‘Like that?’
‘Bit more ... Yes.’
Rhys and Natasha walked around her, cooing in admiration. Marie ran her hands down her firm curved sides. She felt regal, sexy, contained and powerful.
Natasha said, ‘My lipstick. Here.’
Marie applied it over her lighter one. Natasha and Rhys raised their glasses to her, Natasha saying a word with a buzzing sound, Rhys replying.
‘What are you saying?’ said Marie.
Natasha said it again, slowly, ‘Naz-drov-ee-ay. Nazdrovye. Russian for cheers.’
‘Slav.’ Rhys pronounced the word slightly differently. ‘We’re having a corset party. Isn’t it gorgeous? Nazdrovye, Marie.’
The men on stage were dressed in black, with little red shorts and pillbox hats. They had blackened eyes and pale faces and were capering in a line to a sarcastic pop song. All the stage was red, with old-fashioned curtains looped either side and bolts draped to the floor. The crowd welled and carried Marie towards the far wall on which hung a banner saying FAST. She saw the stage again briefly, the men dancing naked, then they were gone.
She found herself next to a piano that had been shoved against the wall. Girls sat on top swinging their boots, one with cones on her head through which her hair had been pulled making giant ears or something medieval. Sitting in the middle, feet on the stool, was a barrel-chested Asian in white beret and sunglasses, chomping on a cigar. Marie was hot and vaguely frightened. She couldn’t see the exit or Rhys and Natasha.
The curtains were closed and a man in devil’s horns and leather trousers stalked onto the proscenium to introduce the next act. Sweat poured off his white face as he shouted into the microphone. The crowd began to heckle him good-naturedly. The Asian on the piano above Marie jutted his head forward and screamed, ‘Show us yer cock!’ in a girl’s voice, then jabbed the cigar back into her mouth with a triumphant leer. Marie tried to move away but there was nowhere to go. People pressed against her. The devil disappeared and music began to blast through the speakers. One of the girls on the piano jumped off to dance. Marie strained to see Rhys through the bodies.
She saw a skinny man in thongs and an Osama bin Laden t-shirt dancing with a fat girl in black. She saw a man so black that all she could see were the whites of his eyes and teeth beneath a tweed cap. There were girls in lurid hotpants with lurid hair, and a creature all in green, impossibly tall, with a green face and headdress. The music was harsh and doom-laden and joyful all at once, a cascade of drums over low swinging chords and a belligerent male voice that seemed to be giving orders yet there didn’t seem to be any rules here in the normal social sense, and Marie began to relax. Nobody knew or cared who she was. The other thing was this: everywhere she looked she saw tattoos. Lacing down the back of the cone-headed girl’s forearms, an anchor on the Asian girl’s arm. A middle-aged woman with a panther headed up her skirt. She also wore a red singlet on which was spelt out in diamantés: I bang for Jesus. Marie removed her shawl.
When the curtains parted again and she stood on tiptoes, the loud masculine Asian prodded her. ‘There’s room up here, mate.’ Marie tried to ignore her but she was holding out her hand, so she clambered up.
From here she saw the columns were wrapped in red all the way to the end of the room where a bar had been set up. That must be where Rhys had gone to buy drinks. Slung down the walls at intervals were banners with designs of victorious bodies in Russian Constructivist style — in detail Marie saw they were actually lewd and facetious. And the banners and costumes and riotous music all made her feel like she was in some dive cabaret of the Weimar Republic.
In front of the stage, people began to sit on the floor and what had seemed a raucous, forbidding crowd now took on an air of obedient expectancy, like children at a recital. A boy came on dressed for the beach, sucking a lollipop. He looked so young; a slender, conceited, young god, and Marie caught a whiff of adolescent Leon at Balmoral, walking across the sand to buy ice-cream, speedos askew showing tan line, all eyes upon him. She thought of Tadzio as the boy lolled on his towel, oiling his chest and legs, while a man with a pot belly and grey beard — Aschenbach — sauntered on wheeling a hotdog stand.
He began pulling out hotdogs, rivers of mustard and tomato sauce coursing down his singlet. He was squirting sauce into a bun, reaching beneath his apron as Tadzio peeled off his shorts and crawled towards him. Then Aschenbach pulled out his penis and began to masturbate it in the saucy bun. It seemed like the real thing. Was he really? Marie strained for a closer look. He jammed the whole meal into Tadzio’s mouth and the crowd roared. The Asian girl drummed her heels on the stool. Marie was thunderstruck. Heat rose up to her face then erupted in a cheer. The applause faded around her lone voice and Marie realised that Rhys was below, signalling with cups of beer.
