Mexican Kimono (7 page)

‘Darling, I wouldn’t call it breaking in, I have a key you know, and I’ve been so worried about you. Tell me everything that’s happened since I saw you yesterday!’

‘Well, I think you of all people know exactly what’s happened to me since yesterday.’

‘Darling, what does that mean?’ She used that mawkish mother voice that sounded very innocent, thus implying to me, she was very guilty.

‘I think you should use your powers for good not evil, Mum.’

‘Darling, are you on that sugar-free diet again? You sound a little on edge.’

I thought about all that had happened. Really, I was some kind of machine to keep going with all I’d been through, who wouldn’t be on edge? I decided to change the subject.

‘JJ is back in town. I escaped from a potentially expensive lunch date.’

Mum sighed. ‘I love JJ, darling. I think you get too caught up in that imagination of yours when you are with him. He loves you. I’ve done his numbers. You two are well suited.’

‘Oh please, Mum! He’s obviously gay!’

‘What’s wrong with that? I know plenty of gay people that have had excellent marriages with heterosexual people. Don’t be so
naive
, darling.’

‘I guess. It’s just the whole Toffany thing I can’t get over.’

‘So no wildfire, ogres or car accidents?’

‘You
are
trying to hex me, you horrible woman! It’s just lucky for you, none of your
predictions
were very accurate.’

‘What? I heard from Kylie you set your hair on fire last night! I was right: wildfire!’

‘I wouldn’t exactly call that wildfire!’

‘And you were fired and you’ve always called your boss some horrible names. I think to you he’s an ogre.’

‘I wasn’t fired! It was a mutual decision, I’ll have you know. I was stifling under the restraints on my creativity and the lack —’

‘Darling, darling, you were just the receptionist.’

‘Just?
Just?
Do you know how many people I was responsible for?’

‘I also heard from Kylie that you asked her to call an ambulance because you were hit by a car!’

‘I think Kylie has been snorting a little too much peroxide lately, Mum.’

She started with the whole big sigh thing she does to try and guilt me into agreeing with her. ‘I guess it would be out of character for you to be honest with me,’ insert consecutive deep sighs here. ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but I had some spirits come to me in my dreams. You are going to be financially ruined, my poor girl, ruined, I tell you! Life as you know it will be destroyed, decimated, even.’

‘Great, Mum, I’ll keep an eye out for that.’ I said, as she slowly sapped my will to live.

‘Wait, darling, there’s more. I also went through the appropriate channels to speak to your father. He told me to tell you to free yourself for love. Your horse-riding warrior will appear, if you
free
yourself.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’

She had the good sense to do her little embarrassed laugh. ‘I was hoping it would make sense to you, darling.’

‘Free myself for my horse-riding warrior? What is this? The 1800s?’ Can you imagine? I seriously wondered how I managed to grow up so normal. Being raised by a hippy wanna-be who channels my dead dad when she wants some fatherly advice for me. Good Lord. It was lucky I was such a together person or I might be racked with ‘issues’ as so many of my friends were. (Kylie, for instance. Did you just hear all that mumbo jumbo she was harping on at Bob? What a weirdo!)

‘OK, Mum, well as usual this conversation was sufficiently alarming, so unless there’s anything else, I really have to go.’

‘Oh, darling, about the taxi …’

‘Bye, Mum.’

Kylie was putting the finishing touches to Bob’s hair. He looked ten years younger and somehow thinner. She produced a large, oval mirror from her bag and handed it to Bob.

‘Struth,’ he said, ‘I look ten years younger and somehow thinner!’

Kylie did her whole chuffed-face look, like she was some kind of miracle worker. She seemed to forget that without the new clothes it would just be any old haircut.

Bob stood up and made his way to the door, delicately moving the mirrors. He turned around one last time with tears in his eyes and said, ‘Thank you, girls. You don’t know how much this means to me.’

‘It’s OK, Bob. We’ve given you the tools. You just need to use them. Remember you’re on a six-week program. Don’t cheat, OK?’ and with that we were blinded once more as Bob rushed out through the curtain of minuscule mirrors.

Kylie and I hugged each other and smiled. It was a proud moment for us. ‘Let’s hope he makes it. For his sake,’ I said.

Chapter 6

Gossip Lust

‘More wine?’ Kylie asked.

‘Sure.’

