Lola Bensky

by Lily Brett

  Somewhere in the middle of ‘Purple Haze’ Lola drifted into a reverie. She was driving her Volkswagen, somewhere in Laurel Canyon, when she noticed a car wedged against a tree at a strange angle, as though it had skidded to a stop. She noticed the windshield was cracked and somebody was slumped against the steering wheel. Lola panicked. Because she was in her rented Volkswagen in Los Angeles and not in her second-hand pink Valiant in Melbourne, she didn’t have a first-aid kit on her. She had no bandages, no antiseptic, no rubber gloves, no tweezers, no thermometer and no sterile gauze pads. Luckily, she had a flashlight with fresh batteries. Lola parked the Volkswagen well over to the side of the road. She knew that the first rule in responding to a car accident was to put your own vehicle out of the way of oncoming traffic.

  Lola ran over and looked inside the damaged car. She got quite a shock. The person slumped against the wheel was Jimi Hendrix. He had facial contusions and lacerations. The car door was jammed. Lola found a rock and, with a crowbar-like motion, jimmied open the door. Jimi Hendrix was still breathing. She listened to his breathing to see if she could hear any sort of gurgling noise. A gurgling noise could indicate the possibility of blood and other secretions in the nose and mouth. A man came up to the car. ‘Call an ambulance, please,’ Lola said to the man.

  ‘I already have,’ he said. ‘Let’s get him out of the car.’

  ‘Don’t touch him,’ said Lola. ‘It’s very risky to move a person with a head injury, in case they have a broken neck.’ Jimi Hendrix started groaning. ‘You’re okay,’ Lola said to him. ‘Just stay as you are. An ambulance is on the way.’

  ‘We’ve got to get him out of the car and lie him down,’ the man said.

  ‘If he’s got a broken neck and we move him, we’ve got a good chance of making him an instant paraplegic,’ Lola said.

  ‘You sure you know what you’re doing?’ said the man.

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ Lola said.

  She turned to Jimi Hendrix. ‘You’re going to be all right, Jimi,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I don’t like leaving him in the car slumped over the steering wheel,’ said the man.

  ‘If he was unconscious and started to choke on his secretions, we’d have to risk taking him out of the car and lying him on his side so we could clear his airways,’ Lola said to the man. ‘But he’s not choking and he’s not unconscious, he is just in a daze. The ambulance should be here any minute.’

  ‘I saw the whole thing,’ said the man. ‘He swerved to avoid a yellow puppy dog and hit the tree.’

  The ambulance arrived. ‘You did the right thing, Miss,’ the ambulance driver said to Lola. ‘You didn’t risk moving him. That could have been dangerous.’

  Jimi Hendrix opened his eyes, looked at Lola and said, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The ambulance is here,’ Lola said. ‘You’re going to be fine. But please don’t swerve to avoid any dogs, it can be very dangerous.’

  Lola came out of this potentially fatal drama in Laurel Canyon to hear The Jimi Hendrix Experience playing their last number. Jimi was covered in sweat. He looked completely intact and unharmed. Lola didn’t know why she had to go into a car-rescue fantasy about Jimi Hendrix. He didn’t need rescuing. He seemed perfectly capable of looking after himself.

  Lola had managed to arrange a brief interview with Sam and Dave. She went backstage. They were expecting her. ‘We’ve only got five minutes,’ an assistant said to Lola. Lola set up her tape recorder.

  ‘You’ve just come back from a very successful tour of Europe with Otis Redding,’ she said. ‘Was there a difference between performing in America and performing in Europe?’

  ‘The audiences are great in both places,’ said Dave Prater, ‘but the big difference is that in Europe and London there are no coloured restaurants, no coloured hotels, no coloured entrances, no coloured water fountains. At the hotel we were treated just like the rest of the guests. Coming from America, which still has a lot of segregated parts, that was like another world.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘It was something else.’

  Lola was shocked at the thought that separate hotels or restaurants or drinking fountains still existed. ‘Do you still feel that it’s largely a white person’s world in America?’ said Lola.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Dave. ‘A lot of people love our music but they don’t love a lot of us.’

  ‘You’ve got two more minutes,’ the assistant said.

  ‘How were the European audiences?’ said Lola.

