Anna had kept her eye on the ball: ‘What’s up on the fifth floor?’
Runner took a deep breath and sighed, as if to say that these two were just not going to get it. When she spoke again, however, there was a green blade of hope in her voice: ‘Have you ever heard of the Lacuna Cabal?’
‘No.’
‘Well … it’s … a very exclusive … book club, and I’m sure … ’
Du, who was a devoted student of every mood that flickered across Anna’s face, here observed her try to imagine the possibility of a book club on the fifth floor of her Jacob Lighter Building.
‘ … and I’m sure it doesn’t interest you, but there are six women up there right now who at this moment are finishing up the last book and are about to launch into proposals for the next, at which point I have to make an entrance.’
Anna’s instinct of ownership kicked in. ‘But this is my building!’
‘I see you fail to see the bigger picture.’
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘I tell you, I need to get upstairs!’
‘I don’t care.’
Du recognised the expression that now came over Runner’s face. It allied him to her, at least for the moment, fellow recipient of the chill wind. The girl saw first that Anna didn’t care, and then she saw that, really, really, she didn’t care. It was an obstacle. It was a challenge. Runner launched in, like Churchill convincing an island to make war.
‘Kid,’ she said, addressing Anna, for how else do you address someone young in years who has revealed herself to be as jaded as a dead thing, except to appeal to the part of her that is still young, the bright shiny package that contains her, her skin? ‘Kid,’ she called her, and went on to ask her if she’d ever felt anything for a cause that was bigger than herself, if she’d ever wanted to throw herself behind such a cause, for the sheer bumfuckery of it, if she’d ever been curious about …
Anna’s uppercut in the microsecond’s lull: ‘I don’t care.’
‘Please,’ Runner said. ‘Those girls up there don’t expect to ever be caught by anything even remotely resembling the owner of a building. You’re missing a great opportunity here, for, believe me, they are far, far more deserving of your goddess-like wrath than I … ’
‘I don’t c –’ Anna had not expected that. Goddess-like wrath? For one moment she didn’t speak. And then another. Dumuzi could see that the broken-legged girl had hit pay dirt, found a weak spot he didn’t even know was there. He made a mental note: ‘goddess’. And then the girl on the floor went on.
‘Association with this club, which I now offer to you in defiance … ’
‘Who says I want –?’
‘– of our heartless executive, will expose you to the damaged masterpiece I am about to propose. That’s right, sister, I can see that you’re a bit of a damaged masterpiece yourself, aren’t you? Though you’re strong and beautiful and everything I’m not.’
Anna looked squarely at the girl. She was thinking that she did often feel like a damaged masterpiece. Quite often, in fact. Regularly. She gave sudden rein to the thought that this girl knew … she knew … what did she know? She knew something. Something about her. Perhaps … everything. Perhaps she was wise in all matters. Shit, man, Anna couldn’t even make her 8.30 classes. This girl, though, she obviously had it together. Anna had always wanted … Her eyes drifted up to the hole in the ceiling. Du’s, mystified, uncomprehending, followed. For a moment, considering the stranger’s words, Anna suddenly felt that she was not confused at all. She felt that she had been confused, but was, in fact, for this precious instant, pretty smart, pretty witty, pretty pretty, not dead. Gloriously defeated by the girl with the broken leg, on the floor.
But did any of this show up on Anna’s face? Nope. She was tough. She was tough as nails. The only indication of a change of heart was the gesture for Du to pick the chick up.
As for Runner, she had been relishing her victory until she saw Du’s hands zeroing in, getting closer and larger. She had a fit of sneezing. When that was through, she proceeded to lay herself bare before this boy’s deepest cell of shame: ‘Oh no, pal, not you. Her. Not you. If you touch me I’d have to ask you to fuck me, and if you said no then that would be humiliating for me, wouldn’t it? It’s been so long, I feel like a virgin. Really. Let’s be honest, I am a virgin, that’s not normal. And still you’re going to let this brute put his hands on me?’
Runner’s virgin status was not something she necessarily wanted to get rid of. But she did feel that the sexual act might just pull her flagging, barely post-adolescent body fully into the present, and force it to grow up. As for shyness around the opposite sex, her wreckage of a body had just led her to an epiphany. She decided, right here and now, anticipating the strong arms of Dumuzi, to fully explore the archetype of the foul-mouthed shy person and take it to new heights.
At least that’s what she decided deep down. On the surface she was screaming indignation that Anna was allowing a boy to lay hands on her.
Anna said, simply, sorry. She wasn’t going to lift a finger for this girl. Maybe she felt a bond with her, but she sure wasn’t about to show it.
Dumuzi, blushing pink, gathered Runner into his arms and picked her up. She was as small and light as a beanbag full of little bones, and she relaxed into his arms. As he swept her up she felt a sharp pain in her leg but ignored it. That is, her voice responded, practically bursting Du’s eardrum, but her mind ignored it. She launched again into her protests and was in mid-aria when she suddenly remembered.
‘Don’t forget those.’
Those?
There at Du’s feet, surrounding him like a toy rampart, were several irregularly shaped slabs of stone. They looked fragile, though none seemed to have broken in the fall. And they were marked all over, front and back, with tender notches of writing, presented in columns with a symmetry and order that nearly took Du’s breath away. They looked old. Really old. She must have been carrying them when she fell through the floor.
Anna clapped eyes on them too. Ten of them. Looked like she would have to lift a finger after all. No idea what this crazy chick needed them for, but she didn’t feel the need to question. Anyway, they were manageable. Weird. But small. Ish. She gathered them up, and they carried on, toward the stairs, and up, and into a bygone era.
And then Neil appeared.
He’d seen Runner negotiate her way through this sort of accident before, and knew she would survive it, this time at least, even if it wasn’t clear that she wanted to. Earlier, he’d watched, on the second floor, as she gave herself freely over to the fall and disappeared into the floor with all ten tablets. It made him tired. He knew she would apologise when he saw her next, and that upset him and made him even more tired.
He’d been here on the first floor for quite some time, through the negotiations, having made his way quietly around the perimeter. When he finally appeared, though, you would not have imagined him capable of such stealth. He looked awkward in his clothes, which were old and badly fitting, and he wore a pair of large round-rimmed glasses without lenses, and his head was buried in a book even when he walked. It was a notebook, which he held open with his right hand, crooked in his elbow, while writing from time to time with his left. As he crept across the floor towards Du’s backpack, he stopped to jot something down no fewer than five times, creating the impression of a time-lapse photograph or a Noh stage show. It seemed he had a running commentary going on the passing