Rubdown (23 page)

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah, fine.’

I put the book down and swung my leg over his. I could never resist him for long. I kissed his neck and trailed my hand down his t-shirt and underneath, to the red-gold hair that disappeared into his jeans. I unbuttoned the fly and slid my fingers under the elastic of his underpants, touching the silken skin of his cock. He just lay there, smoking and staring at the screen. The usual hard-on was absent, but I felt sure I could rectify the situation and began stroking, my fingers cramped by elastic and denim.

‘Simone, I’m not in the mood.’ He pushed my hand away and zipped up.

‘What?’

‘I’m just not, okay?’ He dragged hard on the butt and crushed it in the ashtray.

I propped myself up on one elbow. ‘What’s your problem?’

‘I don’t have a problem. You’re the one with the problem. It’s not going to kill you to go without sex for five minutes.’

‘It might,’ I joked, but he didn’t crack a smile. Fine. If I couldn’t have sex I’d have cheese.

I got off the bed and crossed to the bar fridge where I had stashed a pack of cheese singles. I pulled four individually wrapped slices from the packet and lay down staring at the TV. I loved cheese singles and had a particular way I liked to eat them. Unwrapping the plastic a little at a time and nibbling from the corner, like a rat.

‘Why do you eat those things? I bought Jarlsberg.’

‘Don’t want Jarlsberg, want Kraft.’

‘It’s disgusting, it’s not even real food.’

‘I was never allowed plastic cheese when I was a kid. That’s why I eat it now. What do you care?’

He shook his head and walked off to the bathroom. I heard him piss, flush and flick the seat back down. He was good like that.

He opened the door and stood there holding one of the white hotel towels. ‘And do you think for once you could hang your towel on the rail instead of chucking it on the floor?’

I glared at him.

He grabbed his Marlboros off the bedside table, looked inside and crumpled the empty pack in his fist. ‘I’m going to get cigarettes.’ He picked up his keys and left.

I lay back on the bed staring at the textured concrete ceiling and willed myself not to cry. A couple of tears welled up and spilled down my temples into my hair.

He’d gone off me.

Impossible. It took more than a week for infatuation to wear off.

He was retreating emotionally before he went away to Vietnam because he’d just realised he was head over heels in love with me.

Probably not.

Who was I kidding? I knew exactly what it was. He was beating himself up over Alex.

He took three quarters of an hour to buy cigarettes. By the time he got back Alex was due to show up. He took my bags off the single bed by the window, put them in the cupboard and messed up the blankets so it looked like it had been slept in.

I stood watching with my arms crossed. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘I don’t want to rub his face in it.’

‘He’s a grown man. He’s thirty-five fucking years old.’

‘We’ve been friends for ten years.’

‘Good for you. Listen, I’m going to check out Geisha’s place again.’ I pulled on a jumper and my coat, stuck a baseball cap on against the rain.

‘You shouldn’t be out there by yourself. It’s not safe.’

‘Yeah, well, I wouldn’t want to hang around and risk hurting Alex’s feelings.’ Meow. I grabbed a cheese single for the road and slammed the door on my way out.

Geisha’s place was off Smith Street, the end with all the factory outlets. Hers was a rundown brick house in a rare, unrenovated block. A triple killing had gone down in nearby Easey Street in the eighties and the Hoddle Street massacre had happened just up the road. Grey drizzle only served to make the location more depressing.

I loitered outside the pub opposite for a second, drawn by the comforting smell of stale smoke and damp beer mats. A whisky was just the thing to give me courage to knock on the front door.

No. Bad habit to get into. I had to learn to do my job sober.

That was the good thing about stripping, you could go to work half tanked. In fact I’d usually done a better job with a couple under my belt. But this was the new improved straight Simone Kirsch.

I compromised and decided I would have the whisky after, as a reward.

I pulled my water bottle out of my bag, had a swig and crossed the road. The iron fence was rusted and a rectangular bin overflowing with Bacardi Breezer bottles had been wedged into the tiny porch. I knocked on the wooden door. No answer. If I was Lulu, hiding out from bad guys, would I answer the door? I doubted it.

I stepped over the recyling to look through the front window. All I could see was encrusted grime and a tatty batik hanging.

A cobbled laneway ran behind the houses, and I counted them off until I came to Geisha’s and peered through a gap in the sagging paling fence. A Hills hoist sprouted from the concrete and an old dunny had been converted into a makeshift shed. The back windows weren’t covered but I couldn’t see in from that distance.

