The Boys from Binjiwunyawunya (44 page)

‘Hey,' he said, as Norton plonked himself down in the front seat, ‘didn't I just drop you off at Richard's?'

‘Yeah, that's right,' grunted Les.

‘What happened?'

‘Ahh, the cunts wouldn't let me in.'

The driver laughed but didn't say anything at first. ‘Can't understand why,' he finally said as he dropped the flag fall.

‘No. Me neither,' grinned Norton. ‘Oh well. It didn't look like much of a joint anyway to tell you the truth.'

The driver laughed again. ‘So where to now?'

‘Same place you picked me up in St Kilda.'

‘No worries.'

The girl on the switchboard didn't notice Les or the condition of his head as he entered the foyer, which was probably just as well. He stormed past her to the lift and clomped down the hallway to his room. Well isn't that just great he cursed as he kicked off his riding boots and grabbed a can of VB from the freshly restocked fridge. Stinkin', rotten, snooty fuckin' Melbourne bitch. Gobbing on her wasn't enough. She's the one I should've belted. Not those two other silly big mugs. He gave a bitter chuckle as he sucked on the can of beer. I wonder how the heroes are feeling right now? Sore I hope. Norton noticed he was having a little trouble opening and closing his left eye. He went into the bathroom and checked his face in the mirror. If it had a bit of colour in it before, now it looked like a Ken Done T-shirt. There was some bark missing from the burnt side of his face, a gouge mark on the other, and his left eye was turning purple and starting to close. Christ almighty he muttered to himself. Have a look at me. It's a pity they're not casting for a horror movie down here. I'd be a walk-up start. He went back into the bedroom, flung himself angrily onto the bed and glared up at the ceiling. He started thinking about Pamela and her unbelievable body, the time he should be having right now and the time he could have been having afterwards. And what am I doing, he wailed to himself. Sitting in a stinkin' motel room, picking my bloody toes. He finished the can of VB, found a bottle of J and B and made himself a Scotch and dry strong enough to make you want to go out and head butt a mountain goat.

May as well get pissed and watch TV I s'pose. There's nothing else to do. I don't know anyone, and where can I go with my head looking like this anyway. There's no way in the world I'd go back to that pub I walked into last night. I'd be in there five minutes and end up getting bunned by poofs. And I sure as hell don't feel like walking around St Kilda. All it is is Kings Cross with seagulls. He took a healthy slug on his drink that made him cough slightly and his eyes spin around like revolving doors. Then a thought hit him.

What about the pub where we did that ad this morning? There's a band there tonight. It could be all right. I could find a spot where no one would notice me. Yeah. Bloody oath. Why not? He climbed back into his R. M. Williams, changed his shirt, tidied his hair and cleaned his face up as best he could. Then with the rest of the quickly-downed J and B warming his stomach he strolled down to the Boulevard Hotel.

The old pub looked pretty much the same at night as it did in the day, except there was a man selling hot dogs at the top of the stairs and two swarthy looking Europeans standing inside the door as you walked in. They were reasonably well dressed and Norton guessed they were either the owners or ran the place. They gave him a bit of a look as he ambled past and that was about it. Even with his burnt and battered head Norton was still as good a style as anyone in the place. For a supposedly ritzy hotel promoting a supposedly up-market drink on television, the actual clientele are a pretty seedy-looking bunch, thought Les.

The place wasn't packed but there was a fair crowd, mostly mid-twenties, early thirties. Some seated. Some standing. The men all seemed to have sallow faces and pale, oily skin that looked in need of a few hours of sunshine. Their clothes, especially their T-shirts, looked in need of a good dose of Rinso too. They were nearly all wearing faded blue jeans and jackets. Some had studded belts with some sort of animal skins hanging off them. The way they walked gave Norton the impression they were all trying to look and move like the lead singer of INXS.

All the women had dark hair: there wasn't a blond to be seen. Plenty of make-up, cheap silver jewellery, clothes made out of recycled jeans and black stockings with ankle-length boots appeared to be the order of the day or night. Whatever the case, the women all looked bored. The men looked half asleep. A gang of pimply-faced skinheads tossing empty beer
cans at each other across the room was the only sign of movement.

