by Lindy Dale
Beside me, Sasha tensed. Her back was ramrod straight as she glared back at him, icy daggers shooting from her pupils. Her voice was little more than a strangled whisper. “Enough is enough. It’s a time I put a stop to this rubbish.”
Watching her purposeful stride through the back door, I knew I should have followed and made sure she was okay but, really, the sight of Simmo and Courtney was so ludicrous I couldn’t tear myself away.
“What the fuck’s she doing now? She’s lost the plot,” Sam said.
Sasha had returned. Holding the previously banned barbecue fork before her like a baton, she snaked her way through the crowd. Politely, she excused herself and apart from the fact that she was walking and balancing a rather large piece of raw meat on the end of the implement, she looked completely sane. If you didn’t look at her eyes, that is. Or the set of her jaw.
“Think we should stop her?” I asked.
By this stage, Sam was laughing fit to kill himself. He could hardly hold his beer. “Let her go. What’s the worst that can happen?”
“She could decapitate Simmo with a cooking utensil?”
“Let’s hope she goes for Courtney’s boobs, too,” Mel added. “I’d love somebody to deflate that bitch.”
Sasha wended her way through the group, approaching the spot where Simmo and Courtney were leaning against the wall, pretending they didn’t know each other and had not, only seconds previously, been engaged in some sort of pornographic mating ritual.
“Darling,” Sasha addressed him, the muscles of her face so smooth it could only be a cover.
Simmo gave her a weak smile. For once he looked worried. “Hey Sash’.”
“Would you like a bit of meat for your dog?” Sasha enquired sweetly, at the same time raising the steak to Simmo’s lips.
“Fucking brilliant,” Mel laughed, “Even I couldn’t have thought of that.”
Then, as we continued to ogle, Sasha put the steak down on the mantle, pushed up her sleeves and calmly punched Simmo so hard in the nose and eye, the sound of cracking cartilage echoed through the room.
“Oh. My. God! She’s, like, totally punched him out. I hope she hasn’t bruised her knuckles.” Kirby giggled.
“That’s one hell of a left hook,” said Sam.
Mel just snorted. “I warned Simmo not to fuck with her. Zumba isn’t the only thing she’s been doing at the gym lately.”
Over in the corner, Simmo was howling like a baby. Holding his nose, he tried to contain the flow of blood with his shirtsleeve. “What the fuck! Saassh!! What was that for?”
Sasha twisted the ring on her wedding finger. Slowly, she pulled it off and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt. Her smile didn’t falter, her eyes stayed locked on his. Helpless to retaliate, and with blood pouring from his nose, Simmo looked to Courtney but she was too busy creating yet another hysterical scene.
“Shit, fuck, Alan! Will you do something please? There’s blood all over me. My top will be ruined.”
Sasha didn’t flinch. Even the sound of Simmo’s real name springing from another girl’s lips wasn’t enough to make her lose focus. “Oh dear, you look a little dirty. Let me help you clean up a bit,” she said, lifting her arm and dispensing the contents of her husband’s beer down Courtney’s front.
“Stay away from me, you psycho cow.”
“Better to be a psycho cow than a man-stealing whore like you.”
“Take that, bitch,” whispered Mel.
Sasha turned back to Simmo. Her calm resolve was astounding, awe-inspiring. “If you were going to humiliate me in front of the whole club, you could at least have picked a girl worth having. It’s no achievement to say you’ve done Courtney. Every lad in the room’s ridden that bike. As a matter of fact, it’s an insult to me,” and turning away she picked up the meat and tossed it at his head. “You’ll probably need this. It looks like that eye is going to bruise.”
*****
“You’ve, like totally gone and done it this time,” Kirby admonished Simmo, after seeing a shaken Sasha to her taxi and giving the driver her address. “You’ll like, totally, want to be having a serious talk when you get home.”
“I agree, mate, you can’t have your steak and eat it too.” Sam was trying not to laugh at the massive welt growing on the left side of Simmo’s face, not to mention the fact that his nose was the size of a mango. It was the first time he’d ever seen a bloke get punched out by a girl. A few bottles over the head maybe, but never punched out.