  ‘They were so great,’ said Sam. ‘In London, at the Hammersmith Odeon, they were stomping and stamping their feet on the balcony and I thought the balcony floor might cave in.’

  ‘They could feel our soul,’ said Sam. ‘The soul part of soul music is your soul. You sing the lyrics but what you put into the singing is your soul.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Lola said to Sam and Dave.

  She went back to her table. People were still talking about Jimi Hendrix. She hoped Sam and Dave didn’t have a hard time following Jimi Hendrix. Lola saw a girl who reminded her of Lillian Roxon’s friend Linda Eastman, but it wasn’t Linda. Lola had called Lillian Roxon from a payphone in the courtyard of her apartment complex last night.

  ‘I definitely prefer New York to LA,’ Lola had said to Lillian.

  ‘So do I,’ said Lillian. ‘There’s no city in the world that matches New York.’

  Lola realised that it had not been smart of her to bring up New York. Lillian was bound to suggest, again, that she come to New York instead of going back to Australia.

  ‘Are you still going back to Australia?’ Lillian said.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Lola.

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Lillian. ‘You can’t go back just for that schmuck.’

  ‘He’s not a schmuck,’ said Lola. ‘Schmuck’, a frequently used Yiddish word, meant an idiot, a hapless idiot. Literally translated, ‘schmuck’ meant penis and could also be used in the sense of prick, as in, he’s a prick.

  ‘He is a schmuck,’ said Lillian. ‘He’s fucking someone else and that makes him a schmuck. You can move in with me. I know you’ll do well here. The people you’re interviewing who aren’t already world-famous are going to be world-famous. They’ll know you and, I’m sure, trust you, so you’ll be in a very good position to do great interviews. What are you going to do in Melbourne, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lola. ‘I’ll keep working at Rock-Out.’

  ‘I bet you’ll get married and have three children,’ said Lillian. ‘You’re way too young to do that. I’ll introduce you to a couple of magazine editors. You’ll do really well. Come to New York. Please.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can,’ said Lola.

  ‘Why?’ said Lillian.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Lola. She wished she knew why she was going home to Australia. It just seemed like it was something she had to do. Maybe she was worried that she’d never find another boyfriend. And that would mean she’d never get married and always be on her own. Lola had felt bad after she’d hung up from Lillian.

  Sam and Dave were about to start. Backed by a slew of saxophones and an almost all-black band – apart from the white guitarist and white bass player. Sam and Dave ran onto the stage. From the first note, the music almost lifted people out of their seats. Lola understood why Sam Moore and Dave Prater were nicknamed Double Dynamite.

  They danced and moved and sang in unison and at high speed. There was a gospel-tinged euphoria about them and their music. Sam and Dave’s music could make you want to go to church. It could make you want to believe. It could make you want to pray. It could lift you out of a cloud.

  ‘Hold On, I’m Comin’,’ they sang. There was a preacher-like ecstasy to their voices and their movements and gestures. Their voices separated and reunited. They moved together side by side and then around each other, as though each were part of the other. Their souls as well as their vocal chords and legs and arms seemed to be in
accord and agreement.

  It must have been the music that fused them. Offstage, Sam and Dave didn’t speak. Didn’t say a word to each other. They hadn’t spoken to each other for a long time and wouldn’t speak to each other for many, many more years.

  8

  ‘Would you like a Maine lobster and cold-water shrimp cake, rolled in Japanese-style Panko crumbs?’ the waiter holding the tray of lobster and shrimp cakes said to Lola Bensky.

  ‘Cold-water shrimp?’ Lola said. ‘Don’t all shrimp and fish live in cold water? They would boil, or at least blanch, in hot water.’

  The waiter took a deep breath. ‘Like lobster and crabs, there are cold-water shrimp and warm-water shrimp,’ he said. ‘Cold-water crustaceans and fish come from cold-water oceans like the Atlantic and the Arctic, and warm-water crustaceans and fish come from warm-water oceans like the Pacific and the Indian.’

