Mountains

RITA & RAY

Rita never once said heroin. Most people wouldn’t hear her even if she did. It’s not a word they heard in the straight world or associated with her. Junkies are supposed to be slouched in a shop front, fall about. She said gear a lot and sometimes smack.

Ray would do anything to stop her feeling the pain, even if it made it worse in the long run. He couldn’t bear to see her disgust. She wore it all over her. Red blotchy disgust. But only when the gear ran out, which was hardly ever. She thought herself as clever and she was clever, the lengths she’d go to, to score.

He loved her more than she loved gear. The gear preserved her. Her skin was beige like sandpaper and her breasts were like pimples. The gear had also preserved the strangeness in their relationship. There is strangeness in all relationships but their strangeness was preserved and people would notice like mortals would notice an immortal over time.

Ray fed the cat lightly seared lamb and scratched the top of its head but it was never satisfied. It sat on the edge of the lounge and released a soft guttural whine. She enjoyed his chest for a few hours also but was soon back poised on the edge of the lounge, whining.

Ray read the book Regeneration by Pat Barker. He compared Rita’s addiction to Sassoon’s shell shock. Disease or conscientious objector. It was hard not to compare. He lay in a bath under a hot running tap and imagined the warm rush of her drug and the unrelenting hunger without it. He oscillated between empathy and blame. To love her was to score for her, to score for her was to slowly kill her.

He called Shaun standing in a towel, dripping wet.

Her top was missing a button and Ray could see a once soft white belly red raw from the sun. It didn’t look like she’d been dressed for the beach. Her face was bright red with white rings around her eyes where her sunglasses sat. They were now on her head and she looked out at the world embarrassed and amused. There were no rings on her finger and bizarrely she was looking at him, right at him. He swallowed and wished he wasn’t drinking coffee alone but perhaps this was a good thing. He pushed the empty seat with his foot out from the table so it looked obviously free. The cafe was busy and for once he was pleased it was busy. She stood one knee knocking her adjacent thigh and smiled at him. He wondered how he attracted someone this sexy, looking like he did. She did as he hoped and sat down at his table. He expected her to ask but the fact she didn’t made his foreskin unfurl and tap his shorts. He sipped the last of the froth from his cup and let his eyes wander on to her casually. He didn’t want to appear galvanized by her presence even though he was galvanised like never before in his 30 years. He rested his eyes on her hands also red and surprisingly wrinkled for someone he assumed couldn’t be more than 30. It was if she dragged his eyes up to meet hers because he was suddenly eye to eye and he didn’t remember wanting to consider her eyes in case she’d mistaken him for someone else. She flattened her lips into a condescending smile but even though he noted this and hated condescending people he smiled back warmly.

‘I fell asleep on the beach’

They laughed together and both were surprised by how easy this was. So soon. He bought her a coffee. She was just about to ask anyway.

How they met came to him a lot as he pulled strands of hair stuck to her forehead. She was too thunderously high to tell him to stop.

‘If I was conscious long enough to think about it, I’d wonder why a man like that would love someone like me’ she told her friend Debbie.

DEBBIE

Debbie used gear too with the same shitty consequences. Consequences normalised by repetition and insignificant if the reward was more gear. A 20 year habit and a hosting job where she provided board for teenagers who’d left home to pursue a modelling career in the city. The models barely ate or slept so she didn’t have to do much and the finest gear came flowing steadily into their home, hand delivered by the photographers who broke the models into the industry. Debbie was the first to admit she was the luckiest junky in the world. When the gear killed a young model who was found dead before her first photoshoot, Debbie gave up hosting models to bury the bad karma and became a driver for Rita’s dad’s business – Clive’s Storage. Clive approved of Debbie. She talked football better than any bloke. And his Rita was quiet as mouse when Debbie stayed over.

Debbie managed to acquire an old ambulance that she kitted out to accommodate furniture and other objects. She cut through traffic sometimes, a glimpse of an ambulance was enough for motorists to move aside. She enjoyed the power and she needed to cut down on her travel time to maximise the clients she could do in one day. She loved picking up furniture and moving it into storage, attached often was a flustered middle aged woman moving to a less compromised existence. Debbie charmed them, so visibly butch and handsome. Maybe a lesbian was just what they needed.

Clive soon bought a fleet of old ambulances and Debbie hired a team of drivers. Their catch phrase was born Clive’s Storage Saves The Day.

RITA’S PLAN

Rita told Debbie her plan, hoping Debbie would scrutinise the details and point out the flaws. Debbie scratched her face contemplating it. Rita expected something more than ‘see you on your way back down’ but that’s all she got. Debbie never entertained the death wishes of junkies because she knew death was just another excuse to not get clean. She wanted to go up the mountain too but only so she could share Rita’s gear.

To clean her out he would take her away, again. Long walks, fresh air. Mountain air. Only someone like Ray who’d never used gear would wage the futility of fresh air against gear.

Moments contemplating getting clean were nudging out the moments she spent genuinely high and so too were the chills of a life without gear. She’d carefully constructed plans before to set Ray free but this time she had the plan down perfectly.

‘I feel heavy and wound up like a million rubber bands. I can feel my weight upon him’, she said to Debbie. Debbie shrugged and poured milk on her cornflakes.

Rita knew one of the best ways to overdose was to be clean for a while so she planned to not use, from Sunday to Thursday. And also by Friday he wouldn’t be so attentive. She’d piss him off by then and he’d be wounded and distant.

DEBBIE AND RITA’S DEALER SHAUN

Debbie drove Rita in her old ambulance to Redfern so she could get what she needed to do the job. She’d been buying gear off Shaun since 1989. A middle class hippie who managed a long term habit and a long term business with the same care free attitude. If he couldn’t get high, he went surfing. She told him over a herbal tea they were heading up the mountain so she could get clean.

‘Good luck with that’ he whispered as he handed her two foils knowing full well the amount he just gave her was not going to get her clean. She pulled out cash in rolls and gave him a wad. He cared for her in a small, remote way. She’d been coming to see him for 20 years. They may have even had sex once but she wasn’t sure, maybe a few times but her memory was not great when it comes to sex for favours. She thought about him a lot though. He did have the best gear. It was quality. He had reliable no nonsense source who got him the best gear. He clipped his words, and never once used the trade mark Aussie upward inflexion in his voice to apologise for his lack of intellect or cultural sophistication. Like she did or even worse like Debbie did.

‘That lot for you and Debbie?’

Yeah’ she said. She tried to leave by getting up dusting off the front of her pants and pointing out the window at Debbie waiting in the car. Shaun moved his head so his forehead pointed to the chair. She sat back down again, as he requested. He spread his legs slightly but didn’t take his penis out from his jeans. He knew it would confuse her slightly, the legs open thing, in case she was so ravaged by gear she’d forgotten she paid with cash and would suck him off by mistake.

She smiled by squashing her lips together tightly. Maybe he wanted sex again. She had a thing for him for sure. His ribcage was tightly wrapped in lean muscle and any minute it could begin slowly peeling away from the bone. She supposed this was from not enough meat, too much surfing and a lot of gear but for these reasons he had an athletic form.

Her memory was not great around sex for favours but she had a hazy recollection of her nose wedged between his rib cage and the smell of hemp oil.

Anyway she had her gear safely in her sweaty hand so there was no need to suck him off. She got up and pushed the chair under the table, loudly to assert her conviction and once again pointed out the window where Debbie was waiting in an old ambulance.

‘Just curious why Debbie didn’t come in?’

Rita remembered that Debbie never waited in the old ambulance unless she was in hurry.

‘Debs in the middle of a job’

‘Ahh’ said Shaun sipping his herbal tea and peering over the rim of the cup directly at her.

She’d never deliberately tried to kill herself before so it’s not as if she had form. But if she wasn’t mistaken Shaun was on to her. He was looking at her closely, studying her every more and not in his usual predatory way. Her rhythm must have been out of whack or something. Did she snatch the foils? Did she have a death wish zeal in her eyes? Talk to fast? Why the hell was he on to her? And by the way who needs a drug dealer who worries about your welfare. I guess a dead customer is bad for business but it wasn’t that. He had that hippy dippy ‘all human life is precious’ vibe about him. It was disgusting, she preferred him sleazy and manipulative. Damn it, even her drug dealer was conspiring to keep her alive.

RAY AND HOW HE TRIES TO GET RITA CLEAN

The hotel room appeared to be throbbing, with its red wallpaper. He saw the glass plate on top of the drawer and scooped it up and put it in his bag. The vase was confiscated next. On adjacent walls were two large cream canvasses bursting with red roses. Bilious red, she thought to herself. She ran her fingers over the cold red bedspread, less than 200 count for sure. What a cheap place to die. Why so much red. It’s not very creative, just because the heart is supposedly red and the heart is supposed to conjure romance, it makes people anxious is all. Stupid anxious red.

She felt sick at the thought of a few days in this room. She wondered if he’s kindness was the only binding force between them because it wasn’t taste. This is what their apartment would look like once she was dead. Tacky as hell. Ray really had no idea. He lived face down in books and knew a lot but couldn’t apply anything he knew to real life. His face lit up when someone had read the same book as him. He loved discussing the characters like they were his friends and family, both of which he had few.

He would be proud of her, wiping her brow as she thrashed about. He would eventually tie her to the four poster bed and pray. He would pray not to God but to her, sending her messages of encouragement. And she would hate him with every kick of her heart.

Rita imagined it as an exorcism.

He would be proud of her. Perhaps the height of the bed and the view of rolling mountains helped. The fresh air. This time she would make it. He got it right finally. He’d read that the mountain was a gathering point for indigenous tribes. They stayed for months, to celebrate and feast on the nuts. The gatherings were an armistice between tribes. ‘I’m a complicated frenzy of molecules’ she kept repeating during her last fever. He remembered this and hoped to find her a haven to allow her the clarity to get well.

UP THE MOUTAIN

She loved the staircase because it was the only original part of the late 1800’s hotel. The subsequent attempts to modernise it had failed. Rita was a purist.

The waitress led them to a table by the window. She could feel the waitress staring down through the crown of her skull. She wondered if eating was necessary. She knew she had to eat something so he didn’t suspect anything. She ate small amounts. She remembered as a child watching her dog being given a lethal injection because he’d lost the use of his legs. He lay on the kitchen floor near the door into the dining room. The Vet slid the needle into his leg and just as the dog expelled his last breath, he projected shit across the dining room carpet. Her mother sobbed but she sounded like she was bleating after a while like sheep being slaughtered. A mixture of grief and loathing of the job at hand scraping up shit. The less she ate the less shit he’d be left to clean up. Maybe she did love Ray since she was taking these details into consideration.

The afternoon dose was wearing off. Was this the moment to excuse herself and head back to the room and pack her needle? What’s the difference between now and Friday apart from giving herself the best chance to die? Giving herself to him for another few days was the right thing to do but the loss would be the same whether she did it now or Friday. In fact, doing it now would be more humane. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? There was no way she could wait until Friday. There was no way she could wait until after dinner.

LAST DINNER WITH RAY

She could see his lips moving. The waitress had gone so she assumed he was talking to her. She smiled at him. hoping one smile fits all he was saying. He looked happy staring at her. She looked away with a jerk of her neck realising that the gumption required to do this thing was kindness not spite. So he couldn’t be happy looking at her. He couldn’t be happy. No way. She had made a prisoner of him and the right thing to do was to set him free.

