Smoky Joe's Cafe (16 page)

On her weekends in Sydney she stays with Mo's sister, Maureen, who is a hairdresser. Not your run-of-the-mill hairdresser, you understand, but one of your multiple-award-winning triple-certificate hairdressers who cuts and styles in an upmarket salon in Double Bay called Le Gaye at the Bay.

The salon is owned by a bloke called Trenton le Gaye, who, when you come to think about it, has a pretty handy name for a poofter who's also a hairdresser. In fact, it turns out his name was invented for the very purpose. Maureen says his real name is Wayne Sprogg, which is not a moniker you'd want to wear if you're going to be a darling of the Sydney social set.

Trenton claims to have trained in London and then worked in LA, where, it is said, he did Audrey Hepburn's hair for
Breakfast at Tiffany's
, even though that was shot in New York. In fact, Maureen says he was the number-eight hairdresser on the set and only once briefly touched her hair with a brush between takes.
He come back to Sydney because his lover got the job of running the Australian branch of a US parcel dispatch company.

Trenton le Gaye styles all the models for
Vogue
magazine and just about all the beautiful people in town, which, of course, also includes all of the ugly people, the rule being that as long as they will pay sixty bucks for a haircut and they regularly get their mugs in the social columns then they're dinky-di le Gaye material.

Maureen is Trenton's cutter supremo, he's nicknamed her ‘Jacka the wonder hacker', and she is making real big bickies as his right-hand man. Which is not a misuse of the expression, because Mo's sister's a chick with a lot more balls than her boss.

Women go to le Gaye's to be seen and to have other women point to their hair at a cocktail party and say, ‘Darling, your hair looks fabulous, is that a le Gaye?' In fact it's a le Maureen, but that's show biz for you. Le Gaye gets all the credit when all he does is ponce around the salon spreading and listening to goss.

Occasionally, if there's someone with a big rep in the salon, the darling of the Double Bay social set will grab the scissors from Maureen and do a bit of a token snip, though he's bloody careful not to screw up what she's already done. There you go, darling (snip, snip),
Maureen's a real wizard with the scissors (ha, ha), I'm just the sorcerer's apprentice (snip, snip), she's a national treasure (snip), shouldn't interfere (snip, snip), it's just that one loves so to meddle (snip), to keep one's humble little fingers flying.' (Stand back, cup chin with thumb and forefinger, look at client with head to one side, snip, snip, mostly air.) ‘Ah, yes, God is in the details, divine, my dear, even if I say so myself.
Moi
hasn't lost his touch.'

The meddle adds ten bucks to the price of the cut and does bugger all except allows the client to legitimately claim that ‘Himself' personally cut her hair. Afterwards Maureen takes the ten bucks he added to the bill out of the till as a tax-free bonus.

The other thing about this type of salon, probably every type of hairdresser, is that women tell hairdressers their deepest darkest secrets and dish the dirt as well as hear the latest gossip on everyone else. You know, who's sleeping with who, whose husband can't get it up. More importantly, whose old man has been seen dining in a little-known restaurant with someone twenty years younger than himself. Whose boyfriend isn't responding in bed. Who's available, who isn't. Who got drunk at a reception and disgraced themselves. Who just had a facelift or the new liposuction to reduce their hips and bum
and flatten their gut. All the good smut women like to feed into their conversations during long lunches in smart restaurants, at dinners and cocktail parties, or over the phone to their stickybeak mates.

If women are depressed when they come into Le Gaye at the Bay, they go away feeling a whole heap better, armed with a new hairdo, nails painted fire-engine red, eyelashes tinted and enough gossip to inflict severe damage to several top-banana reputations. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they've deposited as much potential smut about themselves for the use of, as they've taken away.

So Maureen tells Wendy all this in the process of her weekend visits to see Anna and soon enough Wendy's got the perfect infiltration marketing plan. She suggests that Maureen becomes a part of the Smoky Joe scam and that she introduces a new summer drink into the salon.

