I dived into the deep end. Under the water it was quiet; the lapping flap and suck of the pool filter, the rush of water in my ears, the sunbeams loose and scattered, swaying like reeds. I touched down on the pebbly bottom and looked around. Randy was sitting cross-legged like a monk meditating, a steady stream of bubbles ascending from his nostrils. He smiled and gave me the OK sign. I shot up to the surface where Mum was leaning over the edge.
Assuming the worst, she screamed, ‘Oh my god, he’s paralysed. Quick, call an ambulance!’
‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘He’s just kidding around.’
‘He’ll have brain damage!’
Randy’s bald spot broke the surface.
Mum shouted, ‘He’s alive!’
He was coughing and gasping for air but grinning like a maniac. Mum leapt in on top of him with a splash. She slapped him on the bicep. ‘What a stupid, stupid thing to do.’
‘So I had you going, did I?’ Randy’s eyes were bloodshot from the chlorine.
‘You sure did. We thought you were paralysed.’ She wrapped her arms about his neck, clinging onto him like a koala.
‘No, we didn’t,’ I said.
‘I’m in training for the Queensland over-fifties underwater breath-holding championships in Townsville next month.’
‘That’s amazing,’ Mum raved. ‘You were under there for… how long was it, Rosemary?’
I hauled myself out of the pool.
‘Four minutes, fifty-two seconds,’ Randy said, showing Mum his stop-watch. ‘Only two minutes, forty-three off the Andy LeSauce record.’
The weekend was nearly over and Scott still hadn’t called. At work that evening, I lied to Trish about my progress, inventing sexual antics deviant enough to satisfy her. It was all bullshit but she believed me and proceeded to describe in graphic detail the sex she’d had the night before with some guy called Zane she’d met at the Norse-Raider rave.
‘He went down on me for hours. Kept saying how much he loved eating pussy and he must have because he jerked off while he was licking me out.’
‘Was he cute?’ I asked.
‘Dunno,’ she said, ‘Everyone looks cute on ecky.’
I wondered if Scott might have been at the same rave. At least he wouldn’t have been eating pussy. He always told me how he hated the taste and preferred ‘real pump action’, but in retrospect he was probably just too bloody lazy to go down there. Not that this ever worried me; I could orgasm every time without fail so long as I was on top with Scott wet-pinching my nipples simultaneously, like the first time we made love after the car crash.
After shutting up shop, Trish got out the stuff for Scott. We stood behind the counter with the lights dimmed low while she unwrapped a square of alfoil. Inside, there were ten white pills, each stamped with an identical green elephant, its trunk trumpeting in the air. Trish flipped them over so all the elephants were on show, lining them up in a grand procession down the bench-top.
‘Fucking beautiful, hey,’ she said. ‘Makes your legs go like honey and your cunt feel all funny.’
I laughed, loving the thrill of being bad. Trish pulled a snap-lock of speed from her bag.
‘Want a bit?’ She dipped her finger inside.
‘Nah, I’m OK.’ I was crap enough on pot and booze.
‘Relax, babe. It’ll just get you a bit buzzy.’ She stuck her finger under my top lip and rubbed in a circular motion over my gum. It was a bit like being at the dentist.
‘Mind if I go some?’ Trish said. She scooped a small amount out of the bag with a latte spoon and pushed and prodded the stuff into a thin line with her credit card. She nicked a fifty from the till and rolled it into a tight cylinder. Then, pressing her finger against her left nostril, leant over the bench-top and snorted. A wide grin spread across her face. She sat up on the bench and lit a fag. I dipped my finger in again. Trish cranked the hardcore. My heart was racing and, although I was buggered from work, my brain was alert and sparky and my body felt hard and springy. I could have gone for a run. The shop took on a new vibe. The counter slick and metal bright. The chairs and tables expectant, like they wanted to dance. I looked up and saw my face, reflected a million times in the parfait glasses which hung upside down from the overhead rack. I got a spurt of childish excitement, like being locked in a toy shop overnight, as if anything was possible.
‘Told you it was good shit,’ Trish said. ‘Hope lover-boy likes it.’
I took some deep breaths and thought about how cool Scott would think I was, getting him A-class so easy. It would be my shout, my welcome home present to him.
