Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space (9 page)

The babes crossed the Williams Street intersection. There was utter chaos as both drivers and pedestrians forgot where they were going and tried to follow them instead. They were now approaching the King’s Cross fire station. A discreet doorway led upstairs to a needle exchange and STD testing centre. A woman with vacant eyes was putting a dollar coin into a vending machine in the doorway. The babes crowded round her, thoroughly engrossed. What sort of game was this?

‘Oh,
baby
,’ Baby greeted the woman, grabbing her crotch.

Sadly, it must be reported that there
was
the occasional Earthling who proved immune to alien charms. ‘Fuck off, ya slags,’ snapped the woman, pressing a button labelled ‘fit’. As the girls watched, oblivious to her annoyance, a thin black plastic container popped out and the machine chirped tinnily, ‘Thank you for your custom.’ The woman, after giving them the finger, slouched off with her prize to the tiny park around the corner. A fireman, who’d been enjoying a smoke in the driveway of the fire station, watched with interest.

‘Cool,’ said Lati, pressing her finger to the same button. Aliens had a way with machines. Something to do with the amount of electrical current running through their synapses. That’s why, as is frequently reported by ‘experiencers’, when aliens or their craft are in the ‘hood, cars tend to stall and television screens dissolve in static. With that sort of power over the mechanical world, no money, no worries. Out popped another black container. Lati fished it out of the tray, and unwrapped it. After they’d all examined the hypodermic syringe inside, cooed
and clucked over it, she popped the needle into her mouth and ate it.

This sight prompted the fireman to drop his cigarette, which promptly ignited a scrap of litter. This, in turn, blew up the street to the cafe next door and landed on a pile of weekend papers, setting them alight.

By the time a waiter had put out the flames with an eccoccino, the girls were well up the street. They didn’t really understand what the fuss was all about. Earthlings eat animal and vegetable, ayles fang down on mineral. It would be quite ridiculous, not to mention rude, don’t you think, if every time an alien spotted an Earthling troughing out on a bowl of pasta it set the place on fire?

Tristram wandered up King Street in search of his twin. He found Torquil standing with folded arms, gazing into the window of their favourite op shop, The Fifth Scarf. Torquil was wearing the sort of baggy, low-crotched cotton trousers colloquially known as poo-catchers, and a Mambo theology t-shirt depicting the descent to Earth of a three-eyed alien rock god. His olive-complexioned brow was furrowed and his large black eyes half-closed in contemplation of an aqua blue feather boa which happened to match, almost exactly, the colour of his hair.

‘Yo, bro,’ Tristram greeted him. ‘Am I my brother’s beeper, or what? Time for our jam.’

‘What d’ya reckon?’ Torquil replied. ‘Do I absolutely need this feather boa or what?’

‘What.’”

‘What?’

‘You said “or what” and I’m answering. What. Like,
you don’t need this feather boa.’

‘Right. That settles it.’ Torquil spun on his heel and entered the shop, emerging less than a minute later with the boa coiled around his neck. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What are you hanging around here for? We’ve got to get home and rehearse.’

Tristram agreeably turned in the direction of home.

‘Whoa! Whoa,’ Torquil called out. ‘No need to rush. Besides, dunno ‘bout you, but I need a nosebag. Got any moolah? I spent all mine on this.’ He flapped the end of the boa at Tristram. A feather escaped, and they watched it float away. It landed on the street, where it was promptly run over by a ute. Torquil laughed. ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘I thought it came with too many feathers. Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Got any dosh?’

Tristram shook his head. ‘Zilch. I just checked. And my next dole cheque doesn’t come till tomorrow.’

‘Spewin’.’ Torquil was outraged. ‘How does the government expect us to budget our money when they give us so little to begin with, hey? Tell me that.’

‘I tell you nothing,’ said Tristram, fishing a bag of Maltesers from the pocket of his leather jacket and handing them to his brother. They were walking in the direction of home now. They copped a fair amount of staring. Identical twins usually did, even those who didn’t go to the additional trouble of dyeing their hair bright purple and blue and tying it up in rows of tiny rosebud-like knots, à la Björk
circa
‘Violently Happy’. Then there was the matter of Tristram’s frock and Torquil’s feather boa, of course.

