Authors: Leigh Redhead
I left the library and sat down in a little Japanese place on Swanston to eat some sashimi, took Alex’s notebook out of my backpack and looked at it again. It was small and bound in brown leather and unfortunately for me seemed relatively new. There was the information about me and after that a page had been ripped out. Well that was easy. I borrowed a pencil from the waitress and rubbed over the blank page. Something came up but it was hard to see in the dim light. I paid my bill , gave back the pencil and went outside. I could just make out
52 Newcowel Rd 6 pm Monday
. It was Monday today.
The only Newcowell Road was in Springvale, right opposite the railway line. Number 52 was a rundown brick veneer in a street full of rentals. The yard was overgrown grass and one straggly native tree and the blinds were shut tight. I was driving a brown Corolla I’d picked up from Rent-a-Bomb, an ’83 model with cigarette burns all over the upholstery, and I’d dressed in a long skirt, floppy T-shirt and baseball cap over a blond wig.
The wig was a bit ratty, a hangover from my early stripping days when I’d had the idea of going blond and changing my name to Marilyn. I’d lasted a week. The wig was itchy and hot as hell and it was a nightmare trying to fit my own hair into the skullcap underneath. Not to mention the ever-present danger of flicking the thing off and looking like a drag queen halfway through a show.
I’d parked down the street from the house, facing away so I could check it out in my rearview mirror. As I watched a man came out, adjusted his tie, trotted across the road to his car and drove away. A couple of minutes later a battered Ute pulled up and a labourer in paint-spattered overalls went into the house. Then a guy in a suit emerged from a shiny new four-wheel drive and did the same. After half an hour the labourer left and drove away. It was quarter to six and although Alex might have turned up at any second I had to confirm my suspicions about what was going on in there.
I’d converted my green backpack into a private detective bag of tricks and I pulled out a tin, clipboard and pad of raffle tickets and approached number 52, heart beating double time. What if Alex arrived early?
Seedpods from the tree crunched between my feet and the concrete path. I knocked on the opaque glass door and plastered a smile on my face when I saw a shape approach. The Asian woman in the black evening dress who opened the door also had a smile that disappeared as soon as she saw me. I launched into my spiel.
‘Hi,’ I enthused, ‘I’m selling raffle tickets for the local primary school, they’re two dollars a ticket and they’re to raise money for, um, computers and it would really, really help if you could buy a ticket or two.’ I checked out the house behind her while I talked. All I could see was a hallway with old floral wallpaper and threadbare carpet. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and cheap, rose-scented air freshener.
‘What you want?’ the woman said sharply.
I rattled my tin. ‘Money? For the children?’
A door opened further up the hallway and the suit who’d gone in earlier popped out with a white towel around his waist. He walked up the hallway and out of sight. A couple of seconds later a woman came out the same door. She was late thirties and had short blond hair, thin eyebrows and an impressive bust. She was tucking her white blouse into a navy skirt when she saw me and marched over.
‘Hi,’ I started my spiel again, ‘I’m—’
‘We don’t want any.’ She slammed the door in my face.
Fair enough. I walked away and pretended to knock on neighbours’ doors for awhile, in case anyone was watching. I grabbed a local paper from a letterbox and took it back to the car with me. It was full of real estate ads and paid endorsements for local restaurants disguised as reviews. What I wanted was at the back in the classifieds.
The relaxation therapy column came right after the adult section. A notice at the top read: ‘Advertisers in this category have signed a legal disclaimer stating that no sexual services are on offer’. Well, they would say that. I ran my finger down the listings until I got to an ad that read, ‘Springvale Aus-Asian Relaxation. New Open! New Staff! New Feeling!’ I rang the number on my mobile and a recorded message told me the address.
52 Newcowell. I ripped out the ad and wedged it in my notebook. Interesting.
At a couple of minutes to six the man I’d seen in the towel came out and drove away and two Commodores, one maroon and one white, pulled up in front of the house. Alex got out of the maroon car and Dick Farquhar the other. Holy shit. I sunk lower into my seat and watched them in the mirror. Alex looked up and down the street but Farquhar strode straight to the front door.
