Dirty Beat

by Venero Armanno

  ‘Poor, poor Phil,’ Debbie mutters with a resentment that seems directed at herself. ‘Abandoned in Thornberry, betrayed one hundred percent.’

  ‘Did you leave him a note?’

  ‘At first I was writing it just to say goodbye, but then I couldn’t stop. I wrote pages and pages. Everything I think’s wrong with him. From the way he smells to the noise he makes when he eats to the way he uses his cock. Maybe he still wants to come find me, I am his wife after all, but I don’t know, after he reads what I had to say.’

  Tony can’t even imagine what pages and pages of personal critique would do to his own psyche. He imagines curling up into a ball. ‘You told him where you were going?’

  ‘We never lied to one another. Not really.’

  It’s not the news he wants to hear. Apprehension crawls through his gut. ‘You mean, exactly where you were going?’

  ‘Well, not the address, but yes, to see you,’ she nods. ‘One night while he was having sex with me I said your name. It wasn’t too hard for even him to work out that I fell in love with you.’

  Fell in love. Tony’s part-thrilled, part-horrified. What will he do when Big Phil the plumber turns up at his door? He’s already thinking that maybe they can move, take an extended vacation in the mountains or at some beach, somewhere a long way away. And go there fast.

  ‘Poor Phil, he’s gonna be so lost.’ Her voice is still sort of spacey and Tony has the impression she’s still somewhere between this world and the next – the one that exists at the end of a long trail of blue pills. ‘Faithful to him since the day we met, then as soon as I’m out of his clutches I do it with just about the first man who comes along.’

  ‘Me, you mean?’

  ‘Huh – oh, by the river? No. I just wanked you off, didn’t I? I wasn’t thinking about that. It’s Bruno.’

  ‘Bruno?’

  ‘Bruno and his drugs. God I wonder what they were? He picked me up at a bus stop a couple of hundred kilometres west of town. Two truckies already gave me lifts but neither of them was coming this way. I was just sitting there thinking how to get where I wanted to go and an eighteen-wheeler pulled up down the way a bit and I saw a man hurrying into the toilet block. When he came back and climbed in, there I was in the front compartment. Nearly scared him to death. His eyes were already all sort of big. Really, he must live on those pills. You look like a ghost, he said. I said, Flesh and blood and I need a ride. He was heading south-east. South-east is more or less heading here, but he had to take the coast roads to do his pick-ups. So it took a long time, lots of stops.

  ‘He’s one of those kinds of guys who drives in a hurry and rides every radio station along the way. Sometimes I’d give him company with my violin. We talked a lot and were quiet a lot. He told me he had two girls and a boy and he was a widower. I didn’t really believe that. Funny how many divorced men and widowers I meet. But he was okay, he was fun, and when all of the riding in the truck started making me sick he pulled over to let me spew, and sat it out for an hour. Then he gave me some white powder in a plastic cup of water. That made me feel better. I lay down in the sleeping compartment behind the seats. When I woke up he told me he liked me and asked if I’d consider giving him something in return for this free trip. I played him two sonatas on the violin. That made him happy, but it wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

  ‘By then he was crunching more pills, I mean really crunching them between his teeth, and I felt like my eyes were dropping out of my head. My arms and legs wanted to fall off. Day three I think it was and those pills had me seeing skeletons dancing in the highway and giant red dogs running beside the truck. He said, These are blue too, but they’re a little different. They should sort you out.

  ‘I tried one. After ten minutes I felt like my legs were melting. I was tingly and warm all over. My toes were curling up like someone was kissing my neck and my nipples felt like they were going long and hard as bullets. I was sure there was a blush going all the way up my throat and through my face. Bruno said, Wow, I’ve never seen anyone react like this, and so fast. Are you okay? I told him I was. He asked me again if maybe I wanted to give him some sort of repayment. I remember it was the middle of the night. The moon was up there somewhere. No clouds. I told him to pull over. We went around the side of the truck away from the road and I leaned him back and told him to open his pants. I took out his dick and rubbed it so that he came standing right there. Three seconds and three great spurts of a load that landed in the dirt. That was all he needed. Then we were on our way again and he was happy as a lamb.’

