Cherry Bomb

by Jenny Valentish

  I flushed.

  ‘Woodford, last year,’ she went. ‘Queenscliff, Echuca . . .’

  ‘Not your vintage,’ Waz said to me amiably.

  ‘Well, that was amazing anyway,’ I said to my aunt, for want of a bigger word. ‘I can’t believe how amazing that sounded.’

  ‘Thanks, sweetie,’ she said, a touch offhand. She assessed herself in her compact mirror and then snapped it shut. ‘We’re off to celebrate. Do you want to come with us to one of these awful establishments on the water?’

  I hesitated. ‘Is John coming?’

  She adjusted her handbag on her shoulder and examined me. ‘He’s working, sweetie,’ she said. ‘He’s here for the long haul. I’m sure Waz will be entertainment enough.’

  ‘Tall order,’ Waz said, ‘but I’ll try.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I just thought . . .’

  But they were off, down the steps of the demountable.

  Once we’d cleared the adventure playground and the carousel I could see the lights from the restaurants sparkling on the water, past the odd bobbing water taxi. It wasn’t fashionable to say so, but I quite liked Darling Harbour.

  ‘This one will do,’ said my aunt, putting her hand through Waz’s arm as she took the steps. ‘They’re all the same.’

  We took a table inside for some privacy and I settled my bag at my feet. I had the cocaine in my shoe if I wanted a top-up . . . I didn’t know how I was going to eat anything.

  ‘San Pellegrino, please, sparkling,’ said my aunt as the waitress came around. ‘Actually, make that champagne. What do you have?’

  ‘Veuve, Dom Pérignon, Cristal . . .’

  Alannah arched her brows and rounded her lips at Waz. ‘Ooh, shall we be naughty? Let’s have a little bottle of Dom. It is a special occasion.’

  ‘Champagne doesn’t count—not as long as it’s champagne with a capital C,’ confirmed Waz.

  I sat in silence as the waitress removed their wine glasses. My aunt was sober again, wasn’t she? She couldn’t sponsor John Villiers and drink champagne. On the other hand, I couldn’t believe I was drinking champagne with Alannah Dall and Waz Sharkey from Rizzler. That was one to piss off Rose, all right. I felt like I’d risen from the pages of Juice magazine, in some decadent scene in which everyone wound up drunk, the journalist included.

  ‘I’ll have the same,’ I said, when it was my turn.

  ‘So, how are things going, young lady?’ Waz said. ‘Last time I saw you, you were the toast of Grandiose’s town.’

  ‘Mickiewicz is making us his chief priority this year,’ I confirmed. It sounded like a boast after I’d said it, so I tried to soften it with something more humble. ‘We’ve always been very inspired by Alannah’s career, though, so we’re aware of how things can change, like that.’

  And then, it was like the click of my fingers ignited a flame in my aunt, so violently I could swear I heard the whoosh.

  ‘You’re not quite at the stage yet where things can take a downturn,’ she pounced, flicking her napkin into submission on her lap. ‘You need an upturn first.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ I stuttered.

  ‘Leave the grand industry overviews to the big girls, darling,’ she said, picking up her menu.

  The waitress came over with the Dom and took our food order.

  ‘Cheers,’ Alannah said when she’d gone, and raised her glass to Waz.

  ‘Cheers,’ I mumbled, last.

  ‘Here’s to front-page scandals, forgotten knickers and Saturday Night Live,’ Waz said. We clinked glasses in turn. Alannah had taught me and Rose to always maintain eye contact through a cheers, and Waz already knew.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Alannah said. ‘How about that ghastly Lana du Wotsit on Saturday Night Live. Completely out of tune; no technique.’

  ‘Del Rey,’ I said, shifting in my seat. ‘Her name’s Lana Del Rey.’

  ‘I think she’s gorgeous,’ said Waz.

  ‘Oh, please,’ Alannah scoffed. ‘It’s all persona. She’s appropriating Nabokov and Nancy Sinatra without a shred of originality, for the sake of shock value. Where’s the heart?’

  ‘Ah,’ he shrugged.

  ‘I like it,’ I argued. ‘It’s the most real thing about my generation I’ve heard in a pop song. She’s singing about my life.’