“Bud whad did I do?”
Mel banged Simmo’s forehead with her palm. “Are you retarded or just extremely fucking slow? Everyone knows you’ve been hooking up Courtney. Do you think Sash’s blind? And where have you been for the last hour? It’s not much fun chasing your crazy wife around when she’s wielding a barbecue fork, you know. I had drinking to do.”
“I was helbing Courtney chage her flat tyre.” He seemed contrite or maybe just sorry for himself. No one was going to be able to get him out of the ridiculous emerald green corner he’d painted himself into.
“With what? Your dick?”
Simmo sniffed. “She’s bwoke by dose.”
“You’re lucky that’s all she broke. She got her black belt in Judo last week.”
*****
The next morning I was in the laundry sorting through the children’s clothes and mine. Somehow my top had become stained with Simmo’s blood and I needed to soak it before it went into the wash so if I was going to do that, I thought I might as well do the rest of our laundry at the same time. I was feeling somewhat guilty about the amount of time I’d been spending with the children of late. More often than not, snippets of weekends that had been reserved for them were now given over to my boyfriend. It was as if I had been given a choice between him and my surrogate family and I’d made the choice—well, Adele had made it. Oddly, she seemed determined to get us together at every opportunity, giving me more time off than I’d ever had before. My theory was she hoped if Sam and I became serious, I’d give up on my dream and stay with the family and him.
Carrying a basket of dolly clothes, Paige came in.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sliding the basket onto the counter beside my pile of clean clothes.
I looked down at her. “Sorting a few things, baby. Are you going to give your dolls clothes a wash? Princess Voilet’s gown did look a bit grubby.”
Paige pulled the plastic step up to the tub and stood on it. She took the mini peg basket from her ‘laundry’ and put it on the counter beside us, peering into the washtub as she did so. “Yuck! Millie! Why is the water all red?”
“I got some blood on my top so I’m soaking it to remove the stain.”
“Eww, gross. Was Sam bleeding?”
“No. It was his friend. He hurt his nose and some of it must have splattered on my top.”
Paige looked at me. Her creamy brow knitted together. “I hope it wasn’t that nice blonde man. He’s very hot. He looks like the man from the Titanic movie I watched last time I was at Jennifer’s.”
Though shocked that my charge had used the word ‘hot’ in the correct context, something else occurred to me. There was no explanation as to how she could give such a description. Johnny had never been to the house.
“When did you meet Johnny?”
Paige shuffled on the stool. She tipped her doll’s clothes onto the counter and began to sort the whites from the colours. Her voice sounded innocent enough but I didn’t believe it for a second. “Who?”
“Johnny. The blonde man who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Paige frowned a little more. “I think it was, um, when we went to the thing.” Now she was deliberately avoiding the subject. I had seen her mother do it and seemingly Paige had inherited the gene.
“What thing?”
“That thing we went to with the gelato. The festival thing. Sam was there.”
Unconvinced, I went back to the sorting and folding. Yes, I had taken Paige and the tw
ins to the Italian Food Festival in Mount Lawley and we had eaten lemon gelato but I had no recollection of Johnny being there.
“Are you sure?”
Paige nodded, though she didn’t look at me. “Positive. But you were in the toilets with Tori and Michael. That was it.”
Hmm. At least Paige hadn’t inherited the lying gene. She was crap at it.
20
Grand Final Night. The Hornets had been victorious over the black scum for the first time in twenty-something years. People were dancing—Sam included— around the room, drinking champagne out of an overtly large, extremely ostentatious gold cup, the very cup that some of the younger lads had only ever before seen in pictures. The veneer clad walls of the Hornets Nest vibrated from the music of Womble and his backing singers, the Womblets. In karaoke heaven, they were pounding out, We Are the Champions at the top of their lungs whilst wearing brown and gold club undies on their heads. Never one to let an opportunity pass by, That-Slut-Courtney was in fine form preening and primping her way around the room in search of a target. Having achieved her goal of stealing Simmo from Sasha, she seemed to have decided was time to move on. We all knew why—Simmo had consumed a bug of guilt that had made a direct line for his genitals, manifesting itself in an inability to perform. Unless the threat of getting caught loomed at the next corner or toilet door, he couldn’t get it up and Courtney was unable to survive without her daily fix of illicit sex.