Time to jump over, Starsky and Hutch style. Suddenly I felt old and tired. Just do it, I told myself, and we’ll make the whisky a double.

I walked back, then did a little run up and jump. Got my hands on the splintery top, strained my shoulders and scrabbled my feet trying to get over. Suddenly I felt pressure on my back.

Someone had hold of my jacket and yanked me off the fence so hard I fell on my arse on the cobblestones.

I looked up and saw a grizzled old guy standing over me. He was wearing a beanie and brandishing a length of two by four.

‘Don’t hit me,’ I squealed, and held my arm over my face.

He raised the plank of wood. ‘Fuckin’ thieving junkies.’

‘I’m not a junkie. I wasn’t trying to steal anything. See? Check my arms.’ I pushed up my sleeves. ‘No track marks.’

‘Could shoot up between your toes.’

‘I don’t shoot up at all. I’m a private investigator.’

‘From the dole?’ He raised the wood higher.

‘No, no, no. Missing persons case.’ I fumbled in my bag and handed him my laminated ID card.

He examined it, lowered the plank and helped me to my feet.

The arse of my jeans was uncomfortably wet. Up close his ratty fisherman’s jumper smelled of tobacco and old tin cans and his wide spaced teeth were a murky yellow and brown.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said. ‘Been breakins up and down this street the past two weeks. Cunts did me over twice. First the tele then all me records. Original fucking vinyl. Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis. Can’t replace ’em. Been camping out in me back yard, waiting for the scumbags to come back. I’m ready for ’em this time.’ He waved me over to the house next door and disappeared in the back gate. I looked in. He’d positioned a striped, foldout chair to spy through a hole in the back fence. Above the chair a blue tarpaulin was strung over the clothes line to keep out the rain. A tartan blanket hung over the back of the chair and a thermos and lunch box sat on a milk crate.

He opened the door to a corrugated iron shed and when I saw what was inside I put all my weight on my back foot, ready to sprint down the alley. Brass rings had been drilled into the walls, and hanging from the rings were lengths of chain and bolts. A baseball bat and iron bar were propped up in the corner. On another milk crate sat a piece of machinery that looked suspiciously like a blowtorch.

The old guy smiled and puffed up his chest. ‘Cops don’t give a shit so I’m taking the law into me own hands. Gonna capture them sons of bitches and beat the shit out of ’em. Torture ’em ’til they tell me where me fucking records are. Whaddaya reckon?’

‘Nice set up,’ I said, adrenal glands pumping, preparing for fight or flight. ‘You haven’t seen an Islander girl next door while you’ve been keeping a lookout, have you? Well, she’s actually a guy but she dresses like a girl.’

‘You don’t mean the chink that don’t know whether it’s Arthur or Martha?’

‘No, not Asian. She’s tall, six foot, long black hair, coffee coloured skin.’

He scratched the white bristles sprouting from his chin and shook his head. ‘Nuh. There’s the chink, a blonde nancy boy,’ he flopped his wrist to give me the idea, ‘and this mean looking motherfucker. Big bloke. Hairy. Looks like one of them eye-rakis.

Thought I should call the terrorist hotline. Dodgy fucker.’

‘You sure that’s all?’

‘Been watching this block for a week now.’

The rain picked up and pattered on the tarp.

‘Thanks for your help.’ I backed away from the gate, ready for any sudden moves. ‘Good luck trapping the junkies.’

I hurried down the lane and into the comforting warmth of the pub. It was my kind of place, unrenovated, with orange carpet, exposed brick walls and a dartboard. A couple of old guys in flat caps watched the trots and a barmaid with pencilled-on brows leaned against the counter reading Take 5 magazine. She poured me a double, no ice, and I took it to the window seat and watched the house, listening to the race callers and the muted card machine jingle from another room.

The whisky warmed me from the inside out and washed away my disappointment at not finding Lulu. I realised I’d been harbouring a vain hope that I would stumble across her, along with the evidence against Wade. I’d seen myself taking her to the police, solving everything, being the hero of the day and totally showing up Alex and Sean, all in time for afternoon tea.

