One Way or Another (16 page)

‘Fall-out!' cries Rhett and it all suddenly becomes clear. There really
were
no people in Benny's. There are no people left in the whole world. There has been a nuclear bomb and we are the only human beings left alive. We quickly get under cover. If we are the only people left on the planet, then Billy and I are the new Adam and Eve. What about Rhett? It reminds me of a silly riddle my mother used to tell me and I share it.

‘Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drowned. Who do you think was saved?'

‘Pinch me!' Rhett yells triumphantly. I pinch him hard on the bum and he laughs hysterically.

*

The next day, I felt like I'd been trampled by a stampede.

Christmas of 1985 was approaching. The city was bathed in candy canes and spray-on snow. Mum and Dad had sent us a Christmas card with money in it and I couldn't have asked for a better present. I toyed with the idea of paying up our growing cocaine debt to Vivien, but that didn't seem terribly joyful or triumphant. Deep down I wanted to use the money for a couple of train tickets to the Gold Coast. But Billy was working and we were helplessly dependent on one another; we couldn't bear the idea of being apart over Christmas.

This dependence didn't feel like passionate love anymore. It felt like claustrophobia. My infidelity had eaten away at Billy's self-esteem and he remained on high alert. I understood his insecurity. After all, I had inflicted it. But I felt like I was under constant surveillance. Worse, the paranoia worked both ways. I was in the red and he was in the black – he might have been plotting payback adultery. No way could I leave him behind for Christmas.

So, Sydney it was, and we decided we'd host a Boystown orphans' Christmas, a Christmas-eve do for anyone who found themselves away from home for the holidays. The Kiwis, Poms and Septic Tanks of Paddington were thrilled and as word spread, offers of help began to pour in. Pete, a licensed pyrotechnician who'd exploded things for the likes of Bon Jovi, David Bowie, INXS and Midnight Oil, offered to bring fireworks. Joey would set up the lights, turning our neglected backyard into a wonderland. Pinky and I put ourselves in charge of the menu and she combed through her cookbooks for the finest Christmas recipes.

‘We could make rude food,' she suggested quite seriously, showing me a cookbook devoted to food resembling genitalia.

‘Pinky, I'm trying to put on a classy party. No.'

‘But some of these are classy. This one looks very nice.'

She passed me the book, which was open to a recipe for Toad in the Hole. I shook my head. But all in all, everything was coming together nicely.

When Christmas Eve arrived, we spent the day like worker bees preparing for a royal wedding. We were all up early for a change and even Pinky arrived before midday, decked out in a pink apron declaring her a ‘Kitchen Slut'. It was her own design. While she began chopping and dicing, I cleaned the house from top to bottom. The bathroom needed some industrial-strength attention.

It was a perfect summer's day, not a cloud in sight. As the first blush of dusk crept into the sky, we surveyed the backyard with satisfaction. Red and green lights danced through the foliage and candles flickered on every table. We all dressed in our festive finest and assembled in the living room, awaiting our guests.

Rhett burst through the doorway first, singing a loud Christmas carol and bearing a bottle. Vivien was next, wearing a wreath of mistletoe around her dark head.

‘Come and kiss me, boys,' she growled, and received several pecks on the cheek. As other guests arrived she grabbed me by the hand and led me upstairs. We went into my bedroom.

‘Let's get this party started,' she grinned. ‘Got a mirror?'

There was a gentle knock on the door and it opened a sliver. Just wide enough for Rhett to poke his moppish head into the room.

‘Knocking on heaven's door …' he whispered.

‘Come in, you big boofhead,' Vivien sighed.

She pulled out a small plastic bag and threw it into my lap. ‘Merry Christmas, Persephone.' I let the name go because I was reeling at her generosity. There must have been three full grams there, about six-hundred dollars' worth. Rhett's eyes lit up brighter than the backyard.

‘I'm moving to Melbourne next week. It's a farewell gift,' she said.

Rhett pulled an antique mirror off the wall. It had an ornate gilt frame around it, weathered but expensive-looking.

‘Be careful, Rhett,' I cautioned. ‘That belongs to the house.'

‘Well, if I break it, I'll get the seven years' bad luck.'

I tipped a little powder onto the mirror and Vivien passed me a laminated video-shop card, which I used to break down the coke into six long lines. Rhett rolled up a twenty-dollar note and passed it to me.

