Cherry Bomb

by Jenny Valentish

  As I gnawed on my nail an on-set make-up artist set about my T-zone with powder. ‘I think you’ve got enough on already,’ she observed critically, screwing her face up so close to mine that I had to blink to uncross my eyes. ‘I’ll just de-clump your lashes.’

  Jeanette handed Jimmy her coffee cup without looking at him and took the armchair opposite us. She consulted a sheaf of papers that contained our certain annihilation. I knew that it would be difficult doing this sort of interview with a woman. If it was a bloke, I’d stare at him that little bit too long, or smile unnervingly as he fumbled through his questions, then wink at him before answering. I’d see him wonder . . . Did I just imagine that? It was just boredom on my part, half the time.

  ‘What should I do about her hair?’ the make-up artist asked Jeanette. ‘We might have a hat in wardrobe.’

  Jeanette raised her head as though she hadn’t noticed my hair until now. ‘I think Nina’s hair is indicative of this story,’ she said. ‘Leave it.’

  ‘Is it supposed to be standing upright?’ the girl asked me now. ‘Because I don’t think I’ve got enough hairspray. What do you usually use?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said shortly. ‘Just leave it floppy.’ Rose was crayoning lip balm back and forth over her lips like a mantra. Her eyes roamed the lights, seeking out the Pro-Mist filter Pru had said we should always insist on. ‘Do I look at you or the camera?’ I asked Jeanette, mainly for something to say.

  ‘Just at me,’ Jeanette said, flashing an efficient smile. ‘Act completely natural as though you and I—and Rose—are having a normal conversation. Just the three of us.’

  The lighting rig clunked into action and instantly we were framed like deer in headlights. ‘We’ll have already intro-ed the clip,’ said Jeanette from somewhere in front of us, ‘so we’re just going to jump right in, okay?’

  ‘When you’re ready,’ the soundman spoke up, getting some kind of nod. ‘Three, two, one.’

  ‘So, Nina,’ Jeanette said, making my adrenaline spike unpleasantly. ‘Can you tell us what were you thinking when news reached you that a pornographic film had been leaked?’

  For a second I was confused. Was she asking me, ‘What were you thinking?!’ or literally, ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t even remember doing it,’ I blurted. ‘I was as surprised as everyone else.’

  ‘It must have been quite a shock,’ she agreed, without pause. ‘Who do you think leaked the film and the breadstick pictures?’

  Rose cut in hastily. ‘On the advice of our lawyers, we can’t comment on that, Jeanette.’

  ‘Was it someone you’d had a relationship with?’ Jeanette asked me with concern.

  ‘Yeah, little bit,’ I said, and looked over at Jenner. A muscle flexed in his jaw but he maintained his enigmatic smile. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, what do you have to say to parents who may be concerned that their teenage daughter or son now thinks it’s “cool” to share the video with their friends—given the appeal that The Dolls already has to young teenagers?’

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Rose twitch, so I let her go. ‘It’s always been very important to us, Jeanette, to be very positive in all areas of our lives, and we hope that message spreads to our fans,’ she said evenly, her hands folded in her lap. ‘At the end of the day, we’re young girls ourselves and—’

  ‘Although, at age twenty, some might say you’ve inherited more of a responsibility by now,’ Jeanette countered.

  ‘True, Jeanette,’ Rose said, ‘but we can only live our lives the best we can from day to day with all the craziness that goes on around us.’ She gave a tinkling laugh and Jenner nodded almost imperceptibly. I was impressed. It was like some people just came out of the box knowing how to act in these situations.

  ‘The life of a pop star can be quite a strange one,’ Jeanette conceded. ‘I mean, you’ve essentially never had a proper job like the rest of us.’ Jenner tilted his head up at the ceiling as she lined up her next serve. ‘Is that something that concerns you?’

  What’s the view like up there on your high horse?

  ‘We’ve got a very strong work ethic,’ I said suddenly. ‘We’re always writing, always recording, always touring, always. And we’ve made more money than all of our parents put together.’

  ‘And what do your parents at home in Parramatta make of The Dolls phenomenon?’ Jeanette volleyed back.