  Lola was dazzled. First, she hadn’t even known there were cold-water and warm-water oceans. It was the sort of information that she felt, at sixty-three, she should somehow have managed to acquire. And second, this waiter knew his fish. A decade ago, few waiters or other food-industry personnel could have told you very much about a dish or its components. Now, each ingredient and herb and spice had its own pedigree, provenance and history. Now it was not just people in the food business who were interested in food. More and more ordinary people were becoming food experts. Food was having its moment. Food was the new stock market.

  Fifteen years ago people were talking about their therapists. A decade ago, the conversation was all about Internet start-ups. And then food took over. Culinary terms appeared in every second sentence. Terms like sous-vide, semifreddo, au jus, deglaze and confit. No one could just say lunch or dinner. It had to be a chicken salad au jus or lamb sous-vide or deglazed pork shoulder or leg.

  How things had slipped from the psychological significance of missing three sessions with your therapist to exactly how your chicken was cooked was a little incomprehensible to Lola. Being knowledgeable about food now made you more socially desirable than a brain surgeon. Or maybe not. In New York everyone liked to know a medical specialist.

  The waiter with the lobster and shrimp cakes came past Lola again. Lola took the last Maine lobster and sweet cold-water shrimp cake rolled in Japanese-style Panko crumbs. ‘You know a lot about shrimp,’ Lola said to the waiter.

  Lola was on the Upper East Side at a fundraising dinner for the New York Public Library or the New York City Ballet or maybe it was another New York cultural institution. Lola couldn’t remember. The dinner was at the home of Phyllis-Elissa and Elwood Earlwood, who owned several of Mr Someone Else’s paintings. They were important art collectors.

  Phyllis-Elissa was never just called Phyllis, it was always Phyllis-Elissa. Lola, who had an inbuilt and irrational dislike of very rich people, quite liked Phyllis-Elissa. Phyllis-Elissa had a warmth about her. She was confident and direct. And she was fat. Not hugely fat. But fat. It was unusual in very wealthy circles for a woman to be fat. Fat women were under-represented in the world of the very rich. There were quite a few very fat, very rich men, but very few very rich, fat women.

  Phyllis-Elissa didn’t seem to mind being fat. She didn’t try to wear more flattering clothes. Her buttons often gaped and her clothes looked too tight. Tonight she was wearing a black, vintage, beaded 1940s dress. Her bust was straining to get out in the gaps between the shiny, quartz-like multi-faceted buttons. The cellulite in Phyllis-Elissa’s thighs and hips was bumping against the crepe de Chine fabric of her dress. Lola admired Phyllis-Elissa for being at ease enough with her size to be able to display it without any firming undergarments or other slimming tricks.

  Phyllis-Elissa and Elwood Earlwood’s Fifth Avenue apartment was, Lola thought, very beautiful. It looked as though it had been built in the 1920s. The apartment was very big. One of the living rooms, which faced Fifth Avenue, was fifty-five feet long. But even at that size and with three Picassos, two Dalís and several de Koonings and Rothkos on the walls, the room looked lived-in and comfortable. The library, which had large, overstuffed sofas and armchairs and a wall-to-wall series of Matisse etchings, had the cosiness of a regular family den. There also must have been six or seven bathrooms. Lola, who had been drinking a lot of mineral water, had already used three.

  Lola estimated there were about fifty or sixty people at this fund-raising dinner. Most of the guests were slim. Many looked like dancers or ex-dancers. Maybe the dinner was for a dance company. Lola was no longer fat herself, although she didn’t like to state it so blatantly in case the fat somehow leaped back and adhered itself to her. Lola hadn’t been fat for at least two decades.

  Lola still felt fat. She couldn’t stop feeling fat. Feeling fat, she thought, must in some way be a comfort to her. Otherwise, why would she cling to it? Why would she still feel so attached to her fat? If she put on four or five pounds, she panicked and felt huge. Maybe that panic was comforting, too. The panic about how fat she was could immerse her for days in a reassuringly familiar universe of anxiety.

  At sixty-three, Lola still wished she could be really thin. She had been able to get there a few times and become thin enough to be able to see that she was thin, but she couldn’t maintain that weight. She inevitably started to eat more. One extra Weight Watchers ice-cream bar, one extra apple, one extra tub of low-fat cottage cheese and she had added another three- to four-hundred calories to her daily intake and a couple of inches to her hips.