A boy stepped out in front of them and pointed. ‘Are you guys twins?’

They each looked around in confusion. ‘Sorry?’ said Tristram. ‘Do you see someone else here?’

Torquil, meanwhile, began contorting his face and slapping it while tapping his feet on the pavement. Without taking his eyes off the kid, Tristram joined in, snapping his fingers, knuckling his head and making popping noises with his mouth. The twins were nothing if not percussive. They were Bosnia’s rhythm section. Tristram played bass and Torquil played drums. Sometimes Torquil played bass and Tristram played drums. In fact, they could play anything. Their bodies, plate-glass windows, the lids of garbage bins, lamp posts, the top of twelve-year-old heads. And they did. By the time they finished, passersby, including the boy’s mother, had thrown $6.35 in change at their feet. ‘Easy as,’ remarked Tristram as they advanced on their favourite Leb-roll shop with a bouncing gait, counting the coins as they went.

Soon, Torquil was wiping chilli sauce from his mouth with the back of his hand and Tristram was munching down the last of a felafel roll. ‘What’s the time?’ asked Torquil.

Tristram glanced at his watch. It was twenty past three. ‘Late as,’ he accused.

‘Well get a move on then, you slacker bastard.’ Torquil flicked the boa at Tristram. ‘So what did Jake have to say for himself, disappearing like that last night? What happened to him? Or should I say,
who
happened to him?’

‘It was aliens, apparently.’ Tristram raised an eyebrow.

‘You mean aliens as in foreigners?’ Torquil was confused.

‘No. Aliens as in
doodoodoodoo doodoodoodoo
.’ Tristram sang the Twilight Zone theme.

‘Aliens as in
doodoodoodoo doodoodoodoo
?’

‘Aliens as in
doodoodoodoo doodoodoodoo.
He says they performed sexual experiments on him.’ Tristram drew a circle around his ear with a finger, the yoonal sign for loopy as.

‘Yeah, right,’ Torquil laughed. ‘That’s one thing I don’t get about aliens,’ he said. ‘Why would they come all the way to Earth for that? Don’t they get enough sex in outer space? Oh, g’day George.’ They came to a halt in front of where George stood belly-bent over his treasure trove. ‘Watcha got there?’

‘Tummy toners. Which one are you?’

‘Torq. Torquil.’

‘Right,’ George pointed a fat finger at each in turn. ‘Torquil. Blue. Tristram. Purple. When you’re not colour coded anybody tell you apart?’

‘Nup. Not even us,’ conceded Torquil cheerfully.

‘Every time I begin to develop a bit of individual personality,’ complained Tristram, ‘he just turns to me, inhales hard and
whoop
there it goes. Sucked right up through his nostrils and into the bloodstream. Then it’s, like, his too. Spooky.’

‘Bullshit,’ argued Torquil, punching his brother lightly on the arm. ‘That’s you. The human hoover.’

Slowly polishing a machine part with a greasy rag, George studied the twins. Tristram was wearing a frock again. Interesting. They’d once told him their father was Egyptian. Later, in one of his books, George read that Egyptians traditionally believed that twins were connected somehow to the star Sirius.

‘Do you two ever think about aliens?’ George ventured.

Torquil glanced at Tristram. What was this? International Alien Week? ‘All the time, George,’ he said,
straight-faced. ‘As a matter of fact, we’re right into aliens at the moment. Jake was apparently kidnapped by some last night.’

If George had had any hair left on his head, it would have stood on end.

‘What?’

‘Torq! Trist! Get your fucken arses over here!’ Jake’s voice thundered across the yard from next door. ‘Chop chop.’

That tattoo. George was about to say something when Tristram cut him short.

‘Gotta go,’ Tristram shrugged. ‘Catch ya next time, George.’

‘Yeah,’ said Torquil. ‘Dad’s calling.’ Taking his brother’s hand, they turned and skipped off home.

