by Alan Duff
Sonny remembered specifically a big tough dude, a gang member, he was celled up with for two months who damn near every night broke out like this in his sleep. Love. That’s what tough Teddy was secretly about. He just wanted love. So Sonny didn’t feel so bad about his outbreak. And the music and the images of the players still lingered in his mind. He got up, put the tape on again. But this time with the light on. Though he still did not find it in him to look at the photographs.
No tears after the second performance; instead, a feeling of perplexing sadness. (I know: it’s the gap. The difference. Between us.) Sonny got an insight. (And – and, and it’s to do with me and my hopes – No, not hopes. Sumpin else. Sumpin else …) But it would go no further than that.
He finished the can, opened another. Lit a smoke. Ate some cashews. Not as nice as the – he had to look at the label on the empty packet – pistachios. He stroked the pile of notes, spreading them out in a fan again. Smiled at them. Picked one up and kissed it. Said aloud, Is this what it’s like to have money? You’re happy all the time? But he knew he wasn’t, not all of even this short time – less than a day – happy. But it sure as hell beats being broke. (Hope that lady in the park is alright.) A sudden reminder from thinking of being broke. And miserable. And so desperate. Then nothing better’n a mongrel, even if it was Jube did the business on the woman. (I was still with him. Didn’t see me saying no to what the money from the woman’s handbag bought us. Mongrels. We crims’re always a few bucks away from being mongrels.)
Then he took the photos out of the envelope.
And gasped.
And felt his guts heaving with an anguish as well as excitement and then a deep, deep wanting. (I want you, lady … Not to fuck – not to fuck, and yet that too. I’m a Teddy Nathan, lady: I just wanna be loved …) Staring intently at one of the photographs. The overall picture of woman shape. Then the specifics. Her face, its serenity, like the piano-playing image of her was serenity. Hair in wet tangles. Those dark eyebrows rather heavy of growth too. So sexy. And he could hear her voice – exactly. It was astonishing. She could be in the room. No she couldn’t. Woman like her wouldn’t set foot in a hole like this. Nor would she expose herself like this for a mongrel. Sonny fought to get back to admiring her.
The triangle of pubic hair and just the start of the divide visible, a sight. But not only the sight, for now she had a voice, and a personality, or what little was in his mind from the video recording. And she had movement now in this same smile frozen on the glossy paper. Legs well shaped, athletic. Breasts ample. And her eyes, so open and honest. Who but Jube’d see porn in this? (So why am I as stiff as a board then?)
He lay down on his back. Grinning at the thought of the stash of over three grand beneath him. He held the one photograph up in front of his eyes. And masturbated. And when it was over he wept again.
Sonny stood before the mirror looking at his image, grinning. Not bad, not bad, even if I say so myself. This was his next sequence of being alone, not able to find sleep nor tame the restlessness, and don’t forget the nervousness that hadn’t gone away for – must be near a day. So looking at how he scrubbed up in his new clothes. Need a hair tidy-up he decided. A real expensive job for once. One of them fifty-dollar numbers, but not a blow-wave; I hate blow-waves, they look false, they don’t move in even a gale, it ain’t natural. Just want some quality.
The nervousness persisted. It felt like he could be ready to go out on his first-ever date. Yeah, that’s how it felt. (And not with her, Penelope, neither. Much too high up in the clouds for this boy. Who then?)
A name just came to him: Jane. Popped up like that in his mind like an introduction. She even had a voice, and it was low-toned like the goddess’s was, cept it didn’t have that clarity of pronunciation. Couldn’t. Not a likely girl of my meeting. Jane. Just a plain Jane. (But not so plain she’d be unwanted by other men. Who wants that? I don’t.)
The new shirt gave him a sudden itch, which he relieved, catching his mirrored image in the awkward position of hand reaching right over his shoulder to the itchy spot. He turned it into a little dance of silly steps, then flopped around body with the arm dived over his shoulder and the other between his legs. Hahaha.
He knew a Jane once. She got killed in a car crash. Wasn’t her driving neither. Never is the woman. They only get to die, or end up horribly injured, in wheelchairs even, in the name of the driver’s manhood. Like Jube’s manhood is on the road, encased in the act of speeding. Jane’s boyfriend was driving. She got killed and he lived. Guy still drinks most days at Tavistocks. Plays the tragedy to the full, even though it happened a few years ago. They do that, do Tavi regulars; they squeeze every last drop from everything and anything. Life, even. But their life: in the fuckin pits.