  But she was happy to be sixty-three and standing up with a glass in her hand, talking, like everyone else. She could now stand and talk. For hours, if she wanted to. She could, with a degree of trepidation and a little anxiety, travel by subway. She could also sit anywhere in the theatre or cinema, except possibly in an upper level – particularly if it had a deep, downward slope.

  Lola knew she still had anxieties she juggled and struggled against, but on the whole she was okay, she thought. She felt lucky to still be so in love with Mr Someone Else and to have children who liked her. Or who, mostly, liked her. Her children were grown up. All three had chosen partners who adored them. And didn’t bore them.

  At Mrs Gorgeous’s wedding and, later, at her son’s wedding, Lola had been lifted up in the air, in a chair. She had laughed like a child as four men had hoisted her and the chair in the air and carried her around the room as the band played ‘Chosen Kale Mazel Tov.’ Lola had felt exactly the way she used to feel when she was riding on top of the elephant at the Melbourne Zoo. She had felt on top of the world. She wished Renia could have been there. Could have seen how beautiful Mrs Gorgeous looked. Could have seen Lola on top of the world.

  Lola was talking to a choreographer Phyllis-Elissa had introduced her to. She had never met a choreographer before.

  ‘You must really have to know the body and how it works to be a choreographer,’ Lola said to him. Unlike a writer, Lola thought, a choreographer couldn’t ignore their body while they pondered whether overwrought or overexcited or overstated best expressed what they were trying to say.

  ‘Yes, you do, down to the smallest movement like how each finger can flex and extend and abduct and adduct,’ he said, demonstrating the four movements. Lola was impressed.

  ‘Do you know that apart from the genitals, fingertips have the highest concentration of touch receptors and thermo receptors of any part of the skin?’ Lola said. ‘It means that they’re very sensitive to temperature, vibration, pressure, moisture and texture.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said the choreographer, and laughed. Lola was relieved that he had laughed. She had no idea what had possessed her to talk about genitals to a perfect stranger. She thought that it must be an overly-enthusiastic need to contribute to the anatomical dialogue.

  ‘Have you always been thin?’ The choreographer said to Lola.

  Lola started stuttering and spilled some of her mineral water down the front of her dress. ‘No,’ she said, firmly. ‘Anyway, I’m not thin,’ she added.
/>   ‘You look thin to me,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ she said, patting her hips and thighs to emphasise their size.

  Lola was flushed. Being called thin unnerved her. Being called fat never used to unnerve her. But then nothing much did. For years. Until almost everything began to unnerve her.

  A small but audible murmur spread through the room. Lola looked up. Another guest had arrived. To Lola’s surprise, the newly arrived guest was Mick Jagger. You could feel the added frisson in the room. Even for a blasé New York crowd, Mick Jagger was a big deal.

  Lola was happy to see Mick Jagger. Mick Jagger looked good. He was wearing a shiny plum-coloured jacket and the skinniest stove-pipe trousers in a tan, grey and dark-red tartan, with black sneakers and fluorescent green socks. He looked remarkably like himself. A lot of people, more than forty years later, only retained a glimmer of who they were. But Mick Jagger was still Mick Jagger. His hair was more or less the same. He didn’t look as though he’d lost any of it. His body looked lean and taut. Lola was happy to see Mick Jagger looking so good. He looked prosperous. And happy. He was with L’Wren Scott, the former model and stylist who was a very successful fashion designer. Mick Jagger, Lola had read in the New York Times, referred to L’Wren Scott as the person he was kind of dating, although they’d been together for ten years.

  L’Wren Scott was very striking. At six-foot-three in her bare feet, she towered over Mick Jagger and most of the other people in the room. She was dressed entirely in black. A long black dress, black tights, black shoes. Her long, almost waist-length hair was as black as her clothes. And her face was as pale as a face could be and still exude a healthy glow.

  Mick Jagger was often photographed sitting in the front few rows at L’Wren Scott’s fashion shows looking very proud. But then Lola thought that Mick Jagger had probably been very supportive of the most important women in his life. Lola had heard that when Marianne Faithful was learning the script of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, Mick Jagger had helped her by playing the roles of the other sisters. And that he had helped Jerry Hall choose her modelling photographs.