  ‘I can’t see the fuss about the allure of teenage girls. I mean, can you, Warren?’ Alannah queried, lifting her glass for a refill. ‘I’m sure they think they’re fabulously sophisticated and sexy, but the reality is a lot of stupid questions and passive squeaks.’

  I worked my jaw. I’d always fancied myself as a teenage temptress, like Drew Barrymore in Poison Ivy. Or The Amy Fisher Story. Or Doppelganger. I raised my glass and tipped it so violently that champagne flowed down my chin and I had to wipe my mouth.

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ Waz suggested as I choked discreetly.

  ‘Drink some water,’ said Alannah.

  I was about to lose my shit. I wasn’t the one who needed water. The champagne wasn’t even affecting me, thanks to the cocaine. Maybe if I dumped some in her drink when she wasn’t looking she would sober up. Instead I got out my phone and started texting. MENTAL BITCH I typed, then deleted it.

  I was forgetting to breathe. I took a breath. My breathing was too shallow.

  ‘It’s not important,’ my aunt allowed, pouring a last drop into her glass and upending the bottle in the ice bucket. ‘I just think it’s terribly dated, that’s all.’

  I looked up from my phone. ‘I think Lana is probably influenced by you, actually. People are really into dredging up the old stuff these days.’

  The waiter cut me off by sliding a plate in front of me. A small mound of gnocchi sat in the centre with a drizzle of something green around it. Pea purée, probably.

  ‘You know what it’s like now, Waz,’ I finished. Then I frowned, leaned over and tucked his shirt label in at the nape of his neck.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Alannah said, drawing herself up. She stood above us for a moment, then left the table.

  When she’d reached the door to the restrooms I said to Waz, adult to adult. ‘She’s drinking.’

  He took a drink himself. ‘I know, not ideal,’ he admitted. ‘But she’s celebrating. Often it’s when people are on a high that they slip up, not when they’re down.’

  ‘What should we do?’

  He looked less receptive. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said distantly. ‘Tomorrow’s a new day.’

  We talked a bit about sound levels and John Villiers’ skill as a live engineer, until Alannah came back.

  ‘Oh, we’re talking about Jo-Jo,’ she observed, taking her seat heavily. ‘Nina’s got a big, fat crush on John.’

  ‘Haven’t we all,’ said Waz.

  ‘But I’m afraid she doesn’t even know him.’

  I chewed my tasteless gnocchi and forced myself to swallow. ‘I prefer it that way,’ I said.

  Waz nodded.

  ‘I just trust him.’

  ‘You don’t even know him,’ she repeated.

  ‘That’s why she trusts him,’ Waz said.

  I could feel the table next to us watching. They’d stopped talking when they picked up the tone in Alannah’s voice.

  ‘Ignorance is bliss, my dear,’ my aunt sniped. ‘You may have a vivid imagination, but the reality, I’m afraid, is rather unpalatable.’

  As she spoke I was carefully dicing a bit of gnocchi, but inside I was raging. She clearly didn’t know I’d had my tongue down his imaginary throat, just as I’d pushed up against his imaginary hard-on, the dimensions of which I could relive with devastating realism.

  The waiter came over and topped up Alannah’s glass from a new bottle; the Dom Pérignon wasn’t even touching the sides. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. My shoe was off my foot before the door had even shut behind me and I fished out the little packet of coke. In a cubicle I shook out a messy line onto the cistern and pulled a ready-rolled note out of my bra.
>
  Out at the basin I gave a few taut sniffs and looked at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t see Alannah in my face. I never really could. I checked my nostrils and went back out.

  ‘So, how are you two related?’ Waz said as I took my seat again. ‘On whose side?’

  ‘This one’s Jeff’s daughter,’ Alannah said, giving him a meaningful look.

  ‘Alannah and Mum are sisters,’ I said, frowning. I speared a bit of gnocchi and put it down again.

  ‘Oh, your old PA? What was her name?’ Waz asked.

  ‘Helen.’

  ‘I can’t believe you and Mum were in a band,’ I said automatically. Then I shut up, feeling strangely protective. I didn’t want Alannah talking about my mother.

  ‘She was a great singer,’ Alannah acknowledged, ‘but too shy. She seems to hold me responsible, as if I sapped her confidence. But your mother was always the favourite. She got all of your nanna’s attention.’

