Chapter 23: Waccy Baccy Dreamin’
“Dinner round at Sonya Rider’s house? With Gordon? Bloody hell, very cosy. You are moving in new celeb social circles aren’t you? Will you soon be popping off to meet Russ and Danni for herbal tea down on Finger Wharf as well?”
As usual, we were sitting on the floor in the lounge putting the world to rights over a cup of tea. Anita was taking the piss out of me, which was fine because I would’ve too if I were her.
“Listen to you!” I said, deciding the best defence was a strong counterattack. “You weren’t so bloody cool and above it all the other night! Queen Starfucker herself! What was it you said to the guy from Blue Heelers? Something like, ‘now that I’ve met you, I can die!’”
“Aaaaaagggghhhhhhh!” screamed Anita, rolling back onto the carpet, curling up into foetal position and covering her face.
Round one to me.
“Damn you, you promised not to tease me about it!”
In the cold light of day and sobriety following the Greek party, Anita was torturing herself with endless cringeful flashbacks of her alcohol-fuelled antics. She’d been woken up the morning after by council workers digging up the pavement outside with several pneumatic drills only to realise there was no work going on outside, the drills were in her head and set to full power. Then she had rolled over and come face-to-sole with a pair of very large feet. ‘Just one pair though, thank God,’ she thought before a tsunami of horrific memories from the previous night, triggered by the mystery feet, flooded her mind’s eye.
Taking a deep breath, she lifted the sheets to see who at the other end of the feet. She found a very large, rather beautiful, naked man and recalled that his name was Adonis. His toga lay in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Three cups of coffee later and some toast later, she knew that Adonis’s real name was Terry and he was supposed to be on set that morning at Channel Five pretending to build a three-storey tree house in just an hour. In reality it had taken him an hour just to find his toga and get it to stay on. After breakfast, Anita had called him a cab and shoved him out the door before retiring to the sofa with an ice-pack and Bert Newton after chucking back four Nurofen. She was just starting to feel better when I turned up an hour later with the newspaper and showed her several photos of herself in the social pages, clearly plastered and draped over everyone from Thorpie to John Farnham. One caption even suggested she was the ‘bit of rough’ mistress of some veteran actor from the North Shore. There was also a couple of Gordon and me, he had his arm around my shoulders and we looked great together, if I do say so myself.
“Y’know what Darl,” Anita said from behind her fingers. “I think my drinks must’ve been spiked because I have never, ever, been that drunk and out of control ever in my whole life.”
We both knew this was so not true. Anita’s legendary drunken escapades were the stuff of legend.
“Bollocks,” I said. “You were drunk as a bloody skunk on a free, bottomless supply of apple martinis. Stop beating yourself up! The hard thing under those circumstances is NOT getting completely and utterly trolleyed. Anyway, the beauty about shindigs like that is that everyone gets plastered so no-one cares what anyone else got up to because they’re too busy freaking out about whether it’s going to be them that ends up as some salacious, marriage-wrecking bit of gossip in the ‘Guess Who Don’t Sue’ column of the weekend paper.”
Anita sat up again, crossed her legs and picked her cigarette out of the ashtray.
“Hmm, I guess. Hell, at least I wasn’t the one shagging that fashion designer guy behind the bushes outside in front of all and sundry. Did you see them?” I shook my head. “It was outrageous. Her skirt was hiked up around her neck and he was thrusting into her as though his dick was an oil pump and he was trying to get through to China. I swear I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I think that’s why I dragged Adonis home, it actually made me really horny!”
“Well, at least one of us got a shag. Bloody had to be you though didn’t it,” I said bitterly and took my second Tim Tam in 10 minutes from the packet that sat between us. I was alternating Tim Tams and cigarettes. Hello heart disease!
“If it makes you feel any better, I can hardly remember a thing. I suspect I’d even passed out before his horse crossed the finish line. And I definitely wouldn’t class it as one of my more memorable and intimate sexual experiences. Still, all part of life’s glorious tapestry eh Darl! Anyway, what about you? Any closer to hanging Gordon’s head on your wall of trophies?”