‘What sort of drink?' Maureen asks. ‘I mean, what goes well with this hash honey?'

‘Just about anything,' Wendy replies.

‘Have you made up a few drinks, tasted them?'

Wendy admits she hasn't. She's a bit afraid even though she knows it isn't addictive. With little Anna so sick she's scared she'll become psychologically addicted, you know, come to depend on the stuff.

‘Hey, are you serious?' Maureen says. ‘I'm supposed to make up a drink that's going to make people want to buy hash honey and you haven't even tried it?'

‘Well, no, yes, I mean Thommo smokes the stuff, I thought I'd leave it at that?'

‘Well, I'm not going to try it on my own! What's more, I'm not going to offer our clients something that may have the wrong effect on them.' She grins at Wendy, ‘So let's start experimenting right now, girl.'

As Wendy later confesses she and Maureen had a couple of very interesting weekends experimenting. They decide to keep the drink simple, though it has to have an alcohol base to dissolve the hash honey as it is fat or alcohol soluble. They simply take a teaspoon of vodka, which is tasteless, and dissolve two drops of hash honey into it and then add lime juice, soda, a saccharine tablet to sweeten it, a slice of lemon and ice. In the winter it will simply be tea or coffee, the milk acting as the fat soluble, or if taken black, a teaspoon of vodka is added. The new drink has all the refreshment of the lime juice with a slightly bitter taste that survives the saccharine and makes it interesting. It's served in a smallish glass so that the client doesn't just take a couple of sips and leave the rest.

‘What will I call it?' Maureen wants to know.

Wendy thinks for a while, then says, ‘Nam Tran once told me the tiger is an important symbol for the Vietnamese people, why not call it Tiger Honey?'

Maureen laughs, ‘Roughly translated that's tiger piss! What about White Tiger? I could sell that to our clients.' She continues, “Madam, may I get you a White Tiger, it's our new summer refresher?”'

Most women come into the hairdressers a bit hassled or stressed and Maureen soon learns to pick her mark. Not everyone is right for a White Tiger, but those who are come in depressed and leave on a high, feeling great, what Maureen comes to call 'a light stone'. This means they can function perfectly but every sensation is heightened, colours seem brighter, problems seem easy to solve, people are nicer and work becomes a breeze and the buzz lasts five hours. What's more there are no hangovers.

Pretty soon customers coming in make a point of asking for a White Tiger. ‘What is it? It can't simply be lime juice and soda?'

‘Oh, we add secret herbs and spices,' Maureen says, smiling.

‘Secret herbs? C'mon, you must know what it is?'

‘No, I really don't,' Maureen fibs, ‘I think it's something that's popular in Hong Kong, you know, a common drink.'

This usually brings a bit of a frightened look, ‘It's not addictive, is it?'

Maureen, who has rehearsed all this with Wendy, laughs, ‘No, it's something the Chinese have used for thousands of years, you know sort of like ginseng, a natural stimulant or relaxant, whatever your mood happens to be at the time.' Which, of course, is the absolute truth.

Then one day Wendy's big break comes. Maureen's styling the hair of a Magazine Queen named Dotty Marche, who's sipping on a White Tiger.

‘Maureen, I've asked you about this drink before, where do you get the herbs you use in it? I'd like to buy some. Is that possible?'

Maureen doesn't answer for a moment, then she says quietly, ‘I'm not sure I can help you, Dotty.'

Dotty is now dead curious and even a bit miffed. She's one of those sheilas used to getting her own way. ‘And why? You said it wasn't illegal, so why not?'

‘I said it wasn't addictive.'

‘Well, that's the same thing, isn't it?'

Maureen looks all innocent like, ‘Well, I don't know . . .I suppose?'

‘In that case, just tell me where you buy the stuff?' Maureen, looking into the mirror, sees Dotty Marche's
right eyebrow rise slightly. She's not going to be fobbed off.