It was much the same in the Neptune room, except for a small group of Aborigines in Akubra hats and moleskins. On the bandstand a man and a woman in cowboy hats, playing guitars and backed by a drum machine, were absolutely strangling ‘On the Road Again'. If Willie Nelson had heard it he would have got the mafia to break both their arms. Norton winced and moved across to the bar.

The two barmaids were full of cheek as they ran up and down between the bottles and the taps and added a bit of life to the place. They were both as skinny as rakes. One had dark hair and a kind of French sailor's outfit on. The other had on a long white dress and strawberry-coloured hair and a sort of strawberry-coloured face. Perched on her head was one of those little fake leopard-skin pill-box hats, a la Annie Lennox.

‘What'll you have love,' she said brightly as Norton walked up to the bar.

‘Ohh. Just a glass of beer'll do thanks,' shrugged Les.

‘There's a beer strike on and we've only got cans of VB or Carlton. The imported stuffs three dollars a bottle.' She stood there waiting for Norton's reaction.

Les looked at her evenly for a moment. ‘Give us a Jack Daniels and Coke, will you. Make it a double. And plenty of ice.'

‘No worries.'

Norton paid her, left a sizeable tip and moved away from the bar to have a look around. It was pretty ordinary and there didn't appear to be too many stray women about.

Not that any of them would have actually rushed Les, considering the state of his melon. Though if some of the lifeless-looking scrumbos propped round the place passing for men could get a girl, Norton, battered and all as he was, would still have to be a chance. The drum machine kicked into another beat and the duo took the hatchets to ‘Islands in the Stream'. Norton winced again, finished his drink, got another and moved out to the foyer. Christ, I can't see myself lasting long here he thought.

He stood in the foyer gazing around and brooding a little about Pamela. But there was another thing he was trying to figure out, that had been on his mind almost since he got off the plane on Friday night. It was Melbourne women. There was something about them, apart from their clothes and white skin, that made them completely different from
Sydney women. What was it? More peering around and halfway through his drink Norton figured it out. It was the way they made their eyes up. All the women had beautiful, sensuous eyes. Even the ugliest, fattest, most unkempt scrubber in that hotel had her eyes made up to perfection. It had been the same with every girl or woman he'd met. Pamela, Mrs Perry, the girls on the film set, the girl on the door at Richards. Even those two old-birds in the op-shop at Whittlesea and that bleach-haired tram conductress. They all had beautiful, even fascinating eyes. Sydney might be a city of blondes, bikinis and suntans. But Melbourne's a city of brunettes and eyes. Don't know what they look like in the morning when they scrape the make-up off though, chuckled Les. Probably like two holes burnt in a sheet. Anyway, you can keep both of them, chuckled Les to himself again. Give me a good old Queensland girl with plenty of freckles any day.

His thoughts were running back to Dirranbandi and the banks of the Narran River when he heard a girl's voice from one of the cubicles behind him.

‘Well, well, well,' it said slowly and sarcastically. ‘If it isn't our big movie star from Sydney.'

Norton turned around slowly and suspiciously. He had to look for a moment or two to recognise the face. It was the young girl from the catering truck he'd been talking to earlier. The one he'd saved from falling on her face. She was sitting in one of the cubicles near the front door with two other girls, similar in appearance and dress to herself.

‘Well I'll be buggered,' smiled Norton. ‘It's the gourmet chef. The botulism queen of Victoria. How are you mate?'

‘Not too bad handsome. How's yourself?'

‘I'm pretty good. Probably because I got away before lunch.'

‘Ooh, you're a smart big bastard, aren't you.'

‘Only for getting away before you had a chance to poison me,' grinned Les. ‘I've heard your cooking's killed more people than road accidents.'

‘Listen digger, I told you before. There's nothing wrong with my food. It's the grouse.'

‘Yeah. If you were in a lifeboat out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.'

The girl smiled and shook her head. ‘What's the bloody use. Anyway. What are you doing in here, Wally? Just posing around are you? Letting everyone know the film star's back in town.'

‘No,' shrugged Norton. ‘I'm staying just up the road so
I thought I'd come in and have a drink. See what the place is like of a night. Can't say I'm over impressed. That band would give you corns on your ears.'

‘Yeah. You're not wrong. If they were playing for meals, you wouldn't give them a paper plate. Anyway — George Hamilton, why don't you get your drink and join us? It doesn't worry you to drink with the peasants does it?'

