘Do you think we'll have to do that one day?' I asked.

‘Probably,' she sighed.

‘Where would you want to live?' I asked.

Taylor looked through her cards and thought about it. ‘The beaches here are pretty awesome, yeah?' she asked.

‘I guess,' I said.

‘So we'll find a house right out front of the best one. Wire up some solar panels. Grow a garden. Teach ourselves how to surf,' said Taylor.

I felt like crying and had no idea why. Taylor looked at me curiously.

‘Yeah?' she asked.

‘Yeah. Totally,' I replied.

We finished the game and Taylor left for bed.

I had willed myself awake and wrote steadily for an hour or two about some of the things we had seen. The real Stuart hovered at my shoulder with a steady critique of every line. Was he even a writer? I hoped he was a weirdo puppeteer or something as opposed to some
world-famous novelist that I had cheated out of his place on the ark.

At some point I had stopped writing and fallen asleep. I woke to Chess nuzzling his wet nose in at the base of my neck.

‘Chess!' whispered Lizzy harshly.

I opened my eyes to find her huddled by the glass door to the balcony. Lightning licked across the hills in the distance. Chess dipped his head and padded back over to join her.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The room was pitch-dark. Lizzy and Chess were silhouetted by a weird purple glow somewhere to the east. It could have been the rising sun, but it felt too early for that. I pulled on a hoodie and joined them on the floor. Lizzy gave me a brief smile and turned back to catch the flickers of lightning. The thunder was soft, but constant. Storms seemed to run the entire length of the hills.

It was hard not to think of Rocky. He and Lizzy used to love watching lightning. A storm in the hills had been the last thing he saw in Carousel. Now that we were out in the world we had discovered that there was a name for people like me and Rocky. Patrons. Sheltered not by intention, but by fate. The old world had been cruel to Rocky, and the new one not much better. I felt an anger rising that for once I didn't feel like swallowing.

‘Rocky would have loved this one,' whispered Lizzy.

Lightning pulsed across her delicate, elven face.

‘I fucking hate the Curator,' I replied.

Lizzy looked at me, surprised.

‘Don't you?' I asked.

Lizzy shrugged. ‘He's probably just a regular dude.'

‘That can make the population of the world disappear?' I replied.

She shrugged again.

‘I just mean that people project a lot of shit onto famous people. In their minds they twist them from what they are, into what they need them to be. The answer to why life is so hard or weird or random,' said Lizzy.

I turned back out to the lightning, unconvinced.

‘You know why bands never reply to fan mail?' she asked.

‘Because there's so much of it?' I replied.

‘Well, yeah. But also, reading too much of that stuff will make you crazy,' said Lizzy. ‘Everyone has their take on who you are. What your songs are about. How you performed. You start to second-guess yourself.
Maybe I am like that. Maybe that song is about something else
. It's a fucking identity crisis waiting to happen.'

‘You think the Curator has an identity crisis?' I asked.