Now I had a legitimate, non-desperate reason to call. Still, I decided to wait a few more days to see if he would ring me first.
I got home just after midnight, still buzzy from the speed. Trish had lent me one of her hardcore import CDs and, driving back, I pumped it to the max. The bass thumped low and deep in my stomach as the car shook around me and the steering wheel sent vibrations up my arms. I was feeling mega-supreme-sexy-queen-of-the-road until I pulled into the driveway where, to my ultra annoyance, Randy’s Beetle was blocking my side of the garage. I blasted the horn continuous, even though the house was in darkness.
Across the road Mr Leyland stepped out with his pet shihtzu to suss out the racket. Mum came running out in her chenille, but I kept on with the blasting, which I could barely hear over the hardcore anyway. Mum was yelling and hammering against my window but I wasn’t letting up. It was important to make my point. Randy came sauntering out of the house in a pair of leopard-print undies. He said something to Mum and waved across at Mr Leyland. Then, as if he had all the time in the world, he cruised into his Beetle, reversed down the drive and parked on the side of the road. Mum daggered me through the windscreen before following Randy back into the house.
I zapped the roller doors, released the brake-stick and rolled into the garage next to Mum’s Holden, the darkness swallowing me up. I pumped the hardcore and butt-danced in my seat for ages, but then the stuff started to wear off and I felt like a bit of a dick so I jabbed it off and sat listening for the tiniest sounds I could hear. The muffled tick of the engine cooling down. The soft crunch of a moth’s abdomen hitting the windscreen. The crack of my big toe. It felt safe; the car a shell with me the soft, squidgy mollusc inside. When I was a kid and Mum and Dad were fighting, I’d lock myself in the car with the radio up full-blast, listening to The Cars. I’d get hungry and eat all the barley sugars from the glove box until my teeth hurt. Once, I slept in there all night with the cabin light on and a picnic blanket wrapped around my legs.
Right then, I had the same urge to sleep in the car. Anything was better than being inside while Randy pumped his sperm germs into Mum with his surgically enhanced member. I took off my sandals, climbed into the back seat and lay down with my feet dangling out the window. It was cool inside the garage and there was the same smell of petrol, grease and rusty toolboxes as when Dad used to tinker about drinking beer and listening to the cricket on his pocket radio. I took off my clothes and stretched out in my bra and undies, my body all limp and floppy. My muscles ached with fatigue but my head was still firing like a piston. I checked my mobile for the zillionth time. There were more missed calls from Hollie and she’d left a frantic message about Danny being missing. I thought about him being outside Scott’s that morning and wondered if I should tell Hollie, even though I’d promised not to. What did Danny want with Scott anyway? It was weird, almost sinister. When Scott finally called me, I would ask him about their history. I had good vibes he’d ring me tomorrow. My legs had gone to sleep and it was pretty uncomfortable in the car, so I went inside.
Outside Mum’s room, I knelt down to listen for any grotesque sex noises but all I could hear was the loud ticking of her bedside clock and Randy snoring. I crept down the hall to my bedroom, hid Scott’s drugs in my undies drawer and stripped off naked for bed. Awake and horny, I lay in the dark for hours tracing figure eights across my stomach and tugging at my nipples,
imagining the split-second before Scott’s cock rammed up into me. I tried to wank myself with the end of my hairbrush but I was all bound up and edgy, and I couldn’t fucking do it. It was like having the worse itch ever but with no arms to scratch it.
11
Four days went by and Scott still hadn’t fucking called me. Extreme paranoia was kicking in, but I convinced myself that Mrs Greenwood had changed his sheets and that the note and choc had fallen down the crack between his bed and the wall. He can’t have got the note or else he would have called about the drugs.
On Friday morning Mum was heading into town to buy a new outfit for a date that night with Randy. I dialled Scott’s number as soon as she left the house.
Mrs Greenwood answered. ‘Yes, love. He’s sitting right here reading the paper.’ She passed me over.
‘Hi, babe.’ He was munching on a piece of toast.
‘Did you get my note?’
‘Yeah, nah, I was meaning to give you a call but I’ve been a bit busy.’
‘Did you like the chocolate?’
‘Yeah, but it melted all over my pillow.’