‘Well,' drawled Norton taking a glance around the room, ‘I do have my image to think of. But I don't see any photographers around. So why not? Thanks.'

‘I never got your name earlier,' said the young cook as Les plonked his behind down next to her facing the others.

‘Les.'

‘Well I'm Dixie, Les. And these are my friends, Mia and Penny.'

‘Hello girls,' smiled Norton. ‘Pleased to meet you.'

Neither girl said anything. They just nodded their heads and smiled. A smile of amused curiosity with a kind of confidence about it. They weren't bad looking. Somewhere in their early twenties. Mia, on Norton's left, had copper-coloured hair combed into an untidy bun on top of her head, a full, heavily made-up face, solid figure but no boobs. There was no shortage of silver chains and trinkets round her neck and wrists and underneath the sleeve of a black disposal store leather jacket. Norton thought he could see a tattoo of a mushroom or something on the back of her wrist. Penny had long, dark punked-up hair tinted with pink. Like her girlfriend, she too had a sensuous, heavily made-up face. But where Mia was wearing a denim mini, Penny had on a sort of white pinafore and a sleeveless Levi jacket with a Huxton Creepers T-shirt underneath. She didn't appear to be a grub, but Norton tipped that her Levi jacket hadn't seen any soap and water since the War of the Roses. Neither had the Tshirt.

They struck Les as either students or something to do with music or the arts. There was also something else about them that struck Les, but he just couldn't quite put his finger on it.

‘So what's doing anyway girls?' he asked pleasantly. ‘And how come you're down here?' he said, turning to Dixie. ‘This your usual Saturday night hang is it?'

‘No not really,' she replied. ‘Mia and Penny live just up the road and I'm staying at their place tonight. I live at Footscray. You know where that is?'

Norton shook his head. ‘No . . .not really.'

‘You're lucky.'

Norton downed what was left of his drink, rattled the ice in the glass and looked at the others. ‘Can I shout you a drink girls?'

‘Sure,' said Dixie as the others nodded too. She ordered a Vodka and squash, the others a Scotch and dry. Les got three doubles, plus a Jack Daniels and Coke for himself.

‘Anyway, cheers girls,' he said, holding up his glass when he sat back down at the table. ‘It's nice to find someone to talk to.'

‘Yeah. Thanks Les,' said Dixie. ‘It's nice to sit next to a movie star.'

‘Don't give us the shits.'

They all had a healthy pull on their drinks, with the girls giving a bit of a splutter and a comment as to the strength of them. Norton smiled and told them that if you're going to drink you may as well drink. He got no argument there.

‘So how long have you been into modelling, Les?' Mia asked. Her voice was a little expressionless but sounded as if she was actually curious rather than just trying to make polite conversation.

Norton threw back his head and roared laughing. ‘Me a model?' he grinned. ‘You got to be bloody kidding. I think I'd better tell you girls the whole story.'

Les told them what he did for a living and how he came to be in Melbourne doing the ad. About Warren, the casting and how he had done one ad before in Brisbane. Pretty much the same story he'd told Pamela when she picked him up at the airport on Friday night. Dixie thought it a great hoot. The other two were amused all right, but still seemed a little reserved, almost distancing themselves from Les . . . as if, even though they appeared to be enjoying his company, it wouldn't have mattered to them that much if he'd got up and left. Norton asked them if they wanted another drink. They all said yes. Mia got them, doubles. Les paid.

The next round went down even easier than the first. It turned out Dixie was working casual on the catering truck. She was a silk-screen printer, but the factory where she'd been working had gone broke a couple of months ago. Penny had worked there too; she wasn't working at all now. Neither was Mia. She'd been playing organ in a band. The Boils. But the lead singer got killed in a car accident so the band broke up. She did do a little part-time work in a health food
restaurant in Carlton. All three were on the dole, and all three were broke. Which was how they came to be sitting in the Boulevard, holding onto their drinks like hourglasses until Les came along. Norton didn't mind shouting the three battlers a drink. He still had more than half of Abraham Goldschmidt's money plus the $300 Pamela had given him, and there could be anything in that strongbox. Not counting the money he'd eventually pick up for doing the ad. So Les was releasing money easily enough. If he'd been paying for it out of his wages though, it might have been a different story.