‘Told you I’m not telling.’
‘I’ll get to hear it next week.’
‘Next week!’
‘Yep. You missed the end of the class when I asked everybody to bring in their pieces to workshop.’
The waiter places their coffees on the table.
‘Just remembered I have something on next week.’ She laughs again, and sips her coffee.
‘No you don’t.’
This is the most she’s laughed for … ever.
Matt reaches across for the sugar — the back of his hand too close to her, and she flinches.
‘Sorry. I …’ She doesn’t know what to say.
He frowns.
‘Sorry. It’s OK.’ She wants to snuggle up against his sweater. It looks so soft. There’s a hole starting to form in the left-shoulder seam; she would like to sew that up for him.
‘I have to go.’ She stands up, and starts to put on her coat. One of the sleeves is inside out, and when she flicks it the right way she knocks over her coffee. ‘Sorry.’
He stands the cup upright, and wipes the spilt coffee with some serviettes. ‘Is everything OK?’
She nods.
‘You sure?’
‘Yep.’ She rushes off — ignoring the pain in her knee and the stupid tears in her eyes — half-walking, half-running up Degraves Street. She trips on the gutter. Idiot. He must think I’m crazy.
32
Ember struts into the dressing room with at least three hundred dollars hanging out of her garter belt. ‘R–r–rob’s out there asking for you.’
Brigitte puts the costume she’s sewing aside and finishes her drink. She slides her feet into a pair of red stilettoes, and sashays out to see him. R-r-rob is a weirdo regular of hers, with a stutter and a fetish for r–r–red shoes — he likes to fill them with money.
He smiles moronically when she sits and puts her feet up on his table.
‘Hello, m–m–mistress P–p–pagan.’
‘Drink your beer, Rob,’ she says. ‘And put some money in my shoes. Now!’ He likes her to order him around.
R–r–rob’s eyes goggle behind his thick round glasses. He’s drooling, a bead of saliva shining at the corner of his mouth, and an erection snaking inside his trousers. He drinks his beer, and fills her shoes with twenty- and fifty-dollar notes.
She stifles a yawn, and looks up at the two blue lights above the main stage: Matt’s eyes. Stop it, Brigitte. Stop thinking about him. Especially after the performance at the coffee shop.
Vince the lawyer saunters in with Doctor Dave, the cosmetic surgeon who brings the dancers cocaine and does their boob jobs for half price. The cash register in her head cha-chings. She tells R–r–rob his time is up. He understands that her other customers will get jealous if she spends too much time with him.
Vince heads for the bar to order a shaker of some lethal concoction, and Dave comes over, waving a fifty-dollar note as Brigitte climbs onto a podium. The DJ plays ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’ for her.
‘Hi, Pagan. Hear you’ve hurt your knee,’ says Dave. ‘Can I have a look at it?’
‘It’ll cost you.’
He pulls out another fifty, and places them both under her garter belt as she dangles her legs over the edge of the podium.
‘Fuck, it’s really swollen.’ He feels the fluid around her knee, and tells her she needs an arthroscopy.
‘I know.’
‘You shouldn’t be dancing on it.’
Al comes over and jokes about them not being allowed to touch the merchandise.
Vince sits next to Dave, and places a shaker and three shot glasses on the podium ledge. He looks up at Brigitte, ‘Hi, beautiful.’
Dave slips his business card into Brigitte’s bra and tells her to give him a call. He can get her a job as a medical sales rep, with a company car and everything. She doesn’t mention that she can’t drive.
‘Now, how about taking off some of those clothes?’
Her garters — one on each thigh — are so full of money that they keep falling down. She squashes the cash into her overflowing locker in the dressing room. A few fifties stick out the bottom as she forces it shut and clicks the combination lock. She’s managed to get Matt off her mind and kill her knee pain with too many lethal shaker drinks, joints out the back with Ember, and lines of coke with Dave and Vince.
