House of Sticks (25 page)

Under the shower she expressed milk by hand. Creamy runnels washed across the tiles, swirled with the water down the drain. She kept going until her hands were sore and her breasts felt eased and softer. Then she shaved her legs, using the little plastic bottle of shower gel. It smelled like coconut and something else, some tropical flower. She stood in the shining room drying herself. In the spotless mirror she turned her head to one side and then to the other. Wrapped the towel tighter. Stood up straight.
You're only thirty-four
.

She shared a cab to the venue with Mickey and Beth.

Bonnie sat behind the driver, fingers spread on her knees, nail polish not quite dry. She could smell it, as well as the deodoriser thing that dangled from the rear-view mirror — harsh, synthetic smells — and there was also, softer and more intimate, the perfume one of the others was wearing, or maybe hair product. Her own make-up, the shower gel.

Her nerves were running now. The others' too. They spoke but didn't listen, flung out chatter to fill the space. Legs jiggled, sighs heaved.

Down the long, crowded street the car moved, slow in the stop-start traffic. Bonnie looked out the window. A small queue outside a nightclub — girls in short skirts and bare legs, arms wrapped around ribcages, shoulders hunched. Lights, signs. Rubbish on the ground. Bouncers at the entrance to a strip place. She put her window down a bit. The air blew cold on her face, put tears in her eyes.

Someone had hung some placards with
Nights Underground
on either side of the stage and over the merch table, but other than that it seemed just like a normal show. The crowd a bit older maybe. Bonnie had forgotten how dark it always was, how people stood in bunches, making the place feel cramped even when it wasn't. The way you always seemed to be squeezing past.

She stood beside the mixing desk. The support band was loud. They looked so small, so far away on the stage. Little figures, bright-lit, grinding away at their instruments, yelling into microphones. Their faces just blurs.

‘I don't know — they're just a bit
blah
,' a woman shouted into her friend's ear.

‘They're trying too hard,' the friend shouted back.

‘Let's go to the front bar.' They turned and pushed past.

Bonnie drank, felt the dry beer fizz at the back of her throat. She shook back her hair and looked up at the chandeliers now glowing softly, the ceiling's vault filled at last with the right kind of mystery. She straightened her shoulders, felt the strap of her bag, the sweep of her new clothes, the lift in the heels of her good boots. The mask of make-up on her face. Slid her thumbnail under the edge of the label on her beer bottle, worrying at the wet gluey paper.

The backstage room was a white-painted box with fluorescent lighting. Dirty blue carpet. Plastic chairs with cracks in the bottoms. On the wall next to the mirror, above the tubs full of bottles and icy water, someone had written
Check you'r rider — tightarse alert
. Bonnie reached over and took another beer, twisted off the top.

‘Fuck, I wish we could smoke.' Beth sat low in one of the chairs, unplugged bass guitar cradled in her lap, strings buzzing and clacking under her fingers.

Mickey stood at the mirror, putting on lipstick. ‘How long have we got?'

‘About fifteen,' said Henry. ‘These guys should finish any moment.'

Bonnie found her guitar case and opened it. She took a seat beside Beth and began her own warm-up. The tinny, depthless twanging hardly sounded over the booming of the band up on the stage. She leaned her beer-thick head against the wall and watched the busy clamber of her fingers, up and down.

On the stage it was hot. Only the first couple of rows of faces showed in the spill of the lights, all the rest like a dark blanket spreading further than she let herself look. She turned back to her amp, fiddled with her levels just for something to do.

‘Hello,' said Mickey into the mic, and a wave of cheering rolled up off the crowd. Two spotlights, bright almost-white glares of yellow and pink, lapped across the stage to meet in the middle, locking in together over Mickey and her guitar. Bonnie watched her there in the dazzle, face lifted, one arm raised, open to the invisible sea of people. Her cheek in profile curved with her smile. There was no way she could see any more than Bonnie, but still she looked out there, smiled, kept her eyes raised as she dropped her arm, dipped her shoulder and hit the opening chords of the first song.

