Mr Romanov's Garden in the Sky Read online

  During my four and a half months at the commission, I’d learnt quickly about staying alert. As I continued along the corridor, I kept my eyes peeled for movement and inhaled the strange cooking smells that still lingered from the night before. When I got to the end of the corridor, the red numbers above the elevator doors said twenty-two. I pushed the button scarred by a cigarette lighter but nothing seemed to happen. Maybe the elevator was stuck. I pressed the button again, thought about taking the stairs, when all of a sudden I heard an almighty crunch as the elevator began its descent. It ground downwards, blinking numbers as it dropped and soon the elevator shuddered and stopped. When the doors heaved open, two older boys wearing baseball caps and hoodies were leaning against the back wall inside.

  Davey had warned me about these boys. Their names were Gordo and Nate. I took a step back and considered my options.

  ‘Come on, then,’ one of them said. ‘We ain’t got all day.’

  Everything told me not to get in, but fear was something these boys knew well. If they saw it in my face, even a hint, they’d use it against me every time we met. Despite my better judgement, I shuffled inside and stood near the front with my back to the side wall. When the doors closed, I could feel them looking so I dipped my eyes and stared at the floor. The taller boy, Gordo, had a spray can in the side pocket of his pants. He started talking as if the elevator stop had interrupted a story.

  ‘And the best bit was,’ he said, ‘when I chucked him off, he started flapping his little legs like they were wings. Flappity-flap, flappity-flap, all the way down. You should’ve been there.’

  I hadn’t meant to look up. I didn’t know I had.

  ‘The hell you looking at?’ said the shorter boy, Nate.

  The elevator seemed to be taking forever. I glanced up and saw that we were only just passing the tenth floor. I didn’t answer Nate but I could feel them looking harder than they’d been before. A new story had begun. And the story was me.

  ‘You lost your horse, or somethin’?’ asked Gordo.

  I snatched a look and caught his eyes.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What’s with the hat?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘It’s just a hat.’

  Gordo seemed to be processing something in his head and by the looks of it, that something didn’t add up. In the short time I’d been in the commission I’d tried my best to steer clear of Gordo and Nate but it was impossible to avoid them completely. At our past meetings when they’d bailed me up I’d simply lied. I’d told them I lived in an apartment in Carlton and that I’d come to the commission to visit my friend Davey. But this time things seemed different. Gordo had connected some dots.

  ‘What floor you on again?’ he asked.

  I opened my mouth, went to speak, but he raised a finger in the air and cut me off.

  ‘I’d think very careful before you answer that,’ he said.

  Gordo was enjoying things now and I had no option but to come clean.

  ‘Sixteen,’ I said.

  ‘Sixteen what?’

  ‘Sixteen B.’

  The two of them glanced at each other and smiled.

  ‘Sixteen B,’ said Gordo. ‘That’d make you the druggie mum’s daughter. Where ya goin’, druggie mum’s daughter?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Nowhere? You must be going somewhere?’

  ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘Check the book, Nate. See if her mum’s paid her tax.’

  Something told me that Nate was used to following orders. He pulled a small notepad from his pocket and after flipping it open he ran a finger down the page.

  ‘Let’s see . . . Sixteen B . . . Says here she’s up-to-date, Gordo. Paid last week.’

  Gordo seemed disappointed. He went to say something but the elevator made a clunking sound and began to slow. It bounced when it landed as if it had overrun its stop then finally settled on the ground floor.

  Mr Nguyen was standing in front of us when the doors opened. I hurried out, slipped quietly past him and heard Gordo’s voice behind me.

  ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t our little mate.’

  Nate must have had the notepad out.

  ‘He’s two weeks late, Gordo.’

  ‘Two weeks,’ said Gordo. ‘Is that right? How about we go for a ride, then?’

  I fought the urge to look back, continued walking and heard a familiar clunk as the elevator began its ascent. I breathed a sigh of relief and after pushing through the commission’s front door, I stepped outside and looked up at the dirty dishwater sky.

  Grey had no business calling itself a colour. Even outside I felt trapped. I could feel the clouds above me and the concrete below, pressing like a vice, squeezing all the goodness from the day.

  With the likelihood of rain, some of the residents had already made a start to their day. Up ahead, two Somalian boys were inspecting the heart-shaped stain on the ground. Another bunch of kids clambered over the ancient playground equipment while their mothers sat on a bench nearby, sipping on silver coffee mugs. A tram rattled along the metal tracks on Brunswick Street and soon enough the concrete became grass.

  I followed a well-worn path and as I approached the store I read the headlines on the newspaper poster out front.

  NEW YORK NIGHTMARE

  THOUSANDS KILLED AS TOWERS GO DOWN

  Crazy Col was standing beside the rubbish bin nearby with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He seemed to be talking to himself, tracing a finger in the air as he spoke. The gusting breeze made it hard to hear but as I drew near, I realised he was repeating the same words, over and over to himself.

  ‘Thousands killed . . . thousands killed . . . thousands killed . . .’

  He stopped raving when he heard me. He swung his head, looked at me as if I was a monster, then scrambled off to his trolley half filled with cans.

  ‘Thousands killed . . . thousands killed . . .’

