Dirty Beat

by Venero Armanno

  She said, ‘I thought you might feel like drumming into the New—’

  Her voice cut off as I pulled her to me. I held her by the waist and kissed her. She gripped her violin and bow as her hands went behind my neck and her heel locked my leg to hers. I felt her violin pressing against my back; Debbie rubbed against my prick. I can’t remember saying anything. I don’t think she did either. My heart thumped but the whole thing was easy because I didn’t love her, not yet, only desired her.

  We went into the most open room of the house. The night was hot, airless and still. The dining room had a long, sliding wooden window that opened to a patio twelve metres high. My back yard stretched away and down for a good half acre and all of it was full of shrubbery and trees. Above us, the stars were out and the moon was porcelain. I sat in a hard-backed wooden chair. Debbie sat in my lap facing me. Behind her was the universe of the night sky. Whenever she kissed me I closed my eyes and saw another dark universe, the one her lips and tongue created. At first she was sort of feverish, but I calmed her down, slowed her down, caressed her shoulders and ran my hands across her back. She took one of my hands and rubbed it into her breasts, and that was nice, but she was too eager.

  I lifted her off me and she sat looking at the view while I got us some drinks. I said, ‘Does Tony know you’re here?’

  She replied, ‘Tony knows I’m gone.’

  I nodded. Didn’t need to ask much more. This was the place it was right for her to be. She looked at me and I felt my legs all warm and weak. I wasn’t so much in control after all. The curve of her cheek, the slender line of her throat, her long hair and blue eyes – I took a sip of red wine then threw the glass out the window. It thudded into the grass far below. Debbie sort of laughed and did the same thing. She bit my bottom lip, shook her hair into my face. I picked her up and fucked her there, against the window sill, on the dining table, on the hard tiles of the patio where my aunt and Conny used to sometimes arrange their chairs and watch the Milky Way, drinks and crackers at hand.

  Later, when we were in my bed, the ceiling fan was turning slowly. She pulled me over her. We locked eyes again. Her fingers dug into my arms, urging me further and harder. This time she bit her own bottom lip. I was falling. Debbie Canova. My Debbie.

  In the morning her head was on my chest. We were damp with the heat of maybe thirty-eight degrees. What woke me was the banging on the front door. I knew it was Tony. At least he’d waited till morning. I eased Debbie’s head onto the pillow and shut the bedroom door behind me.

  The first thing to hit me was the stench of stale booze. The second was a hunk of branch he’d found somewhere in the street. It was heavy and split open a line down from my forehead, across my nose and through my upper and lower lips. He swung again and missed, drunk, almost knocking himself out in the process. I backed up, bleeding, eyes watering, holding my face while Tony howled like an angel thrown back into Hell. When he couldn’t hit me again he hit the walls with that branch, and when he hit a wall too hard and the branch reverberated out of his grip, I grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him ahead of me down the corridor. He tried to punch and kick and bite me, called me every name under the sun. He fell down. I picked him up. He kicked me in the shin and spat at me.

  I wouldn’t hit him. I’d hurt him enough already. In his drunken abandon, plates smashed, glasses, the front of a cabinet, and a kitchen window shattered to a hurled can of baked beans. A muesli packet erupted against a wall. A bunch of bananas hit me in the face. The whole place was a mess and he wasn’t about to stop.

  I tried to shout above his shouting, trying to get him to calm down. No use. He overturned the dining table and chairs. When he was satisfied with that he turned on me again and tore at my face. I only just managed to keep out of his grip. Warm blood was in my eyes anyway and the clammy morning ensured that it ran like soup and didn’t congeal.

  ‘Come on, Tony, stop this. Get yourself together.’

  He wasn’t listening. If anything, he was just warming up. When he picked up one of those heavy dining table chairs and tried to smash it over my head, just as he must have seen done in a hundred westerns, well, that was enough. I wrestled it out of his grip. In the process he fell over again. I had a stroke of genius and used that chair to trap him under it. I sat down. He wriggled and kicked but couldn’t get out, and so howled some more.

