An advertisement was on the television. She watched a young woman hold up a box of detergent, the pristine whiteness a shock after the muted yellows and oranges of the video. It too seemed obscene, contaminated by all that she had just witnessed. Her breath was retching. She threw the ashtray against the wall with such force that she stumbled and collapsed. She lay curled up on the floor, with no tears but with her entire body shaking and convulsing.
When she finally rose, the room was dark. She turned off the TV and threw open the curtains, allowing in the winter’s fading sun. She ejected the video from the player, and dropped it and its cover into the kitchen sink. She opened the window, switched on the fan above the stove, and took out a bottle of methylated spirits from the cupboard underneath the sink. She doused the video, struck a match, threw it and moved away. The flame leapt, grabbed the edges of the curtains. She rushed to put out the flames, ripping apart the fabric, throwing the still-burning material into the sink. She stood in awe as the flames flared and leapt almost to the ceiling, washing the kitchen in their fiery light. Slowly, the fire stopped dancing and she approached the sink. The video was now two shattered solid white wheels afloat in a thick black ooze. The smoke smelt toxic. She coughed and fanned the smoke towards the window. Covering her mouth, she leaned over the sink and blasted the foulness with water. There was a sizzling, more black smoke, then finally nothing. She scooped the coagulated mess into her gloved hands and threw it in the bin, spitting on it before she slammed the lid.
She scrubbed, scoured the kitchen with disinfectant. The sink she attacked mercilessly, her face, her arms, her back dripping with perspiration; she bathed the sink in vinegar till it shone silver, till all signs of blackness had disappeared.
When she had finished, when the house was once again neat and clean, when the shards of the ashtray had been collected and deposited in the bin, when all was as before except for the reproving nakedness of the kitchen window, she took a bottle of brandy and sat cross-legged in the spare room, his old room.
She took out the family photo albums, and drank and remembered. There was Nick at his confirmation, grinning proudly at the camera. There was Nick as she knew him, the real Nick, in a singlet by the sea, his arm around his cousin’s shoulder, laughing so hard his eyes were squeezed shut. There was Nick at two and Nick at five. There was Nick in his school uniform, Nick as a surly thirteen-year-old in a village square in Italy. She filled and refilled her glass, poring over the photographs, remembering, replenishing her memories, filling her eyes and her mind with her Nick.
She finished the bottle, going through the photo albums again and again. When her husband found her, she was whimpering her son’s name, over and over, a blanket of photos spread around her. He took her in his arms, placed her gently in bed, whispered to her that she should sleep.
But sleep would never again be peace. She lay there still, listening to the muted words of his praying.
Porn 2
WHERE DOES JESUS LIVE? I KNOW. He lives deep down in the sewer with me.
I saw Jesus just the other night. I was with Mickey. He was shit-scared, couldn’t stop looking over his shoulders, jerking his body this way and that, jumping around, grinding his teeth from all the goey he had shot up. He was petrified cos he owed Dick Cheese Saunders, that big fat fuck, two thousand bucks. Mickey didn’t have two thousand bucks. He could barely scrape together a lousy twenty.
I saw Jesus in Mickey’s eyes. For a brief moment they had stopped twitching and had swerved back to look at me. Our Saviour stared straight out.
Then a fleshy, hairy paw landed on Mickey’s shoulder and I heard a gruff, bass voice say, ‘Where ya been, cunt?’
Dick Cheese Saunders had found us.
I waited outside the kebab shop, my hands deep in the pockets of my tracky daks, trying to keep warm. I tried to scam money off some drunk working stiffs going past but the turds wouldn’t even look at me.
I was freaking out that Dick Cheese Saunders would kick the shit out of Mickey. Saunders was capable of anything when he lost it, and two thousand bucks was a lot to lose. Please, Jesus, I kept thinking to myself, please look after him. Please. That made me feel a bit better. Jesus wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Mickey. Jesus was in Mickey, I’d seen him.
And Jesus was there alright. Straight after, Mickey galloped up to me, all gangling arms, skinny long legs and the biggest shit-eating grin spread on his face. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me to the ground, pretending to dry hump me. I punched him off. I had a stiffy.
Saunders had offered a deaclass="underline" if Mickey agreed to do some porno scenes in a video he was shooting, Saunders would forget about the debt. He’d even promised to chuck in a baggy of heroin.
Mickey said yes straight away. ‘I’m gonna get fucking high,’ he told me. ‘So fucking high that it won’t be me on the video. Then I’m out of here. I’m gonna catch a bus back to Adelaide, find my mum and go cold turkey. I miss my mum, I even miss that hole of a city.’ His eyes were wide and shiny. ‘That way,’ he continued, ‘I won’t have no more debts, no reason for anyone to look for me. I can fucking disappear and never have to think of frigging Sydney ever again.’
•
Mickey was an angel and all of us were in love with him. All of us. There are whores in the brothels and on the streets tonight crying as they’re getting fucked because Mickey is on that bus back to Adelaide. There are men driving down to the Wall, looking for their sandy-haired seraph and returning home disappointed. After Mickey, no one else would do. I bet those faggots are crying as well. I’m not crying. I’m not sooking like a baby. I’m sitting on the beach, the waves crashing in the blackness, the waves that go all the way back and forth, back and forth, from here to America. I’m not feeling the cold. The heroin is liquid honey inside of me.
•
Mickey took me with him to the shoot. It was in some warehouse apartment in Annandale, around the corner from Booth Street. There was no furniture in there and the windows had all been blacked out. The whole joint was crammed with lights and cameras, microphones, cables and coloured plastic that went over the lights.
There was me and Mickey, Dick Cheese Saunders, and two young blokes, one holding a camera and the other the sound equipment. There was an older man, who said he was the director. He had a camera as well. He spoke in a thick accent that I couldn’t place, that I never heard before.
Mickey asked if I could come in on the shoot. He wanted me to make some money too. The director looked across to Dick Cheese Saunders, who shook his head. ‘The kid’s fucking cross-eyed!’
I looked down at the floor, humiliated, and then I went spastic, wanting to knife the cunt, but then I remembered what Alex, who was my sponsor at the Congregation, had taught me. He taught me that when I get pissed off, I should just pray, instead of losing it. So I started to pray and the director bloke came over and lifted my chin.
He smiled and asked me in that strange accent of his if I could open my mouth. ‘More, open more wide,’ he ordered me and I stretched it open so much it began to hurt. He checked my teeth, checked my profile, left and right, got me to take off my T-shirt, show him my dick, to bend over and stretch open my arse. He was like a doctor. ‘Is okay,’ he said finally, ‘we can use.’
Mickey winked at me.
But Dick Cheese Saunders still said no. Then his tone softened. He said something about the next time. He offered me something to get me high, an E crushed into a powder, and asked me to stay out of the way and be quiet. So I sat in a corner and got high and kept quiet.