by Linda Jaivin
Approaching a corner of the huge, nearly square bar that dominated the centre of the room like Mission Control, Jake signalled to one of the commandos within. ‘Hey Greg. One Coldie. And, uh, one bourbon, one scotch, one fizzy drink.’
The bartender raised an eyebrow, which was no easy task given the number of silver rings that were weighing it down. ‘Joking, right?’
‘I’m not. She might be.’
Gregory leaned over the bar and looked to see who Jake was indicating. ‘Phwoah!’ he exhaled, smiling ingratiatingly. ‘Who’s the babe?’
Jake shrugged. Who was she indeed?
‘Reckon she’s the sickest bitch I’ve ever seen you with, hey,’ Greg complimented as he laid the drinks on the bar. ‘And you’ve brought in some scary betties in your time.’
Jake, privately pleased, palmed the change. ‘Keep up the good work, Greg,’ he said, deadpan. He wrangled the four drinks over to where Baby was waiting. She relieved him of her three. ‘Cheers,’ he said, raising his to his lips.
Trying the bourbon first, Baby gagged at the taste. Before Jake could react, she held the three glasses out at arm’s length and tipped them over, letting their contents cascade onto the floor. Then she ate the glasses. It’s hard to say whether the slack-jawed astonishment of all those within splashing distance was due more to horror at the public menace of it all, terror at the sight of her crunching glass or just simple amazement at the waste of perfectly good piss.
‘Oh man.’ A crustie boy examined his bourbon-and-scotch soaked trousers and scratched his head, raising a small cloud of dust. A dazed smile crept over his features. ‘Whatever she’s on,’ he sighed enviously, ‘I want some too.’
Jake felt faint. Just when you think you’re back on Reality Road, something like this happens and you realise you’re so far off it you could be, well, on the moon. He started to put an arm around Baby’s waist to lead her out of the circle of interested stares when his hand, having got that close, suddenly beat a hasty retreat. He indicated the back of the pub with his chin. ‘Shoot some pool?’ he suggested.
‘Sure,’ replied Baby gamely, picturing rifles and backyard swimming holes. ‘How do you shoot a pool?’
Jake studied her. If it was an act, it was a very good one. ‘Pool is a game?’ he ventured, wondering if he was making a complete fool of himself. ‘You play it on a table?’ He pointed to the back of the pub. ‘Like that one. You must have seen a pool table before? Surely.’
‘How do you swim on that?’
‘You having me on?’
‘On what?’
‘Never mind.’
Baby shrugged. ‘I told you. I’m from outer space. There’s a lot I have to learn about Earth.’
‘We all have a lot to learn about Earth,’ nodded an earnest girl with a nose-ring and a Celtic tattoo on her upper arm who’d been listening in on their conversation. ‘I really believe that. Otherwise we’re going to destroy it.’
Jake led Baby to the pool table and put a coin down on the side. A game was just beginning between a stick-thin bloke with a shaved head and another fellow, also in his late twenties, whose looks hung on the knife’s edge between seedily handsome and just plain seedy. ‘We’ll just have a go when they’re done,’ Jake said. The players were tossing for the break. Baby didn’t get it. What was this heads or tails business? Jake explained. He was just about to make some other comment to Baby when something in her eyes made him hold his tongue. The look on her face was a blend of studious observation and rapture.
Surveying the table, Mr Stick leant almost parallel over his cue and hit the white sharply, scattering the balls and sending one of the bigs straight into a side pocket. The white came to a halt in a perfect position to sink a second. He pocketed that and two more balls and set up a fourth within a centimetre of a corner pocket. Mr Seedy stood unperturbed, leaning on his cue, his eyes half-lowered, one corner of his mouth pulled up with an expression that said, I eat players like you for breakfast.
Baby had never seen a game as sexy as pool. The intense, predatory circling of the table, the slow grinding of the chalk, the gentle sawing of the cue over the bridge of the hand, the sharp crack of the balls, and the subterranean, hungry gulps of the table. The soft green felt and smooth polished wood. The cigarettes dangling lazily out of the corner of the mouths of the players. Their jaunty, jut-arsed, cock-hipped stances.
