The Candle Dancer / The Way That You Found Me (3 page)

‘God that was great, wasn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘I mean… what a show, right? Pain. It makes me high.’

This was so unexpected that I looked at Benjy in alarm. Such raw masochism was utterly beyond me.

‘That’s a weird thing to say,’ said Benjy.

Doll’s dark eyes opened. She reached out to each of us, a tentative joining of hands. I felt the dry palm and the feather lightness of what was inside, like the skeleton of some small dead thing, a mouse or bird. Benjy seemed ill at ease but he held her hand too, and I thought more of him for it.

II.

After we left school, all three of us studied at Melbourne University, and we often met up at Milk, a Carlton café that turned into a nightclub after dark. It was not far from the uni, and the beer was cheap.

At Milk, the whole vintage craze had been taken to a new level. Not content to simply decorate her café with Formica tables, the owner, Jackie, forbade anything invented after nineteen-seventy. This included in the kitchen, where she had a forty year old sandwich press. Even the milk bottles were sourced in antique shops. (You don’t say found, you say sourced. Sourcing has become a creative act.)

‘She’s got Bree Breslin playing tonight,’ Doll said, painting her short fingernails scab-red. ‘I’m obsessed with Bree Breslin. What a look she’s got. What a name!’

‘That’s why you’ve dyed your hair!’ said Selima.

‘An
homage
, darling, that’s right.’

‘But it was so pretty the way it was!’

‘I used Lotta’s hot rollers. Those things are
great
.’

‘Forget the hair. We’ve got to decide on a band name,’ I said, looking over at Benjy. He’d said he’d be in our band and I didn’t want to lose him. He sipped Coke out of his vintage glass tumbler, regarding Doll with placid amusement.

‘I’ve told you what it should be:
Broken at the Wheel
,’ said Doll. She was studying renaissance torture techniques as part of her arts degree, and going through her first bad breakup with Richard.

‘Too heavy. It sounds like a Norwegian heavy metal band. I like
Star of Fortune
,’ said Selima, swinging her feet onto a chrome chair. She’d finished her shift and taken off her apron.

‘I don’t like that,’ I said. ‘At all.’

‘
Velvet Underground
was the best name ever,’ Selima said, chewing her pencil stub. ‘Forever taken, like
This Mortal Coil
. What do you think, Benjy?’

He shrugged. He didn’t look interested, but then, he never did.

‘We’re a
rock
band,’ I said. ‘I’m not into eighties dream pop.’

Milk had live music on Fridays. Unplugged, mostly. Acoustic folk, Billie Holiday rip-offs, stuff like that. Even though Selima worked there and theoretically we’d have an ‘in’, Jackie would never let us play. My electric violin would send her into meltdown.

‘I like
The Lean Look’d Prophets
. Shakespeare. Benjy likes it, don’t you?’

‘Too boysy,’ said Selima. ‘And pretentious.’

‘And
This Mortal Coil
isn’t pretentious? Names get cool over time.’

‘And we’d have to be
lean
. The first thing they’d say, looking at me, is: shouldn’t their lead singer be a bit leaner?’ said Doll, pinching her soft upper arm.

‘You’re the leanest one of all of us. Anyway, I thought
I
was going to be the lead singer,’ I said.

‘I’m off,’ said Benjy, getting up.

‘But Bree Breslin’s on soon!’

Benjy laughed. ‘I’m not staying for
her
, Doll. You know I won’t.’

‘Me neither,’ said Selima, jumping up and throwing her bag over her shoulder.

‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ Doll clutched my arm. ‘What if Richard comes in? I can’t be
alone
!’

‘She’s good, Doll, I’m just not into her.’

‘Please. I’ll buy you a cocktail. My shout.’

‘You don’t have any money.’

‘Well, I’ll borrow it from you and pay you back. I will! I promise!’

I shook my head at her, smiling.

‘Ok, have I got this right: you’re borrowing money from me to treat me to a cocktail?’

‘Yep. And let’s get some more hot chips. I’m starving!’

Richard did come in, with some gorgeous girl. We ignored him and drank our cocktails. Breslin, a tiny woman with tiny dark eyes and ice blonde hair, sang “Fever” and “Black Magic Woman” with her chanteuse’s voice of smoke and honey. Doll swooned over her, borrowing more money to fund the twenty-dollar drinks, while I sent the occasional, agonised text to Benjy who unsympathetically texted back:
sucked in, Suzanne
.