  Tony soaps Debbie’s shoulders and watches beads of water slide down the ridged curve of her spine. He knows that if she were to take out his dick for him and rub it right now, he’d spurt in all of three seconds too.

  ‘So you didn’t do any worse than that?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. Not until about an hour later. I took another of his little blue pills. It made what I was feeling worse. Or better. We were driving again and the thought of him exploding in my hand sort of stayed with me. There’s something about that. Bruno was forty-five or so and not really completely unattractive, though his body odour was getting a bit rank. But I couldn’t stop thinking. While the truck hummed and vibrated down the highway, I just wanted to come in my seat. Then I asked him to pull over again.’

  ‘And he could do it?’

  ‘Poor Phil. If he knew. After the first time, I let Bruno have sex with me whenever he wanted to. It was kind of dirty and fantastic. We did it all the way here. Well, not right to your street. He dropped me off at a train station about twenty klicks away. Gave me the fare too. I was sort of relieved and sort of sorry to say goodbye to him. I told Bruno I was heading on to Switzerland. It was the first place that came into my head. Don’t really want Bruno the Truckie coming after me. And he thinks my name is Virginia Bach. I don’t know, that was the first name that came into my head too.’

  Tony lets out a long, pent-up sigh. He wants to have sex with Debbie Canova, but a bigger and better part of him wishes that glazed, distant look wasn’t in her eye. He thinks this is the reason she’s prattling on so, telling him things he’d much rather not hear. She’s not quite with it and he’d like her to be a bit sharper – and maybe for a little more time to pass since her dalliances with Bruno. He asks the main question that’s on his mind.

  ‘Debbie, why are you here?’

  She doesn’t have to think about it. She’s been thinking of the answer such a long time.

  ‘When I met you and your friends, it just seemed like the perfect way to be. Minstrels travelling in their truck, you in your ute, bringing music with you wherever you went. And I liked you and what we did in the grass by the river. You were so gentle with me. After you let out that shout, that howl, you said, Come with me Debbie, just say to hell with everything and come with me. Most guys, well, you know, they’d say that before they ejaculated, not after. Even Phil when he’s nice to me, after we do it he just clams up. I’m not so pretty any more, not so alluring. I’m just there and I think he’d prefer it if I wasn’t. My mother used to say, When the balls are full the brain is empty. I’ve added a corollary. When the balls are empty the brain moves onto something else.’

  Tony nods in sympathy but asks, ‘What’s a corollary?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Debbie sighs. ‘I think I’m feeling sick again.’

  He helps her up. She emerges dripping from the bath and just makes it to the toilet bowl. Sliding wetly down onto her knees she hangs on as if for dear life and heaves and heaves again. Mostly it’s just juice and dry-retching. Tony holds her hair away from her face. The smell is bad, but not as awful as some of the things he’s experienced in the dumps we played, or within the confines of travelling in close quarters with dirty rock-pig musicians. He’s happy to be lending a hand, it makes him feel strong and protective of her. Okay, let Phil turn up here, he thinks, just let him.

  After she’s done, Debbie Canova sits on the floor of the bathr
oom with her wet messy hair hanging over her eyes and cheeks. He wraps a towel around her shoulders. She presses another into herlap.

  ‘That was so disgusting. You must be wondering what you ever did to get someone like me arriving at your door.’

  ‘No, it’s cool.’

  ‘I had a bag of things, but I lost it somewhere. Change of clothes, underwear, lipstick, notebook with I don’t know what ideas written in it. My purse, my bankbook, everything’s gone. All I managed to hang on to is my violin and bow.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘how long do you want to stay?’

  That worrying vagueness is still in her eyes and now that she’s conducted a symphony of spewing, her face is beyond white, it’s translucent. He can see the tiny veins beneath her skin. She gazes up at him. Debbie Canova had said that she’d fallen in love with him, but even twenty-two year olds can be predisposed to adolescent crushes, can’t they?

