Damien Almie
by Wenee Yap- 'Dupre' written on the matte back of a photograph.
- Imaginings of an idle American South.
- The vibrance and shape of fanciful language.
- Gone with the Wind and Steel Magnolias and other shiny softcover editions of airport reading.
These are the last half-formed thoughts to ever cross Damien Almie's mind. And the last thought, as he falls through the twin panes of soundproof glass on Changi Airport's South East internal observation deck, the last thought to flit before his mind was:
- I've always wanted to read that.
The days had begun to look alike.
He laid four photographs upon the green steel desk: a woman and her third straight vodka shot; this woman's smiles all over a gentleman, a tall thin sleek gentleman. This gentleman, Damien mused; he's surely the kind with two boats, two grown kids and two failed marriages, surely the kind who chews cigars as he smokes their ember ends.
Damien laid the third photograph beside the other two so that they framed a chronology of images, like a series of film stills. The third image revealed this woman cocking her head left as the gentleman stooped to gesture and, in her right ear, murmured, "Won't you dance?"
The third image inspired Damien Almie, who at the time of taking it had found himself crouched and hiding behind a hotel palm pot plant and a three speed zoom lens to think, beautiful. And then he swept it aside with the thought, What sentimental trash. The final scene of the set of photographs threw this woman under dim lights further dulled by drifting cigarette smoke. Here, she hung her arachnid arms around the gentleman's silk-suited waist. She too, wore silk, red silk, and it clung to her like a second skin. She kissed his pale neck and looked right at you, me, Damien Almie.
'You're like a superhero," she later said, when they were lovers lying together and tucked into the rear of a car seat at night. "You're a mystery, you have double identities Your superhero name would be∑the clandestine sentimentalist."
"Sounds intellectual."
"I'm a bra-ain." She indicated her cranium and tapped it. "See how it throbs," she said.
But long before that moment of intimacy, as Damien Almie covertly clicked away with his bulky, conspicuous camera, the woman crossed the marble floor from a dance with another gentleman and took his hand as he turned to leave, and told him, "You're tailing me."
He lied and said he was a photographer. He murmured that she was beautiful, as if by explanation.
"That I know," she said.
Right then, he wanted to go. Sensing this, she smiled, and flashed her full red lips and said, "Come upstairs. I'm on the 22nd floor."
And so he was led away from the bar, as his camera swung from its black nylon strap around his neck. He was led to the elevators, up 22 floors, he was led to her room instead of countering her invitation with his usual feeble lies, instead of muttering, "I'm sorry, I have to - " and slinking away.
They sat opposing each other, Damien and the woman of the photographs. Around them gurgled the anxious sounds of evening traffic, the swell and squeals of birds as they flocked to the trees of Hyde Park to rest, the clinking of coffee cups being replaced by the high-pitched ping of wine glasses.
"Now tell me honestly, Mr. Almie," (she had always addressed him as if he was a stranger, and tonight she smiled as she spoke.) "Tell me, why are you following me?"
"I'm not."
Her foot tapped his left shin, and through his pants he felt each of her toes poking at him. His pants were silk, like the gentleman with whom she had danced one night a month ago.
"I know you are. I caught you with that big ugly camera, hiding behind a fern in the Hilton lounge! Don't deny it."
"I know, but if I'm with you now, I can't be following you too."
"Don't smile, Mr. Almie. It makes you look smug."
Damien's smile widened. She winked, and tipped the last red wine in her glass down her throat in one motion, the way a pelican swallows fish whole.
"Who are you, Mister Almie? Mister, Mister, Mister. Al-mieee?" she teased, with her best attempt at a Manhattan intellectual's drawl. "From what hole in the earth did you surface?"
She swung out her empty wine glass to a passing waiter, who obliged with a generous refill.
"A golf hole," said Damien. "You never know, maybe I'm a championship golfer."
"A month ago, you were a photographer, Mr. Almie."
"I have many interests."
"Ah! And what interesting things have you done in your dark past?"
'You first."
She let another glassful of wine slide down her throat. Her neck muscles flexed as they swallowed.
"I once told my economics teacher I was pregnant to get out of finals exams. I begged him not to fail me or tell anybody, because I was going to have an abortion and I couldn't have a fail on my college application. I cried."
"And?"
"Passed economics. Flew to Paris for the week. Your turn."
"Really?"
"No! I stayed at home and read travel guides of Paris instead. So, I almost flew there."
"Do you want to?"
"Who wouldn't? But it's your turn."
"I once killed a man."
"Did you really?"
"As part of my civic duties. I used to be in the Army."
She laughed. "Was he a bad man?"
"Of course."
She peered at the red remnants of wine in her glass.
"So, Mr. Almie, you might be a golfer, you might be a photographer, and you used to kill people. With those interests, I'd say you were a contract killer."
"Maybe I am."
"Am I your latest hit?"
"Maybe you are."
"Seems a little unprofessional, to sleep with me and then kill me."
"Why, have you ever been a contract killer?"
"But you aren't."
"No."
"So you won't kill me, will you, Mr. Almie?"
'"I've got something I need done, Mr. Almie."
