‘Gee, you’ve got a smooth friggin’ way about you, havencha, Wolfman?’ she said.
‘See you soon then,’ he said, and clicked off.
Roasted split poussin—definitely. But first, another ice-cold Peroni.
‘Hey, Claudio,’ he called, spotting the waiter, and held up the empty glass.
She was sitting opposite him in fifteen minutes—waiting for the toenail polish to dry took the extra five. Suzen always looked as if she’d just fallen out of bed, and today was no different. Her spiky henna’ed hair stuck out in every direction, but Stan knew it took her a long time in front of the mirror to achieve that effect. Suzen couldn’t help herself: she worked part-time as a hairdresser in a salon for the super-cool cats. Stan had visited her there, and it was like being in a giant, canary yellow, cone-shaped space capsule. Today she had on green eyeliner and eye shadow, a heavy application of mascara and dark green lipstick. Contrasting with all this was a dusting of white powder over the face. When she opened her mouth Stan saw three silver studs in her tongue. She had rings and studs—not to mention tattoos and other markings—all over her body. A glittering silver chain swung from an earring to a lower lip-ring. On her upper arms were tattoos of an Indian chief in full headdress, and intertwined serpents, flames spewing from their mouths, and there was a snarling bulldog on her rump. Coils of barbed wire holding a burning candle—the Amnesty International emblem—encircled her ankles, a sexy guitar-playing grrrl adorned one of her breasts and there was a flowering orchid on a shoulder blade. Obscure Mayan and Egyptian symbols were scattered over her like an ancient code, and there was a single Japanese character meaning ‘happy life’ on the small of her back. She even had a scarified tattoo—cut with a scalpel and inked in—of a holy cross over her heart, and a brand across her abdomen, just above the wispy patch of pubic hair. Burnt into the flesh with white-hot wire, it said PROPERTY OF WILEY—whoever the fuck Wiley was. Had to be some dopey boyf from before she knew Stan, but he didn’t want to know.
So Suzen was right into body modification and S&M—it was one of the reasons Stan was attracted to her, and vice-versa. She was no babe—like him she had acne scars on her face; she also had a permanent rash, and was scrawny and under-endowed from an unhealthy lifestyle. But she was a wild and willing party chick who’d do pretty much anything— especially if she’d sniffed some blow or popped a Mitsubishi, or shot some horse into her veins. She would swallow any kind of shit he gave her without even knowing what it was. Best of all, she didn’t race for the door when she clapped the peepers on Stan’s hairy torso. In fact she liked it—called him Wolfman, or the Wolfhound—Wolfie for short sometimes.
They ordered a bottle of white wine to accompany Stan’s seasoned split bird, which filled the plate and came with separate bowls of roast potato and parsnip with garlic and rosemary sprigs, and some steamed greens. Suzen nibbled at a piece of his poussin and ate a small potato while Stan made an almighty mess of his plate. Suzen had next to no appetite. ‘Lunch’ for her consisted of pecking at morsels. She might chew a leaf of lettuce or slice of mushroom, or dab at the crumbs from a bread roll, but there was no real eating involved. Stan put this down to her drug and alcohol addiction, along with all her offbeat traits. Together they gulped the Passing Clouds, and when it was gone they had another. Stan was feeling a lot livelier by the time they’d reached the bottom of it, and the lights were definitely on in Suzen’s evil, Gothic eyes.
When they’d finished Stan called for the bill, dropped some cash on the table and waved adios to Gianni. On the sun-dappled pavement he slapped her sharply on the backside and said, ‘So—wanna come back to my place or what?’
Suzen didn’t need to think about it too long. ‘Why not? Might as well trash the rest of the friggin’ day.’
In his recently purchased pad—one of the ultra-modern medium-density apartments in Beacon Cove, Port Melbourne— they did some lines of powder, then made their preparations. After showering they applied liberal doses of lubricant onto each other,particularly over—and into—their erogenous zones. The sex-scented oil acted as a powerful aphrodisiac as much as a lubricant. When that was done Stan attached his nipple rings and the navel ring, then inserted a fourth ring in the pierced head of his penis. When that was done he connected the heavy silver chains to the nipples, ran them down to the navel, then the penis—the Full Albert, it was called, after Prince Albert— he was some kind of groover, the old Prince Al. Then he put on a wide studded belt, studded leather gauntlets with exposed palms and a black leather mask that made him look like Zorro. In the meantime Suzen decked herself out the same way. She already had the nipple and navel rings and two on her labia, so it was just a matter of connecting the chains. Then she clipped on a heavy, seriously spiked dog collar. Stan attached a chain to it, wrapping it around his gauntlet, then ordered her onto all fours.