  ‘She says the same about you,’ I said. But Nanna was a hard old bat. ‘Maybe there just wasn’t enough attention to go around.’

  Waz was staring fixedly out at the harbour, as though his usefulness had been defused by this girl talk. He snapped to when my aunt said, ‘She’s got every right to hate me, anyway.’

  I sensed a warning look even though I was too slow to catch it.

  ‘She doesn’t hate you,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, she does, darling. She credits me with stealing her husband.’

  Waz clanked his fork loudly against his plate.

  ‘Did you?’ I said, trying to laugh.

  ‘Oh, you don’t know our relationship,’ she said. ‘He was always there, Jeff—he understood me well. We understood each other.’

  ‘Shall we get the bill?’ Waz said.

  ‘Really?’ I tackled her. ‘I can’t imagine that. Dad’s not the sharpest tool in the box.’

  She took a sip and looked across the harbour with a pained expression, the broken heroine.

  ‘When?’ I persisted, my throat tightening to choke me.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘Around the time you were born. With Alain gone and my career all over the place, I needed something stable—’

  ‘My dad, stable?’ I laughed harshly. ‘Funny. He’s rooted everyone, you know. Probably even while he was seeing you.’

  ‘Probably,’ she said mildly.

  I went quiet, trying to find evidence that would reveal this to all be a lie. My aunt wore a sorrowful expression as she attended to her Atlantic salmon. The black sesame crust glistened malevolently.

  I met her eyes. ‘I hate you,’ I said.

  ‘Look, darling, it’s the champagne talking,’ Alannah said quickly, patting my wrist. ‘We’re all getting a bit emotional. There’s no need to get too dramatic about it. You live and learn. Your forties and fifties are a time of atonement; you’ll discover that eventually.’

  She squeezed my hand warmly and smiled at Waz. ‘Nina takes after me, Waz. God help her.’

  That was the first time she’d ever said such a thing.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said, getting up and kicking back my chair. ‘I take after my mother.’

  •

  I walked, head down, across Darling Harbour with my champagne glass in my hand, booting any rubbish that crossed my path.

  I’m nothing like you.

  In the playground I sat on a swing to drain my glass. Hooking my arms around the chains, I pulled out a scrunched-up cigarette packet from my leather jacket. I’d been dying for a smoke for the past hour but instead I’d sat and listened to that pair of bastards.

  My lighter was running low on fuel and by the time I’d lit my cigarette I’d burned my thumb on the metal. A few ibises were having a scrag fight in the palms overhead, sending a lone dirty white feather spiralling down. I gripped onto the chains and swung myself horizontal so that I could watch them. Soon the Saturday-night fireworks would start up, hopefully at the moment I cornered John Villiers. I probably had champagne breath now though. I hated champagne.

  Do you feel totally betrayed by your aunt at this moment? asked Molly.

  But screw him. Molly was Alannah’s friend, or was once. After this VTV show came out, he probably would be again. I’d always adhered to a Rule of Plausibility with my fantasies so that I wouldn’t end up breaking my own heart, so I had to face it: Molly wasn’t mine anymore.

  I needed to find out where John Villiers’ loyalties lay, and if they were with my aunt, so be it—he would never hear from me again. I swung myself to my feet and dropped the champagne glass in the nearest bin, enjoying the smash. The stage was still lit up across the way, and I didn’t take my eyes off it as I cut diagonally across the grass. I touched my finger to the side of my neck. My pulse was jumping painfully.

  At the sound desk, John Villiers was packing up his condenser mic and decibel meter when I crossed the now-empty VTV compound.

  ‘You still here?’ he said, straightening up and running a hand through his hair.

  I took that on the chin. ‘Are you done?’ I asked. ‘I was really hoping you could play me some of Alannah’s album.’

  He pulled out his hands to show me they were empty. ‘I don’t have it on me.’

  I sighed and held his gaze. ‘Back at yours?’

  Was it on? I couldn’t tell, but I could see the tug-of-war going on behind his eyes. I stared at him, willing him to take me home. If he turned me down tonight, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  ‘I’m staying here tonight, in the city,’ he said, gazing at the skyscrapers. ‘I do all right, contrary to what you might have heard.’

  I shifted and he hesitated. ‘Well, I might have some of it on my laptop,’ he admitted.

