Beyond Carousel (7 page)

‘Let's go next door,' I said, replacing the guide.

‘You'd think there would be some minestrone at least,' said Taylor.

We went next door but found the kitchen empty there also. As were the following four houses. Doors unlocked. Cupboards ajar and empty.

‘Popular street,' said Lizzy at the sixth house.

Taylor and I glanced at her. It was unnerving to see
such obvious signs of someone else in the area.

‘Let's get out of this weirdo suburb,' said Taylor.

We cycled through a series of similar streets as the sun dipped and spread giant eucalypt-shaped shadows across the bitumen. I checked a couple of houses and a deli as we went. Each place told a replica story. No sign of habitation, but the cupboards and shelves were stripped bare. We stewed quietly over our lack of supplies and kept moving. Eventually it was dark and we bunked down in a brick-and-tile place to eat some dry noodles from the hills. Taylor got caught out in the toilet and Lizzy and I had to ransack the place for tissues. It was like somebody was going from house to house, taking everything but the furniture.

The place was hot and musty and before long the three of us gravitated to join Chess on the porch. Taylor and Lizzy scrolled through the iTunes library on somebody's laptop. Between them they had a couple of hard drives and a plan to collect some decent music as we journeyed to the city. So far the bounty had been small. Most laptops were out of charge, having lay dormant for so long. Others, like this one, did have charge, but the library was full of
Idol
winners and top forty.

Chess shuffled about and whimpered. I watched as his ears shifted about with the sounds of the night.

Abruptly they stopped.

There were footsteps coming from somewhere
down the street. The three of us froze and stared out into the blackness. The footsteps shifted from the road to concrete or something smoother. A door opened somewhere, then there was silence. We shared a glance and strained our ears. After a few moments we heard the door reopen and the footsteps resumed across the concrete, then back out onto the street. This time they were getting louder. Moving toward us.

Lizzy took a hold of Chess's collar. Out of the darkness came the tiny red glow of a cigarette. Then the thin silhouette of a young guy carrying a can of food and some toilet paper. He shuffled along, smoking and humming a silent tune in his head. He was right alongside us when he stopped and looked up.

Chess let out a bark.

‘Hey,' he said.

‘Hey,' said Lizzy.

‘Just getting some beans,' he said.

We nodded. He finished his cigarette and looked up at the sky for a while as if he had almost forgotten we were there. He looked like your regular everyday hipster. Beard. Boots. Oversized flannelette.

‘You live near here?' asked Taylor.

The guy looked confused. As if the idea of having a home was somehow strange.

‘We jam at a warehouse on Henry Street,' he replied.

The warehouse was a slum. In a previous world it had been a food wholesaler with a converted rehearsal space for bands built into the back corner. Now it looked like the set from
Trainspotting
. There were mattresses scattered around the floor. Rubbish kicked into corners and stacked in overflowing boxes. The charred remains of haphazard fires made during winter. A layer of dirt on the floor so thick that it felt springy to walk on. And, slumped on couches beneath a bank of jittery fluoros, four anaemic looking members of local five-piece Kink & Kink.

Joseph, the guy from the street, didn't introduce us. He just took his beans over to a sink area and started looking through a stack of grimy pots and plates. The people on the couch, a girl and three guys, had glanced at us upon entry, but appeared totally underwhelmed at our presence in their warehouse. A Smiths record was droning away under a dusty needle in the corner.

Taylor glanced over at Joseph and shifted uncomfortably.

‘How are you guys doing?' asked Lizzy and strolled over with Chess at her heels. Taylor and I trailed behind her.

The band looked our way, a little surprised.

‘Where did you find an Australian shepherd?' another bearded guy asked.

‘Oh, he's a border collie I think. He kinda found us,' replied Lizzy.

‘It's an Australian shepherd. The colouring is darker,' said the guy.

Lizzy mouthed
okay
and looked like she might walk out then and there.

‘I'm Taylor, this is Nox and my sister Lizzy. Our dog's name is Chessboard,' said Taylor, trying to salvage the situation.

The girl looked up and flashed a big smile as if she had just noticed there were other people in the room. I got a weird feeling in my feet and clammed up.

‘Do you have a Residency in Kewdale, too?' she asked.

‘How do you mean, Residency?' asked Taylor.

