Dirty Beat

by Venero Armanno

  ‘I’m sure.’

  She picked two bottles of champagne from the refrigerator. We left the presidential suite and walked down the thickly carpeted corridor, bumping into totally ripped revellers like it was a wild new year’s eve.

  ‘How did you get us a room?’

  ‘I know this place pretty well.’

  ‘You work here?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  We stopped at the lift doors and she pressed the down button. The look in her face said she wondered if I finally realised.

  In a second I did.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘So what about Jamie?’

  ‘We go back quite a few years. Thing is, it’s the work I used to do, finished as of tonight. While the party was going on I was attending to my last date. The real last. I’ve got the savings I’ve been aiming for. In three days I’ll be in Thailand, one month of beaches. When I come back I’m going back to university.’

  ‘To study what?’

  ‘Psychology. You could say I’m quite interested in human nature.’

  As the lift descended she didn’t stand too near, probably wondering if I’d really want to be close to someone like her. I barely knew the answer myself. In this light she didn’t look quite as young as I thought she was; still, she wouldn’t have been over thirty. She had clear skin and the whites of her eyes were very white indeed, as if she was full of health. But she worked at something that was full of sickness and the potential for terminal disease, and not just of the body, but of the heart and soul too. Just like my mother.

  It was odd. Why was I the one? Nothing about her made me think she might have been trying to set me up for some sort of elaborate sting, and I didn’t think she was going through this entire production just to tell me that if I wanted to fuck her it would require a certain amount of cash.

  Room 2602. Laetecia flicked a switch and locked the door behind her. Subdued wall-lighting illuminated a good suite of rooms far smaller than the presidential suite. This place was quieter and warmer, but I was nervous. I thought of all the paid sex Laetecia would have had with men who were hard and ramming, no second thoughts to make them soft and useless. That’s the way I’d be, thinking too much, too tired, useless. But I still didn’t want to go home. That red kiss on the invitation had hooked me before I even met her.

  Room 2602 was designed like an apartment, with a kitchen and glass doors that you could open to a balcony. Below were railway tracks and the start of a great expanse of dirt that in some visionary’s mind would be the new and improved lungs of our city. Laetecia turned off the air conditioning. She wanted the balcony doors open and the rain had let up a little. Lightning flashed in the distance. Dawn was close. She popped a fresh bottle and found two coffee cups; for some reason there were no glasses to be found, no cutlery of any form, no plates, no saucepans. Maybe staff had already started taking souvenirs.

  ‘To All Saints and All Souls,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t quite get your interest in Halloween.’

  ‘Want to hear some mad stuff?’

  ‘Mad stuff is okay.’

  ‘I’ve always felt an attraction for what comes after you die. I like the idea of a door opening and there being a way to get between this world and the next. No religion has the entire afterlife story right, but as soon as you say to yourself that, yes, there is an afterlife, then anything goes. When you say, okay, there is life after death, then you must believe there is a human spirit, a soul. Something that lives on. If that’s so, then souls might be able to do things we can barely imagine – or that have been imagined all through history: our ancestors stay with us after they die; there’s a Heaven and a Hell; we become reincarnated around a karmic circle. And so on. The idea of hauntings doesn’t become so silly. If the soul of a human being does go on then it has to be somewhere, right?’

  ‘Well, let’s not talk about somewhere for a second. Let’s talk about here. This suite.’

  ‘There aren’t any spirits here. This place is like a cardboard box. No other-worldly vibes, that’s for sure.’

  ‘No, I mean why am I here?’

  Laetecia poured herself more champagne. I didn’t want any, inside I was seedy and tired enough.

  ‘Jamie spoke about you. I went to see him play and that’s when I saw you.’

  ‘But like you said, that was a long time ago. And I’m sure I never met you.’

  ‘Hmm, I was younger, and Jamie didn’t know I went to a show, not the first or any other time.’

  I thought about what she said, trying to figure it out. ‘How often did you see us play?’