It’s always the woman gets hurt or killed, same as they get beaten up – in the name of manhood. Poor Jane. Even if she was a bit of a typical Tavi scrubber, she didn’t deserve to die. No-one does. Not even Jube. Enough of that, Sonny shaking his head in a deliberate gesture to ward off darker thoughts.
The Cossack dancers, that’s what’s next. He got the tape, read the handwritten title again: Georgian State Dancers. Frowning. He thought Georgia was in America: tough-guy country, where the whites’re like Jube McCall, cept they hate anyone with dark blood like I am. They hate the world, from what a man understands, like Jube does. (Ahh, but come to think of it, so does every Tavi regular hate the world. It’s the condition, brother. Part of being the condition, hahaha.) He reverently placed in one of his drawers the piano-playing duo. Mine. They’re mine, and definitely not for Jube’s eyes.
The dancing was stunning. Had Sonny standing up and stay standing in open-mouthed astonishment that such virtuosity of movement could exist. Disbelieving. This was a Pandora’s Box, the whole experience, from first sight of that huge modern house thrusting up out of the dark of angles and slopes and protrusions, to now this. He hadn’t even touched the beer can he’d started before the tape came on. He rewound it then started it over. This time he did a couple of imitation steps to the male members of the troupe: guys in Cossack dress, high leather boots and billowy shirt sleeves and fur hats.
Sonny fancied himself a dancer – of crude skills compared to this lot, but endowed with an inborn rhythm, an understanding of beat and how to express it in body movement. Lot of Maoris could. Must be in the blood. Hah. Like crime is too? He thought of the high proportion of Maori people in jails. But shrugged it away: I ain’t no genius, don’t ask me why this is so. Like I said, might be in the blood, a certain passion, a subsequent lack of control, cos the passion got the better of the mind and common sense went out the window. Hell, I dunno.
Was past eleven o’clock when the tape was through for the second time. Jube’d be coming home soon if he hadn’t picked up a woman and gone somewhere with her. But Sonny wanted to see one more tape, and enough beers in him to say to hell with Jube coming in on him. So fuckin what? He my boss or sumpin? He sorted through the tapes. Tried one that said Verdi’s Nabucco. That’ll do.
Bor-ring. How anyone’d want to watch this kind of crap was beyond him. But he kept watching if only that he became a little bit interested seeing people dressed up like they were. And then something happened: group singing… Man, that’s kinda cool… Sonny listening and watching hard now, as the voices began rising, then they fell again, then – LAAHHhh – as they reached up, grabbed a high note together. Man. This wasn’t bad after all.
It got so that Sonny saw the triumph in the song, even though it was in foreign language; it was the way the singers built and built, how his own skin broke out in goose pimples and his chest swelled up, even his chin was lifting higher and higher, as if someone’d told him: Stand proud, man! Lah-DA-DAAAA!!! dadada, lada-da-da-da, it went like that, men and women in a kind of ordered frenzy. Melodic, sure. But alive – alive, cuz.
Sonny wanted to be part of it. Of them. The group. In song. In joy. Of meaning. Of learning. Of being a member of a something that’d
got itself organised and then trained into doing this. Opera? He guessed that’s what it was. Man, for all he knew they might be men and women prisoners putting on a musical over in, where? I dunno, Russia? Italy? Germany? What kinda language is it they’re singing? Then sounds from outside had him sighing, and he quickly stopped the tape playing, readied himself for the Jube and probable company onslaught.
(Man, this is unreal: from that world on screen I been watching all night, to Jube arriving in his throaty-engined car with its specially designed exhaust he is convinced really impresses people with its growl. He’d be in the company of, what, a Tavi scrubber, or a girl from the massage parlour around the corner to the Tavi, and there’d be a few hanger-ons cos Jube was flush with bread, and hanger-ons they’re no different to flies zooming in on free pickings. They’ll be sucking up to Jube, playing on his stupid vanity, arms around each other thinking they’re all mates even when they know they’re not, they’ll be stoned as well from dope, all arvo and night toking, and the shit’ll be pouring from their mouths as it has been all this time getting out of it. Yet still they don’t, and won’t, know.
HAHAHAHAHA!!! Jube’s cackling laughter. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Another couple of cacklers with him. And was that the softer giggle of a woman Sonny heard? Oh well. Can’t beat em, join em. And he opened the door and closed it quietly after him. Hey, Jubesy babe. Flat. Sonny’s welcome, flat.