Lizzy had tired of waiting for any kind of hospitality and slumped down onto a couch. Taylor and I sat down next to her.

‘An Artist Residency. Somewhere you can work on your art without distraction,' she replied.

‘Oh. No. We're just passing through,' said Taylor.

Joseph walked over, eating the beans straight from a
pot. The others watched him hungrily. Adjacent to the couches was a semi-enclosed room with an impressive array of instruments, amplifiers and mixing desks.

‘What do you guys play?' asked Lizzy.

The band looked at Lizzy like she was some boring auntie or writing for a community newspaper.

‘Anti-folk,' replied a guy wearing what I'm pretty sure was a ladies' leather jacket.

‘Oh yeah. Like The Racketballs?' asked Lizzy.

‘Who?' replied Joseph, mouth full of beans.

‘They're small. You probably haven't heard of them,' said Lizzy.

A couple of the band members nodded. Taylor looked at Lizzy, slightly agitated.

‘Anyway. Joseph said you guys have been here since the Disappearance?' asked Taylor.

‘I didn't say Disappearance,' said Joseph.

‘It's a time vortex,' muttered a scrawny dude from behind a book titled
A Detailed History of the Nautical Knot
.

The girl looked at him and pondered this earnestly. She looked dirty, with matted brown hair and jeans that seemed pasted to her legs. But her face was animated and pretty. I tried my hardest not to stare.

‘Have you met a lot of other Artists?' asked Taylor, moving on.

‘A Japanese manga Artist. His work is amazing,' said the bearded guy.

‘Right,' said Taylor. ‘Anyone else?'

They shrugged, uninterested. I took a trail bar out of my pocket. All five band members turned my way.

‘Do you guys want a trail bar?' I asked.

They nodded, but none of them got up. I walked over and handed them a box of six. They sat eating quietly, like mesmerised schoolkids. Taylor and Lizzy glanced at each other. Neither of them seemed to have a handle on these guys.

Taylor sipped on some water and looked around.

‘Is that spring water?' asked the girl.

Taylor looked at her. ‘You don't have any water?'

‘There's something wrong with the plumbing here,' she replied, sheepishly.

Taylor sighed and passed her the bottle. The five of them huddled around and hydrated their sickly hipster bodies.

‘This is amazing. Thank you,' said the girl earnestly.

Taylor forced a tiny smile.

‘You don't have any blues records, do you?' asked the bearded guy.

Taylor stared at him. Lizzy held in a laugh.

‘No. Just food and water,' replied Taylor.

‘Are you guys Patrons?' asked the ladies' leather guy.

Lizzy groaned. Taylor shook her head. These idiots had no idea who they were talking to. Lizzy walked over to the guitars, plugged in a Gibson and ripped through a couple of riffs that shut everyone the hell up.

Taylor turned to me in between riffs. ‘These guys are amazing, right?' she whispered.

‘I don't get how they're still alive,' I replied.

‘They cleaned this place out, then just started going from house to house whenever they remembered to eat lunch,' said Taylor.

I couldn't help but laugh. Taylor looked at me for a moment, then started laughing too. Thankfully Lizzy's guitar drowned us out.

‘It's getting late. We might as well crash here and see if we can find out anything useful,' said Taylor.

I nodded but felt uncomfortable in our abruptly social surrounds.

‘You should talk to that girl,' said Taylor.

My face burned like a fool. Taylor smiled and ruffled my hair. ‘There's whisky in my bag,' she added and walked over to join Lizzy at the guitars.

Chess hung by my side looking overwhelmed by all of the smells in the place. I knelt down and hugged him under my arm while I rummaged for the whisky. I necked some and looked up to see Kink & Kink staring right at me. I held up the bottle and they shuffled over.

The bearded guy, Yoshi, insisted that we drink it three-to-one with some room-temperature water. Even though there weren't enough glasses, and the ones they had were stained with who knows what. At one stage Lizzy walked over and took a swig straight from the bottle, just to spite the guy I think. He just started on about Polish vodkas.

I found out the girl's name was Molly. She was friendly and smiled a lot, but talking to her was weird. It was like she really thought about and assessed everything I said. Which in turn made me do the same and question whether I even had opinions or stories or anything. She also looked right into my eyes, like
right
into them, the whole time we spoke. I had no idea what this was about, except that it probably wasn't a come-on in any traditional Hollywood sense. If Molly was with one of the other band members it wasn't obvious to me.

