The Unexpected Salami Read online

  Lying there with nothing to do but watch her read, scrape my heel on her body, or otherwise mark time, I started comparing her to Rachel. I hadn’t thought about not hearing from New York in a while.

  Rachel’s eyes were more startling than beautiful, those deep-set brown circles that chased you everywhere. And she was much taller than Hannah, five eight or so; the crown of her head came up to my forehead. Despite her model height, she was not what you’d call a graceful girl. She knocked over our standing lamp near the TV at least once a week, or her black tights often had a ladder that ran down to her calf. And despite the fact that she was urbangothic white, as she called it, even in the summer, Rachel insisted on wearing black basketball runners everywhere; high-tops, she called them. She could have bowled everyone over with her knockout legs if she wore silk stockings and European high heels like Hannah, but she didn’t give a shit. “It’s a look sure, but high-tops without socks doesn’t look good on your pale skin,” I’d say.

  “Dress yourself,” she’d say.

  “As your closest friend in the Southern Hemisphere,” I once said, “I’m telling you that you could tone it down more.” She was headed out the door for her shift, in her purple American bowling shirt embroidered with the name Susie, tucked into her bright red miniskirt. And those fucking high-tops.

  “Will you chill out? Is there a law against color? The world is drab enough.” Rachel had a name and an answer for everything.

  Phillip once said it best: “She’s great, but sometimes I wish she’d shut the fuck up.” I didn’t know how Rachel was in bed; I imagined full-on sex with her would be fun, but wordy.

  A sound like feet trudging through mud came from the corner. Marjoram and Smudgeface were devouring their Happy Cat liver and bacon. Poor suckers had no idea of the meatless fate that awaited them. I was bored. Hannah had a book by Rilke on her Art Deco dresser.

  “My old flatmate Rachel read Rilke. But she thought his writing was ‘pompous male poet sentimental mush, like Rimbaud’s and Verlaine’s.’” Rachel was always going off into tirades like that, even when she didn’t mean it; she made me write down those two writers’ names to force me to check them out of the library and see if what she said was true. I have to confess I never did. I could tell that once again she was thinking midair. Like that time I drew a caricature of her from a bad angle and she acted like I was her executioner for fifteen minutes, and I felt like utter shit for it, like a boar, and then a second later she asked if there was milk left in the fridge.

  “Rachel is not a delicate woman,” Hannah sniffed, “Rilke is sublime.” I tried to kiss Hannah’s sublime little breast, but she said, “I’m reading now, Colin. Why don’t we do that stuff when we’re in Mount Buller?” Her sister had a share at Mount Buller for the ski season.

  So, we were lying there, frustrated bastard and bombshell Kelvinator on the coldest setting, when Phillip rang with the news. “Can you get that, honey?” she asked, without looking up from her cookbook.

  “Leser residence, Colin speaking,” I said, like Hannah had told me to—she didn’t approve of my standard “Yeah?”

  “Mate!” Phillip said, “Wait until you hear this! Angus rang the house. That Aboriginal pop band Yothu Yindi, you know them?”

  “Of course—”

  “Well, the lead singer’s developed nodes on his vocal chords from having one too many global gigs during the official United Nations’ Year of the Indigenous People—”

  “And you’re excited by this?” I asked.

  “Hold on. They’re in the middle of a tour with INXS, and the promoters needed another opening Australian band since it was a Foster’s tour, and guess who that band is? I’ll give you a hint: you’re right, Angus is one cluey bastard of a manager.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “He had Deirdre from the Sydney EMI office ring their American office to remind them about our Yank-friendly press hook with the murder. And the tour’s promoters rang Angus, who brilliantly told them we’d perform for a third of Yothu Yindi’s fee. EMI’s and Atlantic’s American offices struck a deal—they’re gonna tie our song to the new INXS ballad—if a station doesn’t play “Gnome,” it won’t get the new INXS single first in their market.”

  “Brilliant,” I agreed.

  “We’re gonna replace Yothu Yindi on their last three shows in America. Buffalo, Syracuse, and the finale in a New York City arena!”

  “Jesus!” I almost screamed—his words were sinking in. Hannah looked up from her feline deprivation recipe for a second. “Jesus!” I pulled the phone cord out of her room and lowered my voice to a whisper: “But wait, shit, Phillip, Buffalo’s in America? Isn’t that where Aunt Sally is?”