Next to me, Sasha was propped up against he wall. Glass in one hand, cigarette in the other; she blew her smoke out the open window. She had entered the stage of grieving known as bitter and twisted. “My God, will you look at the pathetic bastard.”
I thought she was talking about Sam who was at that moment attempting to slip his lost shoe onto the wrong foot, but realising she meant Simmo, who was flopped in an old chair, staring dismally into his glass like it was the last beer on Earth, I agreed. “Sad isn’t it?”
Simmo’s un-ironed clothes lacked Sasha’s touch and stubble sprouted from his chin that was definitely not purpose grown. He looked tired and pale but had nobody to blame but himself. Not only had he lost the only woman who would cook him crumbed lambs brains and had to fork out seven grand to get his nose fixed, but it looked like the woman at the centre of the trouble was trying her best to become another man’s dog.
“Sad? Believe me, the only sad thing about him are those vile high waist underpants his mother buys for him. He deserves every bit of misery he gets. He’s a dickhead. Last Sunday, I caught him doing a drive by of the house on three separate occasions. He said he was on his way to the gym. The only time he’s ever been inside a gym, Millie, was last Thursday when I caught him ogling me from behind the Stairmaster. And he only stopped because I threatened to call the police and report him for indecent exposure.” Sasha’s laugh was brittle as she blew another smoke ring out the window.
“He’s, like, totally stalking you,” Kirby said.
“Tell me about it. Yesterday he happened to be at the supermarket when I was there. If he sends me one more grovelling text, wanting to get back with me, I’ll break his phone over his head.”
Oh dear.
“You could shove a restraining order up his sorry fucking arse, while you’re at it,” said Mel. “That’d teach him.”
“I’d rather put my boot up it. He only wants me back because of what he might lose in a divorce settlement.”
As soon as Sasha realised what was going down, she’d engaged Johnny as her lawyer. Jilted wives being his speciality, Johnny was guaranteed to take Simmo for everything he had. In the name of business, of course.
With a theatrical sigh, Kirby tossed her golden hair extensions across each shoulder and began to make them into a makeshift braid. “Men are like, so totally caveman. I mean, what about Ryan? Last week he, like, invited me to go and visit him in Geraldton. So I, like totally, took the week off work, because I felt sorry he’s stuck there and I, like, got to his house—” she said, stopping for a breath, “—and he’s not there.”
“Where was he?”
“I called him and I said, like, ‘where are you Pumpkin?’ in my most sweetest voice. I mean, I’d just, like, driven four hours across the country. I had a right to be pissed off but I was being the best at keeping it in.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he was, like, playing golf. Golf. Can you believe it? Then… then…” She thumped my forearm, to make sure I was still tuned in. “Then he said, he’d totally forgotten I was arriving. Um, hello! The woman he loves is, like arriving tout suite, and he’s off swatting little balls into even littler holes. I, like, maxed out my cards on a whole new travel outfit and a Guess overnight bag. I looked totally awesome and he wasn’t even there to, like, greet me.”
“Bastard,” Sasha snorted. “Him and Simmo should get together. They seriously need to read the book of How Not to Treat Women.”
“It would be so nice if they could just be like Sam.”
I sat up straight. Had I heard right? Was Sam suddenly the nicest guy on the planet? Had he been dethroned from his number one ranking as Bastard of the Century?
“So what happened next?” I asked, my eyes firmly fixed on what Sam was up to. He and Johnny had made some sort of sleds from the vinyl cushions of the bench seating and were greasing the floor with vegetable oil to ride them through the crowd. On their stomachs. It was another trip to Emergency waiting to happen.
