Sin City (30 page)

“Get a move on, Toomey. There's another flight of stairs yet.” Carole's running now. She's passed the door marked “Fliers”, gone straight up.

“Here we are.” She's stopped.

I can't see any clouds, only still more stairs winding round and round. Perhaps they lead up to the sky.

“Don't go any higher, love. You can see okay from here.”

She's standing by a lift. I didn't know they had one. It comes up through the centre of the curving stairs. Carole's pointing, peering down.

I go and join her. No. It's not a lift, it's more a padded cage, like the one I saw on the television where everyone was falling. A cage with windows in. I look down through the windows. They're still falling.

A man in a flight-suit crashes to the ground. He doesn't fall that far because the cage is rather cramped and all closed in. There isn't any sky, only padded walls. There's a wire grille on the bottom which makes him bounce a bit. The tall man in the tracksuit tries to pull him up, grabs him by one leg. He falls again. He's just a child who hasn't learnt to walk yet and keeps collapsing on his face. Except he's not small, not at all, but very big and clumsy. They're all big and clumsy, the five fliers in the cage. Their suits have swollen up so they have great fat arms and legs, and gas-masks on their faces with iron bars to hold them on.

The man is lying still now, lying in a heap. He may be a woman. It's difficult to tell. They all look just the same, very bulky and puffed up, more like huge great rubber toys than human beings. Their suits are flapping in the wind. The wind is very strong and too loud for them to speak. The man in the tracksuit is making signs to them, stretching out his hands, dashing after them. I think he's getting cross. He's shaking his head, jumping up and down.

The roar is getting louder. I can't seem to block it out, even with my hands across my ears. It's far worse than the plane's roar, impossible to speak. I thought it would be peaceful when you flew: just the brushing of a bird's wing, the breathing of the clouds. I imagined you'd escape the noise of earth, soar right away into quiet and empty space. But here the noise is frightening, booming all around us. Even Carole's got her fingers in her ears.

I turn back to the fliers. Another man is falling now, sprawling on the padded bench which goes right round the cage. It's bright blue like his flight-suit, a horrid plastic blue, not pretty like the sky. The whole cage is lined with plastic. It's scuffed and dirty, even torn in places. There was sky in all the pictures on the notice board downstairs, not plastic or a cage.

“Fliers” is a lie. None of them are flying. They're only toppling down and falling, landing on their heads, bouncing on their bottoms. The wind throws them up, blows them down again. They smash against the sides, thud into the wire. One man turns a somersault, bumps into two others. I can't tell which is which. They're just a tangled pile of bright blue flapping limbs.

Bang! Another fall. That one crashes on his back, doesn't move at all. He may be dead. Carole's laughing. I can hardly hear her laugh. The roar's too loud. She has to shout above it, really yell.

“If that's flying,” she splutters, “I'm Henry VIII. ‘Experience the thrill of sky-diving' – that's what it said. And all you do is nosedive. Or break your bloody neck. Oh, look! He's got her by the seat of her pants.”

The man in charge is holding one of the fliers by her trousers, running round and round with her. He's got his hand right between her legs. You shouldn't touch a girl there. It is a girl. I can see her pigtail jerking in the wind. I had a pigtail once, a very long and thin one. I never had a ribbon on it, only rubber bands. Oh, let her fly, I pray, please let her fly.

The man is still dragging her along, still clinging to her suit. He suddenly lets go, throws her up above him. She's flying. Yes, she's flying, soaring on her own, the pigtail flying with her, streaming out. Oh, please, don't stop, don't stop her. Let the roof open, let her float right through it to the sky. Let her feel the clouds, white and soft as feathers, rushing by her, let her see the face of God. St Joseph, when you meet her, send her back to me with some message, some small present – a scrap of blue, a feather …

She's falling. I shut my eyes, can't look. I feel my stomach fall and smash inside me as I thud down to the floor. Everything is falling – clouds, birds, sky. The world goes black.

When it's grey again, the girl is on her back. She tries to struggle up, feeble arms waving in the air. She flew for just five seconds – five brief seconds, when she had longed and prayed to fly for twenty years.
Fly like a bird
. She was just a fledgling, a clumsy fledgling which hadn't grown its wings yet, falling from its nest.