  I loved the store. When I pushed through the door, a woman was standing at the counter plucking coins from her purse. She was down to the small stuff, counting them out like a school kid. The owner, a friendly Indian man called Ramesh, looked up at me and smiled.

  ‘Ah, Miss Lexie,’ he said. ‘Already I have checked and once again is beautiful in Surfing Paradise today. Today he has sunshine and twenty-five degrees.’

  ‘Thank you, Ramesh.’

  I smiled at our game then headed to the far end of the store for the milk and eggs. After retrieving them from the fridge, I took a different route back past the biscuit display, then I stopped at the magazine rack a few metres from the counter. While Ramesh was busy re-counting the woman’s coins, I looked at the famous faces on the magazine covers. I spotted the Queen and Prince Philip and wondered if they had to do any swimming, if they ever struggled with things the way everyone else did.

  ‘Miss Lexie.’

  I turned to the sound of Ramesh’s voice then walked over and placed the milk and eggs onto the counter in front of him. He closed the till and craned his head to the magazine rack.

  ‘You want one?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah, I was just looking.’

  Ramesh threw me a smile then punched some numbers into the register.

  ‘Nine dollars and seventy-five,’ he said.

  When I up-ended the coins onto the counter it was pretty clear that I didn’t have enough. Thinking I could make the scrambled eggs without milk, I grabbed the carton and started for the fridge at the back of the store.

  ‘Is all right, Miss Lexie,’ said Ramesh. ‘Today is on my house.’

  I stopped walking and turned around.

  ‘Really? On the house?’

  ‘Surely, yes. You think Ramesh be forgetting your birthday?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t sure. I mean, I only mentioned it once. I didn’t think you’d remember.’

  ‘I remember, Miss Lexie. And Ramesh have present also.’

  ‘You do?’
>
  ‘Of course.’

  Ramesh stood quietly for a moment then raised a finger in the air as if he was checking the direction of the wind. He screwed up his face then something came to him and he began rummaging through the shelves under the counter.

  ‘Shanti never listening,’ he said. ‘I tell her one hundred times not to move my things.’

  Presents didn’t come my way very often. After raising myself onto my toes, I placed my arms onto the counter and inched myself forward for a better look. Ramesh seemed to be getting annoyed.

  ‘Where? Where? Where?’

  A few minutes later, Ramesh stopped searching and took a long deep breath.

  Still on his knees he rocked back a little then snatched a quick look over his shoulder as if what he was about to say was secret.

  ‘You know what Shanti be meaning in India, Miss Lexie?’

  ‘I’ve got no idea, Ramesh.’

  ‘It be meaning “peace”. But you think Shanti be giving me any peace?’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged my shoulders and kept my mouth shut.

  ‘No peace, Miss Lexie. Only headache.’

  Ramesh caught sight of something in front of him and almost instantly his face seemed to soften. He smiled and retrieved a battered cricket bat from the shelves and got slowly to his feet.

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  I ran my eyes over it, over the red spots dotted along its wooden face.

  ‘You got me a cricket bat?’ I asked, trying to hide the disappointment.

  Ramesh wrapped his fingers around the handle and looked at it lovingly, like it was an old friend.

  ‘Not for you, Miss Lexie,’ he said. ‘A long time ago in Jaipur, Ramesh hit many runs.’

  ‘Really? And you’ve kept it all these years?’

  ‘Yes. But use now for hitting heads.’

  ‘But you were good, yeah?’

  ‘Yes. I was good.’

  ‘You sound pretty sure about that.’

  ‘You don’t believe, Miss Lexie? You think Ramesh be making up stories?’

  As if to prove a point, Ramesh began to demonstrate a few defensive shots behind the counter.

  ‘Patience, Miss Lexie,’ he said, looking up. ‘Ramesh be always waiting for the right ball. Waiting, waiting, waiting and when it comes . . .’

  All of a sudden Ramesh cut loose. He shifted his weight to his back foot and swung the bat at an imaginary ball coming at him chest high. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten about the limited space around him, and as he followed through, the bat hit a metal display rack and swept it off the counter behind him. Packets of chewing gum flew into the air and clattered onto the concrete floor. Ramesh ditched the bat under the counter then tiptoed quietly to the closed door behind him. He raised his hand up as a signal I should be quiet and put his ear against the wood.

  ‘I think is all right, Miss Lexie,’ he whispered.

  With his head on an angle as it was, something caught his eye and the corners of his mouth turned upwards and made a smile.

  ‘Ah-ha.’

  He reached a hand out to the space where the metal rack had been and picked up a small round object no bigger than a cupcake in size.

  ‘Your present, Miss Lexie.’

  When he placed it onto the counter I took a step back. I raised my hands up, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to touch it.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Open and see.’

  Ramesh seemed even more excited than me. As he drummed his palms against the counter, I reached my right hand out and picked it up, feeling its shape with my fingers as I drew it in.

  ‘It feels hard,’ I said. ‘Round on the top and kind of flat on the bottom.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘I think . . .’

  ‘Do not think, Miss Lexie. Just open.’