It had to be between the main meal and the dessert. She would go to the room, get her gear and head back down to the restaurant toilets and do it there, that way he wouldn’t be the one to find her. She hadn’t felt sneaky for a long time. She liked feeling sneaky because it meant a hit was imminent. The decision to go cold turkey was hers and hers alone. His role was to provide a conducive environment; comfortable pillows, a view, fresh air. His straightness made her laugh. He always looked so convinced of each hotel’s potential to fix her. Like she was trying to shake a bad headache.

She felt a rush of excitement as she excused herself to go to the ladies. Guilt momentarily but mostly excitement. It was a long time since she felt a natural rush even if it was to do with the onset of another self-administered rush. This was to be the mother of all hits. Her last. She ran up the staircase and laughed at her enthusiasm. She knew it wasn’t going to hurt. She opened the door, pleased she didn’t fumble. Keys in old locks can be difficult to negotiate. She often fumbled but not today. She entered the room but her handbag was not immediately obvious. In a frenzy she searched the room. She knew she only had a few minutes before he’d coming looking for her, this delay may prove costly. It felt like the ground had collapsed from under her when she set her eyes on the safe. She tried to open it but it was locked. She kicked it hard and then sense braced her. It was in a drawer. She flung open the lacquered pine drawers. He’d unpacked his socks and underwear into the drawer already. She hated him for this.

She raced over to the bed and lifted the mattress. Nothing. She lifted the pillows and as she did a calmness came over her. Because she knew. He was the kind of man that would hide a handbag under a pillow just in case someone broke in. And there it was. Under the plump white pillows. She’d lost valuable seconds looking for her handbag. She didn’t have time to go back downstairs to the restaurant toilets. It will have be done here. The bed was covered in fake rose petals. There was no way she was going to be found dead in a bed of fake rose petals. It would have to be the bathtub. More bilious red but diluted by water.

While the bath filled with hot water, she cooked her stuff. She figured if she shot it while sitting on the bath rim she would fall backwards and hit her head and drown in the bath just as the gear slowed her breathing. She sucked up as much she could into the needle and taped it lightly on the bath rim. An old habit, no reason. She didn’t bother with a tourniquet. She knew her vein pattern better than she knew her own bedroom. Bang.

THE BATH TUB

Her ears slowly fell below the waterline. When both were submerged she could hear the beating of her heart loud as if she was trapped in her heart. Then his TV next door, the low hum of a commentator’s voice. He was watching sport. A slow sport like snooker or lawn bowls. If she wasn’t so high she’d hold her head under the water until she choked.

She needed to get the rest of the gear into her veins as quickly as possible to top up the existing load if she stood any chance of stopping her heart but she was thunderously out of it she couldn’t find the energy or vision. She pushed herself upward to see over the rim of the bath. Everything was gone. Her gear, her needles, her spoon and her handbag. She would have to get out of the bath and go find her stuff. Probably even have to ask him. He would point to the bed and her stuff would be laid out neatly. A clean needle, a new swab and maybe even her tourniquet. He might have gone through her handbag to see how much she had left to gauge how long he had left to enjoy the surrounding countryside. He would have been disappointed to find her high but he knew he had no control over her use, he could keep her breathing at least. It was all hers to fix. If she wanted to stop she could, anyone can. People stop all the time and people start too. He knew by now that gear always comes before dessert.

Perhaps he would bring it to her if she called out to him but she couldn’t find her voice. She now felt trapped in a long sigh. Plunging blissfully, even deeper than before. ‘See you on your way back kid’ repeated on her. Bloody Debbie. It felt like the whole world was conspiring to keep her alive.

She laughed at herself. She had even more reason to continue to use because she didn’t die and this was a sign to live and to use because they are the same thing. For him it was just another failed attempt to get her clean. But she wanted to let him know that her use was for a different purpose this time. She wanted to say out loud ‘you do know I’m not using to get high this week. I’m using to die’ but when she rehearsed this line in her head and realised how stupid it sounded. What difference did it make? Gear remained a constant. What did she want him to say back? ‘So you’re no longer a junky? You’re just suicidal. Great.”

So now she was high but not dead. Perhaps higher than she’d ever been but not dead. This would last a few hours maybe a few more than usual but there was no more gear left she knew this for sure and she was not dead. She’d have to head back to Shaun’s place and he would be pleased because he was worried about her, genuinely, not just because she was a lucrative customer. Oh God she blasted all the gear, enough to kill most junkies but she was not most junkies, she was an experienced junky and she was not dead.

JUST A BIT MORE

She felt ridiculous sitting in the passenger seat across from her ever diligent ever devoted husband driving down the mountain. He didn’t even raise his eyebrow or register his disappointment. They could be a regular couple on a Sunday morning drive out to fetch some coffee and a paper, if you didn’t get to close and see the blisters on Rita’s lips and the milky red eye balls. She was still warm inside but the edges of her body were getting cold and she swore they were sunburnt even though she hadn’t seen sun for months. She was convinced the load she blasted would have stopped her heart. She wished for the pure stuff that hit Redfern streets in 1992 but remembered the deaths were mostly to do with a period of abstinence and then a shock to the heart of the pure stuff.

Shaun was waiting for her as all good dealers should, she thought to herself. He knew she’d used the equivalent of weeks’ worth in one night. He almost laughed when she came though his door. Nothing could kill this kid. She used his toilet which over the years had become a clean and functional place to use, but only if you were fucking him, she guessed. He didn’t seem as happy to see his other customers, whenever she crossed paths with one. Oh God did she fuck him? If only she could remember.

She unwrapped her stuff and pulled her cooking utensils from her bag. She put all of it in the spoon. She sparked her lighter under it and noticed there was an absence of small clear bubbles swelling from the brown stuff as it warmed. She could smell something sweet, like barley but it wasn’t barley exactly. She dabbed her finger in the mix and placed the same finger on her tongue. Glucose!

Rita threw the spoon on the bathroom floor, yellow with black stripes lino she noted, psychedelic eye sore, particularly in this bewildered state.

‘Hello?’

She stormed back to the kitchen where her Shaun sat at a long wooden table sipping his green tea. The table had dark ashen spots probably cigarette burns and chunks missing from overzealous dinner guests banging the table.

‘Hello?’

Shaun smiled.

‘My husband is waiting outside, you might want to give me my gear’

He got up and walked toward her. She knew what was coming. He pulled his cheesecloth pants down so his penis was exposed. She knelt down matter-a-factly and began to suck it. It took a while for it to get hard but it grew each time he said ‘oh baby’. He was verbal and his trigger was his own voice.

‘It can’t be full sex, Ray is waiting in the car’ she said in between sucking. He lips squeezed tight around it, hoping this would make him cum faster. She realised her managing his expectations suggested she’d had sex with him previously like she’d vaguely recalled. It can’t be full sex.

‘Oh baby’

He came and she was grateful for something in her stomach, it tasted and smelt like nothing at all but the green tea was so pungent in the kitchen that it probably didn’t register. She realised he hadn’t offered her a drink either when she came in or perhaps he did and she declined in a hurry to get into the bathroom.

She held her hand out. He pulled his pants up and sat back down at the table.

‘Well?’

‘Sorry Rita, not today, you got a death wish at present and it’s bad for business’

Rita felt that familiar rush of heat and dry mouth that accompanies disappointment. If she had a gun she’d pull it out now. She put her hand over her mouth and slowly backed away toward the door. Ray beeped the horn when he saw her stumbling toward the car as a way of seeing if she was okay. He’d seen her stumble many times but this stumble was new.

STILL ALIVE

Seeing Debbie leaning against the carport, one leg crossed over the other was enough to make Rita want to slam her head against the wall. Ray drove the car slowly into the driveway, the carport shutters slowly went up. Debbie fell backwards as if she wasn’t aware the door was going to rise. She regained her balance and laughed like an idiot. Rita gritted her teeth.

“How was it?” Debbie said, putting her head through Rita’s window. Rita opened the door and used it to push Debbie out of the way. She pushed passed her and headed into the house.

“Lovely all things considered” Ray said kissing Debbie on the cheek. Debbie grabbed the bags out of the boot and stumbled toward the house.

Debbie hadn’t moved from the couch all week by the looks.

Ray’s riot proofing interior design was about to be tested. Rita lifted the coffee table and held it above her head. He didn’t think to chain this down because she wouldn’t dare. She waited for Ray and Debbie to enter the house. The cat whined as if it was also calling for blood or begging her to reconsider. Rita threw the coffee table at Ray. It would have hit him square in the face if he hadn’t deflected it with his elbow. Still, it would have stung. What she’d give to get some gear right now and what he’d give to stop her and make it alright. Ray calmly put the coffee table back, it had splintered on the edge where it hit the ground. He placed Regeneration on the top and nudged it with his fingers until the title faced him. He stared at it for a long while, how long he wasn’t sure. Rita was letting out sobs in a strangely comforting rhythmic way. Tomorrow he would suggest rehab again.

CAROL AND CLIVE

Carol and Clive used the same analogy to describe their relationship without realising they had this in common. We are animals stuck in a cage. Did he say it first or did she? They both liked its primal fatalism. If they surrendered to the view they were animals, vengeance was survival and if they believed they were in a cage any malicious act was breaking free.

Clive built a storage unit empire during the divorce boom in the early 1980s. Carol filled the freezer with TV dinners and discovered new tricks in her voice to appear like she was listening.

Clive’s Storage moved people quickly and stored their possessions free for a month, a service popular with female divorcees. Clive’s shiny face and blazing white smile on the back of his glossy brochure. Carol scrawled phone numbers across his white teeth. She snickered at small retaliations. His were white and hers were beige. She was yet to prioritise the hygienist over private school fees.

BLUE SUE WATCHES

Blue Sue always wore an item of blue even if it was just a bracelet. Blue Sue felt sorry for Carol and showed her CCTV footage of Clive following women into the storage units and reappearing minutes later smoothing out a hard-on and tucking in his shirt. There were no cameras in the storage units so Carol had no real proof of what went on behind the doors. He could be in there helping to move a mattress and this is what he would say if she confronted him. That was the last time she saw his hard-on, 30 years previous on CCTV. Blue Sue was sacked shortly after. Carol wondered if she’d turned him down. Blue Sue was silent and deliberate as she fast forwarded the video to the bit Carol needed to see. Carol was not surprised but neither was she relieved. It was still a betrayal even though she despised him. Clive’s hit rate couldn’t have been perfect although she suspected it was close to perfect. Her husband was persistent, and he knew when to strike. He helped her move a mattress once too.

The CCTV footage tantalised Carol. She replayed in her head the image of her husband’s diving pose leaning against the door, flexing his biceps so they popped, drawing his women into his rank pits. She knew the pose from the front and now she knew the muscles from the back. The women in the storage unit would be laughing and shaking her head probably in resignation ready to have that therapeutic fuck that goes some way toward evening the score with the man she’d just left. Or horny. Like Carol was. Horny was all, not in the slightest bit interested in taking it any further. He would change his pose to leaning with his right shoulder against the door and then in a rolling motion, fall in. The captured women. The smoothest of seductions with a very low rejection rate, opportunistic rape in one sense.

ADAM IS CAROL’S YOUNG LOVER AND DETECTIVE

Carol admired Adam’s new digital camera and it’s one-million-pixel clarity. She joked around with him and wondered aloud if he would be her private detective and get some proof of Clive having an affair. He licked her bosoms and gazed up at her eyes slowly blinking. He accepted the challenge. Carol knew Clive entertained someone in a hotel every few days. She gave the hotel manager a handful of crisp new notes to allow her lover to hide in the wardrobe so he could film her husband, the adulterer.

