Tales From A Broad (35 page)

‘Collin lost his future,' Caroline says to Phil.

‘Collin's lost the furniture,' is what Tilda hears from Dana.

I take some more champagne and cheer Frank. He picks his up and drinks. Ah, forget it, I'm through trying. We'll have one of those nights where we float through the same evening as if we never met. We'll talk tomorrow as if nothing went astray and by evening we'll hash it all out until I'm right.

Time to shmooze.

I stop at each person, pull up a chair and talk to them while they eat, or travel with them while they get seconds, thirds, fourths. I'm completely annoying but I can't stop because I don't have my friend Frank to just be with and I want him to see how popular I am. I'm completely not tempted to try the garlic prawn Valerie is offering and we're talking away – well, I am – when suddenly, we hear a chair sharply, forcefully scraping back over the floor. Collin is standing, fork in the air, beet-red. Moving away from the table, he stabs his fork in the direction of his plate. He swings it to his left and uses it to direct a waitress over. He jabs his fork again and again, backing up, an invisible duel on hand. He speaks rapidly, excitedly, to the waitress, eyes wild and fearful.

‘What happened? What happened?' we are all asking each other. I have never seen Collin's mouth move at all and here it is, up and down and up and down. Valerie and I give each other a ‘whatthefuck?' shrug. The news spreads downwind. Finally, it reaches me. ‘There's an earwig in Collin's lobster bisque!'

The 50 dinners at the Shangri-la, famous for its glorious buffets, the 40 bottles of Moët, some unopened, the odd beer, various juices, Diet Cokes and sodas are all on the house, picked up by management. And now we're off. Dancing!

Collin's pockets are intact, save for an earwig.

We go to a bar in the basement level of a shopping centre. All the stores are closed and dark. I'm slightly drunk, wearing non-mall clothes at a non-mall hour in a shut-down mall. No sounds at all except for the forceful buzz of electricity and a few hollow giggles. It's as if we decided to do lines in Dad's office at night instead of going to some more perfect place, like a car. It knocks the adrenaline down a few pegs, makes you stop and think about what you're doing; it reprimands and inhibits. I swing my scarf-bedspread around my neck and brace myself for the uphill hike to having a good time.

‘Does it look better over my head and around my neck or just hanging loose over my shoulders?' I ask Samantha, who doesn't hear. ‘Samantha! Samantha! Does it …' But she doesn't turn around. Caroline has everyone's attention. She's prepping us on the Johnny Cash Pub, telling us how much fun this place is, how much we'll love it. They screw a railing on the bar and let people dance and swing once they're good and smashed. They only play classic rock. I raise my hand. ‘Yes, you in the back?' Caroline addresses me.

‘And they play Johnny Cash, right?' I say.

‘I don't think so, but they have a bust of him by the cash register.'

I look across to the Young Gurl Cutz beauty salon and then over to The Bra Bazaar. Rock? I don't hear a note, not a chord, not the thrum of a bass. I only hear a pop. It is from Sam, who's sitting on a marble bench, next to a fake fir tree, a bottle of nicked champagne to his lips. I go over, adjusting my scarf, wrapping it around my neck twice, weaving it through my arms, taking it slightly off the shoulders and casually tying the ends behind my back.

‘Ah, come to share?' he asks.

‘Just the bench,' I answer, tucking up my trousers, admiring how the threading goes from green to crimson depending on the light. I take out my own nicked bottle. ‘Well, there were so many just left there,' I say.

‘Lucky for us we kept our wits about us,' Sam says and points out his second bottle behind a fake tree branch.

‘Yeah, while everyone else ran through the halls screaming, “An earwig! An earwig!”' I laugh.

Caroline finishes her introduction and leads us in. The minute we cross the threshold, we forget the morgueishness of the sanitary mall and catch a wave of floor-beer stink and cigarette fumes. The bartenders speed-walk from end to end, multitasking like they invented the word. The music tries to get you to do something brainless and wild on the dance floor, the stage or even on the bar, which is now being set up with the steel rails, just like Caroline said.