She filled our glasses with white wine and sat opposite me on the deep-mocha sofa. ‘OK, what do you intend to do for work now?’

‘Is this some kind of interview? I couldn’t possibly think of looking for a job just yet. I’m still a little fragile after today. These things happen for a reason. I need to de-compress, de-stress, de-ah, meditate …’

‘Don’t bullshit me. You are the least stressed person I’ve ever met.’

Kylie took a huge gulp of her wine. I worried she frequently turned to the bottle to feel better about herself. Sad, really.

Another conversation route recalculation was needed. Miss Gossip Monger would certainly get distracted with some new material. ‘JJ is back from Paris. I met him for lunch today.’

As expected, her beady little eyes twinkled with lust. Gossip lust. ‘So are you going to get back together?’

‘He wants to, but I think he only loves me for my credit card.’

Kylie rolled her eyes in a very dramatic fashion. She really can be very annoying, you know. ‘Who cares? God, Samantha. He is
so
good looking. He’s arty, well-travelled. Practically famous! Give him your credit card, if that’s what it takes.’

‘Hmm, and the gay thing doesn’t put you off?’

‘Well, he only had the one affair with Toffany and she wants to be a girl, so I think that cancels out the gay part. Doesn’t it? I get confused.’

Me too. The drag queen thing
was
confusing.

‘I guess. Maybe I’ll call him later. It’s just I have this image of the perfect relationship. You know, a totally normal, stable love affair where he gives me
his
credit card. He takes
me
out for lunch and then a spot of shopping. Not the other way around.’

‘I hear ya. I don’t think that’s been done since Julia Roberts became a Pretty Woman. And Sam, you’d be the first to say it – it’s so 1990s. I fear Women’s Lib has gone too far. We’ve made a rod for our own back. I mean, having to be a sugar mummy for a gay guy does seem like a bit of a cop out but, really, what else is out there? I know the lesbian thing is hot right now but, seriously, I just couldn’t do it.’

It really was the latest trend. At least half of my hetero girlfriends had turned gay for the sake of fashion. I had to be careful calling them my ‘girlfriends’ these days.

‘No, I couldn’t do it, either. Not that’s there’s anything wrong with it, it’s just one trend I’m going to miss out on.’ Since I didn’t start the trend, I sure as hell wasn’t going to follow it. I decided I’d call JJ tomorrow and take him shopping to make up for the lunch drama. I’m sure he’d understand. I mean, I was called away for a work
emergency
.

Kylie interrupted my scheming and said, ‘Where’s your kimono? You were wearing it during the “hair on fire” incident. Was it burned?’

‘Oh, no! I hope not. I don’t even know where it ended up.’ I bent down and began scanning the floor. I had clothes and shoes strewn from the kitchenette to the hallway. I really needed a housekeeper. One couldn’t expect to hold down a serious, high-paying executive career and then flounce home and clean. I would have no time for a social life at all.

We searched under discarded pizza boxes and behind cartons of A4 paper. We hunted through drawers filled with maple syrup and cayenne pepper (our last detox diet) and stood on furniture to check shelves laden with gossip magazines (probably Kylie’s), empty bottles of tequila (JJ’s, I bet) and half-empty tins of sex wax (obviously Toff’s).

Kylie wiped a layer of dust from her brow and said, ‘You don’t think you may have hung it in your wardrobe, do you?’

I thought for a second. It was unlike me to hang anything up. I had a much-loved and trusted dry-cleaner who worked from the bottom unit of the apartment building I lived in. I usually threw my clothes into a big pile by the front door and when I finally couldn’t get past it, I took it all down to Mai Ling who ran the place. She was old and tiny and only spoke to me in Chinese. Somehow we managed to arrange a price and we’ve been friends ever since.

Her son delivers the clothes once they are pressed and cleaned. He is your typical half-Australian, half-Chinese, gorgeous hunk of a guy. Beautiful chiselled cheekbones, glossy ebony hair, eyes so dark his gaze seems to burn you but, best of all, he has these really defined arms. You can see the outline of every muscle right down to his hand. They look strong and taut. I start to reminisce about the last time he knocked at my door. He held out my plastic-wrapped clothing and said in a harried voice, ‘I’ve come to drop your clothes off.’