My pay (I had a part-time job at the IGA delicatessen) was running out fast, but when I saw Richard sending Doll furtive looks I decided I didn’t care. My presence would get Doll through the night. I loathed Richard. To me he was a living cliché: a corporate banker by day who loved lady-boys at night. No doubt he’d one day get a wife and family and keep his habits secret.

Anticipating this moment was why Doll had bleached her hair, I thought. She was offering herself to him again, outdoing the girl he’d come in with, even outdoing Bree Breslin. She leaned back in her chair and laughed with me. The fluttering fingers and slightly widened eyes let me know that she was aware of scrutiny, and not just from Richard. A light above struck her in all the right places: brow and clavicles and cheekbones, her nose casting a shadow like a soft, dark butterfly. Again and again, her shapely lips met the rim of the glass.

It was late when we stumbled outside. The street lights made a blurry, twinkling floss above us. We walked down Elgin Street, clutching at each other and giggling. Ahead we saw a dark shape on the footpath that people were stepping around: an old man, drunker than we were and probably homeless. I wanted to step around him too. Doll wouldn’t let me.

‘Oh, let’s stop for this poor fallen angel.’

She made me help her move him up to a nearby bench. At times like this I remembered she was male: she crouched in her stiletto heels and slid her hands under his armpits and lifted with barely a grimace. I took his feet. His coat fell open and the movement sent his unwashed stench upwards. Doll was unperturbed. Having known extremes herself, she wasn’t frightened of them in others. She sent me off to the nearest service station to buy cheese sandwiches and a bottle of mineral water.

‘I’ve only got five dollars left.’

‘So? You’ve got a credit card, haven’t you?’

I set off for the two block walk, wondering if the servo would still have sandwiches. I glanced back and saw that Doll had arranged things so the man’s head lay in her lap. She was chattering and laughing, occasionally bending her head over him. I felt humbled by the shadowy pieta they made, lost to the indifferent passersby.

III.

We were practicing in Dad’s garage when the police came.

All three of them had just done a line of coke, and I was furious. Doll had brought the stuff, laughing as she unrolled the sealed plastic bag with a flourish. She wasn’t taking the band seriously. We started up after the line and it wasn’t till our next pause that we heard the knock.

Dad led them in, thumbing to them over his shoulder. As usual, Dad looked rather like a bed that needs new sheets. He turned up the dimmer switch. Doll blinked and stopped gyrating her hips, her eyes glittered madly inside the Breslin-style rings of kohl. Benjy put down his drumsticks and assumed a sober expression, but Selima kept strumming her bass guitar softly, blowing at the wisp of black hair that fell over her face. Both cops were around forty-five: a shortish plump guy who seemed more senior, followed by a redhead with a bizarrely bushy, orange moustache.

‘You have to stop. There’s been a complaint,’ said the short policeman, after he’d said his name—which I instantly forgot. I mentally re-christened him Shorty.

‘But you can play till ten on a weeknight—it
says
in the council guidelines,’ I said.

‘Not if it’s disturbing the quiet.’

‘But—we’ve got to be able to practice!’

‘We could hear it from the street. It’s too loud.’

‘Who complained?’

‘We don’t know who the complaint came from.’

‘I know who,’ I said, bitterly. ‘It’s that guy two doors up, bloody Bill
Dudley. You know tried to kick our door in, once? Never even introduced himself. Never said,
hey guys, we’ve got a bit of a problem
.’

‘What’s your name?’ said Shorty, flipping open a notepad.

‘Suzanne. Suzanne Fitts.’

‘Do you get called Suzy? You know, like Suzy Quatro?’ asked the red-haired cop. Shorty’s pen paused over his notepad. He shot his colleague a droll, sideways glance.

‘Well,’ he said, defensively, realising he’d made a blunder. ‘She’s got the pants for it…’

Predictably, I never heard the end of that one.

‘
Ewww
, she’s got
the pants
!’ yelled Doll, after the police retreated down the driveway, escorted courteously by Dad. I looked down at the black leather pants, bought two weeks earlier on eBay and stretched over my sturdy legs like the hide on Benjy’s drum.

‘
Suzy
,’ said Benjy, with his slow grin. ‘Never saw it before.’

‘I’m not Suzy, I’m Suzanne, and could we just drop it?’

‘More like he wants to get
into
your pants,’ said Selima.

‘Yes,’ said Doll, slapping her thigh. ‘She’s
got the pants
! And he wants to
rip them off
you, honey. The drought is over.’