Bonnie thought of something she'd read in a review once.
Meyers' performance is so generous it's hard not to feel like every song is being sung just for you
. She saw the lit-up front rows, the heads all turned to Mickey, tilting like a field of sunflowers.

Further over, Lloyd, Henry and Beth were ranged level with Bonnie along the back of the stage. Bathed in their own softer lights they appeared, on the outside anyway, to be incredibly calm. Composed, focused. She breathed, and felt her own wash of nerves take a useful shape. She glanced down at her guitar, checked the volume and tone knobs, then back up at Henry. They were here to work. Out the front Mickey started to sing the first verse. Henry nodded, adjusted his grip on the drumsticks, and they gathered themselves. Reined in all their slow-built heaving energy, smoothed it, held it down with an even pressure. Went into the song.

Afterwards they stood around the band room. The white light showed the sweat on their faces, the slip and blur of Mickey's lipstick, the dark stains under the arms of Henry's shirt.

People edged in the door. Mickey hugged and kissed and laughed and made introductions that were lost in the whirl of talk. More drinks were passed around. Someone opened a bottle of champagne. It was crowded and noisy and the lights seemed even harsher than before, but Bonnie stood with a beer in one hand and a plastic cup of champagne in the other, half listening to Henry and Lloyd saying things like ‘I had too much of myself in the fold-back at the start' and ‘I reckon
Catching Birds
works better when we play it slow like that', and felt it still surging in her, the high of the show. The feeling she'd known she'd missed but forgotten how much, the glorious soaring that was so much better than any drug she'd ever taken.

‘Excuse me.' A woman slipped around Henry and stood next to her. ‘I just wanted to say I love your playing.'

‘Oh.' Bonnie stared down at her two drinks. She felt stunned and slow. ‘Thanks.'

‘It's really beautiful. The sounds and the … the … what you make …' The woman laughed. ‘Well, anyway, it's just beautiful.'

‘Thanks.' Bonnie drank from the beer.

The woman lifted her plastic cup. ‘Cheers.'

‘Cheers.' She bumped it with her beer bottle, and then her own plastic cup, and they both laughed a cut-short laugh, then drank and looked away from one another.

‘Anyway …' said the woman, and moved off again.

‘Here you go.' Henry held out a poster and a pen.

‘Oh, I don't need to.' Bonnie held out her drinks. ‘I mean, I'm not really in the band, I just —'

‘No — he wants you to sign it too.' Henry tipped his head towards a young guy standing in the doorway, who put his hands together in a prayer shape and gave a little nod, shoulders curved in with self-consciousness.

‘Okay, then.'

Henry took the beer and gave her the pen. He spread the poster against the wall and held it there for her, and Bonnie added her own scribble to the others in the white space under the photo of Mickey.

‘Haven't seen you in a while.' It was a tall guy with glasses. Long, badly cut hair tucked behind his ears. He held a bundle of CDs and wore an old Mickey t-shirt, from a tour years before, worn and faded.

‘Um. Sorry, I don't think we've …?'

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. So many nights, so many faces.' He rolled his eyes. Behind his glasses they were small and flat.

‘Sorry.' She glanced around. Henry and Lloyd had moved off.
Bugger
, she thought.

‘Bret,' said the man. ‘I met you last time you played with Mickey. Here, actually.'

‘Oh.' She tried not to keep looking around so obviously. ‘Sorry. I've got a terrible memory.'

‘I'm not very memorable.' The man shrugged.

‘No, it's not that. It's just, you know …'

‘Yeah, yeah.' He stood square and close, unmoving.

‘I'm Bonnie,' she heard herself say weakly.

‘I know.'

They stood in a bubble of silence within the frenzy of chatter.

Oh god, just leave me alone
.
I can't be bothered with weirdos tonight
. She drew in a breath and gestured vaguely towards the door. ‘Well, I guess I'd better …'

But he was turning anyway, his head swivelling, beacon-like. ‘Yeah, sure.' He swung his long body around, and Bonnie caught a whiff of laundry detergent. His arms gangling out of the t-shirt sleeves looked white and soft. She followed his gaze and saw Mickey alone in a little clear spot, momentarily abandoned.
Whoops
, thought Bonnie, but relief bubbled up too, and she wended her way to the door and out.