  Debbie Canova crept out of the bedroom and into this farce. What a sight it was that met her. If ever a picture was needed of what a rock band’s break-up might look like, well, this was probably it.

  XXV

  Finally on his way out of my house, Tony said, ‘How could you do this to me? You of all people. My friend.’ He glared at me and added ‘Traitor’ with just enough inflection that I’d know he would never have done something like this to me or anyone else. A knife went into my spleen, but I wasn’t about to back down. From that moment to this I never saw him again, except when his picture was in the paper or on the back of his self-help books.

  Iron John couldn’t have cared less about Manoeuvres or Xodus or whatever-we-were breaking up. In the new year he spoke to Debbie about putting a backing band together and going on tour to try and save the disaster that was the record. Of course she liked the idea. Her as leader, me on drums and a team of hand-picked musicians with us. Iron John even volunteered to be a guitarist in the band, or a sound mixer-cum-engineer-cum-anything that would keep him close to her. For he would soon break the news to Debbie, news she hadn’t quite been aware of. It came many months after the break-up, many months after she’d moved in with me, many months into the tour rehearsals with our crack new musicians.

  All that time we were like one person, together almost every minute of every day. On the nights I went to my shelf-stacking so that we had a little money to feed ourselves, she’d be practising with her new electric violin, discovering the sounds it was capable of making. When I came home she was always waiting, didn’t matter what crazy hour of the morning: freshly showered, hair like silk, her smile welcoming and warm. Supper would be ready and the bed made up with fresh sheets. In those days, nights and early mornings Debbie Canova’s love fell as easily as rain.

  I was happy; I still believe we both were.

  Eventually, she thought her new electric violin skills were good enough to demonstrate, and she’d even composed a new piece called ‘DC-E’, for Electric. She arranged to go to Iron John’s office and play it for him through a small practice amp. I stayed home with the fellows of our refashioned Xodus and hoped she wouldn’t be gone long. We boys sweated through several difficult portions of the DC repertoire as Debbie Canova set up the amp in Iron John’s office and checked her tuning. Feet planted, she started to play.

  Distracted and pensive, he stopped her after two or three minutes.

  Debbie thought he must have been worrying over tour dates, venues, and wanted to talk things through. His bookings had been going well enough despite the absolute bomb that was the album; we could thank the power of who he was – or used to be – for that. Disappointed he wasn’t interested in her proficiency with an instrument he himself had given her, she waited to hear what he had to say. Instead of dates and ideas came the confession he’d bottled up for too long.

  ‘We should be a team, Deborah. Imagine what we could do. Your talent and my smarts. Your looks and my contacts. The way you compose married to the way I arrange. From the day you came in to see me, I knew. We could make this big. We could make a fortune. It’s us, Deborah. Us. You don’t need to be in a band, you just need musicians to back you. We can pick that up anywhere.’

  He had more to tell her of course, the grey nightmare of his eyebrows jumping as, for the first time in his life, that iron in his heart was peeled away. What did he say? Things I knew myself. That when she planted her feet, lifted her violin and tucked it under her chin, and when her bow swooped and the music soared – so did the tired spirits of men. For Iron John specifically, when she smiled at him, well, he just felt his
old blood roar. She was young, he was middle-aged, but together they’d get things that were timeless: success, money, influence. They’d be that new kind of royalty the world adored: rich celebrities.

  Poor Iron John, just like the rest of us, but with nothing but glass beads to attract Debbie Canova.

  ‘What about Max?’ she asked. He stared at her. ‘Max’ barely rated a comment. ‘But I love him,’ she said. More staring.

  Then: ‘DC, I love you. That’s all that counts.’

  She wanted to make music and be successful, but in the process she hardly wanted to give herself to a man she didn’t want to be with. She’d had more than enough of that in her marriage. Even if she hadn’t been with me, he didn’t have a chance. She found him physically repulsive, emotionally stunted, and she baulked at the bad, old-man sort of smell about him. No amount of money or success could make her want him; no amount of money or success was going to make her leave the man she already thought she loved.