There was a squirmy silence. I took a deep breath and went for it. ‘Listen. Mum’s gone shopping for the day and I thought you might like to come over,’ I dropped my voice to a husky whisper, ‘for some S.E.X.’ As Trish said, there was no point in beating round the bush.
He laughed. ‘Bomber’s coming round to shoot hoops this arvo.’ There was a long pause. ‘But I can put him off. I’ll be over after lunch.’
‘Great. And I can give you the stuff from Trish.’
All morning, I ran around in a fluster: washing and blow-drying my hair; plucking the stray hairs from my porno-strip; painting my nails red to match my new half-cups and g-string; applying kissable lip-gloss and a butterfly sticker to my cheekbone. I took down his postcards in case he thought I was a psycho and I pulled out the fly screens in case he came to the window like he used to. Under my bed were the handcuffs and the leather whip I’d bought from a dodgy shop in the Valley. The thought of Scott coming round for sex and drugs really got me going. I grabbed the snap-lock from my undies drawer and opened it. I licked my finger, dipped it inside and rubbed all around my gums. My heartbeat quickened. Taking some deep breaths, I lay down on my sun-soaked bed, wriggling my fingers and toes like plant tendrils angling for the light. I focused, slitty-eyed, on the ruby sparkling in my belly-button. I hadn’t had the opportunity to show it to Scott at the party and I couldn’t wait for his reaction.
The phone rang. I answered in my drowsiest, sexiest voice. ‘Hello?’
‘Darling, it’s me.’ It was Hollie and I could tell, by the high pitch of her voice, that something was wrong. ‘Why haven’t you called me?’
‘I was going to.’ I felt bad. I was always letting her down. I should have called her back, but my mind had been on other things. ‘Listen, there’s something I should tell you about Danny.’
A shadow fell across my middle, blocking the sunlight like a sudden cloud. I sat up and there he was, right outside my window, grinning, in a pair of basketball shorts, no shirt.
‘Hollie. I’ve gotta go, alright? I’ll call you back later. I promise.’
‘But what about—’
I hung up.
The sun blazed around him like an aura. Sick excitement ripped through me. It was just like old times when he used to come in the middle of the night. Even on the hottest night of the year, we’d sleep spooned together on my single bed, the sweaty sheets knotted around us. At first light, he’d wake up and drive home so that Mum didn’t catch us. He hauled himself up and sprung, biceps flaring, onto the sill. I was propped up against my pillows, pretending to read, as if these days I always hung about the house reading novels in lacy lingerie and full makeup. He pounced onto my bed.
‘You expecting someone?’ he said, checking me out, his eyes roving up and down my legs, lingering on my belly-button ring, hovering over my wet-look lips.
‘No one in particular,’ I said, looking up from the page. His stare made me want to shed my skin but I’d spent a fortune on my bra and undies and didn’t want to get naked just like that. I wanted him to kiss me all over like he used to, to build up slowly. I wanted him to discover my butterfly butt-tatt. But he sat at the end of the bed, his knees drawn up to his chest.
‘Show us the gear, then,’ he said.
‘The gear? Yeah, cool, the gear.’ I got it off the top of my dressing table.
We sat cross-legged on the bed with our knees not quite touching, the stuff between us, the sun streaming in through the window. He was perfect in every way. Even his shoulder-length hair and stubbly face turned me on. He was a man now, his jaw sharper, his Adam’s apple fully formed. He unwrapped the elephants first, lining them up on the bed, same as Trish’d done. He counted them twice, up the row, down the row.
‘How much do I owe you?’
‘Don’t worry. It’s on me.’
He cocked his head to one side and looked at me. ‘You sure, babe?’
‘Positive.’ I slapped him lightly on the leg. ‘It’s just great to have you back,’ I said, realizing with a twinge in my gut that I sounded a bit wet. ‘So, are you going to that rave?’
‘Yeah. S’pose.’ He was fingering the pills one by one, giving them the kind of attention I wished he’d been giving me. ‘They’ve eroded a bit. You should have kept them in the fridge.’
‘Yeah, but Mum’d find them.’
‘You haven’t changed one bit, have you? You’re still the same girl I met that night at Café Neon.’ He chuckled. I smiled. At least he was talking about us. ‘You didn’t even know it was a strip joint.’
‘Yes, I did.’ I lied. ‘Remember that stripper.’