  ‘They’re very proud,’ I said automatically. And I realised for the first time this was true. Helen had cut out and filed every story about us, which had felt like an accusation but probably wasn’t. I looked straight at the camera and then quickly away. God, god, god.

  ‘We’ve never been a band to embarrass ourselves,’ Rose said, then turned to look at me fondly, ‘but I guess every kid with the best intentions is going to have their moments.’

  After Jeanette wrapped things up, she was briskly pleasant before leaving us to our own devices.

  ‘Well, that didn’t go too badly,’ Jenner said, selecting a muffin as I pulled a compact out of my bag to check my face. Rose was halfway across the room, away, her heels clacking under her incognito furry coat.

  •

  Mickiewicz wanted to take us to dinner, but this didn’t give me the same sense of foreboding as when our American record company asked us on a date. I knew that our CEO got me. Nina Dall harked back to an era when rock stars really were rock stars. When Mickiewicz was first starting out, people understood that talent equated to trouble. If you wanted professionalism then you deserved the homogenised music you got.

  He’d invited some of his mates from those good old days to dinner, which I suspected was an opportunity to show off. I didn’t mind—I lapped up Mickiewicz’s yarns. Rose and I were late arriving at the Japanese restaurant in Sydney’s fashionable Surry Hills. Of course we were. Rose made us late for everything because her make-up took thirty minutes longer than mine and she always had to stick a photo of it up on Instagram before leaving so that no one would worry she’d gone missing.

  As we walked in, I heard Mickiewicz’s guttural tones before I saw him. He put down his napkin and stood up. We were introduced to a grizzled tour manager called Biff and the guitarist from Rizzler, Warren Sharkey. As Rose and I arranged our legs on the floor cushions without our skirts riding up too much, the three of them sat back down and resumed their conversation about Danger Michaels.

  I surreptitiously punched Warren’s name into my phone so I could read his Wiki entry in my lap. I could tell just from the way he was sitting that, with this guy, forewarned was forearmed.

  Warren ‘Waz’ Sharkey was the guitarist in Australian post-punk band Rizzler, formed in Sydney in 1987. The band dissolved in 1995 following creative differences and Sharkey’s ongoing health issues . . .

  Rose nudged me and frowned.

  ‘I’ll tell you something incredible,’ Biff was saying. ‘Danger used to get the roadies to bring his mic stand into the dressing room so he could do his stretches and run through some moves. It was like he was a martial artist practising with his nunchucks. It needed to move in his hand without thought, and it did. It was like an extension of him.’

  ‘Like a fencer,’ Warren acknowledged. ‘He was a true artist.’

  Mickiewicz had a wheeze at this. ‘Remember, Waz,’ he said, pointing a chopstick. ‘You rebuffed him once at the football. Essendon. He came up and did a bow and scrape in front of you and you told him to rack off out of the way.’

  ‘I thought he wanted my autograph,’ rejoined Waz. His eyes slid to me and Rose for a reaction.

  A waiter came over and tried to wrangle some plates down over the shoulders of Mickiewicz and Waz, who didn’t try to make things any easier. I looked at the menu. I’d gone to a Japanese restaurant once before with John Villiers and he’d told me what sort of thing to order. Edamame, for a start. We’d both really enjoyed that.

  ‘So, Nina,’ said Waz. ‘I hear you’ve got a lot of naked ambition.�
��

  Mickiewicz groaned in disappointment, as if they hadn’t discussed the sex video before Rose and I arrived. ‘Cut it out,’ he said. ‘She’s got a lot to learn and that was an excellent first mistake.’

  ‘I agree,’ Waz protested. ‘I wish I’d done the same thing. It’s too late for me now—you’ve got to have the form for it.’ He cast a look at my rack.

  I wore: ‘Like You, But Harder’ T-shirt, denim mini-skirt. I had my legs casually pulled up under me, to show off my pedicure in my thongs. I wasn’t sure if Mickiewicz had a foot fetish, but he might do.

  Waz wore: Denim shirt tucked into jeans. Phone in holster.

  ‘That’s enough,’ repeated Mickiewicz. ‘Anyway, no harm done. Nina now has the press in the palm of her hand.’

  Everyone sniggered. I had to laugh too.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Rose said, aghast.

