‘Who are you talking to?’ She caught sight of Alex and her eyes widened. ‘Oh.
Hello
.’
‘Chloe, this is Alex.’ I couldn’t believe that after everything, they’d never actually met.
‘The famous Alex, huh? Simone wasn’t kidding when she said you were hot.’
I gave her a look. She ignored me.
‘My god—’ Alex was openly staring at her boobs—‘your tits are huge.’
I winced but needn’t have worried, she wasn’t the least bit offended.
‘Thanks.’ She took one in each hand and appraised them like a fruiterer testing the quality of a couple of oversized cantaloupes. ‘I am up the duff though.’
‘No shit.’
Chloe looked from me to Alex and back again, a knowing smirk on her face.
‘Well, nice to finally meet you, but I know when I’m in the way. Guess you two have a lot to talk about . . .’
I reached out to flick her leg but she was gone.
‘A lot to talk about?’ Alex raised his eyebrows as he took another swig of my margarita.
‘Pregnancy,’ I said. ‘She’s gone mental.’
‘So, what’s it like being public enemy number one?’
‘Piss off.’
‘Hey, did you hear the latest? Rod Thurlow, the writer, put up a million-dollar reward for info leading to Nick Austin’s arrest.’
‘Really? He’s rung me a couple of times but I never called back. Maybe I should find the fucker. I could use the money.’
‘Heard your licence got suspended. What
are
you doing for work? Back on the game?’
‘Fuck you.’ I kicked out at him.
He caught my bare foot and squeezed. I pulled it back.
‘Stripping isn’t prostitution—not that there’s anything wrong with being a working lady.’
‘If you say so.’
‘And for your information I’m not dancing at all.’
‘Why not?’
‘Sean didn’t reckon it was a good idea.’
‘He’s laid down the law? Told the irrepressible Ms Kirsch to keep her kit on? I didn’t think it was possible.’
‘No. He heard that a few of those current affairs shows were going to smuggle in cameras. Get footage. Thought it was best to say I wasn’t stripping anymore, not add any more fuel to the fire.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He sounded like he didn’t believe me.
‘Sean’s not the kind of guy to tell me what I can and can’t do. Unlike some people . . .’
‘You sure? No bloke wants to think of other men perving on his chick.’
I raised my eyebrows. It was fine for chicks to call each other chicks, but arrogant coppers . . .
Alex continued, on a roll: ‘I’d never let my wife get her gear off for anyone but me.’
‘Don’t you sound like the unreconstructed Greek boy. Hard to believe you did your masters on gender equality in policing.’
He ignored me and kept on, snickering to himself. ‘Hear you guys are living together, too. I can just see it, Simone the hausfrau, cooking breakfast, seeing her man off in the morning, darning his socks, polishing his handcuffs . . . ah, domestic bliss. Next thing you know you’ll be popping out a mess of kids.’
‘Who’s talking? You’re the one who just got married, and how long have you been off work? Must be a hell of a house husband by now.’ I instantly regretted saying it, but hell, he’d been winding me up.
‘And whose fucking fault is that?’ he barked, eyes going flat and dark.
‘Sorry,’ I said quietly.
He looked away, out over the train lines, and when he turned back his eyes weren’t flat anymore, they were glittering. ‘Want to make it up to me?’
‘How?’
‘I was thinking something along the lines of what happened at the pub.’
‘What happened at the pub?’ Sean’s voice.
I snapped my head around, saw him approaching with a margarita and hoped to hell he hadn’t picked up the rest of the conversation.
‘Hey, buddy, glad you could make it,’ he said to Alex.
I guessed he hadn’t heard, thank Christ.
Sean handed me a drink, and Alex sprang up and the two hugged in a blokey way with lots of back-slapping.
‘We were just talking about Alex’s prick of a cousin hiring me for his buck’s.’ I shook my head and did an amazed laugh which sounded pretty fake even to me. So much for my acting skills.
‘Hey, mate, make one of those for me?’ Alex asked Sean.
‘Sure.’
‘Good to see you, Simone.’ He looked at my legs again. Jesus. He was Jekyll and Hyde after the head injury, and it was impossible to predict what he’d say next.
Alex and Sean repaired to the bar and I did the only thing that seemed sensible under the circumstances—started drinking heavily. Andi and a couple of the strippers were downing shots of cocksucking cowboys, so I joined in as the sun sank low over the train line and melted into a dazzling pink glob.