Slapping her on the bare buttock, right on the bulldog tattoo, he began to berate her: ‘You dirty little dog. You filthy creature. You pissed on the floor, didn’t you?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she whined.
‘Yes, you did. I saw you. Next time you do that I’m gonna rub your nose in it, you filthy bitch. You grubby hound. Go on—get moving.’ He gave her hindquarters a stinging blow, and Suzen crawled around the room yelping and panting as he carried on upbraiding her. Then he began thumping her buttocks with his slippery erection, hitting her harder and harder with it, the chains clanking and swishing, before ordering her to roll over onto her back. Panting and woofing—the slavering, studded tongue hanging right out— she cringingly obeyed, folding her arms in like puppy paws and lifting her legs high and wide. Stan got on his knees, unclipped his penis from the chains and slid it into her, under the labia rings. Suzen barked and yelped and bucked, but when he saw how much she wanted it he quickly withdrew.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a bad, bad dog. You don’t deserve a bone.’ He reconnected the chains to his hefty tool.
‘I won’t be bad again,’ she whined, legs pedalling the air. ‘Please . . . I’m sorry. Give me one more chance.’
Stan stood over her, cock in hand.‘Whimper, whimper . . . You’re fucking pathetic. You make me sick. I wouldn’t waste my jism on you. I’d rather flush it down the can.’
So it went on—for over an hour. The aim of the exercise was to continue for as long as possible without succumbing to the inevitable endgame. This took a lot of discipline—and practice. With S&M it was necessary to deprive oneself of easy pleasures. It was all about denial, refusal to give in, withholding, punishing. Then at long last—reward. What a huge blast it was—infinitely more satisfying than normal sex. You got rocks off you didn’t know you had. Today it was Suzen’s turn to wear the collar, but when Stan did she hard-rode him around the room, slapping him over the head and cracking him with a jockey’s whip. If she felt the Wolfhound was particularly deserving of punishment, she would shove it deep into his rear end and give him a golden shower.
Dusk came down. The scent of lubricant was still strong on their bodies as they lay in bed, but Stan wasn’t even slightly aroused—Suzen didn’t turn him on outside the S&M scenario. Come to that, Stan’s erections were few and far between nowadays, even though he was still a young-ish man of thirty-seven—ten years older than Suzen. Only violence, real or make-believe, consistently made his prick come up and stay up. Now it was at rest. They’d napped, then sniffed some more of that lovely powder. Hmm. How could anyone even think of eating when there was this stuff around? Now they were downing Bacardi Breezers and watching the news on TV—another string of convenience store robberies.
‘That bastard’s out of jail, you know,’ Stan said in a low voice—like a growl. The old crackling and spitting at the back of his head had started up again.
Swigging on the Bacardi, Suzen thought about it—she was more than a little spaced. ‘What bastard’s that?’ she said, thinking it had something to do with the still-at-large convenience store bandit.
‘Well, what
bastard do you think? Shaun McCreadie—that bastard.’
‘Oh, shit—is he?’
‘I just said he was, didn’t I? Jesus, Suzen, listen up.’
Suzen bit her lip, swallowed more Breezer. She knew what he was on about now. It wouldn’t do to annoy him on the subject of Shaun Randall McCreadie.
‘I thought he was in for life,’ she said.
‘He was,’ Stan said. ‘But the Appeals Court upheld his appeal. Judges ruled—unanimously—that there was some doubt about whether he pulled the trigger or not. New forensic evidence, or some shit. They reduced his sentence to fourteen years, which made him eligible for parole straightaway.’
‘Oh, that’s fucked, Stan,’ she said.