‘This is serious,’ I said, angrily.

‘It could get serious. He’s a cop,’ agreed Selima, setting Doll off again.

‘No, dickhead, I mean
here
. We’ve got nowhere to practice if that prick keeps making complaints.’

‘We have to play quietly,’ said Benjy.

‘Well, it’s mostly
your
fault,’ I snapped. ‘You play so loudly the rest of us have to turn ourselves up to hear ourselves.’

‘I can play with the brushes,’ he offered. He never took offence at anything, Benjy. He was a sweetie, actually.

‘But we need to really open up sometimes,’ said Selima. Doll was still laughing.

I scowled.

‘We have to do something. Dad forked out a fortune to convert this place so we could practice.’

‘Well, maybe we just play softly, then open up at the end, really let it rip,’ said Benjy.

‘Yeah, get the cops back,’ said Doll, ostentatiously wiping tears from her eyes. ‘Then, we’ll clear out and leave the two of you alone to enjoy some copper love. He’s probably got a copper crotch as well! Suzy Quatro and Copper Crotch!’

The whole session was wasted. Doll wouldn’t stop with her lame joke and I lost it with her and stormed out. Eventually all the gear was packed up and I was rid of them. I sulked in my bedroom, listening to
The Dead Weather
on my iPod and plotting revenge on Bill Dudley. I’d really tried hard with him. I’d rung the local city council and gotten a copy of the Environment Protection Authority’s sound guidelines; I photocopied them and put them with a conciliatory letter in his letterbox.

The next day I found them by our front fence. For a weird moment I thought I’d forgotten to give them to him—but the letter was torn open. I realised this was his response. He was returning my letter without a word. The bastard hadn’t even bothered to put them
in
the letterbox.

I was so full of rage I couldn’t sleep. I found some relief in dancing furiously to “60 Feet Tall”, and reflecting that Benjy drums like Jack White, stopping and making grand entries with intuitive genius. I didn’t have the voice of that girl though, what’s her name, Alison Mosshart, husky and stylised and whooping unexpectedly, vibrating like a bell and scraping like sandpaper.

At two, a roaring sound broke through the music. I pulled out the earbuds. Someone was hooning up and down the street in a hotted-up car. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it.

‘Why doesn’t Bill Dudley pick on
him
?’ I thought.

I walked out of the house and waved my hands as the car went by on its fourth lap.

‘Shut UP!’ I screamed. ‘Shut UP!’

I couldn’t make out the driver beyond seeing it was a bloke. He tooted. He had one of those stupid car horns that beeps out a tune.

IV.

Quite a few of our friends were at Milk two nights later. Selima was working, wearing her checked uniform and apron. She still had her rock chick wisp hanging down, defying Jackie. Doll was slipping vodka into her lemonade, busy pretending she didn’t care that Richard was there with a crowd we didn’t know.

‘We’ve been thinking,’ Selima.

‘Yeah? I’ll have the burger and fries,’ I said.

She took her pencil stub from behind her ear and wrote on her notepad.

‘What about a Suzy Quatro cover band?’

‘What? Don’t start this Suzy stuff again.’

Doll stifled a laugh. Selima shook her head.

‘No, we’re quite serious. We reckon if you got that haircut, that kind of shag mullet, you could look quite like her. We could call ourselves
The Roxy Rollers
, after one of her songs.’

I screwed up my face.

‘You’ve got her kind of mousy hair,’ said Doll. Selima glared.

‘Don’t, Doll. It’s not cool. I’m trying to sell this, right?’ she said. ‘So what we were thinking was, we could cover a few of hers and sneak some of our own stuff in too. The rock tracks, that we could make sound like her.’

‘You’d be the lead singer then. You could wear
the pants
,’ smirked Doll.

‘And Jackie said she’d let us have a gig. Suzy Quatro’s a bit late but she’s still retro.’

‘Well, I’ve got to think it over. I want to make a real band, like
The Dead Weather
.’

‘Our skills just aren’t up there yet,’ said Selima, blowing at her black wisp. Her eyeliner was smudged. ‘The thing about doing covers is that we
learn
, not just to do the music but we get live experience, all that.’

‘Here’s an idea. Why don’t
you
dress up as Joan Jett? You look like her more than I look like Suzy Quatro.’

‘Well, I for one refuse to cover “I Love Rock'n'Roll”,’ said Doll, and began humming it, glancing over her shoulder at Richard again.