He knocked and they went inside. Forty long, boring minutes later they reappeared, talking and laughing. They shook hands and climbed into their respective vehicles while I started up the bomb. When they’d driven past I followed at a safe distance. Farquhar turned left at the end of the street and Alex indicated right.
I went after Farquhar. I tailed him for ten minutes, hanging a couple of cars back in the traffic until he turned off into a residential street and there were no more cars between us. He parked in front of a small block of blond brick units and went inside. I pulled over further up the street.
By this time I was desperate to pee. I took a funnel and an old drink bottle with a screw top out of my bag.
Right. I wished I’d had a practice run at home. I stuck the neck of the funnel into the bottle and maneuvered the apparatus underneath my skirt. Wrong angle—the wee would go everywhere.
I felt underneath my seat and pulled a lever to slide it back, then perched right on the edge of the seat, using one hand to raise my arse up, and put the contraption back again. The angle seemed fine. A few cars drove past and I tried to release my bladder but felt like I was pissing in public. Nothing happened. I forced myself to think of streams, rivers and finally great gushing waterfalls swollen in flood.
That did it. Sweet relief. I hoped I wouldn’t overflow the bottle. It took five hundred millilitres but how much was the average urination? I didn’t have a clue. Finally I was done and I wiped myself and the funnel down with a handy travel pack of wet ones and screwed the lid back on to the bottle.
Just in time. Farquhar came out of the building, shoving something in his pocket, and when he looked in my direction I almost had a heart attack. I was too low down in my seat for him to see me though, and he hopped in his car and drove away. There was no way I could push my luck and keep following him so I decided to call it a night.
I went home and ordered Thai takeaway, tom kha gai and beef salad. I had two glasses of wine, which counts as detox for me, and went to work moving the corkboard from the kitchen to my bedroom desk. I removed all the photos of Chloe and me in various stages of drunkenness and undress, and the ‘Overdue—Pay Now’ notices, and devoted the left-hand side entirely to Dick Farquhar. First I stuck his picture up, then the ad for Aus-Asian Relaxation, and finally Post-it notes with information supplied by Torcasio and the girls.
Frank’s photo and the article about him went on the right and I pinned my smudged coaster from Expansion in the middle. When they do this in the movies it enables them to make subconscious connections and solve the case.
Let me tell you right now, it doesn’t work.
I had a jug strip at the Royal Hotel. I’d cancelled all my shifts at the Shaft but this one had been booked a couple of weeks earlier and I really needed the money.
The Royal’s on Punt Road in Richmond, opposite the Richmond cricket ground and not far from the MCG. A sign outside advertises TOPLESS BARMAIDS & STRIPPERS 12–2 & 5–8. I parked at the side of the pub, hoisted my big bag off the bench seat beside me and went in.
‘Hi, Dave.’ I waved at the manager. He sat at the bar doing the
Herald Sun
crossword.
‘Hi.’ He probably didn’t remember my name.
I let myself into the girls’ room. It was small, windowless and furnished with a full-length mirror, wonky barstool and three hooks in the wall. In its previous life it had been a broom closet. A skinny goth chick was wriggling into a leather outfit and I said hello.
She nodded and looked me up and down. I dumped my stuff and went to the bar.
‘Able,’ said Dave, ‘six letters.’
‘Adept?’ Elise the barmaid poured beers for a bunch of tradesmen. She had long red hair and pendulous freckled breasts.
‘No. That’s only five.’
‘Adroit?’ I said.
Dave scribbled it in. ‘Thanks.’
I grabbed a glass beer jug from the end of the bar and prepared to do the rounds. Most pub shows were jug strips where you went around and collected money from the punters before the show. It meant the venue didn’t have to pay you, just like table dancing. I hated it, it felt like panhandling, but I gritted my teeth and did it anyway. I wore a knee length black skirt and a low cut top. You had to save something for the show.
The pub was full of tradesmen who’d knocked off when the mercury hit thirty-five degrees, all dressed in blue singlets and anything by King-Gee. Most of them knew the drill and put in at least a two-dollar coin. Some gave me shit and asked why they should put in any money. I had my answers ready: ‘The more you put in the hotter the show. Guys who put in the most money get all the attention.’
A couple of men put in ten-dollar notes and I made a point of remembering their faces.
