Chopper Unchopped (106 page)

Don’t ask me why, but all I could think of was seeing Carolyn again. She told me the club opened Sunday night and Rocky never showed up because he spent every Sunday night playing Russian poker, otherwise known as Manilla, at a wog shop in Williamstown.

Also, she went to see her dad in Richmond every Sunday lunch. If I wanted to, she’d meet me tomorrow in the Botanical Gardens at 2 pm near the duck pond on the South Yarra side. The entrance near the pub.

Yeah, I said quickly, I knew the place. With a butterfly kiss on the mouth to say goodbye, she turned and walked away swinging the best body I’d ever seen in my life as she went.

I left. I didn’t want to watch her dance for other men. I saw her wiggle her wet-dream arse in the face of some grey-haired old toff with a fat roll of notes in one hand and his other one buried in her knickers, and that was enough for me.

I said goodbye to Wazza and went home. Six years in the bluestone boarding school had gotten me used to early nights. In spite of the stay-awake pills I was out like a light by 9 pm. I dreamed about Carolyn. Dancing.

I GOT to the entrance near the duck pond at a quarter to two the next day. I’d been drinking since lunchtime, but the excitement at the thought of meeting Carolyn kept me sober. I had my mother’s diamond ring in my pocket. It was a half carat, set in 18-carat gold. My old dad had given it to me. Three and a half grand’s worth. I wanted to give her something that would show her that my love was for real and not just dick talk. Something told me this girl had heard an army of men tell her they loved her. I wanted to set myself apart from the rest. You could say I was a sucker for a pretty face.

As I stood there looking at the butterflies dancing in the sunlight, she did it again. I felt a tickle on the back of my neck. I spun around and she kissed me on the mouth again, with a flick of her tongue darting across my lips. She was a white witch, and I was under her spell.

When I saw her it was like I was walking on a cloud. She looked like a dream. A little pair of white runners on – I couldn’t get over how cute and tiny her feet were. Her legs were bare and tanned bronze. She had a little white cheese cloth dress, more of a long shirt than a dress. She wore a little white cheese cloth belt and the whole affair did its level best to cover her bottom when she stood straight and didn’t move too much. That’s how short it was. Her arms were bare. No make up and no jewellery. All she had was a pair of white rimmed dark glasses sitting high on top of her head, on her mane of blonde red hair. Her eyes danced from green to blue to a sort of yellow, depending how the light caught them. I couldn’t decide. She wore a light perfume and she smelt like a rose garden. I’d never seen anything so beautiful.

‘How ya going,’ was all I said. It’s all I could say.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and murmured ‘Been waiting long, baby?’

Then she kissed me. This time a proper kiss. Her tongue was trying to knock my teeth out. My hands started looking for her arse underneath the cheese cloth. It didn’t take a lot of finding.

I ran my hands up her body and felt her tight, high cut knickers – the sort that show the thigh clean up past the hip bone. That’s all she had on. Flimsy panties with less material in them than a necktie, and this ridiculous excuse for a dress. She pulled away, took me by the hand and led me deeper into the gardens.

We didn’t talk. Down near the duck pond she broke the silence. Her voice was light and happy. All I’d ever known was violence and death, hate and hurt, and to me she seemed childlike, innocent, sweet, light, clean and fresh.

She chattered away like a kid. I was delighted. We walked down to the duck pond and watched the ducks. In a few days – hours, really – I’d gone from the blood and guts of Pentridge and the darkness of a long prison sentence to standing in the sunshine with an angel watching ducks on a pond. My mind could hardly wrap itself around the contrast. I felt lightheaded. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the diamond ring and said:

‘Close your eyes and open your mouth.’

She did so without question and popped out her little pink tongue. I sat the ring on her tongue. She closed her mouth, opened her eyes and looked up at me.

Then she reached her hand up and took the ring out. Her eyes came alive with a blaze of delight and childish wonder. When she saw the big diamond she looked at me and whispered, ‘For me?’

I nodded. She put it on her left hand, the finger next to her index finger. It was a perfect fit. I held her face in my hands and said, ‘I told ya I loved ya.’

I thought for a moment. She had tears in her eyes and she turned and said ‘C’mon’.

