Mexican Kimono

by Billie Jones

  Loud, insistent knocking at the door. Goddamn it to buggery!

  ‘Samantha, open this door immediately!’

  The very annoying next door neighbour from hell. Why didn’t I buy lilies that were already blooming? I put half of my clothes back on and opened the door for Kylie. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  She had her ‘I’m an adult and you’re a naughty school girl’ face on. If only she knew what I was about to get up to.

  ‘Mrs Dingleberry just informed me you’re moving out!’

  ‘Yes. In five days.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you care? Less time for photo ops for Facebook?’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Twitter?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘MySpace?’

  ‘No one uses MySpace any more.’

  ‘Instagram, then?’

  ‘Enough,’ she said, back to her bossy voice. ‘I’m surprised that’s all. We agreed to live next to each other forever after the double break-up disaster we went through. Where will you go?’ Her tone of voice was making me feel guilty, like I was orphaning her or something.

  ‘I have a few options. Tim, JJ, my mother.’

  She started this little shoulder-quiver-held-in-sob type thing she does. Now she was intentionally trying to make me feel guilty.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kylie, but you might want to consider moving too. Do you realise they’re charging for window cleaners? For garage attendants? I didn’t even know there was a garage!’

  ‘It’s totally normal, Sam. That’s called strata fees. Your garage space is filled with um, office supplies you happened across in the job before last. Remember?’ she said.

  ‘Happened across?’ What the hell? She was speaking in riddles.

  ‘Stolen office supplies. Broken printers they used for parts, boxes of A4 paper you seem to have a fixation with, filing cabinets, paperclips, liquid paper pens, hole punches …’

  ‘OK, OK I get it. Jesus. I don’t like the way you’re implying I stole those items!’ I had forgotten all about that job and those particular perks. I definitely didn’t have a fixation on A4 paper. I just didn’t like to run out of it. Office supplies always reminded me of Dad’s bookie business. He was always surrounded by paper. He had some kind of laundry business there, too. Mum said they washed the paper to make it new again. I just like paper. It’s not a fetish or anything.

  Kylie scoffed. I hate that scoff she does. ‘You did steal it!’

  I returned the scoff. ‘I hardly think so, Kylie! I encouraged the boss to go for recycled paper!’

  ‘The sooner you admit you’re an alcoholic kleptomaniac with delusions of grandeur the better!’ Here we go. Our OCD neighbour had turned. Timothy was looking at us with a grin on his face. I guess he was used to drag queens arguing, but Kylie was much more dramatic.

  ‘Do you feel the need to clean something?’

  ‘My condition is not a joke!’

  ‘It was a serious question!’

  ‘Excuse me for interrupting,’ Tim said, interrupting. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your condition?’

  Kylie narrowed her eyes and glowered at me, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t spread it around town yet,’ she said to me.

  ‘Jeez, Louise. Hark who speaketh!’ I said.

  She faced Timothy and said, ‘I have a compulsion to clean. Samantha seems to think I have OCD tendencies, but I don’t think it’s that serious.’ She scanned my apartment which obviously looked very different from hers, considering I didn’t spend six hours a day cleaning it and said, ‘You know, I only developed this condition after living next door to Samantha. I think there’s something in that.’

  Hmph. ‘Well, you only have five days to go and then you may be cured! Hallelujah!’ I said.

  ‘Do you wash your hands constantly?’ asked Tim.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I try not to because they get so dry, but touching people’s hair all day kind of grosses me out. I wear gloves, but I don’t like the idea of where the rubber’s been. It’s a Catch 22.’

  ‘I understand. I have that in the cafe, too. The thought of the cutlery going in people’s mouths freaks me out. For a long time I just threw the cutlery out and bought more. Now I double glove and put them through the dishwasher cycle twice. I don’t personally use them, though. I have my own set of cutlery locked away.’ Oh my lord. Was I in a parallel universe? Who were these people? I looked at Tim’s empty wine glass and now realised why they were different. He’d brought his own with him! How rude.

  Kylie tutted. ‘Cutlery is the worst! I can’t help looking between the spokes in the forks when I’m at a restaurant. You’d be amazed at the level of dirt in there. It’s criminal!’