  “Relax, Colin, America is shorthand for North America. Stuart’s not going to show up at the Canadian gig anyway.”

  “But what if Aunt Sally’s relis see the press, or someone else she knows?”

  “Stuart is not a bloke who’d make many friends these days. Anyhow, they’re not going to run the murder victim’s face in the newspaper, they’ll print that it happened over in Australia, and that there was pandemonium when it happened—”

  “What if Angus gets them Doug Lang’s clip?”

  “Mate, you’re gonna have to ease up if we’re going to pull this off. I’ll talk to Doug to remind him that Stuart’s in Canada.”

  “Yeah, good.”

  “We’re meeting Angus at Mario’s, in the back booths—ten A.M. sharp. I’ll ring Mick-O as soon as I’m off with you. Angus already booked us a flight. Do you have a passport?”

  “No.”

  “Bring your driver’s license and birth certificate then. Angus can get an emergency passport and visa for you through Ausmusic—they have an arrangement with the U.S. Consulate. We’ve got to get photos taken right after brekkie, ’cause we’re eligible for something called cultural ambassador status.”

  I hung up the receiver. I had Hannah’s attention. “What was that about? Why are you looking like that—Colin?” I blew on the antique glasses she bought in a shop in Armadale, which she used for reading books in bed, books like Italian Pottery, A Field Guide to Roses, or A Treasury of Romantic Poems.

  “Oh, stop! You’re breathing like a dog!” But she was smiling. She knew something good was up.

  “We’ve been asked to play an arena in New York City. In New York City! Jesus Fucking Christ.”

  “You’re kidding! That’s amazing.”

  “We’re replacing Yothu Yindi—”

  “The Aboriginal band?”

  “Long story—the lead singer has nodes on his vocal chords and—”

  “Who’s Aunt Sally?”

  Phillip was right. I’d let my cool slip. Everything was going great. “Aunt Sally’s a Canadian aunt of Phillip’s who’s a Born Again. She hates the fact he’s a rock singer, calls it devil’s work.”

  “Oh.”

  I sat naked on the corner of Hannah’s bed, my tic starting up from the excitement. Should I ring Rachel to say we were coming over, go ahead and roll out the red carpet? Hannah startled me by caressing my back and neck. She gently bit me on my nipple, and we made love for the second time in the month.

  • • •

  My seat was next to Angus, who was telling me about how I should talk to the American media. The plane headed down the runway for liftoff. I wanted him to shut up. I had never been on a plane before and was nervous as hell. Angus had been overseas to America and Europe more times than he’d ever dreamed. “New Orleans’s good,” he said. “Europe, okay. Seen one castle, seen them all.”

  I passed air as the plane lifted, because of the hemorrhoid air-pump fiasco. Hannah had done this crazy thing that night we finally had sex: the last few minutes before I had been about to come, she’d slid her finger right up my arse. I mean right up in, prodding around with her long sharp index fingernail. Fucking weird. It felt like she was fishing with barbed wire in there, but I didn’t say anything. She must know what she was doing—a Kama
Sutra thing perhaps, since she had that on her shelf. But the next morning I bled out my arse. I was afraid Hannah had done some damage. My flight was in twenty-four hours. I enlisted my mother for help getting an emergency spot with Dr. Leach, her doctor.

  Mum paused on the phone when I told her what area needing examining. “What exactly happened here, Colin?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I was trying to clean an itchy bit out of my bottom with a screwdriver.”

  “Oh, Colin!” Mum burst out laughing.

  “Don’t make me tell you anymore, please Mum, please—”

  “Can I tell your father? He looks so bored.”

  “Mum, please no.”

  “I’ll ring Dr. Leach for you if you promise to buy me a bottle of Smoke. That’s a fragrance my new neighbor Caroline is going on and on about. You can’t buy it yet in Georges or David Jones yet. Will you write that down?”

  “Hold on a sec, okay.”

  “Smoke, by Ivan Stanbury, the American designer. Caroline picked it up in a department store called Bloomingdale’s, if that’s any help.”

  “Deal. But ring right away.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Colin. You always said fame would happen and it did. My little rock star.”

  Dr. Leach was on a golf holiday up on the Gold Coast, but Mum got me an appointment with Dr. Leach’s intern.