‘Merry Christmas,' I said and inhaled two lines, one after the other, one up each nostril. The burn. The taste. Lovely.

*

Pinky's food looked great and after a few joints had been passed around the yard, people were tucking in enthusiastically. The sound system was pumping and everyone seemed to be having a great time.

‘Mistletoe!' shouted Rhett, swooping me into a surprise embrace and kissing me on the lips.

It was nice. I could taste the sting of cocaine in his mouth and wanted to let my hands run over his broad shoulders, but I stopped and pulled away.

‘Tempting.' I licked my lips.

I caught Billy's icy stare from across the garden. Damn. Whenever he looked at me those days, I could see the suspicion in his eyes.

As the night wore on, guitars came out and a Christmas jam-band formed, made up of some of Australia's finest musicians. They christened themselves the Christmas Leftovers and rocked up a set of carols. At midnight we enjoyed the fruits of Pete's pyromania and a spectacular array of explosions burst over us, sending tendrils of smoke and the heady smell of gunpowder into the air. The grand finale lit up the sky and then whimpered back to earth, catching in the trees.

‘Shit!' someone called. ‘You've set the yard on fire.'

Flames leapt from the upper branches and someone raced to find a hose. Guests ran screaming as a powerful stream of water brought the night to a soggy end.

*

The next morning, I was first up to greet Christmas Day. I phoned home at first light, knowing the kids would be blistering to rip open Santa's gifts. After picking at unappetising leftovers for breakfast, I sat on the back step, dragging on a cigarette and blowing steam from my instant coffee. The heavy iron door was propped open from the night before; no-one had bothered locking up. There was nothing to steal but rubbish.

What would this new year bring, I wondered. Peace and trust in my relationship? My big break? Or just more partying? The sun burned into my shins and a neighbourhood cat fossicked through the backyard. Joey joined me and we began the clean-up, picking up discarded plates and glasses. No-one else stirred for hours and eventually I was all alone with my thoughts and a hangover. Silent day. Holy day. All was calm. All was bright.

Vivien left town. Rhett disappeared overseas for a stint. A few weeks into 1986 we watched, along with the rest of the world, as the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded. Glued to the television, I felt sick as the cameras panned across horror-struck faces. Kids all over the planet were watching. It was a horrible event and the media milked it for all it was worth, wringing every last drop of coverage out of it. In the end, we turned off the television and let the world grieve without us.

After the high of my film debut, my acting career seemed to have stalled. Bedford and Pearce sent me for a few ridiculous cattle calls for television commercials, but I didn't present as the girl next door and that was usually what these ad monkeys were looking for.

Finally I was called in to audition for the part of a punk rocker. Now that was more up my alley. I pulled on some loud clothes, slinked a pair of fishnet stockings over my skinny white legs, frizzed my hair and slathered on the make up with a trowel. The result was suitably menacing and I landed the gig. The ad was part of a public-awareness campaign to educate people about the new threat of AIDS. My character was Vicki, a punk, who was sharing a couch with her equally spiky boyfriend, discussing the finer points of condom usage. The campaign was to be shown overseas and therefore paid top dollar. We celebrated with a bottle of cheap champagne and a big night out in the Cross. It happened to be my twentieth birthday, but I told no-one how old I was. Most of the Benny's crowd were five or six years older, and I did not want to be treated as the baby of the group.

With Vivien out of town, Billy and I needed a new dealer. For some months now I had shared a passing acquaintance with Jackie, an attractive blonde woman pushing thirty who was rumoured to be the unofficial coke-supplier at Benny's. This probably explained why Vivien had never joined us at that particular venue, preferring to haunt the corners of the Manzil Room.

It made sense now to get to know Jackie a little better, and we invited her over to our booth for a drink. She was clad as always in a white leather mini-jacket with fringed sleeves, matching white leather mini-skirt and white ankle boots. She was a cowgirl vision with perfect teeth and a glowing tan. Her sidekick, Brian, was a large, hairy man with a permanent scowl and close-set eyes. He didn't say much, but stalked behind his girlfriend like a personal bodyguard.

Ice-cold and remote as Siberia, Jackie was hard to read. Settled into our booth, she lit up a long, thin cigarette and threw her blonde mane over her shoulder.