The shaky footage of Clive on top of a woman was unmistakably him. Carol could see her husband’s arse muscles pinch and expand as he thrust into her. She couldn’t imagine even touching it anymore or cupping it like she did her private detective’s arse. Clive fell on to his back. The woman climbed on top of him and began to bounce up and down. Clive pushed upwards in slow heaves. She arched backwards and threw her long hair side to side. The woman was different to how Carol had imagined. He was fucking someone older and fatter than her. She didn’t know whether this made it better or worse. Her young lover stood over her swollen with pride at his accomplishment, waiting to be fed. Carol flared her eyes at the small screen.

“How do you zoom in. I want to see her face”. Before he could show her how to do this Carol began hitting buttons on the camera. He grabbed her wrist and yanked the camera from her.

“You’ll break it, geez”

His face was no longer swollen, it was white.

“What is it?” she asked, lurching toward him. He lowered his shoulders and shook his head slowly. “You’ve deleted it”

Carol yanked the camera back off him and began scrolling through the files on the camera.

“No, no, no. Please, please, please”

“It’s gone,” he said, his voice breaking slightly.

Carol screamed and lifted the camera in the air and brought it down on his head. He stooped over and his arse muscles pinched like Clive’s when he thrust into that ugly woman. She could hear him sobbing. He was even more beautiful, curled over, small and hurt.

CAROL WANTS TO TELL RITA ABOUT ADAM

Carol ordered another malt whiskey and scoffed at her daughter Rita’s slow moving beer and the fact she always looked half asleep. She was divorced finally. She didn’t get all she wanted from Clive at least not commensurate to bringing up his children, but she got enough.

“Did you ever love Dad?” Rita asked, sculling her beer suddenly and flagging down the bar attendant for another. Her hands wanted to touch her mother’s but that’s not how they showed affection, so her hands stayed in her lap.

Carol stared into her malt whiskey. She knew the answer immediately but was trying to work out how to justify thirty years with a man who described her once as “the woman I ejaculated into three times too many” which was the cleverest thing he ever said and the most cutting.

“In the beginning he made me feel so many things but never love. He made me feel something, one up from feeling nothing I guess”.

Carol thought about telling her daughter about her affair with Adam. The thought of confessing to it excited her. She wished she felt ashamed but she didn’t. She felt ashamed once when she hired a prostitute who stole her purse when she was in the shower. Later she was heavy with disgust and foolishness, it hung on her, nothing since compared. Not even the shame she felt as a teenager for hating other girls who pl aced all their self-worth in man’s glance. Confessing to her affair with Adam was now exhilarating the longer she rehearsed the words in her head but she stopped herself from saying anything to Rita because Rita needed to believe that only one of her parents was awful. Rita would marry the wrong person. Her son would marry the wrong person too.

CAROL SAYS RITA WILL MARRY THE WRONG PERSON

Carol saw her daughter Rita in the park on weekends and walked away easily, only fleeting yearnings to be closer, to be important. She didn’t want to influence her any further, a curse is just a superstitious way of explaining poor parenting. She also thought this might be an excuse as well and that really all she was doing was running away over and over so she never felt trapped again. The fights she had with her daughter about nothing were a way of justifying an even earlier departure from the park. She only considered this later once she was back in her apartment staring into the resin of her malt whiskey. Her biggest regret was hating her husband’s traits and quirks when they shone in her children. His snide laugh oozed out of her son. She knew it wasn’t always triggered by superiority because he laughed like that at the TV. It was her son’s only laugh, his father’s laugh exactly. Her daughter had a dark resolute vanity. Even if mocked by her brother she would not pull herself away from the mirror when she was putting the final touches on an outfit. Her fixation if anything became a psychotic drilling into her reflection. Just like him. Staring intently at the mirror ignoring the world, the burning soup, ringing phone, while doing his hair. Or pouting and arching one eyebrow when he shaved.

CAROL FALLING IN LOVE WITH ADAM

Carol tried to appreciate her lover’s vulnerabilities and remain the detached observer, but she fell in love with each of them like snow tumbling off a mountain. He came back for more and didn’t know why. He was a brawny 19 year old with calves that expanded like a cake in the oven when the yeast does its job. This from skating since he was a lad usually with her son. They would skate everywhere and talk endlessly about skating. A maneuver that went wrong or a move that went right. They would re live it through long conversations in her son’s bedroom and she gave it not a second thought until now. Everything Adam did and said was in focus now that she was fucking him and possibly in love with him.

Adam could be with any woman, but he came back to Carol. Carol never once contemplated having sex with her son’s best mate until he showed interest and she went with it, realising as it was happening the leverage it gave her. She wasn’t going to stop it. It felt good and it was her trump card when she wanted to destabilize her husband. He would be destabilized too but not because he was jealous because the moment he accused her of grooming Adam she could hit him with the descriptions of hundreds of barely legal women he was fucking in his storage cages. Permission to devastate. Carol would no longer be in the monogamous wife box and Clive would panic, leaving him anxious and worse placed for negotiations about a divorce settlement.

CLIVE’S PRIVILLAGE AND THOSE BOXES

She always thought of Clive’s storage units and his diving pose and wondered why she could never keep the many parts of her life in boxes like he could. A businessman who didn’t even add numbers to calculate a profit. His square jaw and infantile eyes enslaved others even in business. Blue Sue now back working for the company gave him an allowance and took care of the rest. Nothing joined up, nothing needed to join up. The world assembled and fell neatly before him, making his path obvious and without obstacle.

Carol wanted to bring together Clive’s two lives using undeniable evidence. The evidence of his affair would not be what destroys him. It would be the integration of two realities, the boxes. She had deleted the video and she was left with no hard proof. If she could replace his lover when they were fucking, he’d open his eyes and see his wife, the woman he loathes in the place where the woman he loves usually sits, moaning. She’ll throw her hair around and he will rise his neck like soft hot glass, eyes popping with blood as his brain heaves.

CAROL & CLIVE CHILDHOOD SWEETHEARTS

She remembered Clive’s ordered bedroom when he was 16. He asked her to study with him and she accepted even though she knew it was about pleasing her friends who had taken it in turns to be obsessed with him since primary school. They would study statistics together, a skill both of them would never perfect or use again. He had huge built-in wardrobes and everything he owned was in a box labelled and sitting on a shelf. He took great pride in being able to find something in under a minute.

“Name something”

“What do you mean”

“Name a thing and I’ll be able to get it for you

“OK”

‘Go”

“I’m thinking…”

“Hurry”

“Padlock”

Within seconds Clive had found a padlock and presented it to Carol.

“I don’t need proof” she laughed “it’s not that important”

Clive smiled at her. He didn’t hear what she said. She liked him, he could tell.

She didn’t like him at all. He was easy to fuck because he expected nothing from her other than to open her legs. Even though he used his hips and fingers to push her legs open, he might as well have been pushing up against the far away wall. She couldn’t feel his flesh on her flesh but she knew she had to enjoy it because his body was the same shape as the bodies she saw in magazines and his penis stood higher than his belly button. So she groaned but wondered if he had blood in his veins at all. It was better than having her father stare at her as she undressed every evening. She needed a lot more than this. The first time they had sex, she realised he’s compartmentalisation of his possessions was the way be organised his feelings. She assumed her pleasure was as important as his. She grabbed his hips and stopped him from thrusting. She pushed her bum into the mattress and dipped her hips and raised her legs in the air higher hoping his penis would go somewhere near where it needed to go for her to get that feeling she got when she masturbated. He pulled himself away and then maneuverer her body back to the way he had it. She pushed him away and wriggled her way flat. He cocked his head, curious that he was heading in a certain direction and had met an obstacle. He lent down and kissed her. She giggled. She hadn’t yet lived long enough to understand or describe what she was witnessing but she knew it was funny. He cocked his head again and then slowly guided her body parts back into the arrangement he had her in originally. Once assembled he began to thrust, kissing her eye each time he came close. She came when he came not because he found her clitoris but because he’s distraction had elongated the time in which he fucked her. He went for so long her vagina caved in and he was after all thrilling in his newness.

Carol’s beauty trapped her. If her boyfriend at school wasn’t a self-obsessed emotionless control freak she would have been pleased with her petite features and slow blinking eyes that gave her the edge over the other girls. She was the one he picked and she was the one who got to know him beyond a breeze as he walked the corridors oblivious to everything and a school uniform that wrapped like cling fill around everything that protruded from his body. His tie sat fat on his neck like a shiny button you press to eject the penis. She got beyond this and saw nothing else except a deep love and endless admiration for his own abundance. But she had no choice. He picked her and if the whole world wants what you’ve got you better take it.

When she in her early teens she thought she was a lesbian because rock stars and Clive didn’t hold her gaze or capture her imagination like they did her friends. If Clive smiled at one of the stupid girls, the stupid girl would spend the next few months scribbling his name on her pencil case until Clive smiled at another stupid girl and broker her heart. Carol instinctively knew that Clive and her would ultimately marry. Why she never fussed over him because she knew that her petite womanliness and his distended maleness would go together to satisfy the natural order of the universe or their parent’s at least, even if there was no attraction on her part.

She even found her parents conspiring with his parents one night as they played Bridge. She listened from the hallway feeling a draining of her body heat she’d carefully stored in her warm bed as they spoke about the best high school to send Carol and Clive. Carol and Clive were names used interchangeably as if they were twins. Her body fell cold.

CAROL IS DEAD

Rita walked up the stairs toward her mother’s bedroom. She tried to make a phone call but had changed her mind at the last minute. The framed charcoal sketches she’d packed in wads of bubble wrap when her mother was moving out of the family home were hanging on the walls crooked, maybe deliberately crooked. She resisted the urge to straighten them. She could hear her mother’s voice saying “Isn’t it funny how some people feel the need to do that and others don’t?” Her mother thought of herself as self-aware or at least more self-aware than others but she wasn’t self-aware, not in the slightest. There were Indian feathers on the walls leading to her mother’s bedroom and she remembered her mother telling her about the Indian doctrine of animism. “When a feather falls to earth, the Native Americans believe it carries all of the energy of the bird. Every living thing possesses an inherent virtue, power and wisdom” Her mother was a bird but virtue, power, wisdom were not her traits. Was she an improved version of her mother? Did she have any of these?

She stared at her mother’s body on the bed, stiff, yawning toward the ceiling. She knew she would have to call someone soon. She’d seen TV shows where the time of death and the phone call reporting it was of such a length it shed suspicion on the person making the call but she would continue to take her moment even though she felt like an intruder in her own mother’s apartment. In the bedroom were boxes, everywhere. Boxes under the bed and in the wardrobes. Boxes stacked high making new walls in front of old walls. One box stood out. It sat at the side of her mother’s bed with its sleeves open.

She began to dig. Inside were photos in soft cardboard frames bound together by ribbon. She took the first stack and began shuffling her way through. Black and white photos of young men mostly. An archive of lovers she guessed, all smiling self-consciously, posing gladly for her.

A stack at the bottom of the box wrapped in rice paper looked conspicuous. She pulled it out and held it in her hand for a while. It was heavier than the other stacks. On the top was a photo of a young man with orange hair. This stack of photos had no cardboard frames, only streaky yellow edges, old Polaroids, maybe 20 years old. She recognised the boy in the photo. He was just as she remembered him. Red flannel shirt over a blue singlet and tufts of orange fur on his chin and top lip. A goatee she recalled. This was Adam, her brother’s friend. Adam. Why would her mother have a photo of Adam? She shuffled through the photos slowly now. They were all of Adam, not taken in one day but taken over several years. He smiled at her in these photos not out of some self-conscious acknowledgement of his own beauty like the others but for her. He was thinking about her as she took these photos, she was the focus even though he was the subject.

