Читать книгу Ashes Of The Phoenix - Jane Fade Merrick - Страница 7

The next morning Fade woke up again because of the noise that Jag was making in the kitchen. The microwave signalled the end of the heating cycle with a noisy sound.

The girl sat dazed on the mattress and looked at the opposite side of the room, a number of rags rolled into the shape of a mattress brought to mind the night before, when she had prepared a bed for her new and very weird acquaintance.

The boy presented a plate with a steaming waffle covered with a sticky sauce, which she eyed suspiciously, but she didn’t hesitate to eat it.

After an endless amount of time, which the girl needed to finish her hairdo, the two were on the street and began to quarrel about a question left open the day before: the brat insisted that it was impossible not to know the group of which he was a huge fan, because they were world-famous; the girl, for her part, retorted that she didn’t give a damn about a stupid band. The argument went on until they entered the place where they were directed, a music CD shop. He rushed inside leaving a puzzled redhead at the door: she didn’t even know why she was there, but the excitement that the little boy put into everything he did, somehow, managed to involve her. She slowly skated inside, finding herself surrounded by shelves full of CDs with many different graphics.

She observed the illustrations of a few covers for a while, and then she reached the child who was standing in a corner, wearing some headphones that were too big for his head. He seemed mesmerized by the music and he sang the song he was hearing, while holding a CD case. When she approached him, he took off his headphones and said, “Here! Listen to this!”

“Are you kidding? I’ll ruin my hairdo!”

“Then look!” He said, handing her the album that he was holding tight. Fade half-heartedly took the case and glanced at the cover. It was a picture of a group of four people in front a totally black background. “Dull” she thought, and began to consider the members of the group: two boys with a girl between them, modelling in a cool pose; behind them loomed a curly-haired boy of considerable height, his stature would probably have been overwhelming in person.

The two in the front stared at the camera with diametrically opposed expressions: the first, with an extremely ‘Emo’ hairstyle, had a thoughtful look that seemed to communicate what his whole life was a continuous torture; the other displayed a grin which seemed to tease you because he had achieved success and all you could do was envy him. The latter, especially, stood out for his dress code. A half unbuttoned dark shirt showed a jumble of ornaments around his neck. Finally there was the girl, smooth black hair, deep shiny eyes as dark as the night. She stood in the centre of the page with her arms crossed. Her eyes observed you from head to toe, as though you were a nullity and she dangled a cigarette from her mouth. The smoke, clearly added with a miserable editing intervention, rose up to form the band name. “Momuht” Fade read.

“They don’t look that special to me”, she said, handing the case back to the boy who greedily grabbed it, holding it tight, as to protect it. “You don’t understand...” he started walking towards the exit “They need me...” She pretended not to hear the last sentence and followed him to the counter.

“I’ll buy this” the boy exclaimed, standing on his toes, handing the album to the clerk, paying and leaving the store contemplating his new purchase.

Jag was walking on clouds, admiring the album from all angles; he immediately tore the cellophane and glanced at the inner cover to see if there were other images; a joyful laugh confirmed the positive outcome. When he opened the lyrics booklet, the child happily started commenting on all the photos within it, describing the person and what role he had in the band, bringing the booklet up to Fade's face, who uninterestedly glanced at it: she didn’t like those motions and fanatic poses, they were pretty annoying to her. She had never liked those who acted as ‘fucking egocentrics’, and that band seemed to be exactly such; she continued to skate slowly, thinking of other things. Once they arrived close to their ‘secret hiding place’ the girl suddenly stopped, then she caught the boy by the collar and pulled him back. “What’s the matter?” asked Jag, quite annoyed by the interruption of his daydream. She frowned and motioned for him to follow her to an alley, and then they started spying from around the corner. A police car and a fire truck were stationed in front of the building in which the girl lived; several policemen investigated by stopping passers-by. A fireman came out and spoke to an agent. “Yes, the house is inhabited: the electric cable that was reported to us was illegally redirected to this condemned building.” At those words, Fade felt the impulse to choke her improvised companion, but she controlled herself, “Do you see what you did?” she said, whispering, despite the desire to yell at him “I told you not to install those stupid electric appliances! Now they found me out!”

He didn’t answer but seemed visibly disturbed. After a moment of hesitation he suggested, “Then come away with me, I'll give you a new home in the place where I'm going.”

The girl looked at him, she wanted to ask him if by chance he was teasing her, but the boy's eyes already answered her question. She couldn’t stand him, she couldn’t believe she had to accept his offer; she remembered too well how hard it had been to find that room, how hard it was to find a place among thousands of homeless people and build a life from scratch. The thought of having to start all over again drove her crazy, having to look for all those items that were part of her daily life, to arrange her spaces, to gather her stocks, and then to find herself suddenly without all those things that represented her world. Her head was exploding when she was distracted by the noise of the fire fighters carrying out boxes in which they had packed all her stuff. She knew that by now whatever she had built for herself was gone. “Let's get out of here,” she said, turning on her skates and leaving that place where she would never return again.