The man spoke to him across the blank oak table, its corners rounded, its surface smoothened through use and age. He wore a pale jazz suit and vibrant red pants. Rimless bifocals perched upon the bridge of his nose, through which he now blinked. Damien half expected the man to conjure a saxophone and without ever playing, launch into a verbal tirade over his love affair with Duke Ellington.
"How much?" Damien didn't look up.
"It's for a friend," the man explained feebly.
"It's always for a friend."
Out the window and three stories down, sirens shrieked through the city, birds and drunken bums conversed, buskers begged, lovers murmured, and the general populus ignored each other as they hurried to somewhere or other.
"This is different," the man began. "You see, my wife - I'd like a divorce. There's no love."
"I'm not a lawyer."
"I know, I know. I know. You see, my wife, she has a pre-nup. But the pre-nup becomes void if she dies 'under exceptional circumstances.'"
"Of course," interrupted Damien.
A silence fell between them. The man paced the grey-blue, low pile carpeting. Clearly, he'd expected to have his proposal met with resistance and now, faced with none, he paced.
He gestured to a newspaper clipping that hung in a frame, white on black on the wall behind Damien, "You used to be a soldier? What's on that fancy blue ribbon round your neck?"
"The medal of honor."
"What was it for?"
"I was a sniper," said Damien, as he tapped the top of his camera. "Point and shoot. Apparently, that was very brave."
"I don't doubt it, Mr. Almie."
The man fumbled within his jazz jacket and drew out a photograph. He placed this photograph face down, matte back up, on the bare table. Beneath it was a white envelope, which bulged with green hundred dollar bills. Its creases were browned by sweat.
On the back of the photograph was a single, scrawled word: Dupre.
"Dupre. Is that how I should call you?" Damien asked.
"Don't call me after today."
The man cast a sidelong look at the door; he wanted to leave.
"So what do you need done, Mr. Dupre?"
"Point and shoot."
Rewind falling through twin panes of soundproof glass. (Arms retracting to his sides from a crossed-over stance, braced for the glass shattering.) Rewind a brisk walk across the tile/thin carpet flooring, hop scotched black and white like a chess board; a godly announcement, calm, cordial, womanly:
Flight QF53 to Paris, departing from Gate D7, Last Call, Flight QF53 -
Rewind Damien still walking with urgency, as if by moving very fast he might find purpose. He's slowing now, just starting out, (rewind), looking over his shoulders as he walks to a stop-motion stillness to ponder meaningful mysteries and sit straight-backed on a navy airport lounge beside her. Rewind to more meaningful stares, as they chatter as chipmunks (rewind) and -
"He'll come for you." Damien doesn't say, "your husband." "You should be ready."
"Will I be seeing you around?" she asks.
He'll come for you, Damien thinks.
"I wouldn't wait. You should leave tonight," Damien says. And you'll probably die.
Damien smiles and hands her: a one-way ticket to Paris, a paperback, and an envelope stashed with cash (she'll find it in Paris), a handshake lingering a little longer than politeness might require. They exchange meaningful stares. Last exchanges -
"I got you 'Gone with the Wind.' Tell me if it's rubbish."
She smiles. "Thought I wouldn't be seeing you again."
"I just told you not to wait."
With that, Damien rises and strides into the future, now the present, now the past. Having seen, as time flattened before him (as he fell through the window and life lapsed momentarily) all that a person might ever hope to see, all the events and lives which will eventually blend to compose our history, our present, our future until the very end of time and the world.
As he dies, he Damien sees:
The Muslim janitor he brushed past as he walked to the observation deck, this janitor later opening a closet of mops to chance upon in-transit love makers; this same janitor's stale immigrant apartment situated on the fourth floor of a block of apartments which were all built like barracks. This janitor's marriage to a mail-order bride which turns out to be nothing more than a $12 000 credit card bill and annual Christmas greetings from Natalya Rodionov of the agency. In a year, even these Christmas cards cease to be sent as the agency (You've got Mail-Order) is closed for crimes of extortion.
Now dead, Damien sees:
The love makers, married but not to each other, meeting over and over and eloping for four weeks after both inconvenient spouses simultaneously (and conveniently) expire.
Police and firemen wrenching his dead body free from the criss-cross of metal gratings, pointlessly placed (or artfully, according to the Changi Airport's architect) and these policemen and firemen returning to their wives or empty beds, pondering as they drift to sleep:
'Why'd Damien Almie jump?'
Frozen and stored in the city morgue, Damien sees all this and casting his eye far across the Atlantic, wandering between the artists lodges of Montmatre built at the turn of the twentieth century, he sees:
An envelope, bulging with hundred dollar bills, its creases browned with sweat, poking out of the woman's carry-bag. He'd slipped in her bag with the plane ticket. She'll find it in Paris, walking the cobblestone streets near the Louvre.
©Wenee Yap
Eighteen year old Wenee Yap has been writing since she was ten years old, having allegedly first declared her aspirations to an anesthesiologist several seconds before passing out. She migrated to Sydney when she was three, and her first reading addiction was R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series of horror books for children. More recently, Wenee has been twice commended as the Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year. In February of this year she won second place in the Newcastle Poetry Prize: New Media section.