Carole picks her bag up, buttons up her jacket. “Come on,” she shouts. “It's getting boring. We've got better things to do than watch people falling on their fannies.” She keeps her mouth right close to my ear. Even so, it's hard to hear. “Do you realise, Norah, not a single person's flown yet?”

I'm forced to shout myself. “That girl just did.
She
flew.”

“No, she didn't. She was just blasted up by that propellor thing, and then plonked straight back down again. And Macho Man kept hold of the others. I mean, it's hardly flying if some twelve-stone bully grabs you by an arm or leg and whirls you round his head like a lasso.”

Suddenly, her voice sounds very loud. I jump. They've turned the wind off, so she's shouting over nothing. We stand quite still a moment, listening to the silence. Silence feels quite strange.

“Thank God for that. I was just about to sue them for damage to my eardrums. Oh, look, Norah!”

The big and bulky fliers have all gone thin and limp like burst balloons. It was only the wind which kept them all puffed up. They creep out of the cage, suits flapping now in folds around their feet. Carole checks her watch.

“Is that all the time they get? Five mingy minutes between the lot of them. Thank God we didn't waste our precious money. Gosh! I'm starving. We've missed lunch as well as breakfast which means more cash down the drain. Fancy an ice cream?”

I nod. I should be feeling hungry, but the hole inside is more a sort of pain now. Pain because I didn't fly. No one flew.

The sun glares at me as we walk off down the street. We find an ice cream shop with eighty different flavours. I don't know which to have. I like plain vanilla, but there's nothing plain at all. I hate deciding things. At Belstead, we had to choose our meals the day before, tick a piece of paper with the dinners written on it. It used to take me hours. Sometimes I ticked liver and they gave me cottage pie.

“You choose,” I say to Carole.

I sit down at a table while she queues. You have to queue for everything. She comes back with two spoons and just one glass. The glass is very full. It isn't just ice cream. I can see sponge, as well, and nuts, and some squashy bits of fruit, and they've poured Bisto gravy on the top. Carole bangs the spoons down.

“All that gunge cost extra and I didn't even ask for it. And look at that false bottom on the glass. This place is full of cons.” She picks out half a peach, goes on talking while she chews it. “I mean, I was walking back this morning, starving hungry, when I saw this sign, ‘Free Breakfast'. Well, of course I stopped, went in. Turns out they only serve it between midnight and five a.m. Who'd want breakfast then, for heaven's sake? It wasn't breakfast anyway, just coffee and a doughnut. Then I saw ‘free tee shirt' – charged right in to get you one, but they were only toddlers' sizes, more like dolls' clothes. Hey, Norah …”

“Yes?”

“I'm sorry.”

“What for?” I wouldn't want a tee shirt. I never wear them. They make your chest look rude.

“You know – shouting, sounding off, being such a pain when I got back. I'm horrid sometimes, Norah, hate myself. Even while I'm doing it. I don't know how you stand me. I'm going to change, though. It's New Year's Eve tomorrow and that's the perfect time to change. I've never bothered much with New Year resolutions. But this year – you just wait. I'm giving up shouting, swearing and smoking for a start.”

“Smoking?” She's just bought cigarettes, used the money from the refund.

“Mm.” She puts her spoon down, lights one up. “Well, I'll have to smoke this one last packet, obviously. No point wasting money. And talking of money, that's another resolution. I'm going to make some for myself, not rely on other people's. How about you? Do you make resolutions?”

I never have before, but I try and think of one. I've never smoked and I don't want money because there'd be more things to decide then. I'd love to fly, but now I know I can't. I'd like to be smaller, with tiny hands and feet, but you can't resolve to change your size and shape. You can't resolve a lot of things.

I don't reply. The ice cream is melting. The gravy has gone pink.

“It's important, Norah, don't you see, especially this year. We've got to have new lives. We can't rely on Beechgrove if it's closing. If we both made money somehow, then I wouldn't have to take some rotten boring job or try and manage on the dole, and you wouldn't have to move out into lodgings. We could buy a flat, a nice one, do what
we
want, not what they decide.”

My hand shakes so much, I slop pink all down my skirt. I don't want to buy a flat and I hate to think of lodgings. I don't like change at all

Carole's crunching nuts. “I mean, even that old Reverend on the box said this New Year was special, our Year of Destiny. He could be right, I suppose.”

I say nothing. I thought we'd got our miracles already – Carole back with Victor, me with wings. It's more difficult to hope now, when I feel so sad and clumsy.