Rita’s mouth fell open, she shut it quickly in case she resembled her mother on the bed. Rita sat still and allowed her mother’s secret and the consequences if it were to get out to properly sink in. Now she knew why she hesitated making the phone call to her brother, to the ambulance. Her mother wanted her to know. Surely. The box opens beside her bed? Then again maybe she didn’t. She clenched her teeth in self-congratulation and studied each photo in detail in case she recognised anyone else. A dying woman looks at pictures of her greatest love near death, surely.

She lay herself down and from memory positioned herself just as her mother did, on her back, legs slightly apart. “She was peaceful” she said. He nodded. She sat upright beside her brother. She knew she would have to open the envelope at some stage but there was no hurry.

RITA CALLS CLIVE

Rita could hear her father splutter on the other end of the phone. Rita wanted him to splutter. She enjoyed telling him. She enjoyed listening to his confusion. “How did it happen? Where is she now? Have you called an ambulance? I’ll call your brother”

“She’s fine dad. I’m not sure how she died but it’s fine. Come over if you like. Yes call Travis”

Clive remembered she wanted to be buried. He considered the type of coffin. Hard oak or elm wood but hardwood is expensive. Soft woods like pine or chipboard veneered are cheaper. He might get the coffin finished with handles, nameplates and ornaments made from metal or brass or chrome look plastic. He wouldn’t be expected to fit the bill but he would pay for it, to ensure they got it right. He remembered she loved James Brown. She would push her pelvis out and roll her shoulders back and forth. He wondered why a crazy black man would make her dance with a look of pained delight on her face. This would be the music at the end of the order of service. I Feel Good. Carol’s sister will want traditional hymns and he will play James Brown. He hurried himself. A shower and a shave. For some reason he wanted to look good before seeing his wife’s dead body. He wanted to look the best he could. He hadn’t seen her for years, only letters from solicitors. He wondered what she would think of him. He stared at his face in the mirror as he shaved. He realised Carol couldn’t see him anymore. She would never see him again.

CLIVE ARRIVES AT CAROL’S PLACE

Rita opened her mother’s door. Standing there was her father and her brother Travis. Her father didn’t take a step forward, he smiled at her instead. A good start she thought. This was not his apartment and he was not automatically allowed through the door. He needed a nod or an invite. He was dressed in pleated shorts, a white collared shirt, knee high socks and brown polished shoes. She almost laughed. He was dressed for the office. She could smell his aftershave, perhaps her father saw the circumstance as business, but she suspected he hadn’t found the right box to store the feelings in at all. Rita hugged him and then her brother. Her father’s arms were almost completely straight but he lifted his hands slightly to sit on her hips. She took his hands off her hips and led him up the stairs.

The brother sat on the bed beside his mother. He picked up her hand and held it. Clive leant over Carol and smiled. He went to close her eyes with a brush of his hand but Rita stopped him.

Rita could see her father looking around the bedroom hunting for clues and also quietly proud of his ex-wife’s categorisation system. They had this in common, the compulsion to categorise, into boxes, cages.

He got up and walked over to the walk-in wardrobe. He inspected the boxes Carol kept on the shelves. There were so many, some colour-coded, all labelled. Her boxes were for him a work of art, their shared passion. So easy to find what you need, quickly. He remembered when they bought their first label gun, just after they were engaged. They fought over who should use it first. There was no way the labels on Carol’s boxes were the one’s applied meticulously in 1982. These hard blue labels with white font were newly applied and he recalled the ones they first applied as a couple were black with white font. No fraying at the edges or curves where the adhesive had melted. These were new. She kept everything in order even after their separation. Clive took credit for her categorisation skills even though they were both equally as enamoured by the label gun in 82.  

He started rolling his finger through her clothes on the railing.

‘Don’t touch her clothes’

Clive sighed and came back to the bed.

Rita slid the photo boxes under the bed with her foot. Her brother saw this but didn’t flinch. He thought she was tidying up, making room. Her brother was soft and contemplative. He would never think to look into his mother’s boxes. He would rather contemplate the reasons for her death and rehearse ways in his head to save her. Rita resisted looking at her brother holding their mother’s hand. It was a desperately sad thing to watch the longer it went on. She didn’t want to stop him but it was hard to be pragmatic and attend to things that needed to be done when her brother was mourning her with such attention.

‘Was there a note?’

Rita shook her head.

‘I’m guessing it was a heart attack then. We really should call someone”

Rita shook her head again. Clive grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

‘Rita’

Rita flung his hand away and sat down beside her brother.

‘What do you want to do?’

Her brother didn’t answer. Clive crouched down and tried to find the eyes of both his children. Neither looked at him. After a while Clive got back to his feet. He sighed loudly again.

‘We have to call the GP or an ambulance soon. There will have to a Coroner to determine the cause of death’

Clive walked around Carol’s bedroom with his arms tucked behind his back peering into any open boxes and quickly looking away so as not to arouse Rita’s suspicion. He admired how ordered her bedroom was, everything had a place. He liked to think that he installed this in her, the ability to order everything with such logic and meticulousness.

Rita patted the bed beside her gesturing for Clive to sit down. She could see he was not going to stop nosing in the boxes until distracted. It had been many years since he had the opportunity to see how his wife had organised her things.

The brother looked up and glared at his father. Clive left the bedroom. Rita could hear him walk down the stairs to the kitchen. He would put the kettle on and look around at how his wife had ordered the kitchen cupboards.

Rita waited for her brother. Once he let go of their mother’s hand she would call someone. She could hear the TV downstairs. Clive was watching something. It sounded like monkeys, a nature documentary probably. She laughed. She left Travis alone to be with Carol.

‘How are the monkeys?’

‘Chimpanzees’

Rita sat down beside her father and tapped his knee.

‘She has a doctor. I’m calling him’

Clive put his hand on her hand. Rita pulled hers away to make the call.

‘I can do it if you want me to’

After hitting the dial pad a few times she was through to the doctor. She thought about the times she really needed a doctor after hours and couldn’t get one to do a house call and considered using her dead mother as an excuse next time.

“Doctor is calling the Coroner. They’ll be here soon”

Clive nodded and tried to put his arm around Rita, she rejected it with a flick but gave him some conciliation by squeezing his knee and then getting up.

Every minute feels heavy when a dead person is present, thought Rita. They’d found match of the day highlights. She was pleased with the time of her mother’s death. She assumed it was in the morning because the kettle was still warm at 10.50am when she arrived. Carol must have had a cup of tea and returned to bed probably to try and ease her chest or arm pains.

Travis was still upstairs with his mother. He’d been beside her since he arrived. Rita hadn’t bothered to call him down. She pitied the devotion he felt for his mother because it was based on some delusional patriarchal default. And she had a special contrived place for her son.

BLUE SUE

The knock at the door didn’t sound like a formal knock, it sounded timid. Rita opened the door. A woman in a blue knitted top and jeans held her hand up in the air. It looked like a peace gesture rather than a greeting, Rita was immediately suspicious.

‘Doctor’

The woman looked embarrassed and shook her head. ‘No I’m Clive’s wife’

‘Oh right’

This was the first Rita knew her father had re-married.

‘Come in I guess’

Clive jumped up from the couch. He greeted his wife with a peck on the cheek.

‘Hope you don’t mind Sue being here Rita’

Rita didn’t know what to say to this. Fortunately, the woman in blue spoke.

‘I thought I should come by and offer my condolences’

‘Thanks’

The women smiled at Rita. ‘You look like her’

Rita found this comment irritating. ‘How do you know I look like her?’

‘Rita!’ Clive said.

‘It’s ok Clive. I knew your mother. I worked for your family’s business for many years. I remember you when you were little’

‘I’ll put the kettle on shall I?’ Clive said walking quickly toward the kitchen.

‘Do you mind if I sit?’

‘Sit, sure whatever’

The woman took a seat and held her knees together with her hands. Rita sat across from her. She tried to place the woman in her patchy memory. She replayed her mother’s many stories over the years; her grievances, her conspiracies, her realisations while Sue drank her tea.

‘Sorry when did you work for the business?’ Rita said, coming out of her daze.

‘Years ago, nearly 30’

There was something familiar about Sue and her blue jumper.

‘Blue Sue!’ Suddenly it dawned on her. Rita knew exactly who she was.

Rita leapt to her feet and ran upstairs. Her brother was now lying beside his mother.

‘Get up and come down stairs’

Her brother leapt off the bed. Rita got on her hands and knees and pulled the box out from under the bed.

EXHIBIT A, B, C, D…

Rita got on her knees and began placing photos on the floor just beyond the sight of Sue and Clive. She arranged them so Travis could see them and if Sue and Clive got up from the sofa, they could too. Sue arranged the blue scarf around her neck awkwardly. Rita noticed the blue scarf was a different shade of blue to her blouse. She remembered Debbie talking about this very thing, the almost bilious mash up of blues; electric, sky, royal, sky and turquoise, all strangling the other for prominence. She wished Debbie was here to see this. Instead she saw Ray, he stood one foot in the kitchen one foot in the lounge room, slowly shaking his head. She couldn’t remember asking him to come over, but here he was.

The first photo was a younger Blue Sue sitting beside a younger Carol presumedly when they both worked for the business. Blue Sue cocked her chin so she could see the first photo. She smiled.

“Carol was wonderful to work for”

Clive smiled too but nervously.

Next photo was Sue and Clive together on a drunken night out. Clive’s hand was somewhere behind Sue’s back.

Sue almost yelled “Carol took that one, at that pub overlooking the harbour, what was it called now?”

Clive shrugged, keeping his eyes fixed on his daughter. Travis her brother moved closer.

Rita placed the next photo on the floor for all to see. It was a rare picture of Clive and Carol arms around each other and smiling.

“Where were you here Clive?”

Clive shook his head and croaked “No idea”

Rita’s eyes moved quickly to her father then dropped away.

“Happy memories”

Travis sat down and fell backwards into the sofa. He knew his sister was not interested in reliving the happy times.

Rita then quick fire presented one photo after another. It sounded like they hit the floor loudly but they didn’t, it was perhaps how it felt. Black and white still shots, extracted from film by the looks…or CCTV.

Clive in a cage fucking a woman from behind over a office table.

Clive in a cage fucking a woman over a cardboard box.

Clive in a cage thrusting into a woman up against the wire as she held on, grunting.

Clive fucking a woman on a pile of mattresses, in a cage.

Clive head deep in woman’s pelvis as she lay back on cow hide recliner.

“We get it Rita” said Travis from deep in the sofa. Ray moved closer. His mouth was slightly open. He was probably the only one watching this brutal slide show who didn’t have any idea. Rita kept everything from him, even the stuff he probably should have known. Sue and Clive said nothing. There were more photos in the box. Rita smiled at Sue. Sue smiled back. Sue knew the man she married. The next photo was to be expected. Clive fucking Blue Sue in every cage, in every position, in every horrible shade of blue.

Travis sat up. “You’ve got a really good man there Sue” then sunk back into the sofa.

This was a montage. Carol must have gone to the trouble of combining all of Sue and Clive’s moments into a montage so it sat neatly in a 60 x 90 cm photo.

Ray was now standing over a crouching Rita. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“I’m fine Ray”

Ray stepped back.

Rita crossed her legs and sat down again. She let the photos do their work a bit longer. She was gagging for more gear. Debbie would know something is wrong soon and bring something. Girl’s honour. The Shaun would have said something by now. He had a way of letting friend’s know if another friend didn’t answer the door or pick up the phone. A dead customer was bad for business.