Her eyes never left the game. Occasionally, she asked Jake questions that sounded so basic—mainly stuff about rules and scoring—that he grew convinced that she really didn’t know anything about the game at all. The two players, overhearing their conversation, exchanged knowing glances. Their obvious air of superiority and condescension annoyed Jake just as their transparent envy—she was with him—secretly pleased him.
Jake wished they’d finish their game and leave. He was looking forward to playing with Baby. He wasn’t nearly as good as these two were, but he was good enough. He was feeling quite unnerved by her. He needed to demonstrate competence, show off some style, redress the imbalance between them somehow. The sex thing. Maybe it was just her idea of a joke. No way he’d forget.
When Mr Stick potted the black, winning the game, Jake politely asked the pair if they wanted to play doubles, hoping they’d just cede the table. When they grinningly accepted and suggested a small wager on the result, Jake could practically hear the theme from Jaws playing in the background.
‘What’s happening?’ Baby was puzzled.
Jake shook his head disparagingly. ‘They want to play for money.’
‘Money?’ Baby asked. She pulled a fistful of fifties out of her bag, the fruit of the afternoon’s abduct-o-heist. Jake paled. Jake had a practical notion of money. He didn’t just see a handful of bills. He saw rent. Electricity. Chocolate bars. Pizza deliveries. Cafe lunches. Dinners for two at the Thai Potong. Breakfasts of eggs florentine and champagne. Fresh seafood. Top wines. Stuffed quails and grilled figs. Not to mention ounces and ounces of excellent gear. Heads. No loose stuff. ‘You mean these rectangular tokens?’
‘You ain’t wrong, sweet thing,’ said Mr Stick, mouthing ‘jackpot’ to Mr Seedy, and then, ‘“Rectangular tokens?” Where’s she from—outer space?’
‘Yes, I am, actually.’
‘Baby,’ panicked Jake. ‘Can we have a little talk about this? I don’t think this is a very good idea.’ Where’d she get all that moolah anyway? She was sexy, smart and rich. Jake felt faint at the thought.
‘She looks like the type to make up her own mind, mate,’ said Mr Stick with a cold smile. Jake could have sworn there were a few large fishtails caught between his teeth.
Smokey Stover announced a break. The word that this bizarre, antennaed, bottle-eating chick was about to put more money on a game of pool than many of the Sando’s regulars saw in a month of dole cheques spread through the pub faster than herpes at an orgy. The space around the table was soon filled with a crush of bodies.
Baby ended the discussion by picking up a coin. ‘Heads or tails?’
‘Tails,’ leered Mr Seedy.
She flipped the coin into the air and, discreetly, took aim with her antennae. Zaaap.
It was heads.
‘I’ll break,’ declared Baby before Jake could say anything.
At this point it would have been highly impolitic for Jake to have expressed any doubt that this was a good idea. He forced a little smile. ‘You know what to do?’ he whispered nervously.
‘Sure. You just told me,’ she answered in a normal voice. ‘You slam the white ball into the others. They scatter and if you’re lucky you sink a coloured ball at the same time.’ Several observers sniggered into their beer. This was going to be rich.
Without the slightest trace of self-consciousness, Baby ran her fingers lightly over the several cues leaning against the wall. Picking one, she held it up. She drew it through her closed palm and then slowly twirled it. With eyes closed, as though in a trance, she registered its weight and balance. She then lowered it pa
rallel to the table and leaned right over it, the hot pink fake fur of her miniskirt stretching taut across her full buttocks and hiking up to the tops of her muscular thighs. Two mohawked boys standing directly behind her passed out from sheer excitement. One fell into the willing arms of a goth girl standing behind him; the other crumpled to the floor and was given prolonged mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by Smokey Stover’s drummer.
Baby, meanwhile, took aim and executed what could only be described as a perfect break, spreading the balls right across the table, even sinking two smalls. A murmur of approval rose from the crowd. Jake gaped at her with barely concealed surprise and relief. Mr Stick frowned at Mr Seedy. Beginner’s luck.
‘My turn again, yeah?’ asked Baby, her mind whirring with equations of force, mass, speed and direction. Complex calculations of friction, action and reaction. Newtonian physics were first grade maths where she came from; Newtownian physics were playschool. She stalked the table like a tigress. Practically purring, she selected her prey. With a clean crack of the cue on the white, she sank the red. And the blue. Then the green. She stopped for a moment to survey the table, and picked up the chalk. Slowly, she crushed the soft stone against the tip of the cue. Three more people fainted at the sight, two girls this time, and one boy.
