The Naked Drinking Club (12 page)

It was only now that I noticed the various reactions that different personalities had to the drug. The quietest of the group – the thin girls and Hugo – seemed to become more talkative, whereas Robin and I seemed to quieten down.

‘So, why can’t you use the studio space to paint your own stuff as well as the tacky stuff here?’ asked Hugo.

‘Mmm,’ agreed his wife.

‘Yeah, why don’t you do that?’ said Robin.

‘Yeah, I do.’ I couldn’t concentrate; I was worrying whether I was too young to have a heart attack.

‘Then you wouldn’t have to get your own place to paint,’ Robin finished.

I wanted to correct her. She was confusing everything; it was all wrong.

‘Yeah. I do. I do paint there.’

Robin had taken off her glasses and put on sunglasses even though it was overcast, and was moving with the music. Nick was making a square on the table with matches.

‘Yeah, Kerry, why don’t you do that?’ asked Hugo again, taking over the cocaine preparation.

‘Do what?’

‘Just use the gear at the ART place, or whatever it’s called.’

‘I’m only there because of the shit paintings, aren’t I?’

They looked at me, four of them in sunglasses now. I’d left mine in the car because it was raining and I didn’t think I’d be taking coke with a bunch of strangers.

I went on, ‘If I wasn’t selling this to get money I wouldn’t be needing the money. No wait. I wouldn’t be.’ I started drumming on the table with my fingers as the song built up some pace. ‘I wouldn’t
have!
I wouldn’t have the place to paint the shit stuff, if I wasn’t doing the job, would I?’

The four with the glasses were laughing at me. The two without glasses weren’t. Would I be like them if I had worn my sunglasses?

‘I get it,’ said Hugo.

‘Well, thank fuck for that,’ I said accidentally, barely able to force a smile.

I had planned a good while ago, during our initial conversation, that I would confess to selling mass-produced, tacky art, and lie about painting it, but would profess to have painted what I considered to be good and sellable art which I also carried about with me. I had settled on the abstract pieces because they were simply less recognisable as shit to most people. Unfortunately, I had now confused myself with my own story, which I was starting to believe – or at least the part about me painting the tacky stuff. I knew the coke was running the show now but I couldn’t stop. I also couldn’t stop with the obsession that I had to sell them a picture. I was fucked for the rest of the day and night, I couldn’t move on to another house in this state. I couldn’t afford not to sell.

‘Hey, Kerry?’ The coke was passed to me once again.

‘What?’ I took it up the right nostril, and planned to do only one more up the left to balance my nose abuse, and then I’d stop. Pleased with my decision and with a self-imposed end in sight, I found some reserve positivity.

‘What?’ I asked again.

Hugo was crippled over laughing and unable to complete his question until he’d got his breath back. ‘You’re a great girl and all that, but we’re not going to buy your shit paintings. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I am,’ said Nick, putting up his hand. I felt instant compassion for him.

‘No way, Nicky boy.’

‘Yeah, I fuckin’ am. Look great in the fuckin’ salon, that unicorn.’

I was stunned into further silence.

‘You fuckin’ cocksucker, Nick,’ laughed Rod.

‘Rod, don’t talk to him like that,’ said Penny, his girlfriend.

‘I don’t mind. I’m used to it. I don’t care.’ Nick stood up, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘How much is it, Cathy? I fucking want it.’ He slammed some notes and loose change on the table.

‘Look, I come here, I drink your wine, you share your coke with me, I can’t charge you. Nope, not right.’ I genuinely meant it, but only because I had convinced myself that I wanted to sell my own work – i.e. the abstracts – rather than the mass-produced stuff. I hadn’t spoken to Robin for a while, losing her to her trance, so I said, ‘What do you think, Robin?’

I felt, based on nothing, that Robin and I had a rapport.

‘Let him buy it, he wants it. He’s Kylie Minogue’s hairdresser, he’s loaded.’

I liked everything Robin said.

‘I cut her hair
once
, Cathy, before she was famous,’ protested Nick.

‘Kerry,’ I muttered.

‘ONCE, KERRY!’ He boomed, sticking up one finger.

I was lost now. I was beaten. I would accept defeat and go with the flow. ‘Take the unicorn, it’s yours.’ I swung on my chair, and picked up a pair of sunglasses from the table and put them on without asking.