The curtains closed and the devil reappeared in a pink baby-doll and suspenders and stockings. ‘Wasn’t that great? Give it up everyone!’
Marie followed Rhys, who cut a severe, elegant figure, greeting people as she went. In her wake, beer slopping onto her wrists, Marie received inquisitive looks, the occasional smile. Closer to the stage she recognised the devil’s tattoos. It was Rob.
‘Show us watcha got, Robbo!’ somebody yelled.
‘Aw SHUD-DUP. Youse’re all a buncha desperadoes!’
‘Here,’ said Rhys, lifting a bag off a chair for Marie.
From the back: ‘Get it off!’
Marie took in the room from this new angle. At the advertising parties all those years ago, the masks had remained nice all night; even by the end when plastered with alcohol, the uniform was still magazine slick. Sometimes there was cocaine and just about everybody including her had indulged in an illicit grope, but like most of the wives, most of the time, Marie had stayed nice. You got used to the disgraces, the script didn’t vary much. But here it was the other way around. On stage and off, the masks were interiors erupting through propriety, disgrace was celebrated and, inside this vulgar intestinal display, Marie felt like a pod in a jungle, about to burst open in the heat.
When she looked back at the stage, Rob had his baby-doll around his ankles and was running through the previous acts, squinting at a piece of paper in his hand. Marie gawked at his long, left-leaning penis in its thatch of black hair. She gawked at the crowd. She saw a man in jeans with a white beard, extensively tattooed, an obese man in a t-shirt that said Butter Bin, and a priest in a cassock with grotesque, protruding black teeth and a hefting posture as though he were carrying something. Her eyes returned to the tattooed man. She pushed out her breasts and looked in his direction, feeling her tattoos glow. Eventually, his eyes drifted over. He glanced at her sourly.
Maybe he hadn’t seen her. Marie moved to an angle that enabled her to watch Rob and still see the tattooed man out of the corner of her eye. A pain jabbed her stomach; she tried to ignore it.
‘Put it away, willya, mate!’ somebody yelled at the devil.
Rob pulled up his dress irritably and introduced the next act.
Tom Cruise from Magnolia roared through the speakers and a woman with red glitter lips, in stuffed y-fronts, strode on stage and began to mime him. Respect the cock! She thrust her pelvis forward. And TAME the cunt.
The woman with the panther tattoo sat beside Marie. She was wearing a badge that said Tammy, Christian Youth Worker. ‘How are ya, luv?’ she said in a Kiwi twang. ‘Havin’ a good time?’
‘Yes.’ Marie leant back as Rhys moved across her to kiss Tammy on the cheek.
‘How are ya, babe? I hear you left the AIDS Council.’
‘I’m at the Cancer Council now.’
‘Out of the frying pan into the fire.’
‘I love it there. I’m doing education.’
Tom had stripped off her t-shirt and y-fronts to glittery stars-and-stripes underwear and was speaking through what looked like a giant vagina around her head, breasts swinging. Tammy passed Marie a joint. Marie took the smoke into her lungs and held it, staring at the
tattooed man, who had, she noticed now, fine long legs. She exhaled woozily, announcing, ‘I’m a legs woman.’
‘Oh yair?’ Tammy drawled. Rhys cocked an eye at her.
‘It’s unusual in women, isn’t it. It’s usually the other way around. But I like legs.’
They followed Marie’s gaze.
‘Oh,’ said Rhys. ‘Gavin.’
‘Not a good idea.’ Tammy winced.
‘Misogynist prick.’
Marie swallowed a mouthful of warm beer. She could feel a pulse fluttering in the corner of her left eye. She squeezed it but the pulse wouldn’t stop. Tammy was on her left side. She ducked her head so Tammy wouldn’t goggle at her hideous gigantic uncontrollable tic.
‘Remember I drove for him when he was sick?’ said Tammy. ‘You forgive ’em for being pricks when they’re that sick. But I don’t put up with it now.’
‘Nor should you.’
‘He’s gay, Marie.’
‘That’s alright. My son’s gay.’
Rhys and Tammy laughed.
‘Oh dear,’ said Marie.