  Gamely, she did as she’d done with Phil the plumber in her ridiculously long farewell letter. She told all of this to Iron John – all of the truth. Gamely, but gently too and very, very kindly. She thought the worst that could come of it was that he’d put an end to this personal angle to their professional relationship and insulate his feelings. He’d forget about it and from here on in he’d treat her the same way he treated everyone else: slightly contemptuously, but as one professional to another. He’d look to the business. After all, she had a contract with him, and wasn’t there an album to salvage? Then of course there’d be the next one and the one after that. The music wasn’t going to dry up and the story of their brilliant partnership wasn’t going to end just because she didn’t feel the same way he did.

  Well, she’d misjudged what sort of a new world she was in and to whom she was telling the truth.

  Iron John’s office was in an alley off another alley that housed his recording studio. The back of Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley; a dump inside a bigger dump. Above his office, a sweatshop clothing factory using Italian and Greek migrant women to stitch shirts together. The vibrations of the machines sometimes drowned out his very telephone conversations. On his floor, some sort of coffee and tea importing firm that never seemed open. Below him, a rat- and cockroach-infested warehouse for second-hand goods like musty pillows and broken bedding. So Debbie and he were, to all intents, alone. Even Iron John’s secretary only worked two days a week, and this day wasn’t one of them.

  She’d put the violin down and had switched off the amp. Now she was sitting in an easy chair, uncomfortable with the situation, but certain the problem would pass. He was behind his desk. Debbie had listened to what he had to say and he’d listened to her reply. His eyebrows had stopped working and his face was – naturally – quite, quite grey. Iron John made a series of non-committal grunts. He stood up and nodded sagely, as if, yes, this was understandable. Debbie, what am I but a stupid old man lovesick as a schoolboy? So now let’s get back to work.

  He came around the desk and before she could even understand the torment raging inside him, he literally threw himself upon her. The sheer shock and bulk of his immense weight knocked the breath out of her. They fell to the floor. Like a drowner, she gasped for breath, but she couldn’t get air into her lungs. As she struggled, voiceless, he ripped away her skirt. It inflamed him even more to see she wasn’t wearing underwear. He sent his raging face deep between her legs, Debbie clawing at his hair. Then she was breathing and almost able to scream, but he pushed her down and punched her in the stomach. She felt as if her body would explode. She kicked out with her legs and his fist ploughed into her again. And one more time. That stopped her. She’d never experienced such pain, had never been struck in the belly by anyone, even as a little girl playing too-rough games with boys in the schoolyard. She knew that to avoid it again she’d do just about anything.

  Eyes squeezed tight, she felt his cock push inside her, then he was ramming hard, and he was muttering too, muttering the same word over and over. What was the word?

  ‘Debbie – Debbie – Debbie.’

  This wasn’t enough. He didn’t possess her enough. He pulled himself out and rolled her onto her stomach. Phil had begged her for this part of herself, but she’d never let him. Now Iron John forced his way in, using his own saliva to make her take him. He ripped inside her and as he ejaculated his head reared up and a long gasp tore itself out of his chest and throat. His face was a rictus of agony. Looking over her shoulder, Debbie had only a glimpse of him; still, the merest glimpse of that tortured face was enough. She’d never seen anything like it. She thought he was dying, actually dying. Unfortunately, there was no such luck. Iron John’s body shivered and then his great weight went limp and fell onto her, pinning her face-first to the floor. She was suffocating again. She beat the palms of her hands against the threadbare material of the office rug, but she was a sparrow trapped beneath a boulder. Finally, however, he pushed himself away. Sat on the floor beside her flattened body, gasping. She was gasping too, and afraid, almost too afraid to move.

  He reached for his coat draped over a chair. Found a pack of cigarettes and a steel-plated lighter.

  ‘Have a smoke.’

  She pushed herself onto her side, curled herself up into the foetal position. All her hair curtained her face. ‘Don’t smoke.’

  ‘Have one with me, Deborah.’