  ‘Of course it’s funny,’ said Waz. ‘And it was very noble of your sister to take one for the team and get you all that free publicity.’

  ‘Cousin,’ Rose sighed, pressing her fingers to her temple. ‘We’re not that related.’

  A bottle of wine materialised and the waiter stood back as Mickiewicz tasted it, then gave it the nod.

  ‘I’ve been hearing the new material from Jenner,’ he said. I fiddled with my mohawk, remembering my last phone call to him, telling him the new songs would give him a boner. I’d woken up next morning with the phone still next to my head. ‘You can scrap “Hot in Dots”, that’s never going on.’

  That was Rose’s.

  ‘And you can forget about “Jailbait” as well. The rest is promising, but it’s all over the place stylistically—’

  ‘I know,’ Rose cut in. ‘Half of it was written on tour, the other half we had to write separately while Nina was in apology rehab.’

  ‘While I what?’

  ‘Apology rehab,’ she said, rapping her nails against her wine glass. ‘That’s what Jenner calls it.’

  ‘I was at home,’ I protested, looking to Mickiewicz for back-up. Waz and Biff stopped chewing.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said coolly, folding a sliver of raw tuna around her fork. ‘And while we had to wait for you to get your shit together, everybody else’s world had to stop too. Not only did I have to write a bunch of songs on my own, but the band were screwed. It’s not like they could go and work on a building site or something—they don’t know how to do anything else.’

  All hail Rose, the patron saint of band members.

  Mickiewicz interrupted. ‘Never you mind the band—that’s not your concern. Every songwriting team has time apart, and it’s not a bad thing. The point is, you’re going to need a good producer to pull it all together.’

  I looked at him with alarm. ‘We’ve got one,’ I said. ‘John Villiers.’

  Biff scoffed and folded his arms.

  ‘Not John Villiers,’ our boss said firmly. ‘He’s a bitter fuck who’s lost the Midas touch. You’ll be working with Noakesy.’

  I felt like I’d had the air punched out of me. I’d been relying on Mickiewicz to reunite me with John Villiers, like a sort of phlegmatic fairy godmother. Ben Noakes, I found superficial. Surely this was just a strategic move to associate us with his name, which seemed to be on every one of Grandiose’s records lately. Name-dropping the right producer was like a box that had to be ticked.

  ‘Touched a nerve,’ laughed Waz as he appraised Mickiewicz. ‘Have you been calculating the interest on the money John Villiers owes you?’

  ‘Ah, he doesn’t owe me anything,’ Mickiewicz growled.

  My edamame arrived, but suddenly I wasn’t hungry. ‘What’s this about?’ I asked.

  ‘Your producer burned down a studio and this mug here had to pick up the bill,’ said Waz jovially, nodding at our CEO. Biff was shaking his head, darkly. He was getting on my nerves.

  ‘No, that was Alannah,’ I corrected him.

  ‘It was both of them,’ said Mickiewicz. ‘That’s what happens when you smoke highly flammable drugs when you’re supposed to be recording an album . . . that I’m paying for.’

  Rose interrupted. ‘The studio in Sydney? That was a candle that fell over.’

  As they all laughed and Mickiewicz wiped a tear from his eye, I felt my stomach tighten into a knot of humiliation at once again being kept in the dark. Our esteemed CEO had broken my aunt’s heart and assumed I didn’t know. Now he was casually dropping the bombshell that John Villiers was a great big joke.

  ‘He’s talented enough, but he’s lost all respect,’ conceded Waz. ‘He’s had to accept any job going to work himself out of debt. He’s lost his value in this industry.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t do that with us,’ Rose pointed out. ‘We didn’t even pay him.’

  ‘No,’ Mickiewicz agreed. ‘He worked with you because your aunty had to post bail for him for drug charges and he owed her that much.’

  Rose snorted and pushed her fingers into her eyelids. ‘Oh my god, Nina,’ she whispered.

  ‘Shut up,’ I hissed. I wasn’t about to let these old farts laugh at me, and I wasn’t about to let Rose Dall criticise my taste when I’d had to tolerate Pru Yoshida. It would be just like Rose to suddenly decide his production sucked, after everything he’d done for us.