  ‘You’d know,’ I said. They ignored me and continued their OCD- ness.

  ‘Urgh. I can imagine. My biggest fear is shaking hands. Some people don’t even wash them after going to the toilet! Then they eat with their fingers! Run their hands through their hair! Scratch, itch, pull, pluck, and pick various body parts. It’s disgusting!’

  I stopped plucking my eyebrows and hid the tweezers under the lounge cushion.

  ‘Eww. I know. Filthy, filthy, filthy! I hate it when …’

  ‘Enough, you two! Who knew you were as warped as each other!’ I started to realise there was a lot about Timothy I didn’t know. For a fraction of a second, I wished for the filthy arrogance of Toffany. They both looked vague for a moment and then understood how uncool it was to talk like that in front of people. It’s fine if you have issues, everyone does, but keep them to yourself or share them with your life coach.

  ‘So, anyway, Samantha, I just came over to say I hope you reconsider leaving. I know we aren’t as close as we used to be now that I’m running my business, but I hoped when you found a job things could go back to normal with us.’

  ‘Jobs are for schmucks. Timothy has offered to fly me around the world first class until I decide what I want to be when I grow up.’ Take that!

  ‘Ah, I didn’t actually say …’

  ‘What!’ said Kylie. ‘You’re leaving Perth altogether?’ A look of despair settled on her plump features.

  ‘Looks like it,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just,’ Kylie sniffed, ‘I always thought it would be me travelling around the world with some hot guy paying the way.’

  Poor Kylie was having a rough time of it. It seemed like she’d overdosed on Mum’s ‘keep your childish exuberance’ remedy. She was living way way in the past.

  Tim piped up from old nakedsville on the lounge. (I can understand why he had no shame, if I had a body like his I’d walk around nude too.) ‘Word on the street is you and Michael are an item. He’s a great guy.’

  I exhaled like a bum-sucking smoker. Boy, once she got started on the boyfriend bandwagon she was a hundred percent committed. ‘Jesus, Kylie. Who’s Michael? What about Mai Ling’s son, Sam? I mean I know he’s on the rebound and all, but you could at least give him a chance!’ It’s not like we lived in New York or anything and did the whole non-exclusive dating thing. We had a little more class and, well, morals here in sunny Perth.

  ‘For God’s sake, Samantha! Michael is Sam. Sam is Michael! They’re the same!’

  ‘Whoa! Take some deep breaths for me, Kyls. Wow. Where the hell did that outburst come from? Happy-angry. Happy-psychotic. Happy-volatile. It’s like having three different friends!’

  She shook her head sadly and said, ‘Don’t start on the split personality thing again.’

  What? I have no idea what’s she’s talking about. ‘OK? Can you tell me one thing, though? Why is Sam Michael and Michael Sam?’

  Kylie looked over at Tim and said something wildly inappropriate but obviously true, ‘She must be good in bed, huh?’

  Tim laughed and said, ‘Something like that.’

  ‘OK, Sammy. I’m going. No doubt I’ll see you for some disaster before you leave. Tim, are we still on for your hair tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks. I w
as hoping for one of your “aromatherapy heat truth” treatments. My hair hasn’t been happy lately.’

  ‘It’s the stress,’ she said, glancing pointedly at me. ‘Don’t worry, easily fixed with some tiger balm tea tree oil and a good talking to.’ She air-kissed us and left the apartment with what I’m calling a lusty last look at Timothy’s nakedness. See? She has Michael and Sam, twins, who I just broke up with, but no, she’s not satisfied. She wants my new man. Unbelievable. Sad, really.

  Chapter 19

  End of the WWW

  I looked at Tim in all his nude surfer dude glory and felt suddenly famished. For food. I should be having my way with him but, seriously, I needed carbs for all that sex. ‘Where should we go for dinner?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm. Japanese?’

  ‘Too healthy.’

  ‘Thai?’

  ‘Too unhealthy.’

  ‘Fish and chips?’

