Читать книгу Sorry Time - Anthony Maguire - Страница 10

ALI RAPPED HIS KNUCKLES against the weather-beaten door. ‘Hello?’ he called. All he could hear were faint strains of music and people’s voices from some other houses a few hundred metres away. But when he’d emerged from the desert into the bare dirt back yard of this house, he’d seen, lit up in an uncurtained window, a sexy-looking girl. She was standing next to the window washing dishes.

He raised his hand to the timber and knocked again. Along the first finger joints of his hand the letters ‘BROS’ had been inexpertly tattooed, a souvenir from Ali’s incarceration in a place called Kariong Juvenile Justice Centre. The letters on the back of his fingers were rendered as part of his induction into a gang called Brothers 4 Life. The crime that had landed Ali in Kariong? Rape.

There was no response from inside the house, but he could hear the faint clatter of plates and cutlery. Ali opened the door wider and went in. He found himself in a room dimly lit by an old 1970s-style lava lamp, a glowing vermilion tube with ectoplasmic bubbles rising and falling inside. The furniture was sparse, just an old table, two wooden chairs, and a sagging couch. Ali noticed a poster of hip hop artist 50 Cent on one wall. On a shelf was a sports trophy – a dust-coated golden statuette of a man in jersey and shorts holding a rugby ball. Beside the trophy was a framed school photo of a black teenage girl, her face beaming happily into the lens. At the end of the room was an open doorway, a bright yellow rectangle of light. The washing-up sounds grew louder as Ali moved towards the doorway. ‘Hello?’ he said.

In the kitchen, Ruby Jakamara was washing dishes under the glare of a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. She was listening to a Nicki Minaj song, Anaconda, through the buds of the iPhone her auntie Shirley had given her on her seventeenth birthday a month earlier. Despite her auntie’s caution to keep the volume level down and thereby conserve her hearing, Ruby had it turned up high. The track was a eulogy to women with big butts, with the pneumatic-bottomed Minaj showing plenty of her own in the YouTube clip that had notched up more than half a billion hits.

Ruby’s own butt was on the larger side and when she was younger she’d lamented the fact that she’d never be a super model, except possibly a plus-sized one. But Nicki Minaj was a sex goddess whose anthem delivered the message that ‘anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun.’ Which made Ruby feel good about herself. As she scrubbed and rinsed dishes and cutlery at the stainless steel sink, she wiggled her pink miniskirted bottom in time to the music and rapped along with the American artist, ’he don’t like ‘em boney, want something he can grab...’

However, at this moment Ruby’s thoughts were actually far from big butts, centred instead on her near future. In less than three months’ time, she’d be starting a design course at Centralian College in Alice Springs, and maybe after that, once she’d got her certificate, she might start a fashion label. She could use designs from Lester and some of the other artists on this community. But by then she wouldn’t be living here anymore. She’d be in Alice Springs, or maybe even Sydney, Melbourne or one of the other big cities. I could come back here like, once a year, every Christmas, she thought to herself.

Suddenly she noticed a large human form framed in the doorway. Her head jerked round. Standing there gazing at her was a fleshy white man with untidy dark hair and beard. His arms were a mass of tattoos. A huge knife hung from his belt. But the most frightening thing about him was his eyes – shining, unblinking pools of darkness. Underneath the left eye, the outline of a tear drop had been inked into the skin.

Tearing out her ear buds, Ruby tried to keep her voice steady as she said: ‘What do you want?’

‘I need help with my car,’ Ali said. His eyes were fixed on Ruby’s breasts under the thin cotton of a white T-shirt bearing the words LIVE LOVE DANCE. The pale tip of his tongue flicked out, then back in, like a reptile testing the air.

‘You can talk to my uncle, I’ll take you to him,’ Ruby said.

Ali took two steps towards her.

‘Or you can wait here to see my uncle, because he said he’d be here in one minute,’ Ruby added, her voice shaking.

‘What’s your name, babe?’ Ali said, taking two more steps closer.

Suddenly Ruby lashed out with her foot and tried to kick him in the balls, but Ali twisted to the side and her bare foot slammed into his hip. ‘Bitch!’ he hissed, reaching down and pulling the knife from the sheaf at his belt. Then moving lightning quickly, he grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him.

‘If you try screaming for help I’ll cut you,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I’ll cut you up real bad. You understand me?’ Ali’s left arm encircled her neck like a tattooed python while his right hand brandished the Jungle Master. Ruby felt the needle-sharp tip of the knife on her cheek. ‘I understand,’ she whimpered.

Ali laughed – a high-pitched, whinnying sound. A cruel sound. And Ruby’s nightmare began.