Pants on Fire (3 page)

What is it with this party? I wondered, as he took my hand and dragged me off. People were either telling me what to do or physically assaulting me. I looked back to see some familiar eyebrows peeping over the back of the sofa. They did a quick one-two and disappeared again.

“I'm going to show you something you'll never forget, Pinkie,” said Jasper, grinning broadly as he weaved through the crowd.

“You've already done that.” I nodded in the direction of his penis hat.

“Oh, I'd forgotten I was wearing that,” he said, taking it off and dumping it on the floor. “That's better, my brain's got some room. Come with me, little girl . . .”

He led me out the front door of the studio and up the main stairs of the building.

“We're not taking the lift for a reason,” Jasper explained, beginning to puff after the second flight. “I want you to earn this. We'll just have a ciggie break here first, I think.”

He leaned against the wall and lit up. I don't really smoke, but sometimes when I'm with someone who clearly adores it I can't resist trying it again in case it's nicer than I remember. So I helped myself from his packet and we smoked together in silence. It was horrible as usual. Every now and then Jasper looked at me, smiling and nodding as if we were sharing some great secret. I was beginning to wonder if he was actually mad, but after he'd ground both cigarette ends into the stairs with his boot heel he took my hand and we set off again.

Five more flights up we came to a door with a large padlock on it. Jasper pulled an enormous bunch of keys out of his jeans and opened it.

“I used to have a studio in this building. I kept this key because I always knew I'd need it one day. This is that day.”

He threw the door open and we stepped out onto the roof.

Sydney Harbour was spread out below us, a map of shiny blue in the January sunshine. Curving over our heads was a clear dome the colour of skies I'd only ever seen on postcards. The water in the harbour sparkled like lurex. Yachts darted around like little white hankies and ferries chugged along purposefully. Everything looked choreographed. The view was unbroken right out to what I guessed were the Heads and the Pacific Ocean beyond. You could see all the way over to Taronga Zoo and to Manly in the distance.

“Wow,” I said, for want of a better word. “We just don't have skies this big in England. Nothing is on this scale. Look at it.”

“It's a pretty city, isn't it, Pinkie?” said Jasper. “Come round here.”

From the other side of the roof we could see the entire skyline of the CBD, the Opera House, the Bridge, North Sydney and all the way to the Blue Mountains.

“Thank you, Jasper,” I said. “This is incredible.”

“Hey, Pinkie, how did you know my name? And what's yours, by the way? Not that I'm going to call you anything else but Pinkie until the day we die in each other's arms, but you might as well tell me for the record.”

“Georgia. Georgiana Abbott.”

“Georgie Abbott—you're the chick who's come over to work on
Glow,
right?”

I couldn't be bothered to correct him. Georgie, George, Ringo, whatever.

“So Georgie,” he continued, “how do you like the bunch of tight-arsed neurotics you work with, then? Debbie Brent wouldn't know a decent photograph if it sprang up and gave her a pap smear, neither would that living skeleton Zoe Siegler, and Maxine Thane is tighter with a dollar than a nun's twat. Is that how you knew who I was? Did she tell you? Or was it that card-carrying psycho Liinda Vidovic? She boiled many bunnies lately?”

“Do you know everybody who works on
Glow
?” I asked him, appalled, but also intrigued.

“This is Sydney, Pinkie. Let's just say I know everybody.”

I didn't know then quite how true that was.

After Jasper's outburst we just stood there for a while, gazing at the splendour around us, which I couldn't help feeling included him. Once he stopped trying to be clever—or basically, once he shut up, which was rarely—Jasper was really quite beautiful. He had dead-straight long black hair, which I'm a total sucker for, and a sensitive face with a delicate, refined mouth. He had a way of cocking his head to one side and looking up at you through narrowed eyes, which was very attractive.

The only thing marring Jasper's face—he even had nice skin—was that stupid little pubey beard. But with all my years of experience choosing cover shots from photographers' negs, before the model's zits had been digitally removed, I just narrowed my eyes and edited it out.