‘Yeah, I thought you were a dyke, you were so into it.’ He opened the speed bag and peered inside.
‘Stop it.’ I wondered what he’d think of Hollie and I pashing.
‘Babe, trust me, I’m not complaining. Two chicks are always better than one.’ He stuck his nose into the bag and inhaled deeply like some kind of a speed connoisseur. ‘Let’s just say, if I had the opportunity, I wouldn’t say no.’ He nudged me with his big toe and handed me the speed bag. ‘Rack us up a few lines while I hang a piss.’ He stood up and pecked me on the cheek, his stubble thicker from a week’s growth. ‘You’re so fucking sexy,’ he whispered in my ear before disappearing down the hall.
I cleared the junk off my bedside table and tipped a fair amount of speed into the middle. He was acting like a real arsehole but I couldn’t help myself, he looked so fucking good. I grabbed my credit card from my wallet and got to work carving out six straight and even lines.
One line for being dirty.
One line for being sexy.
One line for going wild.
One line for bad-girl want.
One line for Scott’s hard cock.
One line for getting back together.
I licked my finger along the edge of the credit card and quickly rubbed it on my gums. Scott padded back down the hall, his feet slapping against the tiles.
‘Your mum’s still got that weird sign about washing your hands vigorously.’ He was standing in the doorway. ‘If it wasn’t so fucking hilarious, it’d be really twisted.’
‘She’s got a new boyfriend called Randy Andy.’
‘Sounds like a poof to me,’ he said, flapping his wrists.
‘He’s got a massive dick.’
‘Couldn’t be bigger than mine.’
‘It’s huge.’
‘How big?’
I estimated the length with my hands.
‘Width?’ he asked.
‘Salami-size.’
‘Bullshit.’ He wrestled me onto the carpet and pinned my arms above my head. ‘Mutai?’ He was playing our mercy game, just like old times.
I shook my head, not giving in.
He flipped me over, twisting my wrists in Chinese burns behind my back. It hurt like shit.
‘Mutai?’<
br />
‘Mutai,’ I conceded through clenched teeth. He released me and I rolled over. We lay side by side on our backs, close but not touching. I felt the heat radiating off his body and I could smell him – that salty, scalpy smell that made me so horny. He turned to me, his head propped up on his arm. I did the same so that only a thin slither of air separated us. We stared at each other for ages, each part of me burning under his gaze.
‘Fuck, you look good.’ He had goose bumps on his chest.
‘I missed you, you know.’ My ears throbbed hot and I had a sinking sensation in my chest like I’d said the wrong thing. He held a finger to my lips and shook his head.
‘I know what you need.’ He crawled over to the lines. I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. What the fuck was he playing at? I needed sex not drugs, but then, as Trish said, speed was meant to make fucking even better. I sat up and watched as he snorted two lines, back and forth, no fuss; then I had one. As he looked at me, Scott’s pupils grew huge with lust. He pulled me to him and kissed me fiercely. Like eating the first strawberry of the summer, it was sweeter, juicier, more delicious than I’d remembered. His lips were so full, so ripe, I wanted to bite them off. He pulled back, turning around to the lines and polished off three more. I had the last one, feeling the stuff drip burning down my nasal cavity into my throat. When I looked up, he was gone.
‘Scott!’ No answer. I went searching for him. The speed was kicking in big-time now, firing my limbs, zipping through the twists and turns of the sausagey tunnels in my brain. I dashed from room to room. The house was bright and fresh. In the kitchen, there was the zing of lemon Pine-o-cleen in the air. I ran and skidded across the tiles, out through the sliding door to the courtyard. ‘Ouch!’ The pavers were hot. I nipped back inside. The cool hush of the lounge room with everything covered in plastic made me think of funeral parlours.
‘Scott!’
‘In here!’
He was lying on his back. Naked starfish on Mum’s bed. The air-con was on full-blast and he’d tuned the alarm clock radio to Triple J. ‘Suck My Kiss’ by the Chilli Peppers was playing. His eyes were closed but his body writhed to the music. I stood there looking at his nakedness. His cock, smooth and thick, pointed straight at the ceiling in a massive erection. He’d always wanted to fuck on Mum’s bed but I’d never had the guts before. It was just past three and I reckoned she wouldn’t be home before five.
The Dark Part of Me Page 12