For the next shot, she perched on the edge of the table, one long leg reaching to the floor and the other curled underneath her. She lifted the cue over her head in an almost balletic movement, and executed the shot from behind her back. It was a perfect double. By now, a hush had fallen over the room. Like quite a few other males in the room, Jake could feel a hard-on stir in his trousers as, cool as Ice-T, she proceeded to gangsta her way through the rest of the smalls. All that was left was to pot the black. She did this, no wucken furries at all. It took a moment for the Earthlings to snap out of their trance. But, when they did, everyone in the room except Mr Stick and Mr Seedy burst into ardent applause. As for Stick and Seedy, looking like the cats who were swallowed by the canary, they shook hands unsteadily with Baby, then, as though by afterthought, with Jake. Then they ran out the door.
‘On ya!’ shouted a group of young women who’d been watching with particularly keen interest. ‘One for the girls!’
Baby looked up at Jake with an innocent smile. ‘Now what happens? Don’t the rest of you get to play?’
For the first time in his life, Jake was speechless. Guileless. Legless with infatuation.
Back at the house, Lati reappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as she had disappeared, beaming and patting her stomach. ‘Boy, have I got the munchies,’ she announced, advancing on the stereo.
‘No!’ screamed Torquil, jumping out of his seat as Tristram hid his eyes in his hands. ‘NOT THE BLACK GOODS!’
Monday morning, morning in the rock n roll sense of the word, which translates to approximately 2 pm Other People’s Time—saw Jake slither down the stairs, towel around his waist, clutching a Panadol, in desperate need of a glass of water. He’d briefly considered drinking from the tumbler that had been in his room since the Year That Time Began, but the liquid within had begun to resemble the contents of a long-neglected swimming pool. Jake was certain there was a lot more than two Hs and an O in there. While he had nothing against chemicals in general, he didn’t want to abuse any mystery molecules on a morning when his head already felt like a bodgy lab experiment.
It’s reasonable to wonder—a Nufonian certainly would—why Jake had never bothered to carry the glass of fetid water downstairs, dump it, clean the glass, and take a fresh one to his room. The answer was simple really. The principle was the same one that resulted in his failure to throw away the infamous Rainbow Loaf. This was a loaf of bread that Jake had purchased, left on top of the fridge and forgotten about. Its increasingly complex mouldy veneer had progressed from green to blue, with spots of vivid orange and red. One day, Saturna confronted Jake, demanding to know why he hadn’t tossed it out.
‘I wanted to see where it was going,’ he shrugged. What was her problem? ‘It’d be such a pity to throw it away now,’ he added. ‘When it’s doing so well.’
‘Pity,’ pronounced Saturna distastefully, as she pulled on her black rubber dishwashing gloves, plucked the loaf from the top of the fridge and tossed it in the bin, ‘is not the word I’d have chosen.’
The Rainbow Loaf Incident was a lifetime ago, which, when you’re twenty-three as Jake was, means it actually happened about two or three months earlier. Today, Jake was struggling just to make sense of his weekend. Entering the kitchen, he found the twins slumped over the table with their heads in bowls of cereal.
Torquil lifted his head at Jake’s approach. His face was dripping with milk. Cornflakes adhered to his forehead and the tip of his absurdly regal nose. ‘Oopsy,’ he warbled, dropping his head back into his bowl.
That was Tristram’s cue. He raised his lactescent features, scattering soggy flakes. Bellowing, ‘OOPSY DAISY,’ he plunged back into the primordial breakfast.
With friends like this, Jake thought, who needs aliens?
Aliens. Who’d have thought, hey? Oh, Baby Baby. Where was she now? What was she doing? She wasn’t with anyone, was she? Those antennae. At the soft moist touch of a tongue on his feet, Jake jumped. He looked down sharply. Doh! It was only Iggy, coming in to snuffle his master’s toes in greeting.
Iggy looked back. Yes, it was his master all right. But Jake’s toes were somehow different since the last time he’d examined them. Softer, less crusty. Had Jake had a pedicure? Iggy was shocked.