‘So, what's your story, then?' she asked, looking me up and down. I gave her the abridged version. When I told her I dreamed of living in New York, she leaned forward, blew a slow stream of smoke from the corner of her mouth and looked me in the eye.

‘Me too. Want a line?'

‘Sure,' I said. We made our way to the crowded restroom, squeezed into a cubicle and shut the door. The coke was smooth and clean and Jackie was generous. I must have said something right.

The rest of the evening unfolded as most of them did and we ended up at Baron's, with much sniffing and grinding of teeth and downing of doubles to help calm us down. Billy drew me into his arms, whispered ‘Happy birthday, love', and I dozed in his lap as the party carried on around us.

The next day Billy filled me in on Jackie's story. Rumour had it that she was a former high-class callgirl who had been married briefly to a real underworld figure, a Sydney Al Capone. She had appeared in a spread for
Playboy
or
Penthouse
and Billy was keen to get his hands on a copy of that! We'd exchanged phone numbers and at seven that night, she rang and invited the two us to join her and Brian for dinner. For the next few months, we became inseparable.

‘You guys are the first people who've made me really laugh in a long time,' she said to me one night. ‘This scene can be depressing sometimes.' I realised that for all her partying, Jackie was a sad woman. She was intelligent, gorgeous and surrounded by friends – but she was lonely. She hid behind her body and her drugs. Were we alike, I wondered. Or would we be, if I stuck around the scene for much longer?

*

One night we were sitting around Boystown, waiting for the shriek of the midnight owl to tell us it was time to hit the Cross. Jackie left the room to make a telephone call and returned with bad news: there had been a big bust somewhere up the line and there would be no more coke that night. This put a damper on our plans somewhat.

‘Come with me,' said Jackie, nodding my way. ‘I know a guy who might be able to help us out.'

Leaving Billy and Brian behind, we crawled into her slick little white sports car and headed to Bondi Beach. We parked outside a nondescript cottage and I waited in the car while Jackie went inside. Fiddling with the radio, I found a good station and put my head back, closing my eyes as Simple Minds crooned, ‘Don't you – forget about me.' When she finally reappeared, Jackie was looking worse for wear.

‘He didn't have any. Only smack. So I got some of that.'

We drove back to Goodhope Street in silence. I had never tried heroin and the very word seemed poisonous as a scorpion. It was the mother of all drugs, if you believed the legend. I wasn't keen, but I trusted Jackie and felt perhaps I should at least give it a try.

Back home, we snuck upstairs to the bedroom. Jackie went first, to show me that it was safe, which meant I'd be using her needle, although it had been fresh to begin with. She injected me and the rush almost knocked me down. I shut my eyes and swooned into a chair, then stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom. Heroin did not agree with me. I spent the rest of the night vomiting, retching until there was nothing left to expel but air and noise and the aching in my ribs.

*

The next day I woke to a burning brain and a creeping sense of self-loathing. I couldn't believe my own stupidity. I had crossed a line and I hated myself for it. Looking at my watch, I realised with horror that I was due in an hour at the AIDS shoot. I jumped into the mouldy shower, scrubbed at my regrets and slipped into my punk costume, then borrowed some money from the coin jar for a cab.

The shoot took less than an hour. ‘It's not Shakespeare. Just bang out the lines and we can get the hell out of here,' was the director's approach. I liked his style. My flash-in-the-pan, blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene played out like this:

Two punks sit on a couch in a dingy living room, music playing in the background.

Boy has condom in hand and looks to girl.

‘Hey, Vicki, I got a condom,' he says, sounding as thick as a plank of wood.

‘Do you know how to use it?' Vicki asks.

‘Yeah,' Thick-head replies.

‘Well, now all you need is someone to use it with,' answers Vicki drily.

I was home by lunchtime. What a great spokesperson I was for an AIDS campaign, I thought bitterly as I crawled back into bed with Billy. Heroin was the last thing I needed in my life. I hated myself for sinking so low, and for having been so weak and gullible. Jackie was a dangerous friend, I realised. I wanted to reach great heights in life. I wanted my family to be proud of me. The mirror that morning had revealed a pale, spotty face and eyes streaked with red. Eyes like that could obscure the view. I needed to clean up my act and focus on where I wanted to be, instead of wallowing where I was. I needed to start looking at the stars again.