‘I’ve got …’ He counted his change. ‘One hundred dollars here, but only because my dealer didn’t show. I thought it was you, by the way.’ He touched my shoulder. He was becoming increasingly camp. ‘One hundred bucks and fifty seventy cents. Here, take it.’

I gave him the double thumbs-up, and cocked my head towards the unicorn. He cheered and ran towards it. It didn’t make me happy, though; I wanted to sell my abstract art.

‘What sort of stuff do you paint?’ Robin picked up a camera from the table and began taking shots of me as I talked.

‘Abstract. I’ve got some with me. Do you want to see?’

‘Yeah, go on.’

I went over to the folder and brought out what I considered to be the best two out of the three. I placed them against the wall of the house and stood back. Robin squatted down and looked at them for a while. I poured myself another glass of wine, as it had gone well past the politeness stage by now, and lit up. I walked over to join her, dragging on my cigarette, tapping my fingernail on my tooth and taking it all in, like I was at an opening.

‘Well? Be honest.’

‘Hmmm. There’s not much going on with it – I don’t feel it. But I think I like it.’

‘There’s not meant to be much going on. I mean, that’s the idea, isn’t it?’

‘It’s banal, I think.’

I didn’t respond to banal; I couldn’t, I didn’t know what it meant.

‘I feel empty,’ I said instead.

‘It’s very empty.’

‘Very, yeah, it’s meant to be, it’s how I feel.’

She snapped away some more.

I stayed still behind the sunglasses I was wearing. The others chatted away in the background, oblivious to us.

‘But you know something?’ She kept clicking, not looking up from her camera.

‘What?’

‘I’m going to buy it.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. But I want you to sign it.’

‘It is signed.’

‘I want you to sign it.’ She looked up from the camera and over the top of her sunglasses. I didn’t feel the need to say any more on the subject. Everything fell into place for me at that moment; I understood exactly what was happening. The sunglasses made the wearer have more insight into what was going on, and a sense of power; that’s why I sold when I was
wearing
a pair, and that’s why Nick bought the unicorn when he was without them. And that’s why Robin had found me out only when she put her sunglasses on. I didn’t want to take off whoever’s glasses I had on, in case things started going wrong for me.

Robin went to remove her glasses. I put my hand out to stop her, but it was too late. She too would be weakened now.

‘How much?’

‘One hundred and fifteen bucks.’

‘One hundred and fifty, there.’ She pressed money into my hand. ‘I’m giving you a bit more because my brother should have; he can afford it, trust me.’

‘Let’s take a bottle and go inside,’ I said, nudging her.

‘OK.’

We walked through the patio doors into the lounge area; nobody noticed us or seemed to care what we were up to. There was no need to say any more; all feelings of nervousness had disappeared, and we had both joined the same altered reality and felt connected for what would inevitably be a short time.

We moved with drinks in our hands. She walked backwards as I pushed her towards the kitchen, away from view. The moment we got through the kitchen door, I pushed her up against the worktop and started kissing her. She went to take off my sunglasses but I wouldn’t let her. We kissed intensely for about ten minutes without stopping. Then we had a break for wine.

‘Whose house is this?’ I asked.

‘My parents. Nick’s my brother, my mum and dad are away, we’re house-sitting.’

We started kissing again.

‘Let’s go upstairs,’ I said, when we broke off.

‘There are no stairs,’ she said, laughing.

‘Other room, then.’

She took my hand and I took the bottle of wine. Then I stopped. ‘Wait. No. The pictures, I can’t leave them.’ I didn’t want to leave her for a second; I didn’t want anything to change for now, for her to go away, but I went back out to the patio.

‘You better look after my sister,’ shouted Nick, who was
chopping
out five lines. I grabbed my folder, hoping that Nick wouldn’t offer me some more coke because I couldn’t say no, but at the same time I didn’t want to unbalance my nostril distribution – if I took another, I’d have to take another one after that.

