Authors: Fiona McGregor
‘Okay. Where to?’
‘Here?’
‘There?’
‘Yeah. And maybe, try a different font? Not so kind of schoolbookish, y’know?’
Kate flipped the print around and examined it. ‘Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean.’
‘Thanks, Kate. You’re a godsend.’
Less than a week after the auction, Marie drove to Rhys’s studio although it wasn’t the studio she was going to tonight but Rhys’s house. She had fretted over
her wardrobe for nearly two hours, finally settling on a sleeveless black dress with a shawl. She rang the bell and heels tapped over the floorboards then the door was opened by a woman with long
black hair and big arrogant lips, painted dark red. ‘Hi, I’m Natasha.’
Marie followed Natasha’s short leather boots and fishnet stockings up the stairs past the tattooing rooms to the top floor. Natasha was big, majestic, with a swinging gait and large sultry
eyes that slid back watchfully to Marie behind her. On the landing they passed a room, Marie seeing through the crack of the door toys, small shoes and clothes in disarray, then they went into the
front room. The walls were crowded with bookshelves and pictures. There was a television, a computer and an old-fashioned stereo with a turntable. Frankincense drifted from a cone in a dish. The
wide balcony was fenced by wrought iron and covered at one end to create a sort of sunroom.
Rhys called out from her bedroom, ‘Babe, can you get Marie a drink?’
‘G’n’T?’
‘Lovely, thanks.’
There was a kitchenette at one end of the balcony. Natasha went to the bar fridge and mixed a drink for Marie. It was eight o’clock and daylight had faded. Marie sat on the edge of the
couch, shawl draped around her shoulders. Natasha brought the drink out. She was tightly laced into a corset, birds in silhouette flying across her broad milky chest. Lines of diamantés
forked from her eyes across her cheekbone. She looked like a character in a movie, something between concubine and cyborg. She lit a cigarette then walked away to smoke it by the window. She
intimidated Marie with her size, diffidence and imperious beauty. She leant on the windowsill, exhaling harshly as though in a hurry. In the street light, Marie saw her face was completely unlined
and she realised how young Natasha was, how much of the haughtiness was bluff and naïveté, a shield for nerves.
‘So,’ said Natasha, ‘I’ve seen photos of your tatts, Marie. It feels quite an honour to finally see them in the flesh. So to speak.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Especially the moth. What’s your next piece going to be?’
‘We have a bit more to finish on the vines. Then I’m thinking of an angophora.’
‘A what?’
‘The most beautiful tree in Sydney.’
By the time Rhys limped in with one boot half laced, Marie and Natasha were huddled beneath the light pulling back their clothing to show one another Rhys’s artwork. Rhys put on a record
and sat on the couch watching them while she thumbed a text message into her mobile. A beep returned immediately. ‘Poor little Trav. He so wanted to come. He cried when Paul took him. I felt
so bad.’
‘Why not bring him?’ Natasha blew a plume of smoke up to the ceiling. ‘I’d help you look after him, you know that.’
‘Because he’s five?’
‘Five now?’ said Marie.
‘He’s just started school,’ Rhys said proudly.
‘Us Russians would have everyone there,’ said Natasha, pouting. ‘The kids’d crash at the back of the room when they’d had enough and the party would go all
night.’
Again the haughty tone, a sort of pitching of herself against Rhys, who stiffened to meet the impact. All the while the two gazed at each other with a frank, dark lust.
‘He’s going to a birthday tomorrow. Can’t have my kid turning up to his friends’ parties trashed. Eight, I reckon. In the holidays.’ Rhys pulled out a compact and
began to apply make-up between sips of her drink.
Something had been completed by penetrating the top of the house. Every bit of furniture in the tattooing room one floor down, every crack in the wall and every book spine, was known to Marie.
Downstairs had also become familiar, but always this floor above, with its TV chatter and footsteps or long silences, had remained impenetrable and so had grown in Marie’s mind to something
large and exclusive. The whole house, due to these hidden realms, had become a castle. Now it was just a collection of rooms in which people lived and worked: an ordinary house.
‘Does Rob live here too?’
‘Sort of. He has a room in the middle floor at the end, next to his studio. Rob doesn’t live anywhere, really. He lives out of a bag. And his beaten-up Mitsubishi.’
‘I admire that. Being unattached like that.’
‘Oh, Rob’s not unattached.’ Natasha laughed. ‘More like polygamous.’
‘You should go house hunting with Rob, Marie. Rob loves looking at real estate.’
‘Really?’
‘He’s totally obsessed,’ said Natasha. ‘He’s on
Domain
like every day.’
‘Pot calling the kettle black.’ Rhys smiled into her compact.
‘I’m just a real-estate pornographer,’ Natasha replied cryptically. ‘It’s just a fantasy.’
‘Rob owns this building,’ Rhys explained to Marie. ‘He owns like eight houses.’
‘My god. Who would have thought?’
Marie was cravenly disappointed. Once again real estate enclosed her like a prison. More likely it had never gone away, but she had idealised the tattooists as free of this national obsession
with land ownership. Now it seemed like everybody was locked inside, pacing around, measuring space, keys clutched tightly in hand.
Rhys went on, with both resentment and admiration: ‘Rob’s like the local eccentric. He’s the goon in the corner of every party but he’s a raging capitalist at the same
time and nobody knows it. He’s incredibly good at it. He’s got shares as well. His studio is full of all the best equipment and pigments, he eats nothing but organic, he’s up to
his eyeballs in real estate but he only owns one pair of shoes and rides a bicycle everywhere he can.’
‘Doesn’t pay any tax,’ Natasha chipped in. ‘It’s all negative geared.’
‘You know,’ said Rhys, ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem with one person owning that much, but Rob is so good to me and Travis, I wouldn’t be in business without him. I
couldn’t live here either. Mainly, I couldn’t tattoo independently, and that’s phenomenal.’
‘These guys,’ Natasha said proudly to Marie, ‘are the last ones standing. They’re the only non-bikie tattoo establishment in the whole of the inner city.’
‘But we don’t talk about that.’ Rhys snapped shut her compact and stood up. She was wearing a corset as well, and made up, in high heels, she looked like a queen.
‘Look at you two,’ said Marie. ‘I feel so underdressed.’
‘You look gorgeous,’ said Rhys.
‘You look fabulous.’
‘I haven’t worn a corset for forty years. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever worn one.’
‘They’re comfortable if they’re well made.’
‘You’ve got an hourglass figure — you’re perfect for corsetry,’ added Natasha.
‘Yeah, she is, isn’t she.’
‘There is the red one, babe. You never wear that anymore.’
Rhys disappeared then returned with a red satin corset. She loosened the laces and held it up to Marie.
‘Not with this dress.’
‘Totally with that dress. Come on.’
Marie stood.
‘Turn around,’ Rhys instructed.
She fitted the corset and Marie did up the front clasps. Hand on hip, Natasha swept the two of them with an approving gaze. Rhys began to tighten the laces while Natasha stood in front, holding
Marie’s hands. ‘Lean into it.’ Marie leant and gripped Natasha’s hands as the corset embraced her tighter, pushing her breasts up. There was a point at which it felt
comforting like a poultice, then it touched a pain. ‘No, looser.’
‘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.