She steadies herself against the wall as she makes her way along the passage back out into the club. A punter sitting in a club chair in the lap-dance area beckons to her with a hundred-dollar note.
The room spins as she drapes herself over him and instructs him to unfasten her bra. She places her hands on his shoulders and sways slowly, softly brushing the insides of his thighs with her gyrating hips. She turns, pauses to remove her G-string, looks over at the door, and sees Sean come in. He looks around and walks towards the bar. He’s holding a bunch of white flowers. What is he doing here? It’s so out of context, it’s funny. She laughs, and her laughter — seeming to have substance and colour — reverberates inside her head. He sees her, but she doesn’t acknowledge him; she just keeps swaying and laughing. He turns and walks out. Hey, wait a minute. She tries to follow him, but doesn’t get far — everything is too fuzzy, and the punter pulls her back by the wrist.
Big Johnny cleans up the flowers strewn across the sticky carpet.
33
Tracy and Kayla have gone home, but Ian’s back. Eric doesn’t look away from the Nintendo game he’s playing with Ian when Brigitte, weighed down with shopping bags, walks into the apartment. Ian takes in a quick up-and-down of her, and loses the game.
‘Who’s Marco?’ Eric says.
‘My driving instructor.’
‘He rang while you were out. He’s running an hour late.’ He rolls the Juicy Fruit around his tongue, and lights a joint. ‘What did you buy, Pet?’ He shakes the flame off the match.
‘A mobile phone like yours.’ And some shoes, cosmetics, books. And lingerie that she had a daydream in the shop about wearing for Matt. Stop it, she warns herself.
‘Want a smoke?’
She shakes her head.
‘Did you say “driving instructor”?’
‘Yes. I’m starting a new job I have to drive for.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
She walks to the bedroom and closes the door behind her. Eric and Ian cough and laugh about something, and then the bip-bip-bip of the game starts again.
Brigitte kicks off her shoes, sits on the bed, and plays with the settings on her new Nokia N100 while she waits for Marco. All the girls at work are swapping their pagers for mobile phones. She works out how to set the ring tone and program phone numbers. She stretches out her legs, and swishes her calves against the gold satin bed linen — it’s cool and smooth. Sensual. She thinks of Matt, and her stomach flutters. She wishes she had his number in her phone. She pretends: types in MATT, and adds a made-up number to the list.
Better do some writing for him. She puts the phone aside, and takes out her notebook. She can’t think of what happens after — or rather, before — the park ranger finds the gold ballerina shoe in the snow. But she has an idea, a picture in her head, of the ending:
Soft snowflakes caught on the protagonist’s (Joanne/Joni/Julie?) spun-gold hair. One gold ballerina shoe, one bare foot and droplets of blood left strange pink-tinged prints in the snow. It was a long way to the summit, to find her husband and child. Her dead father took her hand and walked beside her. There was no hurry. Out here, there was no time and nothing mattered.
But what happens in between? Writer’s block.
She takes a break and tries to read the paper, but her mind keeps going AWOL. Matt. Matt. Matt. Stop it! Matt’s a nice guy. Nice guys are not interested in du
mb strippers with homicidal boyfriends.
But she won’t be a stripper for much longer, she reminds herself. Maybe then … She finds Doctor Dave’s card in her purse, and rings the number. She doodles some love hearts on her notebook cover while she waits for him to pick up. No answer. She leaves a message for him to call back about the medical-rep job.
There are plenty of other jobs in the paper’s employment section. One of those might be better than the rep job. David Jones is looking for a sales assistant in the cosmetics department. She loves shopping at David Jones. She writes an application letter on the back page of her notebook, and tears it out carefully. She’ll post it with a copy of the resume they had to write at school, after her driving lesson.
