Part Two - Margaret

Her eyes opened, and with bland, animal calm she found herself clothed, curled on a dirty floor and in great pain.
Tiny bits of carpet-litter had worked their way into her hair and clothing. Clumps of carpet-hair threaded between her fingers.
She waited for thoughts to come.
To tell her where she was, tell her who she was, tell her what to do.
White sunlight filtered through lifeless old curtains. Dangling. Limp. Pain in her leg. This rotten leg. Ought to chop it off and be done with it. All of the operations, the leg brace, crutches. “Strengthening and lengthening”. Rubbish. Should have chopped it off when she was a girl.
The thought subsided, she forgot again and was content to lie there, breathe, feel pain. Watch the light through the curtains for a long, long time. Minutes. An hour. Longer.
Then the alarm clock rang, and she remembered everything. Everything, it all came back to her. It was time for her to go to work.

One of Shona’s children stood pointing a pistol at her.
‘Blam blam,’ it said.
Margaret frowned. She edged the gate open, squeezing past it and onto the footpath.
The child said: ‘Blam, you’re dead.’
Then, as if annoyed with her failure to comply: ‘You’re dead you crazy _____.’
Margaret turned back to it.
‘What was that?’
She stepped closer to the child.
‘What was that you said? I’ll t–’ Her voice quavering. “I’ll tell your mother”. Unlikely.

No question of the child being disciplined, she thought, fumbling the headphones out of her bag, limping, slipping them over her ears. No question of it. After all, where had it learnt the word?
(“Who were you speaking to?” “Oh I was speaking to that crazy _____ downstairs”)
But the face had alarmed her. The expression in its eyes, one of basic hatred.
She shivered, tucking the headphones’ cord into her empty pocket.

Faces alarmed her. All faces did, she decided. The faces of the people here, sharp-nosed, dead-eyed. They swung about like weapons, swung up to the windows, eyeing the world outside like rifles pointing.
So many people in this city. Surely more now than when she was young. More people cramming the pavement, they seemed a particularly large throng today. Clogging the traffic. Slowing the bus as it inched along Lambton Quay.
Babbling into their phones. ‘No mate I couldn’t get through, I can’t get through to her. No mate the network’s overloaded. Lucky I got you, mate. No mate. Can’t see anything from here. Nah, I’m on the bus mate.’
Of course you are on the bus, we can all see that you are on the bus.
She closed her eyes and blocked out their din. The headphones helped. She imagined music, songs from the records she owned.
Then on the footpath, pushing through the milling bodies, a wave of them flowing the other way, pouring out to sea. So she imagined that she was alone.
Seasons of gasoline and gold
Wise men fold
Near a tree by a river there's a hole in the ground...
One of the girls said:
Margaret pulled off her headphones.
‘What are you listening to?’ the girl asked.
Margaret shrugged, put the headphones into her bag and the bag into her locker. There were other voices, other conversations to distract:
‘So freaky. It was just, I don’t know what it was. Is. It's still there, I was down there. But like I’m covering Julie tonight, so like I had to come back. But everyone’s there. Like everyone.’
‘Gutted.’
‘So gutted.’
Conversations in another language.
'What do you think it was?'
'Last night,' one of the girls said to her. The same girl, talking to her again. Normally the girls didn't talk to her. This one was small, as young as the others no doubt but with the meekness of one even younger.
'I'm sorry?'
'For Land's End I mean.'
Margaret checked the schedule. Land's End was the film, her film. She hadn't known it was finishing.
'I guess you'll be pretty stoked, eh. Can't be too much fun doing cinema checks on that every night.'
'It's popular,' said Margaret. 'I expect they'll change their minds.'
The girl seemed confused.
She said: 'You know you don't have to always do the same movie. You can talk to them and swap over.'

Margaret said: 'It's very popular. I think they'll keep it running, at least for another week.'
She looked around. The audience were coming in. A little soon, she thought. She limped along her aisle and swept the last of the popcorn under the seats.
Surely they would keep it on for another week. It had only been running for... she tried to think.
'Excuse me,' she said, brushing past a patron.
There weren't many of them, but that wasn't the film's fault. They had thought it would be a busy night at the cinema, it usually was, but the customers were scattered here and there as if a bowling ball had swept the middle of them away a minute before. Everyone at the waterfront. Some party, some event or other.
Not many at all, perhaps two dozen in total.
She hovered around the door, uncertain. She had other cinemas to clean in the complex, and possibly she was meant to man the snack counter later. She couldn't remember.

The lights went down.
The audience watched in silence, blue light washing across their faces.
There was a car and inside were four young people, they were trying to find a party or a rock concert. They were lost. For the thirty fifth time they drove down a road and there was a gate and a skull “KEEP OUT”. And her boyfriend drove backward and you thought that would be the end of it but there was a trap and the tyres burst. And they walked through the woods where more skeletons hung and you knew that even though they were scared they were in worse –
The film stopped, very abruptly. At the same moment, the lights went up.
Margaret blinked. The audience muttered, rustled.
'Whew,' said one patron nearby, a young woman. She laughed.
Then the alarm went off.