  The tone of his voice said he might not be finished yet. She straightened herself. Forced her body into a sitting position. Every part of her seemed to either sting, throb or cry out. Added to that, her hands weren’t just trembling, each finger individually quivered. She’d never felt so scared, so terrified. What a word – terror. She wanted to vomit, but made herself take a cigarette, to play along. It was time to placate the monster in him, not aggravate it. This was how she’d get out in one piece. Time to be clever. She’d smoked sometimes with Phil, especially when he rolled joints. All right then, anything to keep Iron John calm. She forced herself to be calm too. The worst was over.

  He gallantly lit her cigarette for her and they smoked, both still sitting on his office floor. To protect his rug, he used the cupped palm of his left hand as an ashtray. He encouraged Debbie to tap her ash into it, too. She did, but never looked at him. She wondered why there were no tears in her eyes – but there was that awful swelling pain in her belly, and down below her belly, and in her back passage too. She wondered if she was bleeding, and if so, from how many parts. She wondered how she would make her way home to me in this condition. Above all else, she wanted to lock herself in a room and be quiet and alone.

  ‘Want to go now.’

  ‘Stay a while. Just stay a while with me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about what I did. Too much. Got too much.’ He lit himself another cigarette. This time, when he offered her one and she didn’t want it, he didn’t push her. ‘Just sit there a second. I want to get something from my desk. Promise me you won’t move, won’t try to run out. You can go in a minute. I just want to talk to you about something. Okay?’

  She nodded. ‘But then, I have to go. Max is wait—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up with Max waiting.’

  A tremor ran all the way down her back. She cringed from that voice, feeling how it made her bowels want to go loose. Debbie didn’t think she could get to the door before he’d catch her anyway. She didn’t think that if she screamed anyone would hear. Now she watched Iron John get to his feet. He pulled up his trousers, but she noticed he forgot to zip the fly. She put a hand on her belly. If she breathed shallow, not too fast, the pain looked after itself. She was feeling stronger. What could she hit him with? There didn’t seem to be anything at hand.

  Debbie looked up at Iron John. All these months of working together, making plans, arranging music, and he was a stranger. Nothing like the man she thought he was. As unknown and unknowable as the nightmare monster you can’t quite picture when you open your eyes.

  Oh, but she’d picture him all right, all the way t
o the end of her days. That was something she was certain of.

  At his desk he opened a drawer. What – a knife or a gun and a bullet to finish her off? He fished out a bottle. She saw the label. Brandy. He returned with two small, dirty glasses. Poured the brandy and leaned down, offering her one. She knew she had to take it: the man loomed over her, heavy as a bear, fly undone, but that awful prick of his tucked away inside.

  ‘So drink up.’

  She took a sip and it burned all the way down, but when the brandy hit her stomach it actually soothed the pain.

  ‘DC,’ he said, reaching out to caress the hair that fell over her face. ‘You’ve been teasing me since the first, since the day you came in here with your cassette. The shy little looks, the little flirts, they work on a man. Gets to him sooner or later. You’ve been doing this since you were a kid, right? Back home in the bush, with all those dumb little boys who fall over every time a sweet girl like you bats her lashes. Gets you things, correct? Gets you what you want. Girls learn, I know that, I don’t blame you. On the one hand you act like sugar wouldn’t melt in your mouth. On the other hand, well, you give out the opposite and poor salivating mutts like me follow at heel. It’ll be brilliant on stage and with the media, but in daily life—’ He shook his head. ‘So let’s be real. Let’s work with what we’ve got here.’ He took a deep sigh, then another. Swallowed his brandy. Poured again. ‘Drink up, Deborah,’ he said.

  Debbie took another sip. She knew how this was softening everything that had happened to her. Rape? But, miss, you did have a post-coital cigarette with the accused, didn’t you? Even a shot-glass of brandy. Brandy? Now that’s a sophisticated drink for a common rapist, isn’t it?

  How much longer? How much longer before she could get out of this hell-hole? This was the end and she knew it; this made everything over; the next move had to be a train, bus or eighteenwheeler to somewhere else. Somewhere a long way away and her with a new name that no one would ever know. Max would come. Max wouldn’t. She already wasn’t sure she cared – because escape is escape, running is running, and she wanted to run now. She stopped the fantasy that she could pick something up and smash him down and save herself.