I followed along behind her into the thick trees and bushes of the garden. There was a little pathway which led to a bench. I thought for a moment that she’d been there before; she seemed to know her way around. She sat me down and sat beside me and undid my pants.

‘Don’t drop ya gun, baby,’ she said with a giggle.

But this time I had the little magnum in the inside pocket of my bomber jacket. She found what she was looking for and proceeded to Linda Lovelace the hell out of me.

Just when I thought that I was coming to the funny part she said, ‘Oh no, don’t,’ and got up and with a wiggle and a giggle had those little white knickers off in a flash. I lasted longer than six minutes this time around. And all the time when I could get her tongue out of my mouth I told her I loved her.

We made love for most of that afternoon. Then she had to get to work, so we set off and walked through the gardens towards the city. She would walk and sort of dance excitedly in front of me, chatting away like a married magpie. She was a Pisces, she told me. I was a Scorpion. That meant a perfect match. Then she said I was Irish – and she had been born on St Patrick’s day. Another thing in common.

All this trivia meant so much to her. Star signs, birthdays, it was all so cute to me. I noticed she carried no handbag. All she had was a little pocket on each side of her cheesecloth dress with her front door key and a hundred dollar note in one pocket and a packet of condoms and an American Express card in the other.

She wasn’t a pro, she went to great pains to tell me. She was a dancer, but if some old duffer offered 200 bucks for a quickie – well, why not. It was all rubber dickie work, patting the pocket with the condoms in it to prove her point.

She made three to four thousand bucks a week in tips and sex. Shit, I thought, I’ve got about a grand in my pocket and that’s all I’ve got in the world.

She kept looking at her ring and smiling at me in her little girl way with a mouth full of pearly white teeth.

‘Do you really love me, baby?’ she asked.

I told her I did. Then she said, ‘Well, don’t take this the wrong way, baby,’ and she stood on tip toe and whispered into my ear, ‘What’s your name?’

God, I felt like a freaking fool. I thought she knew it. I thought I’d told her or Wazza had told her. What’s your name? I’d humped her twice and put my mum’s ring on her finger and told her I loved her and hadn’t told her my bloody name. Brother, you’ve been too long in jail, you’re losing the plot. C’mon mate, get with it.

I told her my name and she repeated it several times, just like I’d done the night before. I put my arm around her and she hugged me. We got to the club and Wazza let us in. She went off to get ready and I sat at the bar. Wazza winked.

‘Best vacuum cleaner in the whole club, mate.’

I went into jealous mode, right away. But Wazza gave me a scotch and said, ‘Listen brother, we are mates, aren’t we?’

I nodded.

‘Well okay,’ he said. ‘Carolyn is a top chick but, brother, don’t lose it. She’s a cold-blooded slut arse whore. Don’t go losing the plot. She’s a tease queen. I’ve seen the bastards lining up 10 deep outside her dressing room at 100 bucks a pop and that was during a half-hour tea break. C’mon sport, wake up. Ya been living in a cage for too bloody long.’

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I grabbed Wazza by the hair and put the cute little .22 calibre handgun into his mouth. I was about to pull the trigger when Carolyn stepped out of the shadows of the semi-darkened nightclub and said, ‘It’s okay, honey. Leave it. He’s not worth it.’ I pushed Wazza back against the glass. He knew he’d said too much and had no intention of saying anything more.

The other girls were coming into the club to get ready for work and Carolyn took me back to her little dressing room.

‘I heard what that dog said,’ she said to me, ‘he’s only dirty cos I won’t blow him. He tries it on with all the girls, and as far as he’s concerned we are all molls.

‘If he talks bad about you again, princess, let me know and I’ll kill the rat.’

Carolyn looked at me in a way that made me feel that I’d kill several dozen men if that’s what she wanted, and crawl over their bodies to get to her. She said, ‘You really do love me, don’t you?’

‘Yeah baby, I told you I do,’ I said. ‘You’re a dream come to life and I don’t want to lose you.’

She held my head in her hands and said, ‘Look, this is what I do. Can you handle that?’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s sweet.’ Silence. ‘But what about ya big wog boyfriend? He’ll have to go.’

Her eyes shone, just like when I gave her the diamond ring.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘He’ll have to go. You’ll have to leave him,’ I answered.

‘Look,’ said Carolyn. ‘he’d kill me if I tried to leave him.’