  ‘How long can I stay?’

  ‘It’s up to you. It’s really just up to you.’

  ‘Really? You don’t mind?’

  She must think he lives the big rock star life of parties, travel and women on tap like water. Inside himself, Tony promises: Fuck it, stay forever if it’s up to me, Debbie. Just forever.

  XXI

  But it wasn’t up to him and roughly three or four weeks set him straight. He was right about the crush thing; infatuation has a short shelf life and forever’s what they’re doing to me. My corporeal experience was that love and forever were two words that should only go together when applied to romance novels or close-knit families, and even those would have to be the lucky ones.

  From the front of the chapel I can see this whole flash-second of memory inside Tony. Poor guy, it’s like an entire reliving. Debbie wanted to have sex with him as soon as they were out of the bathroom, but when he took her to bed she wriggled in his arms and opened herself wide and was comatose within about thirty seconds. This is okay, he told himself calmly. Better she sleep that vagueness away.

  The next morning she wasn’t vague at all, only ravenous. She went into the kitchen and with trembling hands cooked up everything that was edible and had never possessed a face or an anus. Only when her stomach was sated and his was full to bursting, did they get it on. Unfortunately, it was no Barry White moment. Things were anti-climactic; Debbie was so excited she came almost as soon as he penetrated her, and his belly was so distended that he thrusted like an obese pensioner and somehow managed to ejaculate into her navel, which she didn’t appreciate. No matter, they told one another, there’s always tomorrow. Or tonight. Or this afternoon.

  I came into the story a couple of evenings later when I stopped by. I had to look twice. I couldn’t believe Debbie Canova from Thornberry was in the kitchen doing Tony’s washing up or that an appetising aroma was in the air. Tony’s house usually reeked of sweaty socks and fried meat or sausages. He told me Debbie had cooked an elegant mess of rice and steamed vegetables. I ought to try some. Even though it sounds basic as dirt, he said, it was the best dinner he’d had in a long time.

  ‘But what she’s doing here?’ I asked, and she emerged from the kitchen into the cottage’s pokey living room with a bowl of her dinner for me. She wore one of Tony’s shirts, her legs long and white, her feet small and graceful as a dancer’s. White-blonde hair fell across her shoulders. Those blue eyes, well, it would be hard for even the Pope to stop gazing into them.

  When she stepped, there was a slight pop to her walk; it was the walk of someone with a zest for life. She’s happy, I thought, I can see it a mile away, and there was no need for Tony to tell me that they’d spent yesterday and today copulating like rabbits. While Debbie returned to rattling the pots and pans in the kitchen, Tony did it anyway, his voice an exultant whisper.

  ‘The first few times, not so good, Max, but we kept at it. Then, wow, you wouldn’t believe it, things just sort of clicked. She comes and comes. And she’s fascinated by – you know – she just loves to see the stuff coming out of my dick. I’ve never known a girl like this.’

  I ate slowly, having a hard time enjoying a meal made by someone whose hands had been so thoroughly coated in my singer’s sperm. Debbie joined us while I was idly pushing the food around my plate.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well,’ she looked at Tony, ‘this young man and I are going to compose together. We’re going to make some new music for the band.’

  So that was the second half of what went wrong between Tony Lester and Debbie Canova, and any bad feelings I might have had about my band being colonised by a stranger were immaterial. It was no Ono—Lennon thing and didn’t come into the equation. The problems were what happened between them. The music part came second because the main thing was that despite what Tony had told me, after the first few weeks Debbie realised she and her new man were simply not very physically compatible. She liked him and gave it her all, but it was never as good as she thought it ought to be. Soon enough her ardour cooled. The more it cooled the more he wanted her.

  She tried to make music with him and that didn’t work either. Tony wasn’t the genius she’d taken him for. Why had she thought that way? She couldn’t even remember. Her expectations had been fuelled by not one shred of reality; he was a crush all right, a means to escape suffocating in Thornberry, suffocating with Phil, suffocating in an environment that valued a violinist less than it might value the worth, say, of the NASA space program.

