by Linda Jaivin
‘You can’t pwove anything. Bitch.’
‘You say “bitch” like it’s a bad thing,’ she replies and, ignoring him, moves to my side. Gently, her soft hands brushing my cheeks, she unfastens the gag and, without bothering to wipe off the saliva, shoves it in Verbero’s maw.
‘How…what are you doing here?’ I am hoping that she will say that she’s come to rescue me, even though she couldn’t have known I was here. ‘This isn’t your usual beat.’
‘Oh, I got tired of going round busting up artists’ gigs and whatnot. Didn’t feel right.’ She moves around behind me, unlocks the handcuffs and starts puzzling out the other knots that bind my torso, legs, and feet to the chair. ‘I should tell you that meeting you was a turning point. Just didn’t want to do it anymore after that.’
I was desperate to see her face. I twisted around, but only succeeded in half-tipping myself over. She caught me and smiled. ‘Anyway, a few months ago, a colleague mentioned he was transferring to VIP security. Close personal protection, we call it. Thought I’d give it a go myself. Put in an application, had the interview and security check and next thing you know they’re telling me I’ve got “aptitude”. In like Flynn. Never thought I’d be protecting her though. The real question is, what are you doing here? I wouldn’t have expected a nice artist like you to be mixed up with his type.’ She throws a thumb in Verbero’s direction.
‘It’s a long story. I’ll tell you if you like, but can I ask you something?’
‘Shoot.’ I am enjoying the friction of her as she moves around me, untying.
‘Did you come to my house a few days ago?’
She looks up. Her eyes twinkle. ‘Yeah. I had your address from the time at the Apocalypso. I heard from some of my colleagues in VIP protection that Doppler had got herself a young artist in residence, called Walker. I couldn’t believe it was you, so I thought of some excuse to stop by. When they said they didn’t know where you were, I grew suspicious. But I thought you’d have your reasons.’
It’s crazy, but this moves me so much I want to stand up. I forget I’ve still got both feet secured to the chair and I tumble forward, into her arms. We fall together onto the bed. She reaches behind her for support and ends up pulling the curtain and rod down on our heads at the same time as the chair flies up and smacks against the back of my legs.
‘Ow!’ I cry. We laugh and untangle ourselves from the curtain. ‘It’s Raining Men’ is blasting out of the loudspeaker and someone’s set off fireworks from a nearby boat. I’m almost delirious with the romance of it all. I want to kiss her and hold her and tell her how much I’ve been thinking about her and what a miracle this is when I suddenly remember something.
I look at my watch. Thurston’s watch. ‘Oh shit! It’s nearly ten to twelve!’
‘Just in time for the countdown,’ she replies.
The pounding of footsteps causes us both to look up. Though the bare window we see, clear as day, Maddie and ZakDot racing past, down the breezeway towards the stern, discarding bits and pieces of their catering uniforms as they go.
‘I remember her,’ Grevillea says.
‘You don’t know how big this countdown is gonna be,’ I tell her. ‘We’ve got to get outta here.’
She quickly unties my feet. She runs out onto the breezeway, me stumbling behind, my legs and feet stiff from being tied up for so long. We reach the stern just in time to see a longboat rowed by what look like Viking warriors angling its bow into the ‘v’ of the duckboard. Maddie and ZakDot jump into the boat, rocking it perilously, then the Vikings, under the direction of Thurston, row like billyo.
As quickly as I can, I tell Grevillea what’s happening. We race back up the stairs and to the deck with the party.
Imagine a Hollywood wet dream of ancient Egypt with a dash of Roman Empire thrown in for good measure. A barge fit for Cleopatra or Nero, for pharaohs, kings or princes. Billowing clouds of gold lamé cover the top deck. It looks like the floating love child of a Gold Coast motel and the bus in Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Young Adonises mill about in loincloths, pretending to be oarsmen or statues, their oiled biceps gleaming in the torchlight. Nubiles in silk togas, frangipani blossoms in their hair, flutter about serving the costumed guests. There is a dessert table on which are lavish trays of sweets and cakes and two enormous displays of fruit crafted to look like peacocks with spread tails.