I hide my bottle behind me and give a one-armed
namaste
to the door guy. Sam and I take a seat in the corner and put the bottles in a dark nook under the table. Valerie, Frank, Dana and regular Collin, Tess and Clive, Simon and Melanie, and even Jennifer and Ward, who have left their kids for the first time, come to join us. I tell Jennifer that I like her new GAP skirt as I take my scarf off and whoosh it around my neck. ‘Thanks. Ward said I could get it the day he got his second set of spare golf clubs. Well. That's quite an outfit you have on, Fran.' Jennifer is always so sweet.

Irish Kell beckons us to the dance floor. I'm really not entirely in the mood but I feel it's my duty … to the Irish. I tug at Frank but he begs off; Sam tags Valerie, but she says, ‘Next song, doll.' So, I dance with Sam. Not long after, the floor gets crowded; Frank starts dancing with Valerie. Then Jennifer, Melanie, Pam and Dana get up while their husbands hope this next lager will make them better dancers.

At ‘Tequila Sunrise' Sam and I go back to our table. A waitress in pink hot pants comes over. ‘I'm sorry, you can't bring in from the outside.' She motions to his bottle.

‘No worries,' Sam shouts over the music. The waitress leans in and he orders us each a vodka. ‘Thanks love.' He pats her on the rear. She returns with four drinks for us.

I'm looking at that bar and looking at that bar and now I just have to hop on that bar. Kell is leaving, goddammit, and she wants us to make some noise. Sam's got his hands all over Valerie, turning right and left to tell whoever is near, ‘This is my wife. Isn't she gorgeous?' Valerie smiles, rolls her eyes and slithers out to go sit down. I've got my place on the bar and I'm taking myself seriously, I'm bringing cultures of the world together in just one outfit and all I know is I'm just a shootin' star and all the world will love me just because, because I am … Frank grabs my ankle. He squeezes it. I'm supposed to stop. Shit, what a bad place to stop. I look at Frank and see an urgency; he is clearly disturbed. I unlock arms with Sam and Jonelle and unsteadily bend over to him. ‘What?'

‘We have to go. The kids are sick. Susie called on my cell phone.'

I feel so entirely foolish and criminal. There I was peeling away, abandoning all responsibility, about to walk the length of the bar swinging my enormous scarf and shining my
bindi
. Now, I'm exposed and facing demons because I am a bad mother and sooner or later we all get caught. My kids are sick and I'm here, pulling my heel out of some poor sod's drink, apologising to a young girl for stepping on her pocketbook, taking Frank's hand and jumping off a bar in a dead mall. My flared pants get caught on the beer tap and I flatten out over the railing like a crashing plane, ripping the pants and landing face down. When I get up, the pants stay down. The tape did not hold up as well as I had hoped. My ankle hurts and my knee is ripped and bleeding. As Frank helps me to the door, Valerie comes over and asks if she can have a ride back to Fortune Gardens with us. She's feeling a little tired, she says.

When we get on the expressway, Valerie's phone goes off. ‘Sam, doll, I told you I was just feeling poorly because, you know … I can't understand you. Sam? Sam!
Sam!

‘His phone just went,' she says, punching buttons on her phone.

‘Sam! Sam?' she shouts. We all can hear Sam's phone clattering onto the floor, his distant voice sounding unreal as he says, ‘Look, it wasn't like that love … don't do that, mate … [thud]' and the Beach Boys sing, ‘Wouldn't it be nice …'

‘We'll go back, Valerie,' Frank states.

‘Just stop the car.'

‘No, Valerie, we'll take you back,' Frank insists.

She pukes on my
shalwar
. ‘Oh, too late, sorry Fran, all over your new outfit.'

‘Don't worry, Valerie. We're here with you. You're fine,' Frank comforts.

‘It's all right, I can clean it, I think,' I say.