I swallowed a lump of Tim Tam. “Well, yes, that’s still the plan and I think I’m still in with a chance. I’m hoping that shagging him might lay some of my ghosts from high school to bed. But I dunno if it’s going to be as straightforward as all that.”
Anita looked at me like I was crazy. Again. It was a look that invariably got thrown my way when the subject of conversation turned to Gordon Worsley.
“I still don’t get it Darl. How the hell is getting him in the sack just once going to change anything? It’s insane! And lets not forget that you’re treating him like he’s disposable, what about his feelings in all this?”
“Oh please Anita, men don’t get screwed up by casual sex like women do. Gordon could happily sleep with me then never give me a second thought. That’s what men do. They screw you and they leave. So it’s best if you get in and do it to them first.”
Jeezus, did I really just say that? Am I really that cynical and bitter? What about all the fabulous, warm, brilliant, caring men that I knew? All my male friends who were sweet, loving and generous.
“Oh get a grip Darla, I know that you don’t really believe that shit...” retorted Anita but before she could go on, there was a knock at the door. Anita had her thumb on her forehead before I’d even thought about it.
“Ok, ok, I’m going,” I said, dragging myself up off the floor and heading to the door. It was Margot, standing on the doorstep with a basket of scones on her arm covered by a red chequered tea towel. They were so fresh that the steam was still rising off them and I knew she would"ve just pulled them out of the oven and come straight round.
“Hello Darla Love, are you girls busy? Have I come at a bad time? I’d hoped you might have time for a scone and a chat.”
“We’d love nothing more Margot!” I said, honestly delighted to see her. "It’s great to see you. And those scones smell unbelievable. Come on in, I’ll boil the kettle again. Anita and I were just chatting about nothing much in the lounge.”
“Hiii Margot!” Anita shouted through, “come in here and join me!”
“You go through Margot, I’ll go sort out the tea,” I said, she smiled and headed off in the direction of Anita's shrill call, while I took the basket of hot scones through to the kitchen to put them on a plate with some strawberry jam and butter curls. I was good at making butter curls, it was about the only thing I remembered from cooking classes at high school -- or domestic science, as we were told we had to call it by well-meaning teachers trying to show that they knew what a valuable and skilled role working in the home was. And how to demonstrate this importance? By making it sound like a man might consider doing it. Just tack a male word like 'science" onto a female word like "domestic" and immediately it seems to have more weight and importance. God, there I go being angry again. How did I get into an internal debate on gender politics via butter curls? Did other people have these kind of thoughts go through their head?
At boiling point, the click of the kettle switching itself off brought me back to the present and I poured three mugs of tea. Then I placed them alongside a jug of milk, sugar, jam, scones, and the controversial butter curls, on a big tray and carefully carried them through to where Margot and Anita were talking about the latest Big Brother eviction.
"Haaaa ha!" laughed Anita, "that Gretel kills me!...aw thanks Darl," she said as I placed the tray on the coffee table in front of them. "A cup of tea and one of Margot's fabulous scones, heaven!"
We all went quiet for
a moment as serious scone eating took place. I ripped mine in half with my fingers and a cloud of steam rose out of the middle, they were still so moist and warm that the butter curls melted straight into them.
"God Margot, these are fabulous, thanks so much." I said through a mouthful of dough, butter and jam.
"My pleasure. To be honest with you though, this isn’t just a casual visit. I’ve had this strong urge to come round because I've been having strange dreams about you both, especially you Darla."
I steeled myself to quash my cynical side and hear her out. I had no doubt that Margot was genuinely psychic but I also wondered if she wasn't a tiny bit batty with it. Surely it was possible to be both? Anyway, she'd had some bizarre, meaningless dreams about us in the past that had come to nothing and I figured this was just another one. Once she'd told Anita that she was going to meet her sole mate amongst the ancient ruins of a foreign civilisation. As Anita was about to go on a trip to Borobodur, Indonesia, she was convinced that Mr Right would be some gorgeous Swedish backpacker with a visa to live in Australia, who’d be on the same tour bus as her or something. Needless to say she came back alone, with nothing more than a two-day fling with an English hippy traveller to report, and she doesn't have plans for any trips to ancient civilisations any time soon.