After five minutes I’d milked them all I could and Dave was on the mike announcing Destiny was about to perform and to give her a big hand. The guys started yelling and the girl from the change room stalked out, all studded leather and eyeliner. Her music was loud industrial metal and with her matchstick legs she moved like a praying mantis. I could hardly watch. It was the wrong sort of show for the Royal. Pub strips called for eighties hits and girls with a bit of meat on their bones.
I sat next to Dave on the far side of the bar, bought a glass of cask wine and added up my money. One hundred and twenty, not bad. Elise swapped it for notes and held it for me while I went and got changed.
I pulled a nurse’s outfit from my bag. It was a nylon number with a zip down the front, hat and plastic stethoscope. I’d bought it from Club X in the city one night when Chloe and me had been rampaging around, off our tits. Thinking about her made my stomach tighten. I wasn’t doing enough to help her.
Destiny came through the door, naked and sweating.
‘Fuck it’s hot out there.’
‘How’s the crowd?’ I asked.
‘Rooted.’ She wiped herself with a towel and began changing into a black velvet skirt.
Dave poked his head in and handed Destiny her stage outfit and tape.
‘Sharon’s just going round with the jug,’ he told me, ‘so you’ll be on in five. Bankrupt, nine letters, last letter T?’
‘Insolvent,’ said Destiny.
‘Right, cheers.’ He closed the door.
I put on white stay-up stockings, white bra and knickers and teased my hair.
‘You don’t know a dancer called Ebony?’ I asked.
‘Black American chick?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Everyone knows Ebony.’ Destiny pulled on big black boots. ‘She’s grouse.’
I zipped up the nurse outfit. ‘Do you know where I could contact her? I know someone who wants a black girl for a show.’
‘Then he’s out of luck. Ebony doesn’t strip anymore.’
‘Retired?’
‘Nah, she’s into B&D now, working at the Marquis and making a shitload. Wouldn’t mind getting into that line of work myself.’
Dave opened the door. ‘Got your tape?’ he asked.
I handed him a cassette, white fluffy rug and bottle of Nivea moisturizer. Destiny stuffed her leather number into an army duffel bag and said goodbye. I stood with the door slightly ajar waiting for Dave’s intro, feeling nervous. After three years I still got butterflies performing before a crowd.
Dave introduced me and I heard the opening guitar riff of Bon Jovi’s ‘Bad Medicine’, the ultimate nurse show song, beloved of strippers from every nation. I strode through the bar in time to the music, swinging my stethoscope around and thinking how someone was probably doing this exact same show, right now, in a yurt on the Mongolian steppes. The tradies sang along, headbanging and playing air guitar while I walked around the crowd, smiling, checking pulses with my finger and heartbeats with the stethoscope. I climbed onto the small stage and danced, unzipping my uniform part of the way, then got down on my knees for a bit, making it up as I went along.
The guys were loud, really getting into it, and I was feeding off their energy and giving a really good show.
Like any live performance stripping depends on the audience, and working-class ones were always the best.
They’d usually seen heaps of shows and knew where the line was and not to cross it.
White-collar blokes were a different story. They didn’t have the experience and saw you not as a performer but as some amorphous, sexually available creature they had a good chance of fucking. They were more likely to make snide, degrading comments and grab for your pussy.
At the end of ‘Bad Medicine’ I unzipped the outfit all the way and it fell to the floor. There were cheers and whistles and I felt like a rock star. The next song started without a break: ‘Doctor Doctor’, by Huey Lewis.
I got up on the bar and crawled along like a cat, everyone grabbing their beers out of the way. My hands and knees got all sticky from spilled drinks but I didn’t care. One of the guys who’d put in a tenner was at the bar so I stopped and sat in front of him, opened my legs and nuzzled my breasts in his face. His mates cheered him on. I hopped off the bar and spun his chair around so he faced the crowd, then put the stethoscope to his crotch and pretended to listen. A highly unoriginal move but it went down a treat.
I found the other ten-dollar guy, sat on his knee and let him undo my bra. After I’d bounced up and down on his lap a few times I strutted to the stage where I prepared to slide down my G-string.
Dave got on the mike: ‘Do you want her to take it off?’