9
Endless, man. The days. And the nights. Just endless.
Was bread did it. Having plenty of readies. That’s what was doing it – lettuce, man. Loot. Three and a half grand of it. Oh, and that gear stashed in the spare room (and that fucking Sonny thinks he’s gonna keep that stuff he clouted on, the stereo and tv and even a Persian rug, he’s got another think coming. It’s ours. Not his. Ours. In fact, was me who told him to grab the Persians, that ignorant brown prick wouldn’t know a Persian rug from a Persian cat – HAHAHAHAHA!!)
Day started when it started, ya know? HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Well it starts when a man wakes up, course it does, it could hardly start when he was asleep – HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Yeh. Might be morn. Might be the arvo. Didn’t madda. Ya juss woke up when ya wake up. And first thing’t hits you when ya do is that you ain’t broke. You ain’t broke, you’re rich. Like in rich. And as you’re reaching out for your first smoke of the day the grin’s starting to spread already: Hey, I’m rich. HAHAHAHAHA!! Mmm-uh, so the smoke tastes even better than it anyway does.
Ya lie there smoking, grinning away, and going over the night – well, the day too, seein it started at, what, usually by twelve – in your mind of that booze ya drank (and bought for people), the joints you smoked, and the laughs ya had all arvo and night till seven when the Tavi closed and you all moved up the street, through the bus terminal, to another pub of your regular going, and drank more piss, went outside to dack up with a few of the boys, back inside for more laughs, maybe some crim talk and a bit of good ole bullshit. For free. Well, may as well be free since it was only stolen money giving a man (and some of his buddies) this good time. So that’s how the day began, the way it started – in a way – of you laughing and getting up soon to go do it again. A-fucking-sweet-gain.
It’d been like this for, what, a couple of weeks? Years? Hell, who knows, and who the fuck cares – HAHAHAHAHA!!! Might be you woke up with a sheila beside ya: huh? where’d she come from? But afraid to check her out too closely in case she was a dog, cos she was sure to be at least half a dog – what else would a guy like Jube McCall pick up bring home? Elle MacPherson – HAHAHAHAHA!! Chance be a fine thing, eh Jube?
Ya know ya musta chatted her when you were out of it, that she musta got more and more beautiful the more double rum and Cokes ya got down ya; rolling over to her, with eyes part closed, but a morning hard-on that’d satisfy a fucking elephant (cept I don’t fancy an elephant – HAHAHAHAHA!!). Grab her hand and shove it down on the old fulla, just to let her know you were ready for her, and let her touch what she was gonna get. Feel that for a boner, babe. And waiting for her to respond. Hey? You awake? Ahh, now that’s more like it, at her giving it a squeeze and a few pumps with a hand that’d be thirty, forty (hope she ain’t fucking fifty; God, I’d die) and a Tavi heart going on a hundred. Grabbing a handful of her box (man, least it’s nice and hairy) and rubbing your mits all over the hair, then a finger probing for the crack (hope it don’t just fall in, that there’s a bit of resistance). Feeling yaself drawn to her naturally, of wanting to kiss her, but not wanting either because she’d have morning breath and your own breath’d be hardly Old Spice; and anyway something about kissing a mole, a Tavi mole, the intimacy of the act (I dunno) that turned a man right off. (Reminds me of my old lady, me mum. As if I was kissing her.) Yet still drawn to the face, till she said she wanted a smoke first. Fuck the smoke. Ya wanna smoke, babe, get down on this cigar, hahahahaha. And shoving her head down under the blankets. She protesting, This early in the morning? What, ain’t it your shift? hahahaha! Geddown, woman.
(Now, what day did that happen? I can’t remember.)
Jeezuz wept, but I need a bloody torch down here! HAHAHAHAHA!! Don’t you worry bout no torch, babe, you won’t have trouble finding it. It’s long and hard and sticking up in the air – HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! But she threw the blankets off. And don’t shove it right in neither. I’ll choke. No, I wouldn’t do that to you, babe, Jube as the mouth’d enveloped his cock, and he looked down at the sight and it pleased him mightily, her tangle of hair part veiling her mouth with his tool sticking out of it. Ahh, babe … Closed his eyes. Opened them again when he heard her tell him, And don’t you come neither. I hate come. Oh no, babe, I won’t come. (Just a little shoot, maybe. Hehehehe.)
