Too Much Lip

by Melissa Lucashenko

  ‘Don’t smile, ya face’ll crack,’ Ken told Kerry as he adjusted the ropes on the fake deerskin of the Tarot Teepee. He propped a red and gold sign reading Know Your Future – Durrigan the Wise – Tarot Readings and Dream Interpretation on the grass. Then he saw that his sister’s eyes were red and swollen.

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘Allie’s already rooting some chick inside,’ Kerry spat, going inside to swap her jeans for Pretty Mary’s black and purple costume. She slid it over her head and grimaced. She could cope with the extravagant flowing sleeves and even the garish sequins, but the outfit was far too low-cut for her liking; she tried in vain to pull it up, to cover the paler brown skin at the top of her susu. Pretty Mary ignored Kerry’s protests and draped a large crystal pendant around her neck to join the silver cross already hanging there. Her daughter’s first lesson would be that a surprisingly large chunk of Durrigan’s custom came from very straight-edged blokes. Bit of tit never went astray where men were concerned, any moron knew that.

  ‘Maybe ya shoulda busted her out,’ Ken advised from outside the tent. ‘Like that mad cunt with the chopper at Long Bay.’

  ‘No doubt. Apparently I abandoned her, when she’s the fucking genius that went and got herself locked up. I’m over it.’

  ‘Stand still for once in yer life,’ said Pretty Mary, carefully tying a chain of fake gold coins across Kerry’s forehead. Kerry screwed her nose up at her reflection in the side-view mirror taken off Ken’s spare XD and hung on a bit of fencing wire from the centre pole. Things in the mirror may be shittier than they appear. She ripped the fake coins off. Pretty Mary pursed her lips, and tried a black lacy veil, which covered Kerry’s forehead, mouth and chin, rendering her mysterious.

  ‘I look like a Muslim,’ Kerry said doubtfully. As if she didn’t cop enough shit for being a blackfella. It was better than the gammon coins though, so she left it.

  ‘Keys,’ Ken said, sticking his hand through the teepee flap. Kerry had bribed him into putting the tent up with the promise of riding the Harley home.

  ‘Don’t prang it. Or go off on any adventures with Sav. And for Christ’s sake don’t get fucken caught,’ Kerry instructed.

  ‘See ya in a couple of weeks!’ Ken teased, jingling the keys in triumph. After backing two winners last night he had a pocketful of cash and every intention of blowing it in Byron.

  ‘Not if ya wanna keep ya junk intact ya won’t,’ Kerry muttered, already regretting the deal. Ken waltzed off, all hail-fellow-well-met to the other stallholders getting their floats ready for the evening. They were singing their usual song of woe about the market management, but Ken was in the good mood he’d been in for weeks. Nothing like a regular root to turn him into the jolly green giant. Back at the teepee, Kerry grinned. Her brother’d be a lot less jolly once he realised she’d drained the fuel tank close to empty. Ken was cuntstruck and she wasn’t taking any chances on the Harley leaving the shire.

  ~

  Martina smiled when the hitchhiker’s face appeared in her open passenger window. He hadn’t had his thumb out this time but she had plunged to a halt beside him anyway. He hopped in next to her and she adjusted her Jackie O sunglasses for a better look.

  ‘I’m Martina. Don’t I know you?’ she asked with a smile that managed to be friendly and predatory at the same time. ‘Or do you just have one of those faces?’

  ‘Steve. One of those faces, I’d say. We were locals once, but we moved up the Goldie years ago. You?’

  ‘Sydney, mostly. I miss it, the beach especially. You look like you surf,’ Martina flirted. ‘I mean, look at those arms. Surfer arms!’ Steve smiled and told her he had always moved around too much to learn to surf. Waxing lyrical about the Coogee break, Martina pulled her T-shirt off her shoulder to show her bikini, one she’d ordered especially from the US. No reaction. Martina grew a bit sniffy and an awkward silence fell.

  ‘So I’m opening up a gym in the industrial estate,’ Steve finally offered. ‘Patto Gym, for all your fitness requirements.’

  ‘Personal training?’ Martina asked, slowing down as they entered the enormous roundabout on the outskirts of Patto. ‘In Sydney I have PT four times a week. Agonising, but worth it.’ Personal training wasn’t the main game, he told her. His was going to be a fighting gym, MMA. Lots of free weights, and a round boxing ring.