  ‘Maybe a half-dozen gigs. I used to do up my hair, wear heavy makeup and lots of kohl around the eyes, dress in black and stay up the back. It wouldn’t have been right for Jamie to know I was following the band.’

  ‘Because he was a client.’

  ‘Correct. Jamie had problems with girls. All that talent, but women didn’t find him attractive. He used to come see me every fortnight, sometimes weekly. I liked him, but he never knew how much. This went on nearly two years. He’s got something, you know. He’s an old soul. It’s such a pity we didn’t meet in a different way.’

  It was so strange to be having this conversation. It made me uncomfortable, but from Laetecia none of it sounded so impossible. ‘You’re really into this stuff.’

  ‘Maybe. My mother was a professional mourner. So was my grandmother, and who knows, maybe my grandmother’s mother too.’

  ‘What the hell is a professional mourner?’

  ‘Where my family came from, they believed that when people died the more mourners there were the better things would work out at the gates of Heaven.’

  ‘You mean, lots of people crying means you must have been a good person?’

  ‘And the more there are and the louder they wail, the more loved you were. So paid mourners like my mother were hired by the families of the deceased to really put on a show. Tears, prayers, grief – and the better the show a woman could put on, the more she was paid.’

  ‘Huh, I like that idea. To have crazy women wailing at your funeral, it’d make everyone reconsider your worth.’

  She laughed. The whole thing was funny, all right.

  ‘But with your mother, that was just a paid gig, so it didn’t have anything to do with souls or ghosts or anything.’

  ‘No, it did. Some of those professional mourners used to be able to see the dead person amongst them. The louder they wailed, the more clearly they saw them. In the region my family came from, they believed wailing called the soul out of the corpse and set it free.’

  ‘Pity when everyone’s quiet, or if no one turns up.’

  ‘It’s just a superstition. But those women really did believe they could see the dead person, especially when the wailing reached fever pitch. In the old country they were professional mourners, but the really spiritual ones like my mother were also called stregas – sort of like witches. That’s the streak that ran through the women in my family.’

  ‘You’re a witch.’

  ‘A pretty useless one.’

  ‘Where’s this place your family came from?’

  ‘The deep south of Italy. I left when I was six.’

  ‘My stepfather said he came from the deep south too.’

  ‘My father’s name is Stefano and he’s living in a beachside retirement village about two hours from here.’

  ‘For a second I was thinking maybe you were my unknown stepsister or something. Why the move?’

  ‘My parents split, a big thing in those days. Papà got me and we came to Australia. I can’t explain why my mother gave me up, but people say she didn’t want me following in her footsteps. Maybe sending me away was her trick for breaking the cycle.’

  ‘Then what about your brothers? Roland and Joseph?’

  ‘Okay, now you’re getting the lot. The boys aren’t my brothers. They run a half-dozen girls like me. Some of them are full-time, but I’ve always been a part-timer. I’ve had plenty of breaks
from the biz. Travelled Eastern Europe once. Got my first degree. History and nineteenth-century literature, if you want to know. None of us ever used to work the club, but we did use this hotel.’

  ‘ “Sparks” isn’t your real name then?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I thought it over. ‘What about “Laetecia”?’ Her reply was a smile. ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘That’s classified.’

  ‘You’ve got to be the strangest girl I’ve ever spoken to.’

  ‘Isn’t that a good thing?’

  The exhaustion was lifting, that early morning jaded feeling going away too. I felt as if a door was opening. Crazy. But she was like a balm, this young woman with no real name any more, at least no real name for me. The rain resumed its steady beat and blew through the open doors. She started to unbutton my shirt, pushed some hair away from my eye.

  ‘I’ve talked a lot,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve known a man who’s wanted to listen so much.’

  ‘Talk can be good.’

  ‘Even with the crazy things I say?’

  I nodded. Laetecia kissed the side of my face and snuggled into me, her head against my chest.

  ‘How old are you, Max?’