Wow, that was suggestive. I said, ‘Come in. Maybe you could ask me nicely to drop my clothes off?’ He looked at me with unbridled lust, I’m telling you. He was definitely in love at that moment, but he obviously had lots of other deliveries because he coughed once, dropped the bag and left. I was a little miffed as to why he’d drop clothes on the floor that had just been pressed, but I understood the game we were playing. I then started to take my clothes to Mai Ling one piece at a time, several times a day. Then, for no apparent reason, she told me they didn’t do deliveries anymore. It was weird and I worried they’d lose a lot of business over it, but what can I do? I can’t save everyone.

I could picture Mai Ling’s son, those tight, tough arms wrapped around me. He would smell fresh and clean like washing powder as he threw me down on the lounge and started to ravish …

‘Sam.’

‘Sam?’

‘
Sam!
Wake up! Focus!’

I looked over to see Kylie frowning at me. God, she was so intrusive. ‘Yes?’

‘What were you just thinking about?’

‘Err, dry-cleaning. Why?’

‘You were kissing your arm!’

‘Oh. Ah.’ Stupid fantasies.

Kylie did her usual ‘You’re a freak’ face and said, ‘Right, well, let’s check your room, then.’

We each took our glass of wine and walked down the dingy hallway. My bedroom was the size of a small shoe box taken up with a huge king-size bed and an inadequately sized walk-in wardrobe. I fumbled for the light switch and turned it on.

‘Ahhhhh!’ we screamed in unison.

Kylie clasped my arms and dug her nails into my skin. ‘It’s alive!’ she screamed.

The kimono was hooked over the curtain rail and was radiating an eerie ruby-red glow. The silk rippled and its arms looked like they were reaching out to grab us and suck us into a vortex of terror. ‘Please tell me the balcony door is open, and that’s where this gust of wind has come from,’ I whispered to Kylie.

‘I opened your balcony door to let some of the noxious air out, but I doubt a gust of wind could carry all the way in and go around a wall and down the hallway.’

The arms of the kimono undulated like they were beckoning to us. ‘It’s like some kind of kimono hypnosis! It’s trying to get us to move closer, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, to suck us into the next world! It’s possessed. You’ll be possessed! Are your ears ringing?’

‘Yes! OK, it’s going in the wood-fire pizza oven at Luca’s,’ I said. All of a sudden, the wind stopped. The kimono lay as limp and as flaccid as, well, I won’t name names, but let’s just say he works in Accounting.

‘That was weird. Do you think it heard you?’

I tried not to get waylaid with thoughts of an impotent penis and said, ‘Maybe, if so, we know how to stop it in future.’

Kylie was clutching at my waist and trying to pull me backwards out of the room. I shook her hands off, looking around for clues. Someone must have hung the kimono on the curtain rail – I certainly couldn’t reach that high.

‘I think your Mum is right, that kimono is bad luck!’ Kylie’s eyes were as large as the time she was jailed for tax evasion.

I was a little petrified myself, but Kylie can smell fear so I played it cool. ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Next you’ll believe that paying tax is compulsory!’ She was so gullible.

‘It is! Don’t try to confuse me. That’s how I wound up in the slammer last time!’

‘You are so naive. If you had gone to the accountant that I recommended, you would have been fine!’

‘I
did
go to the accountant you recommended. Turns out, he wasn’t
actually
an accountant! I still have nightmares about that time in my life.’

Cue the waterworks. Honestly, she was so dramatic sometimes, I could barely stand it.

She sniffled and wiped away at her crocodile tears. ‘I still can’t believe you’d set me up like that because you thought it would be funny. I’m scarred from what I’ve been through.’

‘Oh, come on. You said it helped your hair psychology. Shaped you into a better hairdresser. That you wouldn’t be where you are today without all those buzz cuts and short back and sides you practised in there.’

‘Yes, well, it was still harrowing.’

‘Plus you wouldn’t have been able to set your business up if you didn’t meet that loan shark in prison. No one else would have loaned you money with your criminal record.’

‘I guess you’re right. That criminal record has hindered me somewhat.’

Better stop this line of conversation or we’d be here all night. I was one step away from falling into a thought coma. ‘What were you saying?’ I asked.

She did her great big old huffing and puffing thing and said, ‘Look, forget it, OK? Now, what are you going to do with that kimono? I know I wouldn’t sleep with it hanging above my head all night.’

‘What should I do? Do you really think a piece of material could be ruining my life? It just seems ridiculous!’