He didn’t offer and I went back inside to find Robin as I’d left her, drinking her wine, leaning against the kitchen unit. We kissed more; the kissing was better than at the beginning. She took my hand and we went into a small bedroom with a single bed and a painting of a flamenco dancer. The blinds were half closed, making lines across Robin’s face as she sat on the bed and leant her head against the wall. She pulled me into her and we kissed for the longest time yet. I stopped it eventually to drink more wine. She would have kept going had I not, but I wanted my wine as much as the kissing. After all, I would not be kissing if it was not for the wine.

We took off our clothes. She had a piercing in her belly button which I fiddled with. We could hear the others laughing and talking outside, and someone had turned up Grace Jones’s ‘La Vie En Rose’. We rubbed around a bit. I wanted more coke, more wine; I wanted to go back to the start with Robin. And although it was my idea to go into the room, I didn’t like it now that I was there. I didn’t understand why. I went down on her, whoever she was.

After a while she pulled my head up and brought my face close to hers. We both stared at one another without talking.

‘I’m off my fucking tits,’ she whispered.

‘Me too.’

‘Take the fucking glasses off.’ I let her do it. Then I lay on the bed beside her.

‘I don’t usually like Sundays,’ I said, but she wasn’t listening.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

‘IS THAT MR
Duffy?’ Mosquitoes hummed round the phone booth. It was Monday night, a night we usually got off, but it was a public holiday and Greg wanted us out. I’d just finished my last house; I’d sold two in the evening, both in the same home to two different couples who were having dinner together. I drank some wine with them, and felt all loose and happy and cured of my hangover, so I bought a phone card and decided to make a start to my enquiries, before meeting up with the others. However, now that it came down to it, I was extremely nervous.

I was holding the second page of Duffys from the phone book and had chosen a number at random.

‘Mr Duffy, does live here but I’m just a visitor,’ said an older voice.

‘Hello, my name is Kerry, and I’m trying to contact a possible relative of mine. I’m in Sydney just now but I live in the UK. His name was John Duffy and his wife is called Madeline, they moved here in 1965 or ’66, I think.’

The man laughed. ‘Well, Kerry, that was a while ago, and it’s certainly not me. Not unless I’ve inherited any money.’

I laughed back out of politeness. ‘Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve just torn a few pages out the phone book and I’m making a start going through all the Duffys.’

‘There are other ways you could do this, you know, easier than that.’ He sounded a pretty relaxed and open type, which I liked.

‘Yeah, but I want to do it this way for now, you know?’

‘I do, yes. Who is this relative, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘He’s a man that might be related to my mother, and I promised her I’d try to look him up when I got here. It would mean the world to her if I could trace him.’

‘I see.’ He sighed and half laughed ironically.

‘Sorry, am I wasting your time?’ I tried to move things along; at this rate it would take me a year to get through all the names.

‘No, not at all. It’s just weird, that’s all.’

‘How come?’ I breathed on the glass and drew a D on it.

‘For a number of reasons, but I may be able to help you a little more than you had hoped.’ He was really dragging this out.

‘How come?’

‘Well, I have my own radio show for one thing.’

‘No way.’ I stopped drawing.

‘Yep, got around twenty thousand listeners.’

‘So, you’re a DJ?’

‘Among other things. I’m a qualified physio, the radio thing is more of a hobby, local radio, really. I’m a big country fan and that’s what my show is about, country music, it’s a show for old cowboys like me.’

‘I didn’t know there were any cowboys in Australia, apart from the ones I’m working with.’

He laughed at my joke. The dollar sign changed to fifty cents, so I put another one in.

‘How many names have you tried already?’

‘I think I tried a few before, when I first came here, but I can’t remember because I was drunk. Tonight I just picked one out and it was you.’

‘Well, that’s incredible, kid, because like I said I’m not technically a Duffy. In fact, I’m not a Duffy at all, my name is Hank White, although my real name is Frank.’

‘Who is the Duffy, then?’ I traced over my old D.

‘This could all be a coincidence, see, but this isn’t my house, it’s my sister’s. She’s the Duffy. I’m down visiting from Brisbane, where I live.’

‘That is pretty strange, isn’t it? You answering and offering to help with your radio show?’

This was starting to feel like the rest of my life, all of it a
series
of bizarre coincidences which, I believed, would eventually lead me to my answer.

‘I’ve gotta tell you, kid, this must be fate.’

‘Yes, yes, it must be, it always is.’ I was excited and speedy. I lit a cigarette and took in a massive drag.