  ‘Thirty-eight in a couple of weeks. How about you?’ ‘Thirty-one.’ I put my arms around her. She said, ‘You know the mistake men make with the women they pay for? They think it has to be like hardcore movies. Women don’t like to have their breasts squeezed like fruit. They don’t like getting their nipples pinched and twisted. If you rub her clitoris too hard it will hurt. A woman doesn’t like sperm in her hair or across her face. She doesn’t like a man to ram her blindly, to force a finger or two into her anus, or to have her ear nearly bitten off.’

  She hid her face. It was quite a speech. Despite all the things she must have done, she was still just as vulnerable as anyone. Fair enough, I thought, if I can do it then let this be for her.

  My heart wasn’t pounding. My anxiety had disappeared. Every time Laetecia looked at me I felt like someone better. The rain outside was getting even heavier. I undressed her piece by piece and under that sober clothing was a ripe woman’s body. There was colour in her cheeks and her breasts were swollen. Even her nipples were large. I didn’t have a condom and asked her if she did. Laetecia opened her handbag, but when she passed one over there was something strangely hesitant about her manner.

  I kissed her all over, everything between us nice and gentle. It had to be because I could see the redness left in her skin from where someone had been not quite so tender. Her final client. I understood why she’d wanted to give me some instructions. I took it slow until it wasn’t time to be slow any more.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ she said. Laetecia eased off the condom, then swallowed me deep inside.

  ‘Now.’ Then she held me while we listened to the rain.

  XV

  Next time I opened my eyes the sun was above the horizon, but had to compete against rain patches and black thunderclouds.

  ‘Look at that,’ Laetecia – real name unknown – said, and walked out of the bedroom and across to the open balcony doors.

  She stood there a minute and I knew this would be with me for a long time, because such moments are all too rare, even if you spend your life straining and railing against death, which is of course what good sex is – our rebellion against oblivion. I couldn’t recall a woman’s silhouette that looked quite so powerful. Laetecia went into the rain and leaned naked over the railing. No one in this gloomy dawn would see her but she didn’t seem the type to care anyway. When I followed her we hugged, two people in nature’s good grace – but even grace can be too cold and too wet, and soon we were laughing and shivering. Laetecia’s teeth were chattering. Her skin was covered in goose pimples and her nipples had become tight and hard. She wanted to stay there. I held her tight, rubbing my face along her wet long hair.

  She said, ‘I talked my head off last night, but you haven’t told me anything. So tell me something. Tell me something now.’ ‘Okay. Maybe some of the things you said weren’t so mad. Once, I did something terrible. I mean, really bad. It lost me someone – and for a long time I thought I was going to die. I was sort of demolished, but instead of it being one thing or the next, I felt like I went through a door and spent too long half-in and half-out of the world. The boundary between being alive and being dead really was sort of blurred.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘A woman by the name of Patti helped me. Things turned out all right.’

  ‘Did you want to marry her?’

  That made me grin. Me and old Patti. ‘Yeah, that would have been fun.’

  That was it. We couldn’t take any more of the cold. We shut the rain out of the room and warmed ourselves. Wrapped in a towel, Laetecia sat in the armchair while I made coffee in the kitchen. At least the place hadn’t been completely cannibalised.

  She rubbed her hair with another towel. Then I was conscious of the fact that she’d stopped and was watching me. She said, ‘So how do you know everything turned out all right?’

  It felt as if I’d been awake a week, me all numb and silly in the head. The coffee had dripped into the pot and it smelled good. I started to pour two cups.

  ‘Because I’m happy, Lee. Right now I’m really happy.’

  XVI

  Midday, and the Premier’s doors rattled and the steering wheel shook before its cold engine would cough into life. The city streets were still hazy with showers as I drove off into the daytime shadows.

  At the stroke of ten the suite’s telephone had started ringing. We didn’t answer it until they’d tried another seven times. Friends of the managers or not, the reception staff wanted everyone checking out. It was time for the hotel to empty one last time. We ignored the calls, sitting in front of the rain, drinking bottled orange juice. Then, when I was finally on my way, downstairs I’d seen that Joseph, Roland and some workmen were already ripping out fittings from the club. Joseph and Roland were in last night’s clothes; they might still have been drunk and stoned because they worked with haphazard gusto, smashing more things than they were neatly removing.