Blue Sue adjusted her scarf again.

“I can’t even get one girl to have sex with me and my father has had hundreds, maybe thousands” said Travis, shaking his head slowly back and forth.

Rita felt terrible for her brother. The next photo would rock his world and destroy his friendship with his best mate Adam. But she needed to make a point. The war between her parents had driven her to gear, to shut out the noise. Travis and her were merely pawns in a 35 year game of blood thirsty chess. Thing is they’d been at checkmate for years. Carol was saving her affair with Adam as her final move. Rita thought the photos did a great job. Visual and undeniable.

Bang! The final photo. Carol sucking off Adam, as he lay back mouth hanging open and neck arched so his Adam’s apple were the lips of a volcano. Carol’s hair was styled, silky brown, wisps dipping under her chin. Black underwear, black bra. The picture was taken from the side. A tasteful shot, skilfully set up, Rita thought. She could imagine her mother directing the action. Securing the camera to the tripod. Adam hard as rock knowing he was about to star in a film with minimal effort and maximum pleasure. Yelling “And action!” The running into position. Rita was not doubting her mother was genuinely enjoying sex with Adam but she just knew that there was always a hierarchy of motivations and at the top was point scoring against Clive then under that her own pleasure maybe even love. Did she love Adam? Did she care?

“Isn’t that Adam?” said Blue Sue. She had wide eyes that suggested shock but her lips were pursed in self-satisfaction. Travis wrestled his way out of his comfortable slouch and sat forward on the sofa. He reached out and grabbed the photo. He studied it. Clive got up and huffed loudly.

Travis threw the photo on the floor, got up and walked towards the door.

“What a family!” Travis brushed himself off, even though it was unlikely he was covered in anything but disgust.

“Did you know about this Sue?”

Sue opened her eyes so wide she couldn’t her nose thinned.

Clive paced back and forth, shaking his head.

“Adam looks about 15 in that photo” Rita added.

Rita gathered up all the photos one by one and put them back in the shoe box. She tied the ribbon over the lid and held the box on her lap.

Now where is Debbie? she thought. I’m absolutely hanging.

Rita was not a point scorer, not like her parents. She did the slide show, to honour her mother. She knew her mother would have been pleased. Clive’s reaction was what she expected. Took him by surprise. He couldn’t find a mental cage quick enough to keep it. It defied category. Even Blue Sue and her whizz bang filing skills could not help him here. Rita watched her father pace back and forth doing the maths in his head. If Adam was 15 then he’d probably only cheated on her about once or twice maybe three times. He hadn’t even employed Sue. Carol was fucking Adam before he’d even hit a million dollars in revenue. What a vile woman, he thought. No wonder he cheated.

CAROL’S BODY

Rita watched as her father directed two men to Carol’s bedroom. Solemn and very formal in their conduct. They would take over from here. Total strangers. Rita had given up. She let her father take control. She had adrenalin cascading through her body filing the hole left by the absence of gear. The adrenalin was running out and the hole was pulling every practical and positive thought into its endless pit. She knew that even though they hated each other for 40 years, they deserved each other, at the end. Blue Sue kept herself busy flicking through the TV channels. She understood the rivalry between Clive and Carol better than anyone having worked for them for 20 years. She knew they were bonded by their loathing. She let them have it. Sometimes hate between two people bonds them more permanently than love. She was okay with this.

Rita was not okay with it. She held fiery resentment toward the both of them that burned at full flame and only gear could make it flicker and fade.

There was nothing more she could do. Ray was waiting for her in the car. She waved Blue Sue to her feet.

“Well come on, I’m going”

Sue got up and hugged her. Rita didn’t pull away. In less than 24 hours they’d become family. Sue was more than her father’s employee, she was the mug that would look after her deadshit father until he pops his clogs.

“See ya Blue Sue”

RAY WAITING

Ray was waiting in the car outside Rita’s mother’s house. He’d been there for a few hours. Rita rolled her eyes and got in.

Ray drove off slowly so as not to rock Rita in her fragile state. Rita pushed her nose against the car window like a petulant child. She started singing a tune that she knew would annoy him.

They drove the same way they always did from Carol’s place to their home. Same pace as well. Ray was a creature of habit, so was she but of a different kind. They had that in common at least, her habit was loud now and wanted feeding.

“Drive me up the mountain”

The Shaun on the way to mountains has the finest gear. She didn’t get enough the last time, to kill her. All she needed was another trip up the mountain.

Ray kept driving with his eyes pinned to the middle of the road to prevent giving in to the distraction of Rita’s cravings.

Rita could feel the anger swelling to the point where she wondered if her eyes would burst from the pressure. Ray instinctively slowed down. He could feel the anger in the air, palpable.

He kept driving but at a snails pace.

Ray knew if he let her out he would have to live with the consequences. This is the longest Rita had gone without gear for a long time. She had been holding a bedside vigil for Carol for at least a day. He did wonder how she managed to handle the whole situation without gear. This is the same women who threw a coffee table at his head after being without gear for a few hours. If she could last 24 hours without gear she could do it again.

“Let me out”

Ray ignored her but he knew something was coming. Rita opened the car door and flung herself on to the road. Ray put the breaks on and came to a stand still. He veered the car on to the footpath. He thought maybe she rolled under the car. He got out and looked back. Rita was spooning the gutter, her ankles grating back and forth. He was only doing about 30 miles per hour so she couldn’t be too bad. He walked toward her and looked down at the heap that was his wife. She rolled on to her back.

Ray shook his head back and forth slowly.

Rita got to her feet and fell to her knees again.

Ray wanted her to get back in the car but he knew she wouldn’t do this so he didn’t ask.

Rita was bleeding from the elbow and forehead. She pulled off her t-shirt and dabbed her wounds. Ray stood by and watched like he always did, helpless bystander.

“Why do you stand there Ray?”

Ray smiled. He had asked himself the same question many times. Why. He was locked in. 

Who was he if he wasn’t this? Invisible at school, overlooked at work. This was the most important he was ever going to be. He would keep trying. After all it was just a drug.

Ray got back in the car and waited. Rita crawled across the footpath to a soft strip of grass where she could lie on her back and work out how she was going to get high. The sun was going down and so to her tolerance for reality. Her mother was dead and probably now at the mortuary, probably on her back like Rita right now. Why is she dead and I’m alive, Rita wondered. She turned on her side and moped her forehead, she was still bleeding. She could see Ray in the car waiting. reading his book Regeneration. He had now parked the car properly, adjacent to her so he could keep an eye on her. Her patience was waning. She could see a rock in garden within reach. She considered using it to bash herself over her head a few times. A shadow crept over her as she rolled back on to her back. A bigger vehicle suddenly blocked Ray and the last of the dying sun. Rita could make out a van with a curved roof and huge doors. For fucks sake she thought, Ray’s called an ambulance.

DEBBIE TO THE RESCUE

Rita could hear someone stomping toward her. Two boots covered in mud came to a sudden stop. Rita saw familiar yellow dungarees.

“Debbie!” called out Rita in a voice she herself didn’t recognise.

Rita held her hand in the air and Debbie pulled her up.

Rita used her eyes to point to Ray parked across the road. Debbie laughed.

Rita jumped in the passenger seat of the ambulance. Debbie walked around the ambulance and to the other side. She waved to Ray. He waved back.

She put her head out the window and smiled at Ray.

“Dead mother” Rita yelled out as Debbie slowly pulled away. “Dead mother” she said again. Ray rolled his eyes.

The ambulance rattled along with Debbie at the helm looking every bit in control of her ship. The back of the ambulance still had the stretcher in it, which Debbie used to carry fragile goods from house to storage unit. She prided herself in house moves where the furniture was relocated without a single scratch or dent. She did this by making sure she only ever employed speed users. Speed gives someone a precision of motion and gear just a sloppy application to everything. They drove in silence for a while. Rita decided she was not the one who needed to start the conversation, even though she knew Debbie would be struggling to find the words. If Debbie didn’t find the words, it would be alright by her. Debbie had known Carol a long time, even still Rita was the grieving daughter so it was Debbie’s job to fill the air with the appropriate commiserations.

The ambulance took a sharp turn. Rita slid a bit toward the clutch. Debbie straightened up the old jalopy. Rita could tell they’d taken a detour and were now heading somewhere Debbie had been many times before. Maybe for a purpose. Maybe not.

Her fingers ached. Her toes ached. Even her hair ached where it broke the scalp. Thousands of times over. She felt stabbing pains in every muscle. Sore as sore gets. It was longest she’d gone for years. 

Rita saw the ugly square box blocking the sun, towering above the streetlights and houses. The eye sore that was her father’s business. Clive’s Storage. The sign, blue font on a white background, repeated all over town, on bus shelters, above corner stores, even on TV with that jingle that haunted her as a teenager. Kids would sing it at her like they were trying to hurt her with its melodic stupidity. “Clive’s your man, man oh man. Cliiiiives’s Storage. He’s your man!” and his big round face with slicked back blonde hair pulled into ponytail and his white teeth, in the top corner of the sign. The cost to keep them that white probably meant one less schoolbook when she was growing up. She remembered Carol complaining that she never had enough money to keep her teeth that white.

She remembered her mother complaining about his vanity. He’s boundless self-obsession. Yet she went to bed each evening with this man, the door would close, and she would not come out until the morning. What did they do? If she despised him. If she couldn’t bare him. What did adults do in their bed at nights apart from trying to appear normal.

She remembered he always complained about him never being at home. She would leave at 5 to come home and cook for Rita and Travis. He would stay on, to check in the customers who paid double to arrive outside of business hours.

“He comes home late” she would say. Yet she goes into the bedroom and closes the door. What did they talk about? Was it just what you did, in the 1980s?

Clive would leave early for work Saturday morning, to open up. He started the car in driveway, turned the radio up loudly and muffled the sound quickly by slamming the door. That quick blast of pop music echoed through the bottom half of the house, so when Rita woke, she wasn’t sure what woke her, only that something had.

This was Rita’s cue to get out of bed and make her way to Carol’s bed. She would mostly listen to Carol as she hypothesised about Clive’s actual schedule for the day, not the work of fiction he would spin as he rolled his white socks over the jungle of hair on his legs, so they sat just under his knees and slide on his brown leather shoes. That he would be doing the accounts with Blue Sue or making sure the cleaners had polished the concrete floors where heavy furniture left barbed scrapes and overloaded trolleys left black smudges as they turned sharply. He would need them to do it again if he wasn’t happy and why they couldn’t get it right the first time was beyond him. All this was not true. Carol knew it. But she went along with it biding her time for when her kids had left home. Rita and Travisua. Her miracles and her oppressors. They were the only reason she didn’t try and prove Clive was a compulsive adulterer. She would wait until the time was right. In the meantime, she would talk everything through with her daughter.

“Fraud” she would whisper in Rita’s ear as soon as he was out of earshot.

Why did she go to bed with him every night?

Rita heard her mother re-tell Clive’s stories, mimicking his voice and poking her tongue out to soften her cynicism, in case it was too much. If she was to undo her husband and make him pay for a lifetime of deceit, he should suspect nothing.

Even after years of hypothesising and re-telling Rita didn’t hate her father. Carol saw the careful observation of her husband as sport. It felt and looked that way to Rita. It was if Carol enjoyed watching Clive lie because it perfectly captured his arrogance, like nothing else. His blind, stupid arrogance showcased in a one act of ludicrous deceit after another. She enjoyed even more the bunking down with her daughter on a Saturday morning lie-in meticulously outlining his latest fabrications and delusion that no one would suspect, least of all his wife who was promised to him before they’d even finished puberty, so she was his to exploit and he was hers to manipulate. Rita wondered if this was the fate of all Prom King and Queen’s if they went on to marry and have children. Fated, bound to making the fairy tale look true until you can slide from the gilded pages unnoticed and live your real life.