  ‘Um. Yeah, I need a dose of omega three. Let’s have fish and chips at the beach. First, I need to whack the kimono on eBay.’ I couldn’t get the mental picture of May Day naked underneath it out of my head. I was cursed all right. A six-foot, exotic, had-the-chop, long and shiny-haired Eurasian was after one of the men in my life. How the hell could I compete with that? This flimsy piece of material was going for good. The sooner, the better. I didn’t want fond memory jolts for Tim any time soon.

  I listed the kimono under ‘antiques’ and ‘collectibles’ and snapped some photos, instantly uploading them. Starting bid one dollar. If I had to fake a few bids myself to get the price up I would. I’d just log in under Kylie’s eBay account. Unbeknownst to her, she’s bid on all sorts of things in the past. She has no idea because I get her eBay notifications sent to my email. I described the kimono as a rare and exotic find. It took me exactly three minutes to list it. At 4.04p.m., the $10,000 kimono was out there on the World Wide Web for potential buyers. I praised myself for being so handy with computers. I’d become an eBay expert after so much downtime at my last job.

  ‘Right. Another thing I can cross off my list,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and eat.’ Tim had changed into a white, open-necked shirt and denim jeans that accentuated his perfect butt. I felt like pinching a cheek, but remembered how hungry I was. I decided instead to practise the three Ds: drink, delay, do something else. Well, until I’d eaten, anyway.

  We arrived at ‘Life’s a Beach’, which was my favourite over-priced cafe (apart from Toffany’s,). It was a huge rectangular room boxed in by stainless steel walls. The ceiling was made out of stainless steel, too, and was lowered down by thick steel chains. It resembled a huge steel coffin. There were no windows, light came from mega-watt fluoro cylinders that shone down like you were in an interrogation room. (Trust me, I’ve been in one.) The bartenders were cocktail experts and always seemed to be throwing something in the air for the patrons’ amusement. They threw me up once. I started a new diet the next day after that fiasco.

  ‘Mocktail?’ Tim asked, as we sat at a stainless steel table for two.

  ‘Why, has the world run out of alcohol?’

  He double blinked. Do you get the double blink thing? Does it make the situation any clearer?

  ‘Ah, no, but I just thought after that bottle of champers we’d have a break …’

  ‘I’ll have a break when I’m asleep. I’ll have a bikini martini.’ Tim and his wallet walked over to the bar and ordered our drinks. If he came back with a mocktail with some kind of fruit and an umbrella poking out of the glass, I was out of here. As soon as I’d eaten.

  He walked his sexy model walk back to our table with two appropriate-looking cocktails. I sniffed his to make sure it was alcoholic. It was no fun drinking on your own.

  ‘The bar guy mentioned something sort of terrifyingly interesting,’ he said.

  I sipped my drink and raised my eyebrows. ‘Yeah, like what?’

  ‘At 4.04 exactly, the Internet shut down. Worldwide. Apparently there’s mass hysteria out there.’ He indicated the small silver door that separated us from them.

  ‘Far out, 4.04 exactly! Are you sure?’ I asked. I couldn’t help remembering I listed the kimono at exactly that time. My body broke out in goosebumps. I wished I’d burned that bloody thing the night of the unfortunate hair incident.

  ‘Yeah, exactly 4.04. Must be terrorists of some sort. Imagine the amount of money lost around the world by having no Internet.’

  ‘Hmm. Do you think it’s weird that I listed the kimono at exactly that time?’

  He frowned. ‘Exactly that time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. My. God. That, Sam, is seriously not cool.’

  ‘Go back to the apartment and burn it or something!’ I said, in a slightly panicked voice.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere near that thing! I think we should just disappear and forget all about your apartment. We better tell Kylie, too.’

  ‘I can’t just leave everything!’ I know this was a natural disaster of the worst kind, but seriously. I had some jeans that were like magic. You know, when you finally find a pair that makes you look two dress sizes smaller somehow? Well, I had them in every colour; no way was I leaving those babies behind.

  ‘I don’t think you understand how crazy this will end up if it doesn’t get fixed!’ Tim exclaimed, ‘People will go nuts if they can’t get to their money, shops will be overrun with people looking to stockpile in case this turns to war! The stock market can’t trade! Lovers can’t Skype! People can’t shop online! It’s terrifying!’