‘How’s your crime story going?’ I asked Andi as a viscous mix of Baileys and butterscotch schnapps slid down my throat. It was fairly obvious how the drink got its name.
‘Which one?’
‘The new one you’re writing with Curtis. Dead financial dude.’
‘Fucking crap,’ she said. ‘Case has just died. Elliot went missing eighteen months ago. He was rumoured to have connections to bikie gangs and speed or ice or whatever they’re calling it these days. But the cops haven’t found any evidence to link him to them. Probably won’t. They reckon he was hit over some sort of drug money—there was a contract out on him.’
The stripper to the left of us, a painfully thin blonde who’d been talking a hundred miles a minute to another girl, whipped her head around.
‘You talking about that rich cunt, found his body up near Daylesford?’
‘Yeah.’ Andi downed another shot, keeping her eyes on the girl.
‘Contract didn’t go out on him till
after
he disappeared.’
‘How do you know?’ I asked. Drunk and nosy.
‘My ex was with the Red Devils. That Lachlan bloke was always hanging around the clubhouse, doing go-ey, taking in the shows.’
I guessed this was Tiara, who Chloe had been arguing with on the phone weeks before. Judging by her glittering eyes, sharp features and inability to shut up, it didn’t look like she’d given the amphetamines away.
‘I heard he pissed off with a lot of cash and drugs,’ Andi said.
‘I heard that too. But the papers said he’s been dead about a year and a half, right? He was killed by someone else. Bikies get blamed for everything, but they didn’t do it.’
‘The date of death’s only an estimate. It could have been a contract job.’
‘’Cept the contract was never paid out.’
Andi suddenly looked very alert and sober. No mean feat, considering the joints and the booze. ‘You willing to go on record and say that?’ she asked Tiara.
‘No fucking way. You think I’ve got a death wish? I’m not sayin’ nothing.’ Tiara slammed back another cocksucking cowboy, gave Andi a slit-eyed look and turned back to ear-bash her friend.
Andi got up, a little unsteady on her prosthetic leg, and limped into Chloe’s office. I saw her through the French doors, sitting at the desk, grabbing a pen and scribbling on a piece of paper. I felt a hand on my shoulder, turned my head. It was Sean. Alone.
‘Where’s Alex?’ I asked.
‘Gone home.’
‘Nice of him to say goodbye.’ I felt offended.
‘He was pretty smashed.’
‘So am I.’ The pink splotch had finally sunk and it was getting dark on the deck. ‘If we tell Chloe we’re going home she’ll never let us out the door. Wanna do a runner?’
‘What’ll we do at home?’
‘I’m sure we can think of something. Watch
King of Kings
on TV?’
‘Thought you’d never ask.’
We snuck down the back stairs, fell into a cab on Carlisle Street and directed the driver to Elwood. Sean had his arm around my waist and I had my drunken head on his shoulder. He smelled good, too. His aftershave didn’t have quite the effect of Alex’s, but it was nice just the same. It suddenly struck me that I had a boyfriend, and a live-in one at that. It was weird, yet also kind of cosy. I remembered the shit Alex had given me about domesticity, intimating that Sean was controlling me and didn’t want me to strip. What a crock.
I lifted my head off Sean’s shoulder. ‘Hey, I was talking to Chloe about New Year’s. There’s some big parties on, lots of shows. She reckons I can easily pull in a thousand bucks that night.’
When he didn’t say anything I went on. ‘Isn’t that great? I won’t have to keep sponging off you.’
I thought he’d agree but he stiffened and moved away a little. The cab turned left onto Brighton Road. The interior smelled like plastic seat covers, sweat, fried onions and barbecue sauce. Outside the windows everything rushed past in a blur. The Greyhound Hotel, traffic lights, big leafy trees.
‘What’s wrong? You have to work New Year’s too. We can celebrate on the first instead, when I’m all cashed up.’
‘I just don’t think it’s such a good idea.’
‘But I’m old news, you said so yourself. There’s been nothing in the papers for weeks.’
‘You’ll get your licence back soon.’
‘Even if I do, I still have to supplement my pathetic income somehow.’
Sean didn’t reply, just turned and looked out the window, like he was fascinated with the tram that was keeping pace with us.
I poked him in the shoulder. ‘You’re pissed off? You can’t be. You knew what I did when you met me.’
Sean turned back, face serious, voice flat. ‘Actually, when I met you you’d given up stripping and were working for Tony Torcasio as an inquiry agent. You went back to it when I left for Vietnam.’