Carol craved someone entirely unsuitable. Clive craved anything that would take his penis into their mouth.

Rita would laugh and shake her head and often stroke her mum’s arm as she off loaded. She enjoyed watching her mother vindicated by her own theories, indulging in her righteousness. She knew she could never confront her father. It would ruin her mother’s plan and break that unspoken agreement of secrecy between them. Carol never asked Rita for her discretion. She knew it came with the deal of mother and daughter.

Debbie however knew everything. She walked around to the passenger’s side of the old ambulance and opened the door for Rita. Debbie had been waiting on her best friend since they were at high school, since they first discovered the elixir of drugs administered express into a vein. Everything was suddenly containable after the second or third hit. The burgeoning hormones neatly muted. The body dysmorphia in context with every organ feeling closer together thanks to the blood rushing through their skinny bodies. The bracing lust for boys second to the bracing rush of gear. Not for Debbie though. It took her years to realise she had no desire for men at all. There was gear and feeling nothing. Nothing in between until the brush of her hairdresser’s bosom on her shoulder. Debbie realised she had feelings for women at this very moment but deeper feelings, feelings that carved out her thoughts on it. It was a tide of ecstasy from her shoulder to her heart. It was like gear except short lived not a constant tsunami like gear, good gear at least. She cropped her hair and made the sides severe, almost bald. She was already working for the narcissist Clive and sharing a flat with the self-obsessed Rita’s so the transition to lesbian was easy. Ray bought her a book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. But apart from that no one noticed. 

Long hair didn’t make her look straight anyway it just looked like a bad fitting wig on her silly head. She wanted women who hated long hair and who loved gear, of course loving gear was most important. She found Rita, cropped hair, passionately into gear but unfortunately not into making love to woman’s bodies. They tried over and over, but Debbie could feel in her touch that the sex for Rita was a means to an end. The source of the pleasure was not dependant on gender. Debbie did the love making, Rita enjoyed the intensity. It was confusing for Debbie when Rita told her that she also lay there and did nothing when Ray had sex with her. Perhaps she was just a lazy lover. Debbie was never sure how she felt. Sexual identity is indulgent and for the clean, not at all important for drug addicts. If there’s gear with sex or as reward for sex then sex can be enjoyed with any gender. Otherwise ‘asexual’ is a convenient identity if sex is requested without drugs, in order to avoid it. 

Rita was assured that Debbie had a plan. Why would they be at Clive’s storage cages if there wasn’t a plan. Or more to the point, gear. 

“Only problem is Reets is I can’t remember which cage. I mean I always leave some in a few cages as backup”

Debbie used her fob to let herself into the office. The same office where Clive seduced Blue Sue. Or was it in the cages. Rita followed Debbie, feeling every step, every muscle aching, sweat cascading from her pulsating temples, pushing through spikey wet hair. She kept it shaved using a 3 blade. Debbie always let her fringe stay floppy but shaved the rest of her head. It gave her a boyish willingness. Big eyes staring out from beneath a silvery canape of hair, perfect for being on the nod and avoiding detection and also perfect for begging for forgiveness when she’d once again pissed someone off in the relentless pursuit of gear. 

“Take me up the mountain” Rita said. Debbie ignored her.

“We’ve been friends for 38 years. I still don’t know why you want to die?”

“To get off this thing”

Debbie used because she used. She never analysed why she used, she just loved gear. Debbie could never understand what made her best friend angry all the time. Rita was obviously frustrated by her dependency. She was so frustrated that she wished for death to end it. Debbie saw it all as pretty straightforward. Why spend all day and night looking for your next hit and regretting it in between times. This is what life has dealt you. A habit. Deal with it.

“You’re a junky Reets. What you gunna do?”

Rita shrugged. “I’m sick of it”

“Don’t blame the gear or your dead mum”

Rita laughed then stopped abruptly.

Debbie was in no mood to listen to Rita’s droning self-pity. She knew Rita’s family better than Rita or at least she could see the habitual patterns of behaviours that Rita couldn’t. This lot were competitive. This lot had to get the upper hand and have the last word. This lot were always right when they weren’t entirely sure, actually. This lot were never happy with their lot. Carol was dead and Debbie wasn’t unhappy about it, she found her way too much. Saw herself as wily, on a quest to teach Clive a lesson. She could see why Rita used gear. Love or hate Clive it didn’t matter, Carol’s lifelong regret being forced into marrying a man she loathed because it was good for both families and her hatred of his acceptance of the situation, fucking whoever he pleased, rubbed off on Rita. Rita held the anger and regret on behalf of her mother not so Carol could be released from it but because there was plenty to go round. Rita was mouth open as it slushed over the edge. Debbie couldn’t tell her to stop feeling another person’s pain. It’s not yours to feel luv, she wanted to say, it’s your mums. Leave it for her. You luv, must make your own pain. But she never got the chance. Debbie’s occasional fear was that she liked Rita unaware, unconscious and carrying the pain of potentially generation after generation of mother, sister, wife. It kept her using gear and that suited Debbie. She wasn’t sure, it was just a fear, based on a hunch.

GOOD FRIENDS WHO DON’T LIKE EACH OTHER

“Take me up the mountain” Rita moaned as Debbie opened cage after cage, box after box looking for gear. Rita couldn’t understand how Debbie could hide it. Rita would use it as soon as that bag or tinfoil slid into palm, gone well and truly before she could hide it. Debbie hid it when she was high which was the secret to hiding gear but also the reason she couldn’t find it now.

“For fuck’s sake quit your moaning”.

Rita worried about gear being hid in boxes that didn’t belong to Debbie, what if the owners took their possessions away and some kid found it and ate it? Debbie got on her hand and knees and reached under a crate where a tower of boxes sat. Rita shook her head and groaned. Only Debbie could do this. Create theatre, from nothing at all. There were hundreds of storage cages. 500 to be exact. Rita remembered playing in the cages with Debbie when they were in primary school. In those days more cages were empty as Clive grew the business. An empty cage for two 10 year olds was a dance space, a hand ball court and a climbing wall. Rita remembered watching Debbie scale the cage walls and hang upside down with her feet lodged in the cage. Her dress would hang over her face exposing her underpants. It was about this time she swapped to trousers and never went back to dresses. Rita did too but to emphasise her long legs rather than for practical reasons like Debbie. Rita remembered Debbie’s red swollen feet and the ridges where the cage wire dug into her flesh. Rita could never hang upside down like that. Debbie loved how dizzy she felt even though her feet were often bruised later.

Rita asked Debbie if the security cameras were turned off. Debbie nodded and muttered “of course”. Debbie was now in the next cage sliding her hands down the cushions of a sofa. Rita was getting frustrated. Not that this was anything new. All would be forgiven if Debbie found the gear. Rita fantasised about the gear on the way up the mountain. It was lovely. It didn’t kill her but it did push Ray away sufficiently to temporarily lose momentum trying to get her clean for the millionth time. Ray was probably looking for her. Driving around. Maybe even up the mountain. Ray wouldn’t think about looking at Clive’s Storage, it was a Saturday night and he wouldn’t look here, surely. And there was a funeral to organise. He might even drive back to help Clive with getting Carol’s things in order for her funeral. Good husband. Rita felt useless as usual. Debbie let out a few expletives that indicated no such luck. This would have never happened if they’d gone up the mountain.

Rita swore Debbie, her best friend, loved looking for gear. The drama of it. The promise. All Rita felt was despair and a thudding soreness. They sat up the back of every class at school, every bus trip. Those girls. Well behaved for the most part just steely glares, grubby arms from tight fitting bracelets and the blatant impenetrable bond. Teaches would often get them mixed up. Rita and Deborah. One and the same. Never apart. Lesbians probably, never cracking a smile, only wry ones sliding from the dewy sides of their mouths for each other to see. Debbie found gear first. Her older lover, designer Anna-Lee, needed a younger woman on her arm for fashion shows and A-list dinner parties. Debbie was perfect. 18 with hair like a helmet with a very straight fringe and dresses over black stockings and of course boots, heavy soul boots with colourful laces. Decorated for the older women’s palette. Dyke enough for sex, fashionable enough for red carpets. Anna-Lee did everything to stop Debbie using gear but the vison of her in slow motion on a settee flanked in something from Vivienne Westwood, Miuccia Prada, Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler. Everything going on. Letting the clothes speak for themselves. Her body just a mannequin, melting. Was enough for Debbie to ask for a taste. Gear was on brand in the 1990s. Anna-Lee moved to LA and spent the next 20 years in and out of rehab. Debbie wrote her once but she never responded. Anna-Lee, her first love and mentor. It was through Anna-Lee that Debbie got the gig billeting young girls who moved the city on their first modelling contract. It was Anna-Lee who found her first eligible vein. It was Anna-Lee who made gear look glamorous. “Well you certainly stomped that allure into the dirt with your big boots”. Rita would say. There was nothing glamourous about Debbie’s habit. She was now rifling through people’s personal possessions trying to find the gear she’d hidden, for a rainy day. Rita was ignoring her phone. Ray kept calling and she was now staring at the 28 missed calls in her phone log. He was tragic. It was if he thought gear was not Rita’s fault, that it was forced upon her like her fucked up childhood. That she was victim of its charms, its power. But gear was Rita’s fault. She had plenty of reasons to stop it. Ever since Debbie unveiled her first lot in tinfoil, there were more reasons to say no then to say yes. Brown and not at all what Rita thought it was going to look like. The muddiness of it underrepresented the quality of the product and should have been the first good reason to say no. Mud into veins through a needle. What’s not to loathe? But she willingly lay her arm down on a cushion as Debbie strangled her arm with a belt and alerted her otherwise deeply rooted veins. She hated it to begin with, felt like throwing up but then wellness flooded her bones, until her utmost core was lifted to a wonderful, merciful place.

It was only a matter of time Ray would drive his Honda Civic into the customer carpark and talk into the security intercom. “Rita” he will say. Debbie will tell him to piss off. “Rita it’s Ray” he will say louder. Rita wanted to be high when he did so he could pile her into his car and drive her home. Dead would be better. But dead was increasingly less likely since she survived the last lot of gear with what felt like ease even though she was unable to tell. Ray could have revived her, although surely she would remember his lips on hers blowing air into her lungs and pumping her chest with his fists. Sweat pouring from his brow, once again bringing his wife back to life. Better than Narceine. Anything would be better than Narceine. What a nasty drug. Reality is best served in tiny morsels, not all at once.

“Now where did I hide this stuff?” Debbie whispered under her breath as if she’d only started looking for it. It felt like days for Rita. Cage after after, box after box, suitcase after suitcase. Debbie dug and pulled and repacked carelessly, in the vane hope tenants of Clive’s Storage didn’t notice their possessions had been fully interrogated by a desperate junky. Debbie new she was running out of time. Rita was about to explode, a brutal yearning she knew well except hers never transpired into violence. Debbie just kept using gear, never questioning it’s harm. It was the air she breathed. There was no fire inside her belly like Rita wanting things to be be different. The hunger was, if anything a homage to the magic of gear.

Rita’s phone was rattling and buzzing and sliding all over the floor. She sat in the first cage they’d arrived at and this is where she stayed, listening to Debbie move from cage to cage along the corridor. There were over 200 cages per corridor. Rita wondered if Debbie had even remembered the right corridor. There were at least 20 corridors.