At least I’d got out of the hotel. I could just imagine it. Alex being a bitch. Sean ignoring me. The two of them doing a bit of male bonding and me sitting there made to feel like the wicked temptress I so obviously was. Christ. I threw back the last of the whisky and decided another was in order. I was turning on my bar stool when I saw the old guy’s ‘eye-raki’ emerge from the gaming room and buy a packet of cigarettes over at the bar. He wore a bulky green army surplus jacket, had spiky black hair, stubble and a pair of aviator sunnies with dark, mirrored lenses. He looked like a Libyan hijacker from the seventies.

As he walked back to the pokies unwrapping his smokes he glanced over and, to my horror, did a double take, like he recognised me. I grabbed my bag, slid off the chair and hurried to the exit. As I pushed open the door I saw his reflection in the glass. He was coming right at me.

I hit the pavement running and bolted left into Smith Street, hoping the people and traffic would force him to back off. No such luck. When I looked over my shoulder he was catching up.

I dodged black umbrellas, pedestrians with shopping bags, and when I glanced in plate glass windows saw him getting closer, pushing people out of the way.

Ahead a tram was taking passengers. At the last minute I veered right and dived in just as the doors were closing, tripped on the step and sprawled on the dirty wet floor. I lay there for a second, trying to catch my breath, wondering who he was and why he was after me. Old ladies tutted and gathered their purses to their chests.

A big black rasta man let out a stoned chortle and held out his hand to help me off the floor. ‘You must have really needed this tram.’

‘Mate, you have no idea,’ I said.

I let myself into the hotel room and my stomach sank when I saw that Alex was still there.

‘Jeez, Simone, you look a bit rough,’ he said by way of a greeting. I ignored him, got the vodka out of the freezer, poured a generous slug and leaned on the TV counter.

‘Some guy who looks like a terrorist just chased me through Fitzroy.’ I downed the drink, poured another. Alex and Sean looked at each other.

‘Who was it?’ Sean asked.

‘No idea. He lives with Geisha but I can’t understand how he knows who I am, let alone wants to attack me.’

Sean shook his head and lit a cigarette.

‘Don’t you believe me?’ I asked.

‘Every time you step outside you say someone’s chased you,’ he said. ‘It beggars belief.’

‘You think I’m lying?’

‘Maybe you were mistaken.’

‘I think I know when a big scary guy with mirrored sunnies is pursuing me down Smith Street.’ A wave of anger and frustration built up. I swallowed the vodka, refilled my glass, sat at the table and lit one of Sean’s cigarettes. Alex was pretending to play with his phone but he wore an air of smugness like a gangster wears an Armani jacket.

‘So what’s going on?’ I said.

‘Me and Alex are just about to head off to St Kilda Road and see the Homicide Squad. Tell them what we know about Wade.’

‘Good. I’ll just get cleaned up.’

‘You’re not coming,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘We’ve got to convince them there’s something in this. I don’t think you’re the best person to do that.’

‘Why?’ I waved my cigarette around. ‘Because I’m a stripper?’

‘Ex,’ said Alex.

‘No,’ Sean said, ‘because you’re drunk.’

‘I am not drunk,’ I said and promptly knocked my glass over.

‘Taxi,’ muttered Alex. Funny guy. I glared at him.

‘We’ll talk to them first,’ Sean said, ‘and then you’ll probably need to go in for an interview tomorrow, when you’ve sobered up.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and the two of them gathered up phones and keys and left.

I smoked furiously. Who the hell did he think he was, telling me I was drunk? I didn’t drink half as much as he did, and I didn’t smoke pot either. Hypocrite. I mashed out the cigarette and looked around. The white walls were closing in. I couldn’t stay in this hotel. Of course I couldn’t go home either. I picked up the phone and rang Chloe to see what she was up to. Doing a show at the Clifton. Damn. A weird, angry energy buzzed through my veins. I needed to drink more. I needed to be out in the city night, bathed in cigarette smoke and neon lights and listening to music.

Yeah, I needed some goddamn rock and roll.

If I headed back to St Kilda I could get all that and search for Lulu while I was at it. Cruise down Carlisle Street where all the transsexual prostitutes turned tricks. It was a plan.

I had a quick shower and put on makeup. I was in the mood for liquid eyeliner and red lipstick. I dressed in hipster jeans, the tight black Club X t-shirt I’d kept from when I used to work at the Crazyhorse, popped the fluffy white jacket on top and ran the straightener through my hair to get rid of rainy day frizz. I was looking hot. Sean didn’t know what he was missing.