When we get back to the Johnny Cash Pub, no one is there. We take Valerie home and Sam isn't there either. Frank offers to sit with her while I return to our house to tend to the kids.

‘You don't think I've been through this with Sam Marks before?' She vomits again.

‘I don't know, Valerie, you're not well,' I say.

‘Comes with the territory, mate,' she says with an unconvincing smile. ‘I'll be right.' She leads us out the door and adds, ‘I'm just pregnant.'

By about four in the morning, me, Frank, Huxley and Sadie are all sweating out our fever and taking Panadol. We watch some late, late movies and take turns adjusting the aircon and blankets. By seven in the morning, we're still camped out on the living-room floor, eating toast with lime marmalade.

Susie is delivering soufflé to Francis.

Irish Kell is calling for her final taxi.

Valerie is 12 weeks pregnant.

And Sam is in jail for ‘outraging the modesty of a woman'. ‘Thanks love.' (Pat pat.)

What will become of us?

A sobering silence fell upon the land and the whirl of social activity halted for many moons. Two masters of discipline were sent to me by the gods so that I might follow in their path – the path to a clean heart, healthy lungs and a damned good liver.

One day, I was minding my own business down at the pool, trying to get through some work, when I heard Samantha cry out, ‘There she is! Eating raisins!' Well, actually, I was reading more than raisining, but what of it? Would I look up to find a few grapes after me? People for the Protection of Produce? Was she narking on me to the gendarmes? No, of course not. She was simply pointing me out to a couple of aliens. They were tall creatures with alabaster skin that shone as if it were made of marble; highways of finely developed muscles covered their whole bodies, including their glistening, shaven pates. ‘Hmmm, so this is what Man will look like in 10,000 years, eh Darwin?' I think.

They stride over sinew-fully in their bathing suits. With an apparent understanding of English, they extend their hands, as we do, and introduce themselves. They are Marge and Tom.

‘Okay,' I say, ‘but I'm gonna have to rename you for the book. You'll be Majestic and you'll be Magnus.'

‘Fine,' they say.

Samantha met them at the pool the other day. Well, actually, she two-finger-whistled down from her balcony to them and then shouted, ‘You averaged 35 seconds a lap! That's incredible. Wait there. I'm coming down.' A few minutes later, she appeared before them in her swimsuit, clutching her goggles. And humbly, standing in the shadow of their large greatness, she implored, ‘Teach me.'

Maj and Mag are professional triathletes and after a small matter of paying a fee and undergoing a test of our commitment, which amounted to proffering said fee, we were taken under their tutelage. We were told to rise and shine with the bullfrogs at 0400 for time trials at the track.

A week later, I heard Samantha say, ‘Let's have a clambake' and I said, ‘Sure, why not?' Except what she really said was, ‘I'm signing you up for the Singapore marathon.' See, she did that thing you can do to a puppy – use the exciting ‘I got a treat for you' voice when you're actually telling him ‘You're going to the vet'. Either way, you get the same doggy jig. Samantha made it sound like fun. Time trials! 0400!

Apparently, according to our track times, we were likely to do very well in the race. Maj waved a hand at me dismissively when I questioned how twice around a track could possibly tell the whole story of a 26-mile race. She said, ‘If you follow my workouts exactly and eat Biospliven bars, it will happen. And, here, take this carton to sell to other athletes in your neighbourhood.' The side of the box read: ‘Liven it up with Biospliven. Yeah!' and showed Maj striking a Mr Universe pose. That's where I'd seen her before, on the Biospliven commercials. Yeah! ‘By my calculations, you will complete the race in under 3:30,' she said.

Maj and Mag began emailing workouts to us. Every night, I'd see what new torture tomorrow would bring. Each day seemed to start at five, except for our day off, which was marked with ‘DON'T FORGET THIS IS YOUR DAY OFF –
HAVE FUN!' Oh my gosh, I forgot it was my day off and I just ran nine million miles in the blazing sun. Silly me.