“Don’t we have CCTV? Can you rewind back to the day you hid it?”

Debbie didn’t answer, at first. Rita was now lying on the cold concrete floor, sweating like pig, sore as hell. Travis calling, Clive calling. Ray calling. The whole family wondering where she was. Probably thinking she was slumped in a corner high. Rita wished she was. Carol would never call her again. This hit her like her fast moving sobriety.

“My mother is dead” Rita called out to Debbie. Debbie suddenly appeared at the cage door. She looked down at Rita and nudged her foot into her ribs. Rita squirmed. A puddle of sweat was now around her. It was pouring from her lower back and a slapping sound echoed as her back arched and flattened. Debbie had dosed only a few hours ago. Rita had been keeping a corpse company for 24 hours. Probably the longest she’d gone without gear since Debbie introduced her to the muddy stuff 20 years ago. No wonder she was a puddle on the floor. Debbie was determined to numb her friend and block the grief, but she still couldn’t find the gear. What a time to lose her head. Just when Rita needed her.

“Where is this stuff?” she wondered aloud.

Debbie left the cage Rita lay in and headed down to the next row of cages. Rita could hear her rattling each padlock then long sighs as Debbie dug through boxes, suitcases and turned over mattresses. Rita knew from her few times visiting her father’s workplace that customers used most of the cage space to store their possessions, often hanging tables and even bikes from the top of the cage. If Debbie was going to start searching the harder to reach places like the items hanging from the top of the cage, she was going to take weeks to uncover the gear. Rita knew the search would be become more frenzied as Debbie’s gear wore off and her chances of remembering where she hid the gear would be less and less likely the more desperate she felt. She yelled out to Debbie to stop looking. Debbie soon returned to her cage. She nudged her with her foot again. Rita sat up finally, she tried to wrap her hands around her knees but with all the sweat she lost her grasp and fell backwards again. Debbie reached down and pulled her back up be her sweaty palm. They looked at each other for a long while both knowing that a trip up the mountain was getting more likely as the search for gear in 500 cages was losing momentum. Rita knew that Debbie’s last fix would be wearing off soon and so her urgency to refuel would be nearing hers in ferocity. Rita was ready to kill. If her mother wasn’t already dead she’d happily kill her to get some more gear. Debbie was scratching her cheek now trying to remember where she hid the stuff. Rita knew any junky that starts scratching their face is passed the half way mark for needing to score.

“We been friends for life Reets, I’ve never let you down”

Rita nodded, her chin stayed tucked into her nape at the last nod. Debbie reached down and slid her arms under Rita’s armpits, she yanked her to her feet.

“Let’s get in the old jalopy and head up the mountain”

The gate to cage slammed shut. Debbie swung around and dropped Rita to the floor again. Debbie could see the cage door shut and a lock swinging back and forth. She figured the cage door had slammed by itself but as she reasoned with herself she felt a looming sense of doubt. The click sound was similar to the sound you hear when a padlock lock, rather than the wind, she figured again. She moved closer and was now surprised to see that in fact the gate was locked and she couldn’t open it. Debbie a veteran at Clive’s Storage of 18 years immediately recognised the padlock, and described it.

“Armoured steel shackle, probably 80mm”

Debbie did what anyone would do, she rattled the gate. It was definitely locked by a steel shackle and not the complimentary padlock provided by Clive’s Storage.

She slowly looked up knowing that whatever or whoever it was, it surely was a joke.

The winding hairs that spring from a man’s knuckle, were hairs she’d seen. Yes these were unmistakable. These were Ray’s hands.

She could hear him walk away. She looked down at her best friend tossing and turning now like she was in an unbearably hot bath but she was simply lying flat on her back in a cage full of stuff. Stuff that no one knew what to do with. Stuff that was waiting on a change of circumstance or any of life’s turns. Debbie’s eyes darted from Rita to the lock on the gate. There could be no other explanation.

“Hello?”

This was not good. If they were locked in this cage and the person holding them captive was Ray. The husband of Rita. The guy that had been trying to get her clean for 20 years. The guy that didn’t give up even if it meant losing everything he had. If it was him that held the key to the cage. This was not good. Not good at all.

“Hello?”

Rya’s resolve to get Rita clean was deeply rooted in the very spit he now shot to the floor of the warehouse. Who was he if he wasn’t trying to clean up Rita?

“Sorry”

Ray appeared back at cage gate. He stood still, arms at his side, eyes down to the floor. Full of shame, Debbie could tell. Debbie was straight with him.

“You promised never to do this”

Ray nodded. “But she has to get clean for her mother’s funeral, of all the times”

“That’s the one time you need to off your head you stupid cunt” Rita screamed, now sitting up possessed by her hunger for gear.

“Charming”, Ray said walking away.

Debbie kept calm by focusing on Ray’s shame, imprisoning her would grate against his sense of morality and maybe he would release her but not Rita. The one he wanted clean. She lowered Rita backwards by placing one hand under her lower back and using the other to guide the decline. Rita’s eyes were shattered with broken veins of blood, 27 years of anger was finding its way out of her. Debbie thought that perhaps her friend needed to be angry to justify her use of gear, rather than anger making her use in the first place. It felt odd. Two self-obsessed, ultra controlling, spiteful, vengeful parents. Hardly enough to justify rotting your soul with gear. And now she was here on her back writhing in pain, probably 24 hours since her last hit. She decided to ask.

“When was your last dose luv?”

“Just before I found my mother dead on her bed”

It was worse than she thought. Rita discovered Carol dead more than 24 hours ago. This explained the writhing in pain on the floor. This might be longest Rita had gone without gear for 20 years.

“Please Deb, take me up the mountain”

Debbie realised that Rita had become fixated with the mountain. It was the stop off in Penrith on the way up. The guy she probably should have married. They had so much in common, gear couldn’t kill either of them, for one. Her husband stood lingering outside the cage, keeping her a prisoner and all she could think about was her Shaun in Penrith.

Ray had really done it this time, thought Debbie. She had the strongest feeling he wasn’t going to let them out of the cage. And that she was collateral damage.

Suddenly Rita sat up. ‘I’m a complicated frenzy of molecules’ she said.

Debbie knew this was a bad sign. Last time she was in the fever she kept repeating this. A scientifically true statement and surprisingly insightful of Rita who rarely spoke about anything other than gear.

Ray appeared at the gate again.

Rita got up and charged the gate, bull mad. ‘Water, food, medicine?’ she screamed. ‘Have you thought this through Ray? We will die in here if you don’t feed us’

Ray slowly shook his head. ‘I want you clean for your mother’s funeral’

Debbie approached the gate slowly. She knew the grounds for negotiation now. ‘OK Ray, mate, look, I will help you get Rita clean for the funeral if you let me out’

Ray shook his head slowly again. Rita used the back of a scrunched up fist to punch Debbie in the neck.

Debbie took a sharp step backwards and spluttered. ‘Ouch’

Rita shook the gate, saliva firing off in all directions from her growling mouth.

Ray stepped back. “The process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay”

Rita screamed even louder. She hated it when Ray quoted from books. He read books with the same attention he paid to getting her clean. As if he had two modes of existing: reading and sabotaging Rita’s attempts to score.

Rita threw her head back now and gurgled her own saliva returning from the air.

Debbie was not scared of her yet. She had imagined this moment for years. So had thought of her best friend’s body writhing, arms gripping a bed frame perhaps, frothing at the mouth. She just didn’t think she’d be trapped in a cage with her at the same time. Ray maybe pacing back and forth in a room near by while she made cups of teas for him. Maybe she would be the nominated person to soak up Rita’s sweat using hard dry towels. Ferrying buckets from bedroom to bathroom. Washing and drying the towels. Yes something like this.

She just didn’t think she’d be trapped in a cage with her at the same time. Without any means to acquire some smack.

Debbie pulled Rita away from the cage, bashing her fingers with her the palms of her hands to release her grip of the gate. Rita bellowed in Debbie’s face and kept hold of the final note like she was signing and at the same time liberally sharing her spit with Debbie’s slightly open mouth. Debbie calmly wiped the spit away with her sleeve. Debbie was now sweating so it was difficult to determine what was sweat and what was her Rita’s saliva. Debbie was a few hours behind Rita so could still keep her calm but only just. Rita was now on floor face down, thumping the ground with her knees.

What did she know about Ray apart from his sick obsession with a junky girl and his love for books. What else did she know. Watching Rita trying to disappear into a cold hard concrete floor using her knees as mallets reminded her that she needed to act fast. What else did she know about Ray? She called him to the gate for a man to man chat. After calling him until she was near hoarse, he finally appeared, slouched and chest caved in more than usual as his arms dug deep into his trouser pockets, but there was a hint of guilt in his eyes that gave Debbie hope.

‘Ray please can you let me out’ she whispered her voice failing as she tried to make it as soft as possible.

Ray shrunk back into the shadows. It was dark. Night time. Still no keys rattling in that lock. Debbie could feel a headache coming on and the tips of her fingers were numb. She’d never gone without gear, not since her first go on it.

‘We are two animals in the same cage’ said Debbie.

‘I’m a complicated frenzy of molecules’ said Rita.

THE SWEATS

Debbie and Rita are now side by side on their backs, creating enough sweat between them to almost float on. Ray considers timing. How best to enter the cage and leave them with supplies so they don’t die. He doesn’t want them dead. He wants Rita clean and Debbie in whatever state that will help Rita stay clean, so alive he guesses and probably back on smack. Debbie stopped being Rita’s enabler soon after she gave her the first hit. From that moment on Rita took the ball and ran with it, as they say. Debbie never had to enable her again, in fact Rita enabled her. Always the one with the next hit in her pocket and the one planning the next hit even as the last hit was lifting her to a comfortable place. The perfect place to calmly assemble her thoughts, process the location and source of the next hit, even if the next hit was in her pocket or in the top drawer in the kitchen or waiting in foil beside a spoon and cigarette lighter on the coffee table. The coffee table. The one she threw at him when she went up the mountain and came back down. Keeper of his books and her kit. Their sources of pleasure. Both with their own power. He felt unworthy. A boring man. Rita was full of feeling, raw need poking out like snapped bones. Not guarded and withdrawn like him.

He was at the cage now, fingers wrapped around the wire. Rita and Debbie lay facing heaven, groaning and calling each other names but less and less as their energy even to belittle or blame each other for their predicament diminished. Ray did not at all feel guilty or concerned about the fact he was committing the crime of imprisonment. He read in a book by George Bernard Shaw that locking up people did not help them be less criminal. In fact his thesis Ray remembered was retribution is at odds with the goal of reform. But this was different. This was imprisonment to save a life, maybe two. When all else had failed. This was the last resort. The last trip up the mountain proved to him one thing, she wanted to die. Not through some morbid desire to end her life or control her destiny or get relief from the drugs that enslaved her but simply as death was the highest she could get, the most fucked, whacked out of her brain like never before.

Ray took the key from around his neck that was attached to a chain necklace. He thought this was the safest place for it. He held his fingers above the lock to check if they were steady enough to unlock the padlock without detection. They trembled slightly so he stepped away from the cage and sat down with his back against the cage across the way. He hadn’t planned this exactly but probably in the back of his mind he’d been planning something like this for 18 years ever since she first had a hit in front of him, on the sofa, using the modular armrest to poise her vein. He remembered seeing the blood swill into the transparent tube and then push back into her vein with the load. The blood, he discovered was striking a vein giving the dispenser proof of passage. He watched her bliss out. All he wanted to do from that moment on, was to save her. Bliss like this he thought is cheating God.