  The red wrapping was secured with a long strap of sticky tape. I dug a nail in under a corner and as I peeled it off, the paper tore down the middle and uncovered my present inside.

  ‘Is Surfing Paradise, Miss Lexie.’

  I lifted the snow dome up for a closer look and saw a mum and dad and a kid making sandcastles in the sand.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ I said. ‘It’s the best present I ever got.’

  Ramesh was beaming. I threw him a smile then looked back down at the dome and shook it.

  Hundreds of tiny snowflakes exploded inside.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘Surfing Paradise,’ said Ramesh. ‘It is good to be dreaming, Miss Lexie.’

  All of a sudden a voice began to bellow behind the closed door.

  ‘Ramesh!’ yelled Shanti. ‘Ramesh, come here!’

  After rolling his eyes, Ramesh placed his palms together, raised them up in front of his face and looked at the ceiling.

  ‘Please, be giving me strength.’

  It was time to go. I thanked Ramesh for the present again and after placing my things into the plastic bag, I pushed through the door and walked outside.

  The weather had turned nasty while I’d been inside. As I stepped away from the shelter of the store, a gusting wind nearly pushed me off balance. There was movement everywhere I looked. Metal cans tinkered across the concrete concourse. Plastic bags and coloured wrappers danced through the air, spiralled and dipped until they snagged and found new places to rest.

  I pushed my hat down on my head and began to run. The rain was coming down sideways now. Halfway across the concourse, a raindrop the size of a marble exploded against my neck. It trickled down my back and when I looked up at the clouds, ready to give them a serve, something in the fairy floss grey caught my eye.

  It was a tiny figure, standing on top of the commission tower. At first I thought I was seeing things but when I stopped running and wiped my eyes the figure was still there, perched on the ledge of the building.

  I was a long way from the rooftop, too far to make out what was going on. As stupid as it sounds, part of me wondered if it might be kids, mucking about, daring each other to walk along the ledge, but something about that solitary figure made me think of someone else.

  A party in Brunswick came rushing back, the one just before my father left when I saw him from the kitchen window, sitting on a swing in the backyard, alone in the dark. I wanted to go to him, wanted so badly to push that swing so he’d stop being sad, stop staring at the ground. But I didn’t know how. I was scared. I always regretted that. It might not have changed anything, pushing the swing that night, but he was my father and I should have tried.

  Maybe it was that leftover guilt that got me moving now. After another quick look up, I started to run. I quickened my pace and with a final burst, I pushed through the commission doors and into the empty foyer. As I pressed the elevator button, I considered stopping at Davey’s apartment and dragging him away from the computer so that he could help me deal with whatever was happening on the roof. But what was happening on the roof?

  Different scenarios flashed through my mind as the elevator made its way up. To be honest I wasn’t even sure if the elevator would take me all the way. After all, no one lived on the twenty-seventh floor. There were no apartments and, like the rooftop, you could only gain access with a special key. Still, nothing in the commission ever worked as it should. Security was slack. Things had a habit of playing up and when they did, no one bothered to fix them.

  I was in luck. As the elevator travelled slowly upwards, I watched the red numbers above the door. Twenty-four . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . . twenty-seven.

  As soon as the elevator doors started to open, I turned sideways and squeezed myself out. I looked around and searched the empty corridor and saw a series of metal steps off to my right. Leaving my plastic bag on the floor, I ran up the stairs, and when I got to the landing, I stopped for a moment and poked my head through the open door.

  The rooftop was bigger than I’d thought it would be. Despite the handful of utility sheds dotted across its surface, I guessed the area was
about half the size of the soccer pitch at school. After stepping through the door, I looked to the city skyscrapers then pointed myself towards the western corner of the building and began walking.

  The clouds seemed so close now. It was as if I was walking straight through them. The rain had all but stopped but I could feel the clouds like spider webs against my face, all velvety and wet.

  I had no line of sight to the western corner. When I’d first looked out across the roof, it had seemed as if the handful of buildings took up most of the rooftop space but after about twenty metres of walking, I came into a clear section and saw the strangest thing.

  In front of me was a large rectangular frame made out of wooden sleepers. The construction seemed simple enough. The horizontal sleepers were stacked three high and were held in place by longer vertical ones positioned at two metre intervals along its sides. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was supposed to be but another pile of sleepers nearby suggested that whoever was building it wasn’t finished yet.

  I was close now. I must have been ten, maybe twenty metres from the western corner but I still couldn’t see the ledge. A smaller building with a padlocked door blocked my view. When I got to it, I slowed myself down and made my way along its eastern wall. Scared of what I might find beyond the building, I stopped at the corner and placed my palms against the cold wet bricks. I took a long deep breath and when I inched my head out I saw a familiar figure dressed in a grey coat, standing on the waist-high ledge. I wasn’t sure what to do so I just said the first thing that came to mind.

  ‘Mister.’

  The word didn’t stand a chance. As soon as it left my mouth, the gusting breeze got hold of it and tore it apart. I had to get closer so I shifted out from behind the bricks and edged myself through the jagged opening cut in the wire security fence. I moved slowly forward, careful not to startle him until I came into view on his left. An empty bottle sat on the ledge beside his right boot.