‘Christ, what difference does it make who pulled the fuckin’ trigger? They were all in it together, in concert—all equally guilty.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. She was remembering: a country mansion, a shocking, violent break-in, appalling torture and bloodshed. Guns, knives, hammers—it all put her in mind of Charlie Manson and his insane ‘family’. Suzen was a Goth, but not in that way, not in the evil way of Manson’s ‘girls’. There was a TV documentary, even a book written about the attack on Stan’s family. Large quantities of cash and drugs were involved. There were some vital unanswered questions, and it was all a bit hazy in her mind—but the crime scene details were grisly and harrowing. When she’d first met Stan she didn’t know who he was, but then he told her his father was George Petrakos, and she’d been horrified. Playing S&M games was one thing, but real violence gave her the cold shivers—not to mention vivid nightmares from which there seemed no waking. Awful, shocking nightmares.
Stan said,‘It wasn’t in the papers. My lawyer says it was all hush-hush—to protect him from possible reprisals.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah—protect him. Can you believe it? He’s free— laughin’—but my parents are still dead, aren’t they?’
Suzen remained silent. She could feel Stan’s anger building. The fizzing in his brain was palpable. She’d seen him explode into terrible rages before—not pretty. And it was always Shaun McCreadie at the bottom of it. Shaun McCreadie was Stan’s Charles Manson.
‘Nothing you can do about it now,’ she said, and immediately regretted her words. Stan turned towards her, small dark eyes afire in his scarred face. Ugliness made his anger so much more frightening.
‘Isn’t there, Suzen? I can find him and kill him,’ he said through trembling lips—lips that were wet with rage and Bacardi Breezer. ‘Make the bastard choke on a bullet, or stick a knife in his black heart. That would settle it. Wouldn’t it?’
‘I guess so,’ she said.
‘I’ve got to kill him, and anyone associated with him,’ Stan said in a level, unemotional voice. Suzen gave him a slightly puzzled look. It struck her as a rather odd phrase to use, and not at all one she would expect to come from Stan’s lips. He appeared to have withdrawn right inside himself now, in a way she’d seen him do before. If she’d waved a hand in front of his face, she was sure Stan would not have blinked.
Charles Manson. Nightmares.
For Suzen the two went together as naturally as drugs and alcohol, or a dog collar and a good whipping. As a child, she became aware of Manson’s atrocities. He became her night stalker, the monster in her dreams—a darkened, evil presence creeping into her room, standing at the end of her bed, knife-hand raised—night after night it was the same. She’d try to wake up, to scream, but couldn’t. The scream always stuck in her throat. Couldn’t even move—she was frozen stiff with fear. It was as if she were pinned down on a slab, ready to be sacrificed and cut up. She’d read Helter Skelter many times, along with every other book on Manson, and years later she saw him on TV during one of his parole hearings—a middle-aged, shaven-haired monster with a swastika tattooed on his forehead. He was lapping up the attention and playing sinister mind games with the interviewer. Manson was so psychotic he could not even see that he had done anything wrong— to him it all seemed very amusing. He was also seen strumming a guitar in his cell. Her stomach turned to water watching the man—the vibe of evil around him was shimmering and potent beyond measure. Suzen always felt that if Manson were ever released—God forbid—it would be a crisis. He would surely come after her personally, to seduce and kill her. That paralysing vision of the killer at the foot of her bed would make one final, dreadful appearance.
Charles Manson. Pools of blood. Dismemberment, satanic messages daubed in blood, strewn body parts, the painted corpse of Sharon Tate in a bathtub, wrapped in heavy ropes, a murdered unborn baby—the formative images of her teen years. Suzen (still Susan to her parents, though she’d changed it years ago) actually turned to tattooing, piercing, body scarification and S&M as a sort of protective shield or force field against the real violence out there—and in her night world. Together with hallucinogens, Limp Bizkit, The Clash and PJ Harvey, it was her way of coping. The awful, seductive power of Manson was warded off by the scarified cross over her heart. In her mind ‘scarification’ meant ‘scare away’, or ‘ward off ’—such was Suzen’s obsession with Manson. She was simultaneously repelled and drawn by his diabolical presence in the world.