On his knees he crawled into the cage and slid a tray with some towels and a bucket of water toward Rita and Debbie. He crawled back out and shut the gate. It was 4am, they’d been in that cage 12 hours now. He tapped his watch. He knew timing was everything. Their skin was shiny, wet with sweat, hair tangled in dewy clumps. Debbie’s jeans were folded into a pillow for her head to rest. She must have prepared for the ordeal, seeing Rita looking possessed a few hours before her. Her knitted top was pulled behind her head exposing her breasts probably mopping up the sweat gathering around her neck.

They both began screaming around midnight, oddest screams too, probably reacting to each other. It was hard to say who screamed first. At least, thought Ray to himself, the groaning became moaning, whimpering became bleating and sobs tempered to sniffing. The screams were sudden, just one note and sharp, like they were forcing the drug out from the pit of their stomachs.

Ray new he had another few hours before customers of Clive’s Storage could potentially drive in the car park and use their keys to access their cages. Sunday surely would be a busy day. He knew no one would open the office until Monday maybe even later in the week, what with Caroline’s funeral to organise. Blue Sue could pop in. Travis had keys. But Clive would be too busy getting his estranged wife’s things sold to pay for the funeral. Ray wished his wife was in a better place to negotiate with Clive. They could do with a BMW or penthouse apartment. The only way this badly put together, last minute plan of his would work is if his captives didn’t scream. He knew that everything they did was being recorded on CCTV and he would need to find a way to destroy the footage but Clive would no doubt comply with his request and say ‘she’s all yours’ like he did on their wedding day. After all it was an honourable thing he was doing, saving his wife’s life.

Ray could see some movement in the cage, dawn light was filtering through the wire. Debbie was pouring water into Rita’s open mouth. It was difficult to watch. Debbie then drank straight from the bucket herself. She lay down again on the hard concrete floor. Of all the cages to get stuck in they get stuck in this one, the one without a mattress.

Ray got up and leant against the gate of the cage. He looked around at the possessions so neatly piled up. Important but in the way, rather than unsure what to do with them, he figured. He married into a storage family, they spent a lot of time guessing customer’s circumstances, why they needed a storage cage for 3 months, 6 months, 12 months. What were their reasons now in the 1990s. In the 1980s it was women leaving their partners. Clive cornered this market with his good looks and word of mouth marketing in the richer suburbs of Sydney. ‘You must call my little man. He offers a discrete, efficient service and darling he is very easy on the eye’ Ray imagined this was the conversation over brunch in Double Bay in the late 1980s, the decade divorce spiked along with Clive’s bank balance.

He saw an elegant table with beautiful turned legs. Dark wood chairs with black leatherette upholstery. Golf clubs resting in a wheelbarrow and snow skis held in place by octopus straps at the top of the cage. Nothing soft or comforting for two people coming off drugs. A hard floor and a bucket of water, was all.

Ray wished it hadn’t have come to this. Imprisoning his wife was hardly an act of a loving husband. But Ray was desperate and everyone would thank him when Rita turned up to her mother’s funeral clean. He would say to the police if he found himself in trouble ‘I had no other option, I didn’t want my wife to die’ and they would understand. Anyone who claimed to love someone would do the same. His actions were justifiable and relatable. Seeing the woman he loved lying on a hard floor shaking and in pain was unbearable but he was doing the right thing. He would never give up on Rita. If customers hear her screaming Ray decided he would tell the truth. If they called the police he would tell the truth.

My wife is a drug addict.

Debbie was at the gate, clinging to the wire and panting like a dog.

She looked pale and her hair was drenched with sweat. Her breasts hung low and the gutter between each one glistened from the rush of sweat.

‘I’m sore’ she moaned.

Ray knew it was safer to approach her at the gate now. It had been 12 hours, she’d be rendered almost useless by the first waves of withdrawals.

“Let me out Ray”

Ray didn’t move his head. He wanted to let Debbie out but at the same time he figured if Debbie got clean she might like it and that could only be a good thing, in fact, it was the only thing to do. Rita and Debbie were partners in crime. It was obvious, they both must get clean together. He was the clown in the Debbie and Rita circus. The third wheel. A hangeronerer. A kind of tragic butler. But he didn’t care, he never wanted to be as close to another human being as Debbie and Rita were to each other. Made him feel sick, that closeness. He trusted purpose and duty. They were together now as it should be. The next 48 hours will be the worst of their lives. But at least they’ll be together. Ray tapped the padlock to reassure himself and warn Debbie too. He shrunk back into the new shadows cast by the early morning light.

Debbie had to think fast although the toxins of muted epiphanies were spewing up her neck like the realisation it was a beautiful day or the comfort of loving arms. She had to convince Ray to let her out. Even with her addle-brain she called upon her common sense approach to all things. She always said that if she applied the same ingenuity to sourcing smack to making money she’d be a billionaire. She simply had to apply common sense.

Saving Rita. That was Ray’s only motivation. Saving Rita. If she stood in the way of saving Rita he’d let her go, surely. The pain in her legs was unbearable so she crawled back to lie beside Rita. Rita was now shivering, the air was sharp with a dawn chill, the same dawn chill that makes you pull the duvet over you, under better circumstances. Debbie lay her hand on Rita’s stomach. It felt like it had caved in completely, nothing was pushing it up or down.

‘Are you dead?’

Rita groaned and turned toward Debbie.

‘Phew, I thought you were dead’

Debbie finally had a plan, something about Rita’s sunken stomach and death-like appearance that inspired her. As soon as customers came to collect items from their cage they would scream for help. It was simple. They were already screaming in pain, wild animals cornered type screaming. But this screaming would be more women in great danger type screaming. Like they were being tortured and very near a horrible death. The customers would come running to their aid and Ray’s game would be up. No matter what he tells them they would convince their liberator of their life and death situation by clinging to the gate and pleading for help. Stupid Ray had clearly not thought this through properly. It was just a matter of time before a customer came. Debbie would hear a car or a truck pulling up and the doors slamming, footsteps on the concrete paths that dissected the labyrinth of wire.

A plastic bag landed near Rita’s feet. Debbie sat up and bent over almost halving her body to pick up the bag. She was now nimble after 24 hours in captivity without food or smack. Ray had thrown them vegemite sandwiches in a plastic bag. She opened the bag and shoved the sandwich in her mouth. She rested the other sandwich on Rita’s stomach. Rita slowly pawed the sandwich trying to work out what it was. She was weak, ahead of Debbie in her detoxification ordeal. Debbie still held on to some ability to move her limbs.

‘Eat it’

Rita groaned, a groan that built slowly in loudness. Debbie knew she had to make her friend eat something so she shoved the sandwich in her mouth. Rita sunk her teeth into Debbie’s fingers and clamped shut. The sandwich fell to the ground. Debbie realising her teeth grip was too strong used her other hand to slap Rita across her right cheek thereby releasing her stronghold. Rita suddenly sat up and threw both arms around Debbie’s waist and sunk her teeth into stomach. Debbie grabbed her by the hair and pulled her away. She threw her friend flat and launched herself on top of her, like she was riding her. She grabbed her hair again and pulled her head backwards. With the other hand she mashed the vegemite sandwich into Rita’s pursed lips. With some pressure pulling her head backwards and some pressure pushing the sandwich into her lips, Rita’s mouth reluctantly opened and the sandwich went in. She chewed as Debbie cupped her mouth to catch any debris.

‘Oi’ came a deep voice from outside the cage. Ray was clinging to the cage watching by the looks.

Debbie ignored him.

She fell off Rita and fell on to her back. Rita crawled to her and lay her head on her lap. She groaned again until it became a sob. Debbie could see sweat cascading from the top of her head down her neck and dripping to the floor from her hip bone. Debbie was covered in sweat too but was it hers or Rita’s? It didn’t matter, for now they stuck together. From the sobs came a little voice.

‘Why are we in this cage?’

Debbie stroked her head and flattened her sweaty hair. She studied Rita’s face. Perhaps the lack of gear had wiped her short term memory or perhaps she was pointing out their predicament by asking a question to emphasise how ridiculous it all was.

‘Ray locked us in love?’ Debbie said stating the now obvious.

Rita rubbed her forehead on Debbie’s shoulder. It was as if the scuffle minutes earlier didn’t take place. Rapidly escalating violence like slaps, punches and wrestling was something their friendship had to endure for years. They both took it from each other. Both knowing how infuriating it was when the gear for whatever reason was not forthcoming. It didn’t matter if they made bruises or drew blood, because the gear from wherever it came would mend the pain and make it all make sense.

Rita remembered lying with her head on Debbie’s thigh when they were 16, in a park one summer. This was before smack so it must have been 1987. Debbie stroked her head that day too. Debbie was kind and funny, very funny. She never asked why. She was all about what and where and when. Rita was always wondering why and how. Rita asked her best friend that day what the point of life was. Debbie answered quickly and matter-of-factly. ‘Does it need a point?’

Rita now had full blown fever. Shuddering into an expanse of cold air.

Rita could hear Debbie’s voice although it was as if she was talking through a cushion. She could feel Debbie’s fingernails on her scalp but it felt like a tattoo needle.

She was now getting her first tattoo on her leg and Debbie was tipping vodka into her mouth to numb the pain. She could still feel the needle, it was a nagging pain, the worst kind she’d come to realise even by 16. She wanted to scream. Debbie kept pouring vodka into her mouth. It was 1986. Debbie by her side. Rita and Debbie, best friends, now and forever.

‘Why are we in this cage?’

Debbie shrugged.

RITA AND DEBBIE AND CLIVE

Clive stood at his daughter’s bedroom door peering through the keyhole. He would have been wholly disappointed by her brawny body and cropped hair. Even more so her best friend Debbie with her hairy arm pits and hairy legs. He would have known the truth earlier than he made out. He possibly even saw them take the drug. But Clive being Clive did nothing to stop it. In fact if anything he saw it as revenge on Carol. Her daughter a junky. Proof she was a failure as a mother.

He thought Carol and him were different animals trapped in the same cage but they were the same animal in the same cage. As stubborn as each other hellbent on getting the upper hand. The other one was the one with the problem, the one to blame, the one that didn’t get it. Every day was a campaign to prove the other one wrong. Making the case against the other so a court somewhere, at some stage deem the other compromised and needing compensation to even the score. A drug addicted daughter was useful to Clive.

“She hates you” he screamed at Carol the night she left the family home. “Your own daughter, hates you”. Carol was holding car door open to hear for the last time Clive’s excuses. Her possessions although not agreed by both parties were long gone in a removal truck and piled up to the ceiling enticingly in her new apartment. There is nothing more permanent than possessions halved, she thought blocking out his screaming. Carol had struggled to find a removal company that wasn’t Clive’s Storage or people he knew. She found a high-end company Purple that had tried to buy Clive out but could never find a price he would accept. Purple branded everything purple even the socks that the removal men wore much to the fury of Clive who had to watch his biggest competitor empty half the family home after 32 years. In purple socks.

“Your son has no respect for you” Clive screamed. Carol kept the car door open waiting for him finish and so the neighbors could see his true colors. Carol had given up on the facade. Most of the neighbors were aware that things were far from perfect. They hadn’t been seen together at any neighborhood parties or school functions for best part of the 32 years. What the neighbors didn’t know was just how deeply they loathed each other. The facade was the appearance that they were like any other couple, not so in love anymore but still a team. That was the facade. And they were far from that. They wished each other dead most days.