While I was sneaking covert looks at him, Jasper was having a moment of his own, spinning round slowly while gazing up at the sky, his arms spread out like wings. This gave me an excellent chance to observe him. Slim frame, built for speed rather than strength. Very long legs. Very long legs in bright pink trousers. Bright pink trousers and a double-breasted navy blazer with gold buttons. A pale pink button-down shirt. Hair slicked back and licking his collar. Aviator sunglasses with gold rims. Cuban heel boots. It was a kooky look. I liked it a lot.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“I'm trying to connect with the sky.”

“Is it working?”

“I think I need another joint.”

“And by the way, what are those trousers?”

He stopped suddenly and grinned at me, taking hold of the trouser legs and pulling them out to the side as if he was about to do a ballet-class curtsy.

“Golf pants. Like 'em?”

“I love them. They're nuts. And they go with my hat.”

“Pinkie and Pink, you see? I took one look at that hat and thought, that Pinkie's for me.”

I didn't comment. They can talk real pretty, these Aussie men, I thought. And they have quite the sparkliest eyes on earth. But after Billy's uninvited oral assault I was still feeling a bit wary.

Jasper came over to the parapet, took out his cigarette papers and rolled another reefer, using only his left hand. I hadn't noticed he was left-handed before. He noticed me noticing.

“Ambidextrous,” he said, twisting the end of the paper with his right hand and putting it between my lips. “Like Leonardo.” With his left hand he flourished a Zippo lighter with an enormous flame and lit the tip. I took a hit and handed it back to him.

“Who are you, Jasper?” I asked. “What do you do? And why are you so horrible about the women I work with? Have you slept with all of them?”

“No, far worse. I've worked with all of them. I'm a fashion photographer. But one day I'm going to be a very famous film director and
Glow
magazine is going to beg me for an interview, which I will of course refuse.”

“Can I be on your table at the Oscars?”

“You can come up and collect it with me.”

 

 

After we finished the joint, Jasper insisted I try his routine of spinning round while looking at the sky.

“Whirligig, whirligig, Pinkie darling,” he said, waltzing me in circles until I felt seriously dizzy. Then we went back to gazing at the view and I began to feel uncomfortably like he was looking for the right moment to kiss me. Glorious though the setting was, I really didn't feel like another mystery tongue sandwich, especially from someone who reminded me a little bit of Rick, so I suggested we should go back down to the party. I may have told some small fib about having abandoned a friend down there. Whatever I said, Jasper suddenly seemed to snap back to consciousness.

“The party, right, the party . . .” he said, resuming his nodding dog impersonation. “Yeah, friends, party, downstairs. We'd better split, Pinkie. Well, it was good to share this with you. Perhaps I can show you some more incredible sights of Sydney before too long. This is my town, you know.”

We caught the lift back down to the fourth floor. Outside the door to the studio, where we could hear the party pounding, Jasper stopped, gave me another of his head-on-the-side squinty smiles and ran a finger gently over my cheek.

“It was fun, Pinkie. Catch you later, baby.”

And then he disappeared into the studio, practically shutting the door in my face. I pushed it open and squeezed back into the crowd, which now seemed even bigger and noisier. The monotonous techno beats had been replaced with 70s disco and more people were dancing. Others were piled on the sofas and armchairs lined along the walls, locked in deep conversation.

After Jasper's brain-spinning dance I had no idea how long we'd been upstairs, but I felt like the party had shifted a couple of gears in that time. A passing waiter offered me a tray of drinks and I took two glasses of water, downed them in quick succession and put the empty glasses back on the tray.

Then I just stood there, realising that I didn't really know a soul in the place. For the first time since I'd arrived at the party I felt a bit self-conscious. And Jasper's joint was making me super-aware of snatches of nearby conversation.

“You should have seen his face when she walked into the room!” said a short red-faced man wearing a Madame de Pompadour wig to a tall thin woman wearing a bald wig.

“Well, I never thought he had any talent anyway,” I overheard a middle-aged man in Playboy Bunny ears say to another who was wearing a flowery ladies' swimming cap. “Just another of Peter's pretty cocksuckers.”

“But I thought that was his sister? So that's the mother? My God, the surgery! Who is her surgeon, do you know?”

“I heard he skimmed ten mill off the top and gave it back to them ready for the liquidators to move in . . .”