  I watched for a minute, but didn’t go speak to them. That was because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk anyway. First the intensity of that ‘End of the World’ play-off against Misty Blue, then the almost delirious ecstasy of being with Laetecia.

  What I’d done before coming downstairs was to beg ‘Laetecia Sparks’ to come with me. I didn’t want things to end in a hotel suite. Sex was the smallest part of it. Red lipstick kisses too. There was a moment when she’d been drinking a cup of coffee, tired, her long black hair straggling over her face. Watching her, that towel covering creamy breasts and dark nipples swollen with kisses, I thought, I’m going to know this girl for the rest of my life. I want to. I’ll never be half-hearted again. She should be mine and I want to marry her. That’s it. There’s nothing else. That’s exactly what I want.

  ‘Come with me, come to my place. I’ll make you breakfast. Then we can sleep the whole day, if you want.’

  I liked the way a smile curled in the corner of her mouth, sleepy eyes crinkling up. ‘You don’t know me, Max, and I don’t know you.’

  ‘After all this?’

  ‘It’s just one night.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but we could get to know each other. You just have to give it the chance.’

  ‘I don’t go home with men.’

  ‘Those days are over though, aren’t they? This is your new life, right?’

  ‘My last real boyfriend was Roland Sparks and that was more than three years ago. I just have to go slow now.’ She smiled some more. ‘The one thing I learned by being with so many men is that there’s a price for being with any man. I’m not sure I really like a lot of what I saw.’

  ‘But it’s not fair to think of me that way too.’

  ‘You’re right.’ She placed my hand against her cheek. ‘Maybe when I do know you.’

&n
bsp; ‘Okay. Then I’ll give you a lift home. Let’s at least leave together.’

  She put her cup down and slowly got to her feet. Her towel fell away and she slipped naked into my lap. ‘I’d really like to, but no, we can’t do that either.’

  ‘What’s your real name, how can I contact you? “Laetecia”. “Lee”. What do I even call you?’

  ‘Either of those is good. I’ll make you a promise. You will see me again. Maybe when you’re not expecting it, there I’ll be.’

  I found a square of notepaper and wrote down my full name, address and telephone number. ‘You better be.’

  Abject weariness finally had the better of her. And me too. We stopped talking when she turned her lips up to mine. Morning bad breath kisses. Something about that made me want her more. We were exhausted and raw, but for just a little while longer I was that boy Maree Kilmister taught everything she knew in front of stacks of vinyl records. Laetecia clung to me.

  ‘Did I hurt you? Lee, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh God, you’re sweet. Max, you’re just so sweet.’

  The Premier’s engine sounded as shaky as a cheap motorbike. It didn’t like the rain and neither did I. Conny used to say his car had more character than most of the people he met. Maybe one day I’d get a real job and make some money, really get this car fixed up properly. I’d drive Laetecia Sparks around in Conny’s beautifully reconditioned Premier sedan, an acrylic lacquer job giving it back its old-world iridescent sheen, plus new narrow-band whitewall tyres, chrome wheel trim rings and all. That would be a laugh. We’d go to the beach and to movies and to clubs. What would life be like then? I’d enrol in some proper music conservatorium too, put myself through course after course of advanced drumming techniques. It was time to get serious. I’d been on a plateau in my rock band, had improved out of sight in Jamie Lazaroff’s jazz ensembles, but now I’d well and truly plateaued again. There were parts of some of the more complex pieces DoctorJay played where I really fudged, really did some flashy things to hide the fact I couldn’t quite follow the snap and zing of the records. I thought I got away with it, but someone like Jamie used to know; you couldn’t fool a natural like him. So I’d better get ready. My band was dead, but one day a hot group like Misty Blue will need a new drummer and there I’ll be, the best in the business.