  I thought of all the things I used the Internet for. It was like being cut off from my social circle. I looked at Tim, who finally understood the seriousness of the situation. ‘I feel sorry for all those Facehookers.’ That’s what we called people who comment on everything and everyone on Facebook. You probably have a Facehooker friend. They are the ones from a small town who somehow have a friends list of 4791 people. They upload photos of their lunch from their mobile phones with a description like ‘Lunch! It’s a hard life for some!’ They’re total tech whores who have nothing better to do and it reflects on their status updates.

  Tim nodded in agreement and said, ‘Don’t forget Twitter bugs!’ Another group you don’t want to be a part of. They are the types who tweet every ten minutes or so like they are letting their parole officer know their (boring and often repetitive) movements. Ashton Kutcher is the only one who can get away with this kind of twitter bugging.

  ‘I guess it will be like forced rehab for them,’ I said.

  ‘And for online gamblers.’

  ‘And their online bookies!’

  ‘What about people addicted to downloading porn!’

  ‘What about people addicted to online chat rooms!’

  ‘Online dungeons and dragons!’

  We broke into the kind of hysterical laughter that goes on forever. Eventually, after ten minutes and some serious belly holding, I had forgotten what we were laughing about in the first place. I was pleased, though, because Kylie reckons when you laugh full-on infectiously like that, it’s equivalent to doing an hour of sit-ups because you use every muscle in your abdomen. It’s how all the celebs got those six-packs of theirs. Kylie and I joined one of those laughing clubs once. You know, the type where they all meet at the park and you just laugh for the sake of it? Anyway, we didn’t last too long. The moderator of the group never smiled, he only did a maniacal laugh that terrified me, plus it was run on a Sunday morning at 7 a.m.– we usually weren’t even home from the night before by then.

  All that laughing only intensified our hangovers, so we agreed to try it again when we were old and fat and really needed the ab help.

  Tim’s facial expression turned serious and I knew he was thinking about my predicament again. I had to get rid of the kimono, but I couldn’t take it off eBay while the Internet wasn’t working. And the Internet wasn’t working because of the kimono, so that was a bit of a dilemma. I had no other choice. I knew what I had to do.

  ‘Now don’t go get
ting all uppity with me, but I need to call JJ. He’s the only one who knows what I need to do to stop the curse and hunt down the culprit.’

  He plied my hands off my bikini martini. ‘I understand. Both of us only want you to be safe. Do you want me to help?’

  ‘Maybe review my list of suspects. Try and narrow it down, to say three or four sheets. At this stage it looks like my phone bill and needs to be carted in boxes.’ That would save me some time.

  ‘I wondered what those boxes were. Maybe I’ll get Kylie to help me, to speed the process up a notch.’

  ‘No. Don’t think I trust Kylie at this point. From memory, she was number two on the list. JJ is number three, Mum’s on there somewhere. You better add Sam and Michael and probably even Mai Ling – she has been overcharging me lately.’

  He rolled his eyes and, for a split second, I considered adding him to the list. He was just a little bit too relaxed and easy going for my liking. The whole travelling overseas thing and bring your other boyfriend? Suspicious. He was on the list.

  I drank the last of my martini and waved at the bar guy for two more. ‘Do you want another?’ I asked Tim.

  ‘No. Better keep a clear head just in case it’s mutiny.’

  ‘Just the two then,’ I hollered over to the skinny waiter.

  I pulled out my phone.

  JJ. Urgent! Need to find that Bruja. Meet now? xxx

  I sent the text and waited as patiently as I could for a response. ‘Hey, bar guy? This could be the end of the world. Hurry up with those cocktails! If I must depart this way, I want to go with my buzz on!’ He seriously needed to eat some carbs or drink Berocca. I’d never seen anyone move so slowly. He reminded me of Gemma, for some reason. He had the same brown eyes that looked innocent and affectionate-like, but I knew deep down he harboured an untrustworthy soul.

  Finally, he walked over with my drinks on a shiny silver tray and placed them on a napkin in front of me. ‘Thirty-five for those, thanks, Miss Impatient,’ said Surly Bar Guy.

  ‘Don’t look at me, Surly Bar Guy,’ I said, looking pointedly at Tim. He shrugged his shoulders and fumbled in his jeans for his wallet.