As for Stan—well, he was an enigma. Ugly, hairy, full of threatening macho shit, but there was something else hidden in there: the small child, vulnerable and frightened, with whom she could identify. She knew he was usually up to no good, but he’d never done anything to her, and in a bizarre sort of way they did complement each other. Like her, Stan had unresolved problems deep in his subconscious. One night recently he had woken abruptly from a bad dream and sobbed like a child at her breast. Suzen cradled him with great tenderness and pity. She had valued that moment—a moment when he had opened up to her, babbling on incoherently about his brother and father. He had let slip his tough guy façade. Stan, too, had fears and anxieties. And after what had happened to his family, why wouldn’t he?
Aside from that, there was an even more compelling factor in their relationship. Suzen was a person who needed to feel protected, and Stan Petrakos, she felt, could watch over her better than anyone alive. Fear/attraction: Manson/Stan. Her mind—particularly when she was tripping—was full of polarisations that blurred, coalesced, became one. There were times she believed she was seriously crazy, clinically insane. Times also—late at night when he was high with excitement/ anger—when Stan’s pocked face seemed to burn with an intense, volcanic glow, as if all the scars and craters and capillaries smouldered and bubbled with a slow-burning lava heated from deep within.
6
Raydon Steer, QC, had a story to tell, an amusing one involving a newly appointed County Court judge who had apparently made an inauspicious debut. Sitting opposite him was longtime friend and fellow barrister Oliver McEncroe. They were ensconced in overstuffed lounge chairs in Raydon’s club, the Australia, enjoying fine, sixteen-year-old single malt Laphraoig Scotch whisky, Lagavulin—Raydon’s preferred tipple at cocktail hour. Oliver, who had come directly from chambers, had on his grey chalkstripe three-piece suit with the gold fob watch chain, while Raydon appeared more relaxed in his bow tie and the navy alpaca pullover he was fond of sporting lately. He was puffing on his Churchill, trying to get it started, and relating the anecdote at the same time.
‘So his honour’—puff, puff—‘his honour calls a recess, you see. It’s a major case involving this tycoon fellow—what’s his name?’ Puff, puff.
‘You’re telling the story, Steer,’ Oliver said.‘Or attempting to. Tell me, do you ever actually inhale that monster?’
‘Good Lord, no. One doesn’t need to inhale one’s hand-rolled Punch cigar to appreciate its superior qualities, McEncroe. Don’t be such a boor. Anyway, as I was saying . . .’
‘Attempting to say.’
Raydon swirled his Scotch and sipped.‘So his honour calls a recess, and all rise. As I said it’s a big fraud case, so the court is overflowing with public, reporters and what have you. He opens the door�
��what he believes is the door to his office—only to find it’s the janitor’s closet.’
Oliver laughed uproariously, slapping the table. ‘Oh, splendid,’ he said.
Thus encouraged, Raydon cleared his throat and hurried on: ‘His honour promptly plunges his imported, hand-made Italian shoe into a bucket—one of those metal ones with a . . . a sort of squeezing device in it, and then brooms and mops and other cleaner’s paraphernalia fall out all over him.’ Puff, puff, puff. Guffaws and an inadvertent snort from Oliver.‘Try as he may he can’t extricate his foot from the bucket, McEncroe. It’s wedged in tight. His honour is now the subject of much stifled chortling and sniggering from the assembled crowd. He is the picture of excruciating embarrassment as the clerk of the court bends his shoulder to the task, burrowing beneath his honour’s gown, and together they manage to de-bucket the learned judge whose face, as you can imagine, is now brick-red.’ Puff, puff, puff.‘Then, when he arrives at the correct door, he can’t open it, because he’s locked it, McEncroe, and can’t find the key. Much mirth and merriment ensued in his honour’s court for quite a time, I can assure you. Even the accused couldn’t wipe the smirk off his face.’
Oliver was beside himself with raucous belly laughter. ‘Fucking brilliant, Steer,’ he said.‘Absolutely first rate. And extra points if you made it all up.’
‘On my honour,’ Raydon said, affecting appropriate gravitas. ‘I swear ’tis true.’
‘Then it couldn’t have happened to a nicer parcel of goods,’ Oliver said.
‘There’s something else I wanted to tell you,’ Raydon said, a decent time having elapsed. ‘On a more serious note.’
‘Well, I didn’t think you’d invited me to your club merely to relate the misadventures of his honour—diverting as they are,’ Oliver said. ‘But if we’re about to have a serious conversation, I insist on more of this excellent Scotch. What is it? It’s so . . . soft.’
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