The next few minutes they walked in total silence. Jag followed the girl with his head bent holding the cover of his new CD, but his mood was definitely different from when he had bought it. She broke the ice by asking:

“So where's this place you're headed? The one on the map, I guess...” The boy stopped suddenly “Yes. We can leave at once!” He exclaimed, heartened.

“What are you talking about?” But she couldn’t finish her sentence because a car with dark windows stopped beside them. The driver came out and spoke to the boy obsequiously, while he opened the door for them: “Have a seat, sir.”

Jag jumped in excitedly as if he had never experienced such a similar experience before, but the girl was reluctant to get into the car.

“Have a seat, miss” the driver said, bending lightly.

“Come on Fade, hop in!” The childish voice from inside the car prompted her “We have a plane to catch!”

“A plane? Are you crazy? I don’t even have any documents! How do you think...?”

“It's a private plane, silly! Get in!”

That last sentence shocked her so much that she got into the car without realizing it. The door closed carefully behind her.

“Who the hell are you, the son of a prince?” She asked. “Yes, the son of the Prince of Evil!” He replied wryly. “Shut up” she replied, annoyed, leaning her face on one hand and looking out of the window.

“Wait! Slow down! Stop!” The girl shouted suddenly. The car stopped at the curb.

“What's the matter?” Asked the little ‘Sir’. “I have to see a person” she answered and immediately got out of the car and skated down in the lanes of an elegant neighbourhood.

Jag reached her shortly after, just as she was ringing the doorbell of a building. He watched her from a short distance.

An elderly little man came out of the door and stopped to look at her in surprise: “Fade, you're back... it's the first time you’ve come to see me when you're not dripping with blood... what's wrong child?”

The girl didn’t answer; she just looked down at the ground swallowing her regret. “You're leaving, aren’t you?”

She nodded her head slightly, and then she quickly embraced the man who had rescued her several times in those years and ran away before the situation became unsustainable even for a person like her. “I wish you good luck and take care of yourself” were the last words she heard before the door closed silently behind her.

The girl reached the child, who didn’t have the courage to say anything to her. “Come on, let’s go prince,” she said, trying to seem more determined than she really was at that moment. The two went back to the car and didn’t speak to each other.

The car stopped at a small out-of-the-way airport on the outskirts of the city. The girl began to show the first doubts about her sudden departure: “I have nothing with me; I don’t even have an identity…”

“We’ll fly with a private airline, for now you don’t need an identity. When we get there, we'll see what we can do”, in saying so, he waited for the door to open and then got out of the car. Fade sat in the car, confused, but when her door opened, she followed him.

As they climbed the ladder to the small airplane, he couldn’t help but ask, “How do you manage to go everywhere on those skates?”

“They're rollerblades,” she said, “and I've been wearing them almost forever...” she answered, thinking that it was more than enough of an explanation.

Inside the passenger compartment, the boy amusedly watched the girl who was having a lot of trouble settling in her seat. Despite the fact that the plane had far fewer passenger seats than a normal flight, Fade banged into everything; furthermore, she clumsily hit the flight attendants who tried to help her to her seat with her hairdo.

Once the funny demonstration was over and the two unfortunate and decisively stunned stewards had been dismissed, she snorted: “Was it necessary for them to ruin my hair?” She complained. “It’s not really suitable for sitting in an airplane; you can fix it once we land...” was his answer.

The rest of the journey proceeded in total silence.

The girl looked out of the window and reflected on a strange similarity: despite a lifetime of escaping, the world around her had continued to go round while she was still standing in the same spot. Being there, in that precise moment, on that plane, forced her to wonder if she could have considered it a first true step towards some undetermined direction.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the boy. “Is it the first time that you travel by plane?”

The girl answered without even turning. “Yes”

“Are you scared?”

This time she turned towards him in surprise: “Why should I be scared?”

“Well I don’t know, many people are afraid of traveling by plane: they fear a disaster. Not having an escape route makes them restless and they begin to say things like they prefer to travel attached to the ground...”

“It doesn’t worry me,” she said firmly and turned back to the window.

“Rather, what are you going to do once we get there?” She asked, to break the silence.

“I'm going to find the Momuhts! I want to be part of their band!”

“What a terrible idea!” The girl continued without giving him too much importance.

“No it’s not! They’ll welcome me! My arrival will change their lives!”

His tone of voice caught the attention of the redhead; the child seemed to be obsessed by that band.

“You never seemed like a normal guy to me, now I’m sure of it” she concluded with disapproval.

Jag leaned back in his seat with an evil grin on his face. He had great projects in his mind for his addition to the band and he had every intention of using any means to gain the favour of the group’s leader. He dozed off indulging in his childish dreams, fantasizing on the wonderful prospects for his future.