She puts the notebook aside, lies back in the satiny cloud of big, fluffy pillows, and closes her eyes. After the next writing class they will all sit laughing, crowded around those wobbly little tables in Degraves Street, with not enough room, so Matt will have to move closer to her. Their bodies will touch. She won’t freak out this time. He’ll accidentally put his hand on her leg. He’ll apologise, she’ll say it’s OK, and he’ll leave it there …
The sound of vacuuming disturbs her fantasy. She opens her eyes; the sheets feel hot, and her pelvis aches. Sean must be out in the foyer. Something happened at work on the weekend. She thinks Sean came in and got angry with her, but she can’t remember why.
Eric and Ian don’t look up as she walks past them to the door. She opens it, ready to apologise for whatever she did. Sean walks away, and she calls after him.
‘Who are you talking to, Brigitte?’ Eric shouts from inside.
‘Nobody.’
‘If it’s Shane, tell him to piss off.’
‘Sean.’
Eric coughs.
‘I’m going now.’
‘Where?’
‘Told you, I have a driving lesson.’
The vacuuming drowns out the sound of Eric’s and Ian’s stoned laughter. She closes the door behind her, and yells over the vacuuming. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’ Sean hits the stop button on the vac and walks towards his office. She follows him.
His office is not much bigger than a broom cupboard, or (having never seen a broom cupboard) the size she imagines one to be. There’s a desk with a phone and a computer; a metal shelf holding cleaning products and cloths; and brooms, of course, in the corner. It smells of furniture polish and lemon-scented disinfectant. She sneezes, and looks up into Kurt Cobain’s frozen blue eyes in a huge poster above the desk. He’s wearing a white T-shirt with Captain America printed across the front in blue letters, and holding a pistol to his mouth. The office is warm and stuffy, but the poster makes her shiver.
Sean stands the vacuum cleaner in the corner with the brooms, and sits at the desk with his back to her. She lingers in the doorway. He rubs his face with his hands. ‘Can you please just go?’
‘I said I’m sorry.’ She studies her fingernails. She remembers what happened at the Gold Bar, while pretending that she didn’t — that it was Pagan, not her.
He can’t even look at her.
‘It’s just my job, Sean. That’s not who I am.’
‘Close the door on your way out, please.’
She climbs into the driver’s seat. It feels strange, unnatural. Marco explains how everything in the car works. He has his own brake on the passenger side, just in case, which is reassuring.
‘Okey-dokey, Brigitte, turn on the ignition and put the gear into “Drive”, please.’
She turns the key, stops angsting about Sean, and smiles proudly as the engine starts. ‘Here?’ She looks down at the gears, and he guides her hand with his to select ‘Drive’.
‘That’s right. Now check your mirrors, and indicate to pull out into the traffic, please.’
‘This?’ She glances in the mirrors, and fumbles with the stick next to the steering wheel.
‘Yes, that’s the indicator — push it down to indicate right. And up for left. Okey-dokey, any time now.’
‘But there are cars coming.’ She looks to the sides, behind, in the mirrors.
‘Those cars are a long way away. It’s safe to pull out now.’
‘Can we wait just a minute?’
‘Okey-dokey. When you’re ready.’ He folds his hands in his lap.
She looks in the mirrors again. ‘Now?’
‘Now is fine.’
She inhales deeply, puffs out her cheeks, lets it go, and pulls out into the road. ‘Ha ha! I’m driving.’
A car beeps at them.
‘What?’ She glances nervously at Marco. ‘What am I doing wrong?’
‘You’re fine. Watch the road. We can go a little bit faster.’
She touches the accelerator tentatively with her right foot.
‘Let’s get our speed up to 60.’
God, that’s fast.
When she relaxes a bit, Marco tells her about his wife who’s in her thirties but still holding onto the dream of being an actor. She was gorgeous when he met her, just 17. A talent scout for a modelling agency discovered her in a shopping centre. The next Elle Mcpherson, they said. Then she started getting acting roles, left school, took drama lessons. Brigitte looks at a dress in a shop window on Lygon Street.