  ‘Those guys who fight in the cages?’ Martina breathed.

  ‘Girls too,’ he told her. ‘But there’ll be ordinary cardio group sessions for people like – well, for people who don’t want to get hurt.’

  Martina arched her eyebrows. Oh hello. This guy thought she was some kind of wimp. A pampered princess in her flash red princess car. That was pretty funny. She shifted down into second, making the engine growl as she whipped around the curve past the servo.

  ‘You think I couldn’t fight if I had to?’ she asked. ‘Or is it that I’m too old?’

  ‘No, not at all. But being realistic, it is a pretty tough game,’ he said, delicately manoeuvring. ‘The Kiwi girls on the Goldie don’t take any prisoners. But hey, if you want to train …’

  A pretty tough game. The phrase rankled Martina; in fact, it really gave her the shits. If he wasn’t interested in her romantically, the least he could do was pay her a little bit of fucking respect.

  ‘Train, but not fight?’ she asked pointedly.

  ‘Either way. I fight for a living, kind of. But why get in a cage when you don’t have to?’ Steve’s calm logic only made things worse.

  ‘I didn’t always have a Mazda6, honey,’ Martina told him, flushing with anger, and shifting down again, this time to hug the tight bend near the footy club. The tyres gave a squeal. ‘I might look all North Shore or whatever, but what you clearly don’t realise—’

  The lights up ahead were turning orange. Her passenger grabbed the door handle.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t. I’m sorry if I offended you. Look—’ He grinned at her, baring his perfect white teeth. Martina shrugged a very Mediterranean shrug. Steve slid his teeth out onto the palm of his hand, and Martina blanched. The false teeth sat there between them, looking nasty, the gums an awful plastic pink. When he put them back in he wasn’t grinning.

  ‘What doesn’t kill us means cranio-facial surgeries and metal rods pinning our limbs,’ he said bluntly.

  He undid his seatbelt.

  ‘I won my last four fights,’ he went on. ‘But that didn’t bring my teeth back. I run fifty clicks a week and do three hundred sit-ups a day. If all that sounds like fun to you, the gym’ll be open next week. Just here’s fine, thanks.’

  Stony-faced, Martina pulled over. Steve made his escape through the crowd streaming into the market.

  ~

  Kerry folded a fifty-dollar bill into her wallet, where four more David Unaipons already sat gazing thoughtfully up at her from among the coin. There ya go, Uncle, Kerry told it. Sit tight and don’t be going walkabout on me. She grinned. Why even knock over TABs when gullible white people fell over themselves to hurl bungoo at you?

  ‘Nothing to it, eh,’ she crowed. Pretty Mary looked up from the shadowy rear of the tent.

  ‘Don’t go getting cocky, girl,’ she lectured. ‘Don’t take the cards lightly, or it’ll come back on ya. And go easy on the tall handsome strangers, too.’ Kerry had begun the day green and nervous, especially after discovering imminent pregnancies in her first two readings. She’d saved face by concluding that the babies could belong to sisters or nieces of the lesbian couples on the other side of the table. They were delighted to be persuaded, luckily. The cards don’t lie, she parroted Pretty Mary, whenever she scented scepticism. Nobody was paying her to prevaricate.

  ‘You wanna jump in yet?’ she asked Pretty Mary. Pretty Mary declined, but when the Two of Cups turned up again in Kerry’s fifth reading, a lightbulb went off in her mother’s head.

  ‘I
t’s because I’m here!’ she declared. ‘Of course you’re gonna be drawing the Cups sitting next to me, cos you’re my child.’ She gazed at Kerry in dismay. There was at least another full day before Kerry flew solo in the Tarot Teepee.

  ‘Hows about I grab us a feed,’ offered Kerry, whose stomach had been growling shamefully all afternoon. Quit while you’re ahead was one of her favourite mottos, along with if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

  ‘I’ll go jull first,’ Pretty Mary agreed, rushing out through the tent flap and slamming straight into a handsome young fella who clutched her by the upper arms to stop her toppling. ‘Oops, sorry, bub,’ she apologised, pushing her foot back into a dislodged sandal. She peered at him, her bladder full to bursting. Hadn’t this lad been at Pop’s funeral? Who owned him? Her curiosity battled with the urgent call of nature.