"You've been dreaming about us again?" I said. "Are you sure you haven't been having too much of your ‘special’ herbal tea before bed again Margs?"
The good thing about Margot is that she didn't mind Anita and I teasing her. She'd just giggle, give us this smug, knowing smile and say, "you just wait my dear! I'm not as batty as you think".
"Oh Darla, why are you such a cynic,” she sighed. “Yes, I've been dreaming about you but these aren't the usual dreams, there's a darker feeling to these ones and I wake up in a panic. It's really not very nice. And I keep seeing all these dead animals. There's a girl there too and she's not very nice. She scares me to be honest Darla; she seems to have it in for you. Have you met any new women lately?"
Thinking about it for a moment, I realised I'd met two new women in the last couple of days. Sonya Rider and Talia, Gordon's ex-witch. If Margot was dreaming about hateful women in my life, my money was on it being Talia. Still, how much harm could she do me? What was she going to do, hair flick me to death? Batter me with her false eyelashes?
"I met a couple of women the other night, yes, but I don't think either of them are too much of a threat. Although I'm going to one of them's house for dinner on Friday, she's off the telly, you know Sonya Rider? She reads the news on Channel Five?"
Margot concentrated for a minute. "Well, I’m not sure who it is to be honest Darla, I just want you to take care of yourself and just be extra vigilant for a while.”
As much as I thought she was talking nonsense, I felt a little shiver.
“Sure thing Margot, I’ll be careful. Don’t forget though, I live with a karate kicking superwoman, she’s my own personal bodyguard,” I said, nodding in Anita’s direction. “Just as long as the nasty woman doesn’t try to get me when Sex and the City is on, Neets will look after me.”
After that the conversation moved onto other things but it took me a while to shake the chill that Margot’s warning had left with me.
Chapter 24: Botox and Lipo
“Darla, when can I get the Ramswell story off you? Is it almost in the bag?” Arabella fixed me with those steely gray eyes. Did the woman ever blink?
“It’s going really well Arabella,” I simpered. “I should have it all to you by Monday. I’m going to a couple more things with Gordon over the weekend and I’m having dinner with him at Sonia Rider’s house tonight. That should give us enough material to fill a glamorous day.” I paused for a moment wondering how to bring up my next question. “The only thing is, ah, that with all the exciting stuff we’re pretending he does in a day, it doesn’t actually leave a lot of time for him to do his, um, job in fact so far our ‘pretend day’ clocks up to about 32 hours, not including sleep, and, ah, we also say he works 12 to 14 hour days sometimes...”
Arabella sighed impatiently and loudly.
“That’s right Darla, ‘sometimes’. He ‘sometimes’ works long hours, but we just didn’t catch him on one of those days! For chrissake, do you really think our bloody readers are going to sit down with a calculator and work out how many hours in his day we’ve accounted for? Like hell, all they want is a glimpse of the glamorous life so that they can forget about their own boring, dull, nothing lives for a moment. Ok?”
“Yep, sure Arabella.”
Christ the woman was a snob!
“Good. Now I want that copy on Monday. By the way, well done on all the press coverage you’ve been getting, I’ve seen you and Gordon in the social pages about three times which is great for the magazine...”
Good Lord! Would wonders never cease? Praise from Arabella.
“...anyway what about you Amanda?” She continued with hardly a pause for breath. “Have you found a pretty blonde dyke happy to dish the dirt on exactly what lesbians do in bed yet?”
“I’ve got a couple of leads but no-one confirmed yet, I’ll get onto it though. I’ve been kinda caught up with trying to find someone for that ‘I was a prostitute now I’m a high court judge’ story you wanted. I’ve called all the female high court judges I can find but they all say they’ve never been prostitutes...”
Arabella let out another one of her sighs that said ‘why am I surrounded by imbeciles?’