‘Watch the red light, Brigitte,’ Marco says. ‘Slow down.’
She brakes too hard, and the car jolts. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s all right. You’re doing fine.’
The light turns green, and she accelerates. ‘Was your wife on TV?’
‘She had a small role in a film and a bit-part in Sons and Daughters, but never got another break.’
‘My brother’s an actor.’
‘Turn left at the road before the cemetery, please.’
She indicates, and turns the wheel.
‘Make sure you get a good education, Brigitte. A good job.’ He barely knows her — why is he telling her what to do? ‘Left again up here, please.’
She doesn’t make the turn. She sits up straighter, in control now. It feels good.
‘Okey-dokey, we can go a bit further.’ He glances sideways at her, and she lifts her chin. ‘You got a boyfriend?’ he says.
She shrugs.
‘Bet you have at least two.’
She can’t help smiling.
‘You do!’
It’s pie night, so she has Marco drop her at Nana and Papa’s house after the lesson. She mails her job application to David Jones in the post box on the corner before she goes in.
34
‘Who would like to share their story?’ Matt is sitting on the big desk at the front of the room.
Only Jack raises his hand. Brigitte slinks in, late, along the wall, when Matt looks the other way.
‘Brig.’
Oh no.
‘How about you go first?’
She groans, ‘Do I have to?’
‘It’s your punishment for being late.’
They all laugh, and her neck and face prickle. But if she can dance naked in front of crowds of men, she can do this. Pagan could do this.
‘OK.’ She fumbles around in her bag for the A4 plastic sleeve containing the story hand-written neatly on lined, loose-leaf paper. Jack nods and smiles encouragement. She drops her bag on the floor next to Matt’s desk, clears her throat, and takes a deep breath. For a moment, her eyes are unable to focus on the words, and she can’t find her voice — she can’t do this. She takes another breath and, with the pages shaking in her hands and her face burning, reads her story about the woman who went insane in a cabin at Cradle Mountain after her husband and child disappeared on a bush walk.
When she finishes, the class is silent. They hated it. She looks up, Matt is staring at her, a
nd one of the women in the front row has tears in her eyes.
‘Wow, Brig.’ Matt stands up. ‘That was great!’
They all clap, and she feels herself turning even redder.
The class workshops her story. Matt offers suggestions about punctuation, and Jack tells her how Hemingway would have approached it.
It’s raining, so they sit inside the coffee shop. Everybody stays longer — congratulating each other on their stories. When they finally leave, Matt tells Brigitte again how much he liked her story. ‘That didn’t really happen, did it?’ he says.
‘Of course not.’
The rain stops, the sun comes out, and it’s hot behind the window in the shop. They take off their coats, Matt pushes up his shirtsleeves, and Brigitte puts on her sunglasses. Her bag emits a ringtone.
‘What’s that noise?’ he says.
She fishes out her new mobile phone.
‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
‘Just as soon as I work out how to.’ She presses the wrong button and hangs up. ‘Oops. It’s OK. Just my nana. I’ll ring her back later.’
‘How do you know it was your nana?’
‘It shows up on the screen. See here.’ Her chair scrapes on the floor as she pulls it closer to him. She’s so excited about her new purchase that she doesn’t notice how close he’s daring to lean. ‘You can program numbers into it. If somebody in your phone list calls, their name will show up on the screen so you know who it is.’ She presses some buttons.
‘You probably need mine — in case you’re running late for class again, or something,’ he says.
She looks up and, catches him gazing at her. He looks back at the screen, pretending to be interested in the phone’s memory system, and frowns. ‘I see you already have a MATT in there.’
‘Oh, no, that’s a mistake.’ She quickly deletes it.
He tells her his number and she keys it in — to be listed alphabetically between Jennifer and Nana. She places the phone carefully where she can admire it on the table next to her empty coffee cup. He’s grinning at her.
‘What?’
‘You have to give me your number, too, or it won’t work.’
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