‘I had to. He fired me. And what do you mean, I’d
given
up
? You make it sound like a vice.’
He stared at me for a couple of seconds, exhaled hard out of his nose, then turned to look out the window again. Righteous indignation welled up inside me.
‘Let me get this straight, are you telling me I can’t work as a stripper?’
‘No. I’m telling you I don’t like it.’
‘I’ve got to make a living somehow.’
‘There are other occupations.’
‘None I’m any good at.’
‘You’ve worked in restaurants, supermarkets . . .’
‘I’m not going back to being a waitress or a checkout chick. I hated those jobs.’
‘And you like stripping?’ His tone was uncharacteristically sarcastic.
‘Bet your arse I do. It’s fun, good exercise, creative.’
He snorted.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Creative? You’re not choreographing a piece of innovative modern dance for the Victorian Ballet, Simone, you’re shaking your tits in front of a bunch of drunken tradesmen in some scungy pub.’
The taxi driver flicked me a look in the rearview.
‘Stop the cab,’ I told him.
‘Don’t stop the cab,’ said Sean.
The taxi driver looked confused.
‘Stop the fucking cab.’
He stopped. We were on Glenhuntly Road, Elwood, just around the corner from my place, next to the darkened Turtle Café.
‘I want my keys back.’ I held out my hand to Sean.
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
He looked at me, mouth slightly open. ‘Are you breaking up with me?’
‘I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know is I don’t wanna spend the night with someone who thinks I’m a tragic slut.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Actually, you did.’ I fumbled in my bag and pulled a twenty out of my wallet. I thrust it at Sean. ‘Here.’
‘I don’t want your money.’ He waved it away so I bunched it up and threw it at him. Plastic notes never crumple too well and it fluttered to the foot-well.
I opened the door, gathered my bag to my chest and shimmied across the seat, bare legs squeaking on the plastic seat cover.
Sean grabbed my bicep. ‘Do you have the faintest idea why I don’t want you to strip?’
I yanked my arm out of his grip and stepped unsteadily out of the cab.
‘It’s because I—’ I slammed the door so I didn’t have to hear the rest. Alex had been right. The bastard had been right.
I staggered down Broadway, the wide, leafy street that snaked from Elwood to St Kilda. My flat was on the first floor of an ugly brick block, a one-bedder with a balcony that had last been renovated in the eighties. I climbed the concrete stairwell and let myself in. The walls were off-white, the carpet was old, and the lounge was furnished with mismatched, second-hand furniture. The only decorations consisted of tatty posters advertising kitsch sixties films and cool local country bands, like Doug Mansfield and the Dust Devils and the Red Hot Poker Dots. As a Christmas present, Sean had given the place a mini-makeover, framing the posters and covering the old couch and armchair with matching chocolate-coloured throws. He’d chucked out my brick and board bookcase and replaced it with a wooden entertainment unit that held the CD player and kept books and CDs neatly aligned. I stood in front of it, swaying slightly, and swept a row of books onto the floor, muttering like a petulant child about how nobody told
me
what to do.
Being ordered not to strip made me want to do it more than ever. Hell, it made me want to do it then and there, so I slid open the balcony door to let in some air, poured a glass of white I really didn’t need, then ran to my room and rooted around in the closet for my red satin stripper heels. I blew off the dust, strapped them on, and tiptoed back into the lounge, spike stilettos catching in the carpet.
I crouched down unsteadily, already feeling the burn in my inner thighs, and tilted my head to scan the CDs, so drunk I had to squint to make out the titles. I noted that Sean’s jazz discs were encroaching on my country, cheesy disco and cock-rock, then plucked out an old stripping mix and shoved it in the mouth of the player.
‘Fastlove’ by George Michael came thudding out of the speakers. The song was basically a homage to casual sex, the lyrics and low thrusty beat perfect for a bit of bump ’n’ grind. I danced in front of the window so I could clock my reflection, and when I raised my arms my blouse rode up and I was alarmed to see a bit of belly overhanging the waistband of my skirt. Still, there was a week before New Year’s and if I spent it running and eating chicken breasts I ought to be right for the shows. At least my thighs still looked alright in a short skirt.
Speaking of which, the burn was becoming pretty agonising, so I leaned back against the wall and gyrated my hips. When even that became exhausting I got down on the carpet on all fours. My knees were going to pay for it the next day, but I didn’t give a shit.