“Look, I just don’t believe we can’t find one shitty little high court judge that didn’t sell pussy to pay her uni fees or whatever. Have you tried overseas? Surely there’s one in the US or Britain. I want this story Amanda, ok?”
The steely grey eyes burnt a hole through Mands’ forehead.
“Yep, sure Arabella,” she mumbled.
“Now, Roxy...” Arabella’s onslaught wasn’t finished yet. It seemed no-one was to escape. I checked the date on my watch. Aha, the 22nd. Of course, she was premenstrual, I should’ve known. Thank god it was Friday because Arabella’s PMS fuelled rages lasted three or four days. By Monday she should be almost human again. Well, as human as any egocentric dictator with a fondness for wearing animal skins can be.
“...what have you got for me?”
“Oh my god! I have just the best, most fantastic story! You’re going to love it Arabella,” Roxy purred with excitement, her beautiful eyes flashing. She was always like that; it was like she had three times more serotonin than everybody else.
“I want to do an extreme makeover!” She continued, “not just changing someone’s hair, make-up and clothes, I want to really transform someone! I want to get some dowdy, hairy, plump girl with glasses and send her off for laser eye surgery, liposuction, permanent hair removal, botox, maybe an eye lift or cheekbone implants, a breast enlargement or lift, collagen in the lips of course, plus the usual hair, make-up, lash tints and so on. I want to create a goddess from a pig’s ear! What do you think?” Roxy was breathing hard with excitement, her eyes shining. Anyone would think she’d just had an orgasm. Knowing her, that wasn’t such a stretch.
“I think it’s a fabulous idea Rox,” Arabella smiled. “I think you should do three girls though, not just one. I’m going to give it about eight pages; it’ll be a huge feature, ok? And I’ll tell Sharon in promotions to use it as a big sell for getting radio and print coverage for that issue.”
Roxy beamed back at her. “Great! Ok, I’ll get right onto it. I’ve got a few potential girls already, I’ll show you their photos this afternoon.”
Arabella nodded at Roxy and checked her watch.
“Ok, that’s it, I’ve got a lunch to get to, we’ll have to finish this meeting on Monday at 10am. Thanks girls!” And we were excused.
Murmuring our thanks back to her, we all picked up our pads, pens and coffee cups and filed out of her office back to our desks.
Once back in our seats and out of earshot, Mands collapsed on her desk and wailed.
; “Maaaaaaan! How the fucking hell am I going to find a fucking high court judge who used to whore? Oh, and don’t forget the attractive part. She can’t be just any goddamned former-whoring judge; she has to be a bloody good-looking one! Christ! That woman has no fucking idea how hard it is to find these people! Does she think I just pull them out of my arse?”
Angry outbursts like this weren’t uncommon down in the trenches at Lush!. Every day or two someone had a minor breakdown. Last week it had been the fashion editor, a few days before that the picture editor had thrown her mobile phone across the room and ran to the loos crying. Which was particularly unusual because normally we all just cried openly at our desks. That was the beauty of sharing an office with 17 women, someone bursting into tears was a regular part of the working day.
“Mands, you know you can do this,” I said calmly, half believing she could but also knowing that she simply had to, no question. There was only one acceptable outcome for Arabella, i.e., the story filed to her by deadline.
“Look, what have you done so far to find someone? Have you called the Sex Workers’ Collective? Have you emailed every high court judge in the country? Have you asked the library to do an Internet and archival search for you? Have you phoned some of the big brothels on the off-chance they know of anyone?”
Mands lifted her face from her keyboard and looked up at me. I sensed some of her old grit returning. “You’re right Darl,” she sighed. “I haven’t exhausted all avenues yet. I guess there are still a few leads to follow up.”
“That’s my girl! But come on, let’s go to the pub, I need a drink. The prostitute-lawyer can wait till after lunch. I need some advice on what to wear to my dinner with Gordon at Sonya Rider’s tonight.”
But just then my phone rang. I picked it up it in case it was Gordon.
“Hello Darling.”
The Year I Went Pear-shaped: A fat woman's tale of love and insanity Page 11