The phone rang. No one budged. It rang again. ‘I’m having an important bonding experience with Iggy,’ Jake informed the twins. ‘Could one of you get it?’
‘We’re having an important bonding experience with the Kellogg company,’ Tristram gurgled through dairy. ‘Intense as.’
‘Yeah,’ Torquil pronounced through bubbles. ‘It’s for you anyway.’
Jake sighed. ‘C’mon Ig. We’ve got to answer the phone cuz no one else in this house is sane enough to be trusted.’
It was Tim, the lead singer of Umbillica, another Newtown band. Umbillica was a heavy metal band that specialised in loud electric guitar sounds, macho stage posturing, and bad haircuts that tossed well. They’d heard the news about Metallica, but were waiting to see what other key metal bands did, hairwise, before making any big decisions.
‘Timbo,’ said Jake. ‘How’s it hanging, mate?’
‘Not so well, actually. I’m in big trouble. I thought I’d surprise my girlfriend for her birthday, which is tomorrow, and take her to see Twisted Mofo at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.’
‘I thought she hated heavy metal.’
‘Oh, mate, you’re not wrong. But it being a special occasion and all, and Ebola Van Axel being, like, a total metal god, you know, I figured she’d at least be a little excited.’
‘I take it she was not a little excited.’
‘Yeah. No. I mean, she was pretty pissed off, actually. Spat the dummy. Said she’d told me ages ago what she wanted to do for her birthday.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Fucked if I can remember. Or, more accurately, fucked if I can’t. I’ve got twenty-four hours to try and come up with it or I’m up shit creek.’
‘Well, Timbo, that’s quite a tale. Is there a moral you wanted to impart?’
‘Jeez. Nearly forgot. Yeah, so I’ve got two tickets to Twisted Mofo. Going very cheap. Going free. Shame to waste them.’
Jake scrunched up his nose. ‘Look, mate, don’t want to be rude or anything, but Ebola Van Axel’s not really my cuppa. The man’s an embarrassment to us new-style, caring, sharing sorta rock stars. But the twins might be interested. I’ll ask them. Hang on a tic.’
Jake meandered back into the kitchen. The twins were actually eating their breakfast now. ‘You’ve got a cornflake on your ear, Torq. You two wouldn’t be interested in tickets to Twisted Mofo tomorrow night, would you?’
Torquil jumped up, grabbed his crotch and, in p
erfect imitation of Ebola Van Axel, shrieked, ‘I’m gonna fuck you on the table, gonna fuck you on the chair, gonna fuck you over here and gonna fuck you over there.’
‘Cuz I love you, baby, I do, and couldn’t love you more. Yeah, I’ve got a big big dick, oh baby yeah!’ Tristram had leapt to his feet as well, and was thrusting his hips and waving an imaginary guitar over his head. He burst out laughing. ‘Oh, man, that guy’s a legend. Ridiculous as. What should we wear?’
‘So, I tell Tim you want the tickets then?’
‘Is the bear Catholic?’ replied Torquil.
‘Does anyone want to tell me what the fuck has been going on!’ Mr Spinner, the manager of Kissed for the Very First Time Records, was fuming. It was Monday afternoon. The young sales staff exchanged covert glances, shuffled their feet and then stared at them. They were entirely innocent. They felt guilty anyway. As you do.
Well, maybe not entirely innocent. They’d all knocked off the odd CD in the course of their career. But the sum of all the CDs they’d ever pinched from the stockroom, combined with all those flogged by every other teenager who’d ever worked there, didn’t come close to the number that were missing. It certainly looked like an inside job. The secure crates in which the CDs were stored hadn’t been forced open or otherwise tampered with.
An excruciating ten minutes passed without anyone saying a word.
‘Mr Spinner?’
‘Yes, Zach?’
‘Uh, maybe aliens done it.’
‘Zach.’
‘I mean, I read in this comic? Like how these aliens had this machine? An Abduct-o-matic? It was really cool an’ it—’
‘Zach.’ Mr Spinner closed his eyes, lowered his head and cupped his face in his hands as though praying to Allah for deliverance from teenagers, his job, everything. ‘Shut up.’
Across the city, similar scenes were unfolding at shops with names like Drum Warehouse and Guitar City. The babes had had a very busy day.