Meanwhile Taylor and Lizzy were putting on a belting live rendition of their new album. The instruments and amplifiers here were way better than anything they had in Carousel and the songs sounded dense and awesome. Even Kink & Kink seemed to be into it, albeit in their apathetic, underwhelmed way. It was cool to see Taylor and Lizzy back as themselves for a while, but the music brought with it a heavy wave of emotions and memories from our time in Carousel. Together with the whisky and the heat and the strange girl wedged into the couch next to me, the whole thing felt a bit like a dream.

After a while Yoshi got on a drum kit and started tinkering away on a series of snares. Taylor and Lizzy stopped playing their songs and tried to jam along with him, but it didn't really mesh. Sweaty and buzzing, they took a break and left him to it. I joined them to look for a bathroom and we found some pretty disturbing stuff. The toilet looked as though it had been blocked
for a long time now. Instead of this, a door stood ajar to an alleyway full of buckets and a smell that was insane. The warehouse still had power, but, from what we could gather, no running water or plumbing. There were also no plants, food or medical supplies. Nothing you might associate with extended survival. These guys had somehow survived living day to day from the very start. It was as impressive as it was sad.

A silky, wavering voice pulled us back into the warehouse. All of the band were at their instruments now. Yoshi at the drum kit with a mic hovering to the side of his face. The ladies' leather guy and his thinner version on guitars. Joseph taking himself way too seriously on the bass. And Molly, hovering waiflike below a mic stand, magically transformed, like a thousand singers before her, from nobody to somebody within the space of a note. Their stuff was raw and messy, but then Molly came in over the top and gave it an ethereal quality. Like some winding, backroad trip to a tropical paradise.

What the hell was happening in the world, I thought. These guys were stranded in the suburbs, the least equipped people to survive in the regular world, let alone one without Centrelink or parents or drive-through takeaway. Yet here they were, almost two years on, still alive, still cooking up kooky, beautiful music for nobody to hear.

Taylor and Lizzy poured themselves a whisky and sat
down to discover Kink & Kink like they might have in a club back in Toronto or Vancouver, or out on tour, or on any night in their pre-Carousel lives. I was happy for them, but felt like the last regular person on the planet. I left my drink unfinished and took a notepad and torch outside.

There were some milk crates grouped in a small circle by one of the side exits. I sat on one and pulled another over for a desk, then propped the torch on a drainpipe running down the wall. I had written in worse places since we left the hills. Music and light spilled out of the leaky warehouse into the silent black suburb. I wrote about Molly and the band and how they were nothing like the cardboard cut-outs I had envisioned in Tommy's stories.

At some stage the vocals dropped from the music inside and a door opened, beaming light and noise into the alley. Molly surfaced with a cigarette and tiptoed over to where I was sitting. There was no time to put away the torch or notepad.

‘Hey,' I said.

Molly hovered, somehow unsure of where to sit even though there were milk crates all around her. I pulled one across to the wall beside me. She looked at it for a moment, then sat.

‘You guys are good,' I said.

Molly smiled, but seemed to have forgotten the music playing inside.

‘I love the stars in our new city,' she said, looking up at the strip of sky above us. The nights were heavy with stars these days. As if somebody had selected them all and hit
bold
.

‘Yeah. I feel like I hadn't really seen stars before the Disappearance. Except for in a planetarium or something,' I replied.

A breeze trickled past us from the east and we both shivered.

‘Are you guys okay here?' I asked.

‘Oh yeah. We're great. Thank you for the whisky,' she replied.

It felt like we still hadn't really looked at each other when she slipped off her seat and propped herself on my legs. Her hair flickered around my face as we made out without saying anything else. She tasted of smoke and whisky and the house parties of my youth. We touched each other and wrapped legs around each other and did everything that might normally lead to sex. Then we stopped and Molly dropped her head into my chest and kind of tucked up into a ball. This caught me out a little. I looked down at her, then put my arms around her. She burrowed deeper. Her voice and her music felt a million miles away now. Across from us my notepad blew open. The empty pages flickered mockingly in the wind.