“Don't look so tragic, Norah. We're dead lucky, actually. Las Vegas is the one city in the world where you really can make money. I picked up this leaflet in the Hilton. It had a crock of gold on the cover with all this money spilling out, and inside were rows and rows of little photos. They were all the winners, Norah, people who'd won
millions
. Not nobs and snobs and hardened gamblers, just normal sort of people – housewives and shopkeepers and old age pensioners.” She crams her mouth with ice cream, wipes it off her chin. “Some of them were ugly, old and bald or even with buck teeth, but they all had this enormous smile. They'd changed their lives, you see. We've got to do the same. The trouble is we need money to make money and we've only got …” She pauses, checks her purse. “Ten dollars and two cents. That's not enough, not unless we win immediately. Mind you, we've got to get lucky pretty quick. It's New Year's Day on Friday. That leaves tomorrow and this evening. Come on, let's drink to it. New Year, new start. New Norah and new Carole.”

I shiver. It's cold in the café with the sun shut out. “We haven't any drinks.”

“We'll toast it in ice cream then.” She passes me my spoon again. I'd put it down after just two mouthfuls. I still find it hard to eat.

“Dig in. Take that great big strawberry. Go on, Norah, aim high for once.” She loads her own spoon, a pink pool overflowing on the table, clinks it against mine.

I force the strawberry down. It feels too big and scratchy for my throat. “N … New Norah and new Carole,” I repeat.

I don't want her to change.

I don't want anything to change.

“How's everyone feelin'? Is everyone feelin' pretty good? Any winners out there? Did anyone win money today? You, Sir? How much did you win? Right – you can lend me a hundred bucks to pay my speedin' fine.”

The fat man on the stage yelps with laughter, does a little soft-shoe shuffle with the microphone. “Is anyone out there havin' a birthday? What's your name, beautiful? Eunice. Let's give Eunice a big hand. She's twenty-one today.”

Laughter from the crowd now. I laugh myself. Eunice is white-haired. There are quite a lot of women in the audience. They've come for the male strip show which is held after the (female) naked dancing, and before the wet tee shirt competition. Far more men, though – crowds and crowds of fellers packed into the club, thronging round the bar, blocking all the exits, jostling elbows, spilling drinks. There's such a babel from the voices, the whole place sort of roars, as if we're in a dark and murky cave with an underground waterfall thundering down just outside the entrance. It
is
a basement actually, and I feel rather claustrophobic, keep wishing we were sitting nearer a door. There's not a window to be seen, and the only lights are dim red-shaded ones hanging from the low black ceiling which seems to press down down. The fat man on the stage has kept up his patter all the time, screaming through the mike above the uproar, making people laugh, telling dirty jokes. He's at it now.

“A guy walked into a whorehouse and said to the Madam, ‘I'll give you a hundred bucks for the worst bit of ass you got in the house. No, I'm not horny, I'm homesick.'”

They love it. I'm not sure I do. I feel a bit uncomfortable and some of the jokes are really crude. I'm only glad Norah isn't here. She'd be deeply shocked – if she even understood them, which I doubt. Anyway, she'd have hated all the noise. The music is so loud it's hard to talk at all. I've mouthed a few things to Angelique who's shouted back or nudged me if a famous face came in. I'm really thrilled I've met her. She's English, the first English person we've seen so far, amazingly. She's not a tourist – she lives here now. She came over for a holiday and stayed. Her story's like a fairy-tale. She was plain Angie Evans back in England, vegetating in a neo-Tudor semi in Watford with her widowed mother and a handicapped elder brother; worked nine to five as a clerk in an insurance office. Now she's Angelique, drives her own Mercedes with AE on the numberplate, owns fifty pairs of shoes. (
Fifty
. She told me. She wasn't boasting. Her wardrobe's so big it's like a separate room.) She got her break by winning an amateur nude dance contest. She'd never even danced before, but it was how she took her clothes off. I was a bit put out at first when she said it just like that, but there's nothing crude about her. In fact, she's obviously refined and very elegant, with high cheekbones and the sort of auburn hair you call Titian, rather than common red or ginger, and very cool grey eyes. She's twenty-three – that's only five years older than I am, yet she's so stylish and sophisticated, she makes me feel as if I've only just crawled out of my eggshell and am still wet behind the ears.