“No, she worked the flannel shoe back with the bias-cut georgette, it was so ug, we were all puking . . .”

“He paid someone to poison all those trees because they were blocking his view of the harbour . . .”

I stood there telling myself that none of these people were talking about me and trying to breathe deeply because I felt at any moment I could be violently ill. I tried to distract myself by looking at the whirling dancers—bad idea, too much whirling—I looked at the floor—no, too floory—at all the people—oh no, more conversation. Breathe. Breathe. Cigarette smoke, oh yuk. Pot smells, oh no! The music sounded terrifying. What was
in
that joint?

“I think you had better come with me.”

Now I really was going nuts—this voice sounded like it was right in my ear. It was. Antony Maybury looked into my face with a serious expression, raised his left eyebrow and gestured with his right for me to follow him. I did. There was something about Antony that made me trust him, even in my brain-fuddled state. Unlike my other new male friends, he didn't grab my hand, but I followed easily in his slipstream along a corridor that ran past several rooms full of people, then round a corner and into another small room with nothing in it except big square cushions on the wooden floor. There were two picture windows framing a harbour view from a lower angle. Sparkly water. Yachts bobbing. Seagulls. The windows were open and a delicious breeze floated in. I pulled my pink feather hat off my head and practically fell onto the floor. I closed my eyes. The room went round and round. I groaned.

“Stay there, don't move,” said Antony and left the room.

It was a great relief to be somewhere relatively quiet, and the breeze was heaven, but I still felt really awful. I kept having great flashes of insight, which would disappear as suddenly as they had come, leaving no trace. It was like trying to hold on to passing clouds and it had a strange effect on time. Each great thought seemed to last an aeon and then when they were gone, it was as if time had never existed. Most unsettling.

After what could have been two minutes, or several ice ages, Antony came back holding a huge bottle of Coca Cola, a glass with a slice of lime in it, a silver ice bucket, a flannel and a large dinner plate. He laid the cold, wet flannel on my forehead as he filled the glass with ice, then Coke, and handed it to me.

“You must drink this,” he said. “It's the only thing that will make you feel better.”

“What's wrong with me?”

“Supersonic hydroponic.”

“What?”

“Marijuana. Pot. Mary Jane. Hemp. Weed. Grass. Ganga. Spliff. Silly cigarettes. Whatever you like to call it. But more so. Did you, by any chance, have a little smoko with Jasper O'Connor?”

“Well, yes, I did . . .” I was already on my second glass of Coke, which had suddenly become the most ambrosial drink the world had ever known. “I did have a few tiny tokes.”

“Well, you've just had another Sydney lesson,” said Antony, sitting down behind my head. “That wasn't a harmless little Portobello puff you just had. That was supersonic hydroponic Sydney weed, grown in water laced with all kinds of growth-promoting and mind-expanding chemicals. If you're not used to it, hydro pot can snake you out like a bad tab of acid. It can be very unpleasant.”

“You're not kidding. I thought I was going bonkers. Do you know, while you were gone, I thought of the most amazing thing to tell you about this party, but I . . . can't remember it . . .”

Antony threw back his head and laughed a very loud pantomime laugh.

“HA HA HA HA HA. Oh, that is classic hydro psychosis. You feel as though the meaning of the Rosetta Stone has been made clear to you, and only you, if you could just remember what it was. It's like being all sentient and having Alzheimer's simultaneously, isn't it. You poor little thing.”

“But Jasper smoked most of the joint, and it was the second one I've seen him have. If I'd had that much I'd be in hospital.”

“Jasper O'Connor is a famous pothead. He smoked pot all day, every day. People say marijuana is non-addictive. Jasper O'Connor and his like are proof that's total bullshit. He can't get out of bed in the morning without having a joint, and ensuring he has a constant supply, the stronger the better, is the main purpose of his life. Which is a shame, because he is a very talented photographer. Or he was. Pot is also the reason he makes pathetic short films, like the one he was describing earlier, and thinks they make Fellini look creatively constrained. It's also why he never meets the Tropfest deadline. He started out with a very good brain and he has fried it totally. I'd hate to see that happen to you.”