‘I got your Eckies,’ Tammy said to Rhys.
‘What are they like? I can’t afford to be too fucked tomorrow.’
‘Just have a half. They’re good.’
‘Ta. Marie?’
‘Thank you.’
Rhys broke the pills in half and shared them around. Marie swallowed hers then remembered she had never had the drug before. She felt scared and at the same time determined to ride her fear, like a teenager. She stared at the stage. Tom now seemed to be a he again, swaggering about saying: Hi y’all, yeah it’s great to be down under; we’re just out back countin’ money. The joint returned and Marie puffed on it greedily then Tammy disappeared. Rhys nudged her. ‘I’m going to the toilet. You gonna be alright here?’ Marie nodded, her mouth dry.
She watched the last performance on her own, a military man with a stockinged face, shaking to heavy metal. Behind him jerked two drag queens in masks with gaping teeth, bloodshot eyes and little blonde wigs, and as the music crescendoed the man stripped off his uniform to reveal a veined and muscled body, his penis a pointy dagger. Marie sat holding her wrists, feeling her pulse quicken. The drag queens twitched like skeletons and the music screeched like breaking machinery and the man stripped again, to bone, his face a skull, and danced maniacally. Marie had to look away. Through a gap in the crowd, the priest appeared full-length. Now she saw that what he had been holding was a metre-high doll dressed as a boy. Its arms were wrapped around his legs, its face buried in his crotch. Aghast, Marie looked back at the stage. The military man was thrusting his penis into a globe atlas, over and over, until it deflated. Sweat ran down Marie’s spine.
This fluttering in her stomach must be the drug unfolding. It made her nervous and excited. She got up and wobbled along the wall till she found the toilets. Inside, her bowels opened and she left the cubicle refreshed. She regained her seat feeling weird and therefore right at home with these people.
Rob emerged from the crowd and sat beside her. He was back in his leathers and a western shirt, his make-up splotchy with sweat. He was evidently pleased to see her. ‘How’s it goin’?’
‘Good!’ Marie’s tongue felt like a slab of wood. She could see the priest shuffling with his hands on the boy doll’s head, holding it against his crotch with a lecherous sneer. Another man picked up the doll’s feet, wrapped them around his hips and began to thrust. The doll flopped helplessly between them while people looked on, laughing or grimacing. The scene terrified Marie.
‘Great crowd,’ said Rob.
‘You’ve trimmed your beard,’ Marie managed. ‘It suits you.’
‘Thanks.’ He offered her a drink from a blue metallic bottle. Marie wanted to wipe the nozzle but thought it might be rude. Besides, she was parched. Her eyes felt so dry they seemed to be dangling on sticks in the air. She took a long swig. It tasted divine. Clarity was immediate. ‘You’ve put fresh mint into it or something.’
‘Yeah. I freeze water with mint in it to take out. Stays cold all night. No plastic bottle waste. You like Stew’s show?’
‘Which one was that?’
‘Just now. He was the main guy.’
‘Oh.’
It was hard to find all these grotesqueries funny. The reality behind them stayed with her. It was like looking at a person whose skin had been flayed: no matter how beautiful or benign they were, you were still looking at viscera, the movement of blood and shit, the bare bones. Reality. At the same time a delicious inner warmth was moving down her back, through her limbs. She wanted to throw her arms around Rob.
‘How’d the auction go?’ he asked.
‘Well, I sold.’
‘Wow. After thirty years, was it? That’s big.’
‘Yes. But it just happens, like it’s just another day.’
‘Like death. The sun still rises. The birds still sing.’
Marie had another sip of Rob’s water. The party boomed on. ‘It was last weekend but it feels like a thousand years ago. It feels like I’ve been amputated.’
‘Where you gonna move to?’
‘I don’t know. Rhys said you’d be the man to ask for help with that.’
‘Did she?’
Natasha appeared, a marble statue robed in black. ‘Going to the bar. Place your bets.’
‘Drinks on me.’ Marie gave Natasha a twenty-dollar note. Her hand shook slightly.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Please. Water for me.’
Natasha turned, and the crowd parted.
‘Do you really own lots of properties?’ Marie said to Rob.
‘Yeah.’ Rob laughed, slightly embarrassed. ‘I got into it when I was really young. I was crap at school and this Economics teacher told me about the stockmarket, and’s like, Here, I’ll show you a few things. I had five hundred dollars saved from my weekend job and I invested that and it doubled then I invested it again, it doubled again. I couldn’t believe it. It was the ’80s.’