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yep,’ I grimaced.

  ‘The car’s over there.’

  He picked up his case of sound gear and called goodbye to the guitarist of Pink Fizz, who was watching with interest. Nosy guitarists were starting to be the bane of my existence.

  John Villiers and I walked in silence. He unlocked his old Land Rover and I hopped in. Grief was a fist in my throat, but I felt a calmness too, now that I was enclosed in a darkened vehicle that smelled of John.

  ‘Sorry about Ben Noakes,’ I said as he gunned the engine.

  ‘Noakes will do a great job,’ John Villiers said, looking past me and pulling out onto the street. ‘He’s what you need right now. Don’t worry about all that Mickiewicz stuff. He’s gone soft in his old age and Alannah got the right lawyer on the case when you signed.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ I said, not liking including Alannah in the conversation. ‘I’ve got him on side.’

  He grunted. I watched him change gears without stalling, the engine making a wonderful racket.

  ‘How are you and Rose going?’

  ‘Okay. Rose is dating a vampire. He’s nice.’

  ‘A vampire lesbian?’

  ‘That’s finished. She’s getting loads of gay-boy love, though. She’s even used on posters for gay clubs when she’s not even playing there. How is she somehow more kitsch than me?’

  ‘She’s got better hair,’ he suggested.

  ‘Do you like it?’ I demanded, swivelling around and fluffing the back.

  ‘It’s reasonably cute,’ he said. ‘You’d have to make a real effort to look terrible.’ He threw me that smile despite himself; the one he gave me all those years ago when I first went into Glasshouse and spilt my Coke everywhere. We sat in silence for a bit, listening to the whir of the heater. I didn’t want this journey to end. As long as we were on our way to a destination, it delayed his rejection when I made my move.

  ‘So, the drugs,’ I said, pausing for him to exhale and get over it. ‘Is that why you split with your wife? The gak?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about that another time.’

  He shook a cigarette out of a soft pack on the dash. So we were going to talk about it sometime. That meant we would
have to see each other again. I smiled to myself and stroked my face in the dark. ‘If this were an article in a women’s magazine,’ I said, ‘that would be known as a “red flag”.’

  He scoffed. ‘You’ve got a few red flags yourself. And they’re just the ones I know about.’

  ‘You know everything about me. You’ve had the advantage of already seeing me naked on the internet.’

  ‘I didn’t look.’

  ‘You missed out.’

  We lapsed into silence again. I stole looks at him. His profile changed under each streetlight; a different mystery to his face every two beats. Now darkness had fallen, George Street was a shimmer of lights that seemed to surround us with promise. Car horns serenaded us and the smell of footpath pizza seeped through the vents. My heart vibrated like a hummingbird’s wing. Like a ruler off a desk. Like Belinda Carlisle’s top E.

  I supposed that this was what it felt like, being in love—like your borders were dissolving and everything could just flood in unchecked.

  John Villiers was staying in a hotel in Kings Cross, so he took a sharp left off the main drag to barrel down into the underground car park. As he looked up I thought of all the times I’d watched him at Glasshouse—just two streets from us now—and willed him to make a move. Up in the foyer, I followed him through a maze of softly lit corridors, my pulse quickening at the heavy silence between us.

  Inside the studio suite, he tossed his wallet on to the kitchen bench and wandered into the bedroom. I bent to check my face in the reflection of the microwave, but I would need to get to the bathroom at some point to see if my bikini line was still in order. If not, he’d probably have a razor in there somewhere.

  John Villiers came out with his laptop lead and leaned over the lounge-room table to set it up.

  Hopefully not an electric razor.

  Once he’d teed up the first track, he sat down on the sofa to listen. I wandered the room, automatically peering into the suitcases along one wall and then catching myself.

  The song he put on wasn’t the middle-of-the-road rock I’d expected, nor the sort of classic pop that press blurbs liked to call ‘timeless’. John Villiers had kept the production pared back, orbited around the new quality of my aunt’s voice. She was still rhyming stuff like ‘masquerade’ with ‘charade’, but the affected sass of her eighties albums had been replaced by a depth of sadness that made it infinitely more beautiful. I felt an unbearable loss, listening to it. My throat ached, but I wiped a tear from my eye as quickly as it appeared.