Cynthia, Lynda and Cashie are standing by the table, plucking pieces off the peacocks’ tails and sharing some private joke. Cynthia is wearing a pointy metallic bra like something out of a Madonna video, and a tall cone of aluminium foil on her head. Lynda is dressed in rags, like a beggar, and Cashie has done something quite bizarre to her hair, or maybe that’s what it always looks like when not confined to a turban. Together they look a little like a feminised version of the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion.
‘To conclude, I’d like to make a very special announcement.’ Destiny taps her microphone. She looks around in despair. By her side, Wayne frowns. Everyone is facing her, but no one is listening. Even with the microphone, she can barely make herself heard over the tinkling of jewellery, the clinking of glasses, muffled snorts and the occasional stage-whispered ejaculation—‘Oh, really?’ ‘He paid what?’ It’s exactly, I realise, like an art opening.
I scan the deck, not exactly sure what I’m looking for. It could be anywhere. But there it is, plain as day if you’re looking for it. A bomb. Right under the dessert table. A black orb with the word ‘bomb’ thoughtfully lettered on the side in white texta. In smaller letters: ‘This machine really kills fascists.’ A fuse leads off to the galley.
Grevillea spots it just as Destiny notices me. Destiny drops her microphone and rushes towards me. I freeze, not sure which is the more nightmarish fate—to be blown up or clinched in passionate embrace by Destiny in full view of Grevillea. In time, I’m sure, if we manage to survive, I’ll tell Grevillea all about Destiny, but this does not feel like the opportune moment. Before Destiny can reach me, though, Grevillea tackles her and wrestles her to the rail.
Destiny struggles to break free.
Oscar sashays over in a grass skirt and coconut-shell bra, waving his arms like he’s hula dancing. ‘Hello, girlfriend!’ He twirls. ‘I’m a Hawaiian princess. Can you tell? Have you been here all evening? Sorry, I must sound a little hyper, we’ve just been doing the best blow all evening. Anyway, so glad you’re here. I thought you had something better to do. I’ve been dying to find out how it all went up there. Apparently, you made some kind of impression. She was asking for you all night.’ I glance over my shoulder. Grevillea was at a safe distance. ‘Goodness, your friend looks like she is about to toss her overboard. It’s about time, too. Dreary woman.’
Another copper in plainclothes, this one a man, has barrelled up to Grevillea and Destiny. Grevillea briefs him in an instant. As Oscar and I watch, together they throw Destiny over the rails. She goes with a howl and a splash. The copper sends a lifebuoy spinning through the air after her.
‘Woohoo,’ Oscar cries, taking off one of his flowery leis and twirling it around on his finger while circling his hips. ‘Quite right too. No one should ever make a speech at a party that goes for more than fifteen minutes tops. I mean, it’s New Year’s, for God’s sake.’
‘Oscar—’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Grevillea has the microphone now. The authority in her voice makes everyone stop what they’re doing and listen. What a woman. I almost get a boner just listening to her. ‘There’s an emergency. A bomb has been placed on board this ship and it is set to go off in’—she looks at her watch—‘six minutes. I want everyone overboard. Jump and swim. Right now.’
A drag queen screams.
‘What are you waiting for, finger bowls?’ Grevillea and her partners then move about the shocked guests, helping them over the rails. The society ladies aren’t too happy about getting their frocks wet but the drag queens are the worst, wailing about their make-up and wigs, and squawking like co
ckatoos; you’d think it was the Titanic. I help Lynda, Cynthia and Cashie to jump. Once they heard Maddie was involved, they knew it was no joke. I look down and see that Cynthia is having some problem righting herself in her metallic bra. She unhooks it. She’s got excellent tits. They float.
I spot Trimalkyo dashing frantically about, calling for Oscar. He seems to have forgotten his accent in his panic. ‘Oscar! Oscar! Where are you?’ Oscar shimmies over to him and Trimalkyo clasps him to his breast. I don’t think Oscar has anything to worry about in the relationship stakes. They dive over the side together, imperial gown and grass skirt flying. I guess Trimalkyo wasn’t in on the plot after all.
Grevillea signals to me. Everyone, including the crew, has been evacuated. She takes my hand and we jump into the harbour.