‘That’s not a problem,’ I snarled. ‘I’ll shoot the big mongrel first. You’re mine, princess. You can rock and roll all you want at work but when you come home ya mine. Okay? Ya can forget the muscle mouth boyfriend. A shot in the skull will soon fix him.’

Carolyn went all smoochy and loving.

‘Would you do that for me, really?’ she cooed.

‘Of course I would,’ I said. ‘I’ll kill the dog tonight. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

Suddenly, she turned thoughtful. ‘No, baby, no,’ she said. ‘Let’s plan it out proper. It’s got to be neat and clean.’

Then she looked at me funny. ‘Do you believe in fate?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

She explained that a fortune teller had told her she would fall in love with a tall, dark stranger who would rescue her from the cage of tears and pain she was trapped in.

I was fairly tall, fairly dark and some people reckon I’m strange, so I guessed I qualified. We made love again. Deep down inside my guts I knew she was a whore and probably lying her heart out, but I was in love, which is just another variety of insanity, if the truth’s known. But, more than anything, I wanted to be that tall dark stranger. I wanted to rescue her from that cage of tears and pain. I was in the middle of some sort of mental and emotional firestorm. I had a big part in some crazy underworld love story and I couldn’t understand the plot. I just kept on seeing this vision, this fantasy. My brain whispered to me that I had hold of a low-life dirty girl with heavenly looks, but I didn’t care. I knew she’d spin my mind until I couldn’t tell night from day, she’d weave me a web of lies and treachery and hump my brains out all the way to my grave. Every nerve in my body screamed that she was everything Wazza said she was, and a truck load more. But the wet dream body and the pouty princess face stopped me facing reality.

I was in some sort of hypnotic state. That’s what love and lust do. They make rattlesnakes look like fluffy bunnies. I didn’t trust her, yet I wanted to believe every word she said, and so I did. I guess I had been too long in jail. I was lost in love and lust and didn’t care.

I guess that’s the difference between a bank robber and a bank manager. One lives as if there’s no future. The other plans for it. And, as my old dad said: ‘Son, when it comes to a contest between balls and brains, balls win every time.’

I SAT at the bar for the rest of Sunday night and Monday morning till about 4 am. I was hoping the bodybuilder boyfriend might show up. I made the peace with Wazza and swallowed six stay-awake pills. Carolyn spent the night dancing and having hundreds and hundreds of dollars stuffed down her knickers. I’d promised to be a good boy and not get jealous. Blokes would fold $100 bills up into tight little balls and she’d dance over to them and they would slip the rolled up note right into her, along with half their hands. In fact, it seemed for a $10 or $20 tip you’d get a big sexy smile and a wiggle of the arse, an inch from your nose – but for $50 or $100 you could jam your whole hand up her grumbler and leave it there for a minute or two while she wiggled it all around.

I saw one beautiful big black chick put a condom in her mouth and roll it on a flat slob’s dick as he sat at the bar. It was dark but I could see her head work up and down for a full five minutes. Then she was gone. A Chinese chick was sitting on another guy’s lap as he sat at the bar across the room from me. I couldn’t see it properly, but it looked like sex in action. The whole thing was pornographic. I sat watching Carolyn jack hammer her arse up and down on a guy’s face as he buried his head between her legs. Someone grabbed me on the dick. I jumped and looked around, not sure for a second whether to go for my gun. Standing beside me was a long, tall, shaggy-haired blonde with big boobs. She had knob monster written all over her face. A real tough-looking, knowing, hard, sharp-faced slut. But not stupid.

‘How ya going?’ she said to me, and smiled. ‘I seem to recognise that smile.’

I said nothing. Just smiled back.

‘Remember me?’ she asked.

Shook my head.

‘No, I don’t. Wished I did, but I don’t.’

She smiled again.

God, I did know this chick. But who was she? She reached over and spoke into my ear.

‘Kerry,’ she said. ‘Kerry Griffin. Garry’s sister.’

No, I still didn’t get it. Who was she? I shook my head again.

‘You backed Garry up in a blue in South Melbourne seven years ago. You shot two blokes outside the police station. You saved Garry’s neck.’

No, I’d never shot blokes outside any police station ever, and I didn’t know this chick from a bar of soap. But, being a gent, I didn’t want to tell her that and disappoint her.