  ‘Give it a whirl, darl, let Durrigan tell you what’s in your future,’ she suggested, gesturing to the teepee as she raced away. Steve grinned and ducked inside to find a horrified Kerry shuffling the tarot deck and looking anywhere but at him in his Parramatta shorts and red muscle shirt.

  ‘Welcome, stranger. Have a seat,’ she said from beneath her veil, unsure whether Steve could recognise her simply from her eyes and hands. Oh, yeah, and the tops of her tits. Steve sat down opposite her in the dim light. Only a small, square table separated them. Kerry shuffled the cards, and began to lay them out.

  ‘Did you want the fifteen- or the thirty-minute reading?’ Kerry asked, almost dropping the deck. Steve didn’t answer. Instead, he plucked a random card off the table, examined it closely, and then turned it around so Kerry could see it too.

  ‘You begin by formulating a question,’ she started, but Steve interrupted her patter. His eyes glowed with mischief.

  ‘The Fool?’ he queried.

  ‘New beginnings and innocence,’ Kerry replied warily, wondering if her cover was blown. Surely he wouldn’t be giving her that look otherwise? Or was he some giant slut who looked at all women like that, trying it on for young and old? It was an unpleasant thought, but Kerry was nothing if not a realist.

  ‘Particularly to do with career, but it can also be things like housing. Sometimes family stuff. Really, though, we need to formulate a question before—’

  Steve was looking from the card to her, and back again.

  ‘New beginnings,’ he echoed, leaning back. ‘I like the sound of that.’

  ‘It’s, ah, twenty-five dollars for the fifteen-minute reading. Or fifty for the half hour …’ Kerry went on, wondering when Pretty Mary would be back. She didn’t know how long she could keep pretending not to notice Steve’s barely clothed body, a metre away. His hands were right there, almost touching her own when she straightened the tablecloth, or laid the cards out.

  ‘Better make it the fifteen. Because I see you having a drink with me in the very near future,’ he smiled. ‘Before you zoom off on your Harley again.’

  Behind the veil, Kerry was grinning too. Cheeky bugger. She put her hand out for the card he held, and expertly shuffled the pack.

  ‘Let’s see what Spirit has to say about that, shall we?’ she answered.

  ~

  ‘Lotta mustard please, mate,’ Steve told the sweating German-sausage man when they finally reached the top of the queue.

  ‘Make mine plain,’ Kerry said, fossicking for her wallet. Steve interrupted her with an electrifying touch on her forearm.

  ‘My shout,’ he said. ‘C’mon.’

  ‘Nuh-uh, I ordered three,’ she told him, brandishing one of the fifties she had earned that afternoon. But, um, you can leave your hand right there. For just as long as you like, bunji.

  ‘Ah, knock off, it’s all good,’ Steve insisted, with a quizzical expression. He let his fingertips linger, and Kerry put her wallet away much slower than normal. You would be incredibly welcome, she said in her secret inner voice, to run that hand wherever the hell you please. When the sausage man handed the kai over, Kerry passed two wieners to a pair of skinny white kids who had been watching the queue the whole time. She nodded at the older one and kept on walking. Steve glanced behind as they walked, and saw the kids hoeing into the snags like there was no tomorrow.

  They found a spot below the huge camphor laurels, and folded onto the grass. On the oval in front of them, two snooty-looking camels were being led about with worried punters on them. Punters who had only just realised how high off the ground a camel’s hump was, and what odd predicaments they had asked – nay, paid – to be in. Kerry twisted her silver necklace obsessively and hoped that she looked cooler than she felt.

  Her body was on high alert, every nerve rattled. Had she been a fire engine her sirens would have been screaming, her red and blue lights flashing for all the world to see. But she wasn’t a fire engine. She was a going-on-thirty-four-year-old Goorie doob being doggedly pursued by a spunky stranger, and the only visible sign of it was the shit-eating grin she couldn’t seem to wipe off her dial. And someone had forgotten to remind her junoo that she preferred fucking girls. Every last molecule of her was itching to get closer to Steve. It felt like the gap between them was filled with something other than ordinary air. Something more liquid and far more enticing drifted between them. It wouldn’t have surprised Kerry in the slightest if fireworks or laser beams had exploded when Steve playfully pushed her, teasing her with the idea that she herself had wanted all three snags.