“Well. I sat on the front step and tried to do my yoga breathing. I thought I was, like, going to have a panic attack. I couldn’t even, like, get into the house and I really needed to do a wee. Not that I wanted to go in there. It’s next to a piggery. The stench was, like, unbearable.”
“Get out!” Mel began to laugh. “How fucking appropriate that the pig should be living next door to his mates. Nothing more than he deserves for treating you like crap all these years.”
“Don’t be mean,” Kirby pouted. “So I sat on the step and I, like, said to myself, Kirby, girlfriend, you have got to like, get a grip. This is the man you love. He wouldn’t invite you here if he were, like, going to be mean to you. And, I waited for, like, another two hours on the porch. He said he’d been stuck behind some bogans on the nineteenth hole or something.”
“Kirby, honey, the nineteenth hole is the bar.”
“Seriously? I wondered why he smelled like beer.”
“And then?”
“Well, he let me into the house, not a kiss, not anything and I’m like totally suspicious. I mean, he was closing doors so I couldn’t look into rooms and he gave me a beer. He knows I hate beer. He was behaving like a total weirdo.”
Sasha nodded knowingly. “And?”
“He jumped my bones. On the floor, in the middle of all his shit. I haven’t had sex in, like, over a month. I was totally gagging for it. And he does give the best head.”
Sasha’s wine spewed from her mouth. A spray of red splattered across the tiles. I bit my glass, trying not to choke. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. This was almost as funny as the things that came out of Paige’s mouth.
“So, by then, it’s like, late and he said we had to have a serious talk. He told me that he was, like, really busy with the new job and that he wouldn’t have any free time to spend with me and I thought to myself, as if. He totally had time to play golf. So I asked him what that meant and he said our priorities lay in different directions. I don’t even know what priorities are.” At this, the floodgates opened and she burst into hysterical fits of tears.
“Was he for real?” Sash’s eyes were practically popping out of her head. “He got you up there so he could have sex and then dump you? Oh, Kirbs.”
Kirby recovered herself. She paused to dab a tear from under each extended lash. “No, no! He also said he, like, totally thought it would be best if I leave.”
“What, in the middle of the night? Shit, Kirbs, what did you do?”
“What could I do? I came home, took that hideous
necklace he gave me for Christmas last year to Cash Converters, got, like seventy bucks for it and hit the shops. Then I got our wine collection, the one he said he wanted half of in ‘the settlement’ and I opened every single bottle and drank half. I had such a hangover, I couldn’t go to work for three days, so it was lucky I had that time off. The couriers are delivering his half tomorrow.”
Mel began to roar with laughter. “I don’t think he meant it literally, Kirbs. That collection was worth a mint.’
“You think I don’t know that? I’m not a retard, Mel. I didn’t want the stupid wine. I just wanted to, like, piss him off. I don’t have time for his shit. I’m twenty-four. My biological clock is totally ticking. I need a husband, like, yesterday.” And with that she stood, puffed out her incredibly real fake boobs, flicked back her hair and trotted over to where the reserves boys were congregated.
I sat on the windowsill for a long while after that, watching Sam and Johnny riding their toboggans up and down the concrete floor at well-oiled speed. I tried to take it all in. Simmo and Sasha were separated. Courtney was on the prowl for a lover who could perform without Viagra. Rambo had dumped Kirbs for a golf course. And she’d ‘like totally’ played him at his own game. As Sam got up, blood spurting from the hole in head where he’d forgotten to put his foot brakes on, and I wandered over with the first aid kit, I wondered what the hell would happen next?
21
“If you don’t tell him this time, I will,” Alex growled into the phone after I told her that I’d delayed my departure again because of Sam’s birthday. We’d been discussing plans for the weekend and I’d mentioned the birthday surprise I’d planned. She’d been proud of my subterfuge until the subject of Bali came up. “You can’t let him keep investing in this relationship without something in return. It’s not fair. It’s a breach of trust.”