As we break the surface, still holding hands, Luna Park grins, the Opera House gapes with all its maws wide open and the Harbour Bridge beams its upsidedown smile. We swim away from the boat as quickly as possible, kicking off our shoes. The water is cold, but not too cold, and the evening is balmy. The official countdown starts and a roar of excitement rises from all around us. It echoes from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair to Shell and Neutral and Lavender Bays, from the naval base of Woolloomooloo to the finger-wharfs of the Rocks, from Pinchgut to the shores of Clark and Shark Islands, from the decks of the tall ships to the low bellies of speedboats and dinghies. Some people on other boats notice our party treading water but they must reckon it’s a crazy night and crazy shit happens.
Everyone, us included, faces the sky as the most extraordinary fireworks display in the city’s long history of celestial spectaculars begins. Sulphuric flowers bloom scarlet and silver in the sky, candescent pompoms shake out their tassels, ringed planets of light burst in the air and great, sparkling jellyfish unravel tentacles of green and violet and ultramarine. Giant sparklers transform the Harbour Bridge into a glittering tiara. Fat golden fingers with red tips tickle the moon and Centrepoint spends itself in a shower of glittery ejaculate. The harbour echoes with the snap and crackle of the explosions and the gasps of the spectators following each fresh display of pyrotechnic kitsch.
Every boat in the harbour sounds its horn. But nothing is happening with the Dinkum. Several minutes pass. For one deeply embarrassed moment, I think that all this carry-on is simply the result of a paranoia I thought I’d left behind. Grevillea looks at me as if to say, well?
I suddenly realise that, whatever is about to happen, I’ve made Maddie into something she could never really be: a terrorist and a murderer. Where would she get explosives big enough to blow up a ship like the Dinkum? And in twenty-four hours, no less? What we saw under the table must have been some sort of witty installation piece. They must have gotten all hyped up on the coke and then had a big laugh working out how to scare the shit out of anyone who discovered the ‘bomb’. I feel really stupid. I look at Thurston’s watch, which fortunately is waterproof. Quarter past twelve.
Then I remember that Thurston said Maddie had taken my watch for a detonator. My watch, which took its own sweet time in getting anywhere.
Just as this occurs to me, on the top deck of the Dinkum, there’s a rumble and a flash and an explosion. It’s now raining melon balls and grapes and champagne and chocolate truffles and jellies, tarts and petit fours, mousse and cake; amongst the shower of treats, scraps of burning lamé float down like shreds of golden sky. It was a bomb all right.
As some Americans on a rented yacht duck the sweet debris, they raise their champagne glasses in a toast to us. ‘We love it! World-class fireworks! World-class city!’
I laugh. Grevillea’s eyelashes have clumped into dark wet spikes. She spits out a stream of water. I draw her to me, dancing in water, and that’s when the real pyrotechnics begin. I love New Year’s now. It’s not bullshit, it’s not hype. I have found my truest love. We’re just getting into it when her colleagues in the harbour patrol come along and pluck us out of the water.
As we’re speeding back to shore, we remember Verbero was still on the boat, gagged and handcuffed to the sink in the toilet, when the bomb went off.
Found objects (2)
A new age dawned in the little country that was also a big island. Everyone came round to thinking that the original inhabitants were right after all, that the country is where it always was, under our feet, and that this is an excellent place for it to be. We stopped creating Troubles out of culture and blaming culture for our troubles, which were, we realised, much fewer and smaller than those of any other country on earth. Tolerance ruled the land.
Penelope Tolerance: the first Aboriginal prime minister. Destiny wasted no time in resigning and calling a new election. The government of Tolerance and Justice (Malcolm Justice, her deputy prime minister) led the little country through the first decade of the new millennium. The forty-first millennium, give or take a millennium or two. The Aborigines had, you see, a slightly advanced perspective on the rest of us. Asian immigrants, and Arab ones, and Europeans and even Anglo-Saxons delved into their own traditions and each other’s, and the love that dare not speak its name—multiculturalism—flourished.