  We ate mechanically through the remaining two courses, speaking only when spoken to. I avoided Rose’s eye as I wavered between wanting to kill John Villiers for pashing me under false pretences, and trying to stop my heart from convulsing every time I thought of him. I resolved to get our producer out of my system, hard.

  ‘You’ve got a couple of months to play with before Noakesy is free,’ concluded Mickiewicz as the waiter brought over our coats. ‘Don’t touch the songs, give them a breather. That way you’ll hear anything that needs changing when you hit the studio.’

  Rose looked blank. ‘What are we supposed to do in the meantime?’

  ‘You’re free,’ Mickiewicz declared, chucking his napkin on the table. ‘Take off somewhere nice, because after that the hard work’s really going to start.’

  Waz gave us a big smile. ‘Use the time to write for the third album,’ he advised. ‘Some of the best albums ever made have come out of leaving town and meeting new people. Immersion.’

  ‘Do you remember when Danger insisted on taking his Rolls to Tasmania?’ said Biff, off down memory lane again. ‘The idea was he’d lie low, but no one had ever seen a car like that before.’

  They filed their way to the door. ‘Typical Danger,’ Mickiewicz guffawed, but he was growing sad around the eyes. ‘Tragic loss.’

  •

  In the car on the way home we sat in silence but for Rose breathing into a paper bag that deflated with an accusatory snap every time she inhaled. I stared out of the window.

  My decision to become autonomous had just been made so much easier by John Villiers being removed from the equation. One more album and The Dolls were through. Rose may have relied on higher powers to guide her life, but I was one to take the bull by the horns myself. I was going to Tamworth, the town immortalised all over the Country Music Channel, to get a head start on my solo career.

  Two months of rubbing shoulders with broken-toothed pedal-steel players who knew a thing or two about minor chords would strengthen my reputation. I would find a producer who would be the Mark Ronson to my Amy Winehouse. The Phil Spector to my Tina Turner. Some of my new songs were floundering, but there was nothing a slide guitar and fiddle couldn’t fix.

  Two months to toughen up and learn to love myself enough to not care what people said about the new Dolls album. Why the hell did we call ourselves The Dolls anyway? Even the name was unworkable now. The fact that we were seventeen when we came up with it was no excuse. Lorde became the timelessly cool Lorde at sixteen. Every time we released a record we invited criticism, that pigeon from hell, into our house—and calling that house a dollhouse wasn’t helping.

  Back at Dad’s, I booked my flights and wrote him a note, telling him I’d call hi
m from Tamworth. Tammy. Tammo. Looking around my room, at all the dumb mementos I’d collected over the past few years, I decided it was time to have a ceremonial cutting loose. I left Dad the balding old koala he’d bought me when I was three, now with a red tequila hat plonked on its head.

  It took me till four in the morning to stuff everything in bin bags, and it was still dark outside when I lugged the haul down the steps and dumped it on the street like a stash of dead bodies. After my accident, my neighbour would pose for the Banksia Argus holding a tiara and a bottle of The Dolls’ prototype perfume that she found after a good rummage. To which I would say, knock yourself out, sister.

  I called a cab.

  •

  Dr Melanie Urquhart PhD, Clinical Psychologist

  Nina Dall DOB 18/3/93

  Bill to: Grandiose

  Co-dependent relationship with cousin.

  Mother uses sarcasm as a defence mechanism—why?

  Permissive father seems absolved of all blame.

  No support.

  Denies eating disorder. Denies feeling anxious.

  Advised on coping strategy for intrusive thoughts.

  Recommend dual diagnosis going forward.

  19

  TAMWORTH

  When my third album, Audacious, failed to set the charts alight, I retired to Ibiza to lick my wounds. And that really was the sole reason I went, but of course I found that Ibiza had its distractions. As they say, you can take the girl out of Parramatta, but you can’t take Parramatta out of the girl.

  POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL, 1997 (SABRE BOOKS)

  A country-town noticeboard was a matrix of weird. The one I was standing in front of in Peel Street in my new cowboy boots offered roosters for the pot, fire-dancing ceremonies, fiddle players, dirt bikes, blacksmithing, sheep shearing and a bunch of roughed-up utes. Fear bloomed briefly inside of me at the strangeness of it all; then I got back to the mission at hand.