  Still, at first they spent their nights staying awake, talking. Tony knows that was the best of the short time they had together. She nuzzled his neck and his ear, he lapped at her nipples and her sex. He put a love bite onto the right side of her neck in order to balance her violin’s proprietorial kiss with his own mark of ownership. They told each other secrets and hopes, those nights stretching into the sorts of gold-rimmed dawns that made them finally close their eyes with satisfaction and happiness. No wonder it was she who put her mark on Tony forever; they had a week or two of fire followed by an interminable slide into ashes. Those days were the most important of his life; nothing would seem so sweet for him again: not the birth of his children, the making of his first million, or the annual good news from his doctor, who tells him he’s healthy as a horse and will likely live to see his one hundredth birthday.

  In the chapel with my dead body a few arm-spans away from him, Anthony Lester, millionaire, wonders what it is he really misses the most about Debbie Canova. He knows how ridiculous it is to fetishise the memory of a girl, but it’s been the inescapable story of his life. She had a sensual smile, but so have plenty of others. Her lips begged to be kissed, but so do those of professionals and amateurs alike on porn websites. It was exciting the way she planted her feet and created melodies with her violin, yet certainly not as exciting as seeing the crowns of his children appear at their births. They had heady sex in his bed, but in the many years since then he’s had a ton of that too, and some of it a lot better. So what was it that put the hook into him? The way Debbie watched with concentrated fascination when she jerked and sucked him onto her breasts? No. Tony knows what it is: she came into his life at the point of his deepest low, when everything seemed finished and his future as empty as a politician’s promise. He was at his most open and most vulnerable, then suddenly here was someone who promised a life for him – a Life – and he’d believed her. She was redemption from failure. She hadn’t been a girl, she’d been Hope.

  Right?

  Tony puts his hands to his eyes and bows his head. No, fuck it, he’s lying. He’s rationalising and knows it. The hook was this and this alone: during those good nights in each other’s arms her quiet voice would whisper in his ear, and with those whispers she would effortlessly reveal her soul. That was the thrill. He’d never, ever, had a sense of touching such a thing before.

  Never did again either, he thinks now. Not even in himself.

  XXII

  They tuned their instruments, guitar and violin, and set out to
play and compose. In the playing Debbie Canova was such a natural virtuoso that Tony had to endlessly yield. Not only that, but one day when she gave him some lyric to sing beside her violin’s melody lines she stopped, head cocked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought I noticed that before. But you’re singing too much on your throat. Don’t you know to project from your diaphragm? You won’t have a voice left in five years.’

  She was right. He went to the primary school down the road and asked the music teacher to teach him how to sing.

  That summer’s heat was building daily and by Christmas all the roads would either melt or crack open. Tony sang his heart out; at least the music teacher showed him how not to sing his vocal chords out. Still, he hadn’t quite got the hang of it and the sounds he made were a little more strangulated than usual. We persevered, inveigling Pete Kelley to give the band his best, last shot. It was university holidays anyway – and we brought in a new bass player, a nice hippie sort of guy who kept quiet except to ask every now and then, ‘Is this the riff or the chorus?’ His name was Stavros and his beard reached to his chest. His fingers were nimble and he had a good ear. Listening to Debbie play, he would nod to himself, ‘Cool. Cool.’

  She’d taken over. In the practice room we all simply waited for Debbie to tell us what to do. We wanted her to tell us. Things weren’t so bad; whenever she was amongst us the band seemed to cohere, seemed to have a point, and the point to which we cohered was her left hand moving spider-like over the frets of her violin. To her existing repertoire, in a few short weeks she added new pieces of infinite lightness and we filled in the background like a behemoth of a machine, an iron giant pursuing a butterfly. After a handful of particularly fruitful sessions we all nearly came to believe we could make a breakthrough, get famous, have a career. Just make the whole thing work.