The act of being done arousing other feelings in him too. Of a certain hatred welling up. For her, the scrubber. For all women who allow themselves to turn into scrubbers. Hated em. Women, scrubbers, my mother, the fucking lot, even as he found pleasure in being mouthed by the same. Even as he felt his climax – the first, mind – building. He hated.
URRGGGHH! Mmmmmmmmm – UHH! Jube spurting and the scrubber choking. He with his hand tightly down on the top of her head, keeping her there. She struggling, having muscle spasms. He wanting to punch the bitch. Then he was spent, so he sighed and groaned at once and let go his grip. And up she came: YA CUNT! I COULDA CHOKED TA DEATH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Jube didn’t care. And he easily parried her feeble blows aimed at his head as he told her, Go brush ya teeth, bitch. You’re dribbling. HAHAHAHAHAHA!! (God, but you were born with one sense of humour, Jubesy babe. Hahahahaha.)
Now, was that a couple of days ago? Man, I can’t remember. But she sucked good, and when I got hard again she weren’t too bad in that department neither. Might be worth a try again some other time. Nah, too much of a dog to look at.
But damned if he could remember what day that was; he didn’t even know her name.
Wasn’t only the fact that he was richer than he’d ever been in his thirty-five years on earth, was the stuff stashed in the spare room (and Sonny’s room, the cheeky bastard) and to top it off there was the unemployment benefit stacking up in his PostBank account that the dumb government mugs paid in automatically every week without fail. The rent, or his half, got automatically taken out in turn from the same account, and with a rental supplement it hardly made a difference to the dole, so it was near on one twenty a week. Not much when ya live the life, but ya get by; and there’s a whole city out there of dumb-arse straights working for a living that you can pinch a bit from. (Or a lot, hahahahaha!) It was too good to be true.
Waking up, and getting round to thinking next about turning himself into a dealer. Smiling at that. Feeling very nervous in his stomach too, at the prospect, the status he’d gain. Not to mention the big bikkies. Very big. As for Sonny’s crap about it being worth a big sentence, hell, wasn’t anything worth that now they had so much form? And not as if it was smack or coke, no way, not my scene, I never touch the stuff, even as a user – a potential one that is.
P
icturing himself driving an American left-hand drive, symbol of the big dealers, of getting the looks from everyone, of envy, jealousy, admiration and not a little awe. Awe, cuz, cos ain’t many in our world can pull up the necessary bread in bulk to buy a reasonable quantity. No, they just live hand to mouth, as the counsellors in prison tell us we got to stop. Oh yeah? How? Well, Jube had the how now. (I have it.) And thinking of that made him near ball with happiness, though he wouldn’t have, not him. (Do tough guys dance? Hahaha.)
Outta bed; think about being a dealer again soon. What’s to eat? Into the kitchen. Man, it stinks in here, don’t that fucking Sonny clean up after him? Oh, forgot: was me and a couple of the boys last night. Or was it the night before? (Hahahahaha!) Don’t madda. I don’t give a fuck. Looking in the fridge. Nothin. Only Sonny’s leftovers of some Chink takeaway food. He can keep that vege three bits a fatty meat, it ain’t for Jube. And come to think of it, a man ain’t seen Sonny down at the Tavi in, what …? A little surprised that he had no idea; a little worried – but just for an instant – that this wasn’t a good way to be. Not when you didn’t even know what day it is. But what the hell.
Sonny came up in his mind again; thinking about the lil jerk, his stand-out difference among his own kind, or meant to be his own. But when Jube thought about it, Sonny’d never been one of them – (Though have I? Course I have. Have I?) – lil black shit, too much thinking, that’s his trouble. He’d be alright if he didn’t think about every damn thing. Plus he wants to go straight, but hey, don’t we all? Does he think I don’t wanna live in a nice house drive a flash car, have no worries bout bills? But how?
Thinking then of his money stashed inside his mattress, where even an experienced burglar’d be pushing to find the slit along the join line into which he’d slid a good portion of the money (but not all of it or a man couldn’t flash his roll, hahaha), and glad – glad – of having it because it represented so much, perhaps virtually everything, of the crim mind, the crim number-one goal in life: to have money. (But why? Oh well, have to ask Sonny that. He’s the thinker, I’m the doer – HAHAHAHA!)