  ‘How’d you know those kids weren’t buying?’ he asked her, abashed that he hadn’t spotted their transparent poverty.

  ‘Cos I used to be them,’ Kerry said, holding three-quarters of a hot dog up and away in demonstration. ‘We’d stand out front of the van, dribbling, while all the whitefellas fed their faces. It was torture.’

  ‘Good time to make up for it now, then.’ Steve buried his face in hot relish and mustard. When he looked up, a bit of tomato sauce was smeared on his chin. Kerry smiled faintly and looked at the camphor laurel leaves littering the lush green lawn. After seeing her lash out like that with a fifty, Steve probably thought she ate hot dogs with gay abandon these days, handed em around like lollies. Probably assumed that there was always a David Unaipon stashed in her back pocket. Or enough on her cashcard to buy an eight-dollar feed any time she wanted. Some people lived that way, she knew. But the crew in Trinder mostly ate bread and chips when they ate at all. Meat was strictly for pay week, same as shop-bought grog and smokes were. Off-pay week was hungry week, sniffing around friends’ and rellos’ houses for someone who’d scored a food parcel, or a job, or had had a win at bingo. She looked down into her lap. It was a shamejob to go explaining how blackfellas lived. Even if dugais believed you, they were full of useless fucking genius suggestions on how to climb out of poverty. Like it was simple. Like it didn’t suit the powers that be to keep poor people scrabbling in the shit, keep their attention off the rich world’s sparkling goodies in case they got any bright ideas about grabbing some for themselves.

  ‘I used to shoplift food when I was fifteen, sixteen,’ Steve said, matter-of-factly.

  ‘Yeah, for thrills.’ Kerry sniffed at the idea of white kids thinking they were all badass and shit.

  ‘Nah, cos we needed the bloody tucker! Mum thought we were down the beach but me and my brother’d be up the Burleigh Four Square stashing bacon down our daks.’

  Kerry’s eyes widened.

  ‘Ever had a greasy, cold packet of bacon in yer undies?’ Steve screwed his face up. ‘No joke, let me tell ya! But frozen burger patties were the worst!’

  Kerry burst out laughing.

  ‘It taught us how to wash up, anyway,’ he added. ‘We’d pinch the stuff, go home, cook it, eat it and then get rid of the evidence before Mum got home from her shift.’

  ‘I woulda picked you for rich,’ Kerry said.

  Steve gaped like she was off her dial. ‘Yeah. Course. Rich people always hitch everywhere.�
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  ‘I thought you were a greenie. And you said you’re starting a business … plus look at your shoes!’ Expensive runners. Perfect teeth. Steve’s brow was still crinkling at her. She shoved his shoulder in turn. ‘What? Don’t look at me like that!’

  ‘My sponsor gives me the shoes, and the gym’s basically a massive debt, so far. You’ve got a bit of catching up to do, girl,’ Steve said, reaching to pick up Kerry’s mobile, which had fallen onto the grass. ‘Listen, before you run off on me again, I’m gonna call my phone with yours. You’ll have my number then, and I’ll have yours.’

  ‘Gimme that!’ Kerry cried, snatching at the phone. Steve rolled sideways, easily avoiding her lunge and then lay on his back in the sunshine, dialling and laughing. His shorts pocket began to trill with the sound of an old-fashioned handset.

  ‘You cheeky bugger!’ Kerry was surprised at how easily he had out-wrestled her. She had grown up fighting Ken and Black Superman, and knew a few moves. Steve teased her, then, holding her phone at arm’s length as she clambered about trying to retrieve it. In the struggle Kerry somehow ended up astride him. Both her hands were planted flat on his chest, and her mobile sat there too, safely beneath her right palm, but Steve held both her wrists in a clamp grip. It was a stalemate.

  ‘Give up, whiteboy?’ she panted, trying to bluff him.

  ‘No pasarán,’ he told her, rocking his hips sideways to make her wobble on top of him. ‘No surrender.’ She dug her knees into his ribs and leaned more of her weight forward onto her palms. Her hair fell forward so that she was looking at him through a curtain of dark curls.