Maureen appears to hesitate, ‘It's this card, the one the bikie gave me, it's . . .well, it's a bit embarrassing.'

‘Can I see it?' Dotty asks. ‘It'll take a fair bit to embarrass me, my girl.'

‘Well, it's like a registered customer card, you can't just buy the herb essence, you have to have your own number to order.'

‘So it
is
illegal!' Dotty exclaims. ‘How very interesting.'

‘I really don't know,' Maureen insists, ‘It's just how it's done.' By now Dotty is hooked, ‘Get me the card, girl, let me see for myself.'

Maureen goes out the back and a few moments later comes back in and hands the woman a card. Dotty looks at it and bursts into laughter. She's holding Wendy's hash honey calling card. It's got this Chinese calligraphy on it which is the sign of the tiger and below it, it says:

White Tiger

Keeps you coming and him going.

Phone: 555 1369

‘So it wasn't my imagination!' Dotty says.

‘Imagination?' Maureen asks, pretending to be surprised.

Then Dotty tells Maureen how she'd been so horny after the last White Tiger that she'd practically raped her partner. ‘Poor darling didn't quite know what had hit him!'

‘You're not the first to say that,' Maureen giggles. This is also part of what she and Wendy have rehearsed.

‘Well, that's wonderful. Have you used it, you know, in this way yourself?' she now asks Maureen.

Maureen laughs, ‘I'm not saying.'

Dotty Marche claps her hands, ‘You have, haven't you?'

‘It just helps you relax,' Maureen says, turning off the hairdryer.

‘And I call this number? Can I write it down?' Dotty holds up the card.

‘Sure, but first turn the card over, see what it says on the back.'

Dotty Marche flips the card and reads:

Dotty grins, ‘It
must
be illegal.' She reaches over and takes a small notebook from her bag and copies down the number. ‘I haven't used a public phone in years, how exciting.'

‘This herb essence, it isn't cheap,' Maureen says. ‘Trenton thinks of it as a special treat for his best customers.'

‘How much?'

‘A week's supply, I mean if you were to make say two drinks a day, is a hundred dollars.'

Dotty sniffs and holds up the card again, ‘Darling, if it does what it promises here, it will be an absolute bargain.'

‘By the way,' Maureen then says, ‘it comes in liquid form.' She explains how you can mix it.

‘At last, the ultimate and positively sneaky aphrodisiac,' Dotty exclaims.

‘Stimulant or relaxant, that's all it claims to be,' Maureen laughs.

Wendy's system is simple enough. When the prospect calls she is met with an answerphone which asks her to wait and automatically dials a second number where another recorded voice gives her the following message:

Thank you for calling. When you hear the beep you

will be given thirty seconds to nominate a precise time and location anywhere in the central business district of Sydney between the Town Hall and Circular Quay. You will be met there in three days. Look for a woman wearing a red rose. You will greet her by saying ‘White Tiger' and she will reply by saying ‘Smoky'. Bring a sealed envelope containing one hundred dollars. You now have thirty seconds.

So this is how a typical exchange is worked. Dotty Marche meets her Smoky and goes through the routine. The Smoky takes the envelope, doesn't open it and puts it in her bag, then she removes the rose and pins it to Dotty's jacket or top. A male gets a long-stemmed red rose in a plastic tube, as though he's bought it for his secretary or girlfriend. Then Dotty is given a card with the tiger symbol, onto which is printed her personal identification number and a phone number.

Dotty is given an empty canvas shopping bag, the kind you can buy at any Woolworths store, and she is told to walk to a second nearby location, which involves crossing a busy intersection that is usually filled with people. Somewhere on her way to this location and with a crowd of pedestrians around her, a Vietnam veteran, known as a ‘Joe', will pass her and, without missing his stride, will drop a padded envelope
into her shopping bag. The envelope, of course, contains a one-ounce phial of highly refined hash honey.