She passed the stage scattered with half-packed equipment and crossed the room that yawned its emptiness, so total, as if none of it had ever happened. The carpet was littered with plastic glasses, and she clipped one with her toe.

In the toilets the door echoed and clanged. She sat in the cubicle and heard the loudness of her own breathing, her pee in a full drunken stream. When she washed her hands she didn't look up at the mirror.

The group — band, friends, hangers-on — had moved from the back room to the area in front of the stage. A security guy had appeared and was circling heavily, making shooing movements and saying, ‘All right, people. Time to move on.'

What was everyone doing now? Was anyone going out? There was a party. There were two parties. People hovered, made suggestions, lifted shoulders and tilted heads, spread palms in an offer.

‘I live around the corner. We could swing by the bottle-o, pick up some beers …'

‘There's an indie night at Spectrum. Could be okay …'

‘You know Max, from Higher Mountains? There's a party at his place in Stanmore …'

Bonnie parked herself beside Mickey. The voices darted, and she tried to follow, dragged her gaze from face to face. Under the dimmed chandeliers nobody looked old or sweaty or pale or tired. She gave up on following the talk and settled into admiration. The sweet, round contours of Beth's face with its sharp frame of hair. Henry's lashes showing in thick dark curves when he looked down. Mickey's full mouth with its smudged lipstick. How alive they all were — how quick and young and clever. She was with them. She didn't want to think about anything else.

A decision was made. Coats were dragged on, bags shouldered. Away they went in a jumble, over the carpet, past the bar, leaving the bouncer dangling his meaty hands.

Outside the road was wet and car tyres loud. Specks of rain drifted, sparkled on hair and clothes. Under orange streetlights, against darkened shopfronts they dived into three taxis that pulled over like magic. Bonnie scooted in beside Mickey. The seat cover was ripped and her hand sank into foam only half covered by a web of tape.

‘Oh no!' Mickey stabbed a finger at a looming figure on the footpath. Hunched in the cold, head lowered to peer in at the car window, glasses reflecting twin slashes of light. The bundle of CDs clutched to his chest like a tourist's map. ‘Quick! Get down!' Mickey grabbed her, and they bent flat over their knees, giggling. She felt the blood beat in her face. Her ears sang with it. The car slid out into the traffic and away.

A room with a long curved orange couch, worn vinyl, missing buttons. Old carpet, pale in the dimness. A tall lamp with a green shade. Music, loud. People. Standing, talking, drinking, smoking, dancing.

Bonnie felt it all swell and heave around her. Amazing, to think she used to do things like this all the time — play shows, stay in hotels, go to parties full of strangers. Feelings moved through her like streams of air from passing cars. Bravado, a nostalgic kind of swagger. Fear, anxiety, rising to clog her chest and throat. A thin tide of the helpless guilt from home. Someone gave her a beer, and she swigged at it.

‘Cheers!' Henry materialised and raised his stubby.

‘Great show!' A woman nodded and smiled, then slipped back into the fold.

‘Hi, Bonnie. How's it going?'

Faces appeared. Men and women from other bands, or who'd worked behind bars or for booking agencies. People Bonnie had met years before and not thought of since. Names drifted in and out of her head, and scenes, little snatches from long-ago nights, flickering way off in the distance. A lock-in at a pub in Surry Hills — sitting at a table by the stage still full of equipment, the bartender lining up shots of something. Palace Brothers playing on the PA — the first time she heard them. A bar in Kings Cross, some party full of film people — impossibly beautiful women, men with their shirts halfway unbuttoned, the smell of frangipani, the flowers fallen from someone's hair, their creamy petals crushed on the floor of the second-storey deck. A fight on the street outside — a man face down on the footpath, a cop kneeling on his back. Blood under the flashing lights.