‘What about the houses?’
‘I bought my first one at nineteen. Got the deposit from the stockmarket investments.’
‘Precocious.’
‘It’s a game. It goes both ways. I lost twenty thousand on gold the other day y’know. Don’t put your money into the stockmarket, Marie. Not now.’
The music was growing louder with thumping bass and muttered incantations and sirens whirling like blades. Tadzio was dancing nearby in a pork-pie hat with a bird on a spring bouncing on top. His boyfriend without the beard and gut didn’t look at all like Aschenbach. Are you a freak? said a female vocal. Are you a freak? Mel came and sat on Marie’s right with a friend. They huddled over an electronic oblong in Mel’s hand, her fingers fluttering across the screen. ‘It’s on YouTube,’ she said to her friend.
‘Where do you want to live?’ Rob asked Marie.
‘I want to stay by the water. But it’s expensive.’
‘Sydney’s ridiculous.’
‘Einstein the talking parrot!’ Mel’s friend shouted. ‘Dontcha love yer iPhone?’
‘Broc-coli,’ Mel croaked back in an American parrot accent.
‘You play your cards right,’ said Rob, ‘you can get a place to live and a rental property, and support yourself while you study.’
‘I’ve done my sums. I’ll probably have to get a job.’
Rob said in a low voice: ‘You be our receptionist when Mel leaves.’
‘What a great idea. Why do you stay in Sydney, Rob?’
‘For work. And Rhys has to stay near Travis’s father. What about you?’
‘I’ve never lived anywhere else. I wouldn’t know where to go.’
‘Like we did consider Newcastle, but I’m not sure if they’d let us work there either.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘Just business.’ Rob shrugged. He leant forward and looked into the crowd, his shoulder blades like wings through the fabric of his shirt. The girls on Marie’s other side
stared at the iPhone, pressed it to their ears. There was something irresistible in the music: it seemed to ripple beneath Marie’s feet. The pain in her stomach was gone. Somebody stopped to talk to Rob. Marie unpeeled her thighs from the plastic chair and stood up.
‘Look at you,’ said Mel in parrot. ‘You’re all wet!’
Both girls pitched forward, screaming with laughter.
Marie moved into the throng of dancers. She passed a group of men and women stripped to the waist, slick with sweat, smiling through heavy-lidded eyes. The Asian was shouting over the music to someone, ‘... mined the fuck out of it.’ She saw Tammy with Butter Bin. She headed towards them and they made her welcome. There was a pause in the music and the crowd stilled, and looking around Marie felt a rush of love. She wormed on through, excuse me, excuse me, hands touching her shoulders, her back, people smiling as they gently manoeuvred her on her way.
The music began to build. Come on ... come on ... come on ... come on ... She passed the strange green creature who was fanning itself and looking around regally. On sighting Marie, it bowed and smiled. A piano melody spilt forth like a trickle of gems, and Marie found she was stuck. Then a cool cylinder was placed in her hand, followed by a pile of coins, and she saw Rhys and Natasha. Arms encircled her from behind: Stew. ‘You scared me with your performance!’ ‘Good.’ Marie drank from her bottle and felt the fluid course through her body, reviving every cell. A horn sounded across the dance floor, plaintive, urgent, then came an outbreak of violent percussion and Marie slipped down to the bassline. There were bells and whistles and a woman fiercely whispering, Take me upwards, and Marie wrapped herself deeper into the bright coat of music, feeling the heat of the people around her, melting into their atmosphere. Somebody was smiling and touching her arms, Beautiful, beautiful, and her body became a ribbon threading through their mass, a pillar of salt dissolving into the pool of them, and she had no past, she had no future, just these dancing feet, this breath, this skin. Take me upwards.
Rhys’s doctor worked in a terrace off south King Street dominated by a gnarled old hibiscus covered in red flowers. The air in the corridor was bitter with Chinese herbs. The worn floral carpet and fireplace in the waiting room reminded Marie of old aunts in Tasmania. She took New Idea from the rack and read an interview with a rock star in which he apologised to the journalist that he was late because he had been turning off all the powerpoints in his hotel room. His band was headlining at a green-powered concert. A photo showed him seated in front of the rig in lotus position.
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