George sat down on the ground with a thump. It was all happening. He was sure of it.

The babes were now approaching the eternally popular Cafe Da Vida, its latte-laden tables spilling out onto the pavement, its customers jargling and laughing, plotting and scheming. At this particular cafe, nearly everyone was an aspiring, has-been or even occasionally practising filmmaker, writer, or actor. This contributed to the theatrical levels of the conversation—a relationship drama here, a career tragedy there, a raucous farce in the middle.

‘I’ve got this idea for a movie.’ An earnest young man with a ponytail and black rectangular glasses leaned across the small table towards his friend. Like everyone else at the cafe, they were dressed entirely in black.

‘Yeah?’ said his friend, turning to exhale smoke and
catching sight of the girls. ‘Whoa. Marty, hold on for a sec. Babe alert.’

Marty frowned. ‘You listening, Bret, or what?’

‘Yeah I’m listening,’ he sighed. ‘Can’t I listen and look at the same time?’

‘Can you?’

Bret sighed and angled his head so he could at least keep the girls in his peripheral vision. ‘Lay it on me.’ Were they green or was it just the light?

‘It’s about this guy in his mid-twenties, inner city type, who strives to overcome his alienation and ennui through drugs, alcohol and sex.’

Bret winced. ‘It’s been done before. Besides, that’s not art. That’s life.’

‘Aw
thanks
,’ said Marty, a little hurt. ‘But before you dismiss it out of hand, there’s a subplot.’ He paused for effect.

‘Well?’

‘It’s about how, like, blonde guys, I mean, natural blondes, not bottle blondes, can have a really hard time cultivating proper goatees, particularly those little caterpillar or triangular numbers underneath the bottom lip. Even if they’ve got enough facial hair to pull it off, the results hardly show and they can suffer
unbelievable
trend-angst as a result.’

Bret considered this a moment. ‘Now you’re talking,’ he nodded. He snuck a look over his shoulder. ‘Oh, man,’ he said. ‘You gotta check ‘em out.’

Marty did. ‘I think they’re
green,
Bret.’

‘Hey,’ Bret shrugged. ‘This is a multicultural society.’

‘Hi there,’ he saluted them.

‘Oi!’ Lati declared, cheerfully grabbing the crotch of her jeans and tonguing a bit of needle from between her
teeth. Her wide grey eyes sparkled from beneath her tousled hair. ‘And what planet are
youse
from?’

‘Mars,’ gulped Bret. ‘And you?’ Did she just grab her
crotch?

‘Mars?’ Baby shook her colourful head and wagged a finger at him. ‘Fuck off, ya slags,’ she laughed. ‘You’re nothing like a Martian. Martians are just dumb microbes. Prehistoricville. Cold and rocky.’ She reached out and stroked the skin of his arm. He felt like he’d just been dunked naked in a bath of warm milk and licked all over by a cat. ‘You’re not cold and rocky. No, you’re no Martian.’ She touched a finger playfully to Marty’s nose. ‘And neither are you,’ she said. Marty had the distinct impression that she’d taken his entire face in her mouth and sucked on it. He shivered. ‘You’re just an Earthling,’ Baby continued, coquettishly smoothing the teeny circle of pink fur down over the tops of her extraordinary thighs. ‘Not that I have anything against Earthlings. We love Earthlings, don’t we girls?’

Lati panted like a dog who’d been offered a t-bone.

Doll scuffled the pavement. ‘I’m bored,’ she announced. For emphasis, she whipped round and applied what is known in kickboxing as a spinning back fist to the brick wall behind Marty and Bret’s table. With a small crunch, the wall reshaped itself. Two men at the next table felt close to fainting. Another found himself with an instant erection. Doll inspected her hand, blowing off its dusting of plaster and brick fragments. She threw her head back and laughed. Her devil’s horns of hair waggled in tune with her hilarity. Cappuccinos frothed and bubbled in their cups, anchovies swam through Caesar salads and Turkish bread sandwiches stood up to bellydance.