Tolerance reversed all of Destiny’s policies. No sooner had she restored funding to scientific research than geophysicists discovered that we had developed a bulge in our heart, making the little country a few hundred square metres larger than we thought it was. Satellite photos taken at the time, however, confirmed that it was still smack in the middle of nowhere, directly on the periphery of everything. Tolerance reopened the schools and libraries and galleries and museums, and provided corporations with irresistible incentives to invest in sponsorship of the arts. Sports people were a bit put out at first, but deep down they loved the arts as much as anyone else and soon grew reconciled to the way things were. Tolerance revived all the prizes and competitions, and reinstated the body that gave out grants and fellowships.
One person who never fails to put in a grant application is Destiny. She’s become a performance artist. She delivers long monologues while swinging naked from a trapeze and playing a homemade musical instrument that makes a sound like doors opening. In the beginning, when we’d run into each other, she’d throw these long wistful looks in my direction. It was embarrassing. I couldn’t really blame her, though. Despite everything else, we’d had some great sex, and the thought of it still got me hot from time to time. But she doesn’t need me anymore. She has every gawky shy boy within a twenty-kilometre range of the inner city hanging off her. She’s a neurotic artist magnet.
Once the initial euphoria wore off, most people I know started whingeing that life wasn’t as exciting as in the days of Clean Slate. The citizens of our country still come out and dance on the street when a local film shines at Sundance or a local artist makes it into a top New York gallery. But it’s finally occurred to the artists that the people of the little country are generally so relaxed, easy-going and happy that they’ll come out and dance on the street at the slightest provocation anyway.
Artists reminisce ad nauseam about those halcyon days under Destiny, when art was banned and therefore thrilling, relevant, important and real. How many parties have I been to where artists of my generation—late twenties, early thirties—spend their time lost in a haze of nostalgia, trading stories and laughing about the good bad old days, while younger artists shake their heads and plot our overthrow.
My mates graciously attributed my, er, date with Destiny to the head trauma I’d received from running headlong into Thurston’s armour that evening, or as ZakDot put it, ‘out into the knight’.
Speaking of my mates…Maddie fled the country before anyone could figure out the connection between her and what had happened to the Dinkum. We got a postcard from Iceland, and then there was no news for ages until one day the Herald reported that she was being deported from France for attempting to launch the Eiffel Tower into space. The Museum of the Most Cutting Edge Art (which the Colombian drug cartel returned to the city in exchange for tickets to every Ne
w Year’s Eve celebration for the next fifty years—no one told them you don’t actually need tickets) contacted her on her return and offered her a commission to take out the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She turned that down to accept a grant from a peace foundation to blow up old military installations all around the world.
ZakDot is still searching for meaning, though he’s finally realised that the search for meaning is itself the focus for his art. He has an idea for an exhibition called ‘“Search” for “Meaning”—I Interrogate “Myself”’ but it’s not past the preconceptual stage. Despite the fact he still hasn’t done any art, he’s successfully achieved the status of ‘celebrity artist’, by concentrating on the celebrity side of things. He’s a staple of all the talk shows and panels. They even asked him to host the new series of ‘Art/Life’, but he knocked the offer back. Pulse had just put ‘Art/Life’ on its ‘shocking’ list, ‘shocking’ now being the opposite of ‘cool’, ‘cool’ being cool again.
Gabe has progressed to the letter ‘S’. I’m not sure what it stands for. Spot?
Julia is still taking photos. She happened to be on a yacht with a visiting troupe of Chinese acrobats when the Dinkum went up. Her photograph of exploding meringues made it onto the front cover of Whirl Art. Last time I saw her, she was with the lead singer of that Newtown band, the fellow who was reputedly even cooler than ZakDot. Apparently, they’d been lovers a long time ago.
Thurston has come out of the closet. I’m embarrassed to admit that there was some drama there in the beginning. It turns out that he was actually in love with me. I can’t believe it never occurred to me: he used to follow me around and gaze at me simply because he didn’t know how to express his feelings. I felt terrible. I was never attracted to him, but that’s not the point. For a sensitive artist, I could be pretty insensitive at times. It’s worked out okay in the end. He met a lovely bloke who adores him. Grev and I even went to their house-warming. And when we had our first child, he sent us a card of handmade paper on which he’d calligraphed the words, ‘May you thrive and tidder.’