  “Just fix me,” I said to him. The intern hooked me up to an air pump mechanism. He left the machine unattended while he took a call from his girlfriend or wife. After a while I felt like a blimp was up my arse, and I called out to him, but he assured me that it’s normal to feel pain. I screamed after another few seconds—that made him take a look—the gauge was at fucking maximum. The jerk apologized in a fluster, no doubt afraid I was going to sue.

  I told him not to worry, but I fumed like hell while he wrote out an ointment prescription for the plane. The side effect was that I passed air nonstop since my appointment; not smells, just air.

  “What’s that noise?” Angus said.

  “Sorry, I had a crazy meal last night in celebration,” I said, trying to mask my terror at leaving the ground at a forty-five degree angle.

  “You’re a legend, Colin,” he said.

  When the plane evened out a bit, the stewardess by the curtain let a pretty girl from the economy seats up front so the girl could ask Phillip for his autograph. His fan looked like she was minutes away from her puberty burst. Phillip tried to look like he didn’t care, that it happened all the time, but I knew it was his second autograph, even with the national publicity we had. Australia isn’t a nation for celebrity worship. I could see it on his face: Phillip hoped America was all that and more.

  Mick-O was asleep, his head propped up against Phillip’s shoulder. Phillip and Kerri were having a bit of a row over the autograph request and the fact that Kerri was on the plane at all. She somehow managed to get a visa at the last second and Phillip was mad as hell as he envisioned himself with a swarm of New York nymphomaniacs.

  Hannah had a ceramics seminar she had to give at Daylesford. She didn’t even try booking a flight. I was supposed to be back in Australia in a month, and Hannah said she could use the solo time to read. I was disappointed that she couldn’t come. I wanted to have someone who mattered watching me on stage, someone I could talk to afterwards, and if I’m honest here, someone I could show off to INXS. Hannah turned heads.

  Angus nudged me awake for our dinner; he’d put down my tray, and the food was waiting for me.

  “Thanks, mate.”

  “Not a problem.”

  There was a piece of paper accompanying the meal:

  To celebrate our new, improved business class to the South Pacific and the United Nations’ Year of the Indigenous People, this month, for business and first class only, Continental Airlines has added special items to our menu for flights between America, Australia, and New Zealand. Some of these items may be incorporated into your meals. From North America: turkey, cranberry sauce, wild rice stuffing, blue corn chips. From New Zealand: mussels appetizer, Hangi-style pork. From Australia: barramundi, mock emu stew, wattleseed ice cream. We hope you enjoy your unusual meal and take time out to consider how important it is to preserve indigenous culture.

  I heard Phillip say to Mick-O, “For Godsake use a fucking fork.” Our flight got the barramundi, which tasted suspiciously like the everyday flake you get at a fish and chips shop. For a bonus dessert in addition to the wattleseed ice cream, there was a chocolate chip “cookie” made in Sydney. I hated the way everyone, especially Dale and Geoff, my second cousins from Dad’s side, let American words replace those I grew up with. My cousins said sneakers instead of runners, cookies instead of bikkies. Geoff, who was fourteen, wore a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt instead of a footy guernsey.

  “Would you like something to drink with your dinner?” the black American stewardess asked. She sounded like Rachel taking a drink order, like the job was beneath her.

  “A Coke would be great.”

  “Are you excited about your tour, Mr. Dunforton?”

  “How do you know I’m on tour?”

  “Flight attendants know everything,” she smiled. She had adult braces like Liam’s wife. “We even know which customers in first class used coupons to get there.”

  “Well, in that case, I better tell the truth. Yeah, I’m pretty excited. I’ve never been further than Brisbane.”

  “Am I the first American you’ve met, too?”

  “No, but I only know one Yank well. You sound a bit like her.” I stopped myself from saying that she was the first black person I’d met. Even though I hadn’t been overseas before, I knew that it wouldn’t be a good thing to say. I had one of Oprah’s shows running in my head—“Dialogue between the Races,” the one Phillip and I imitated for a week—this black girl with tight rows of plaits said straight into the camera, “No, don’t ask me if you can touch them, I’m not going to touch your awful perm, you hear me?”

  “Is your friend from Baltimore, too?”

  “New York City.”

  “People from Baltimore sound nothing like people from New York City. But you’ll find that out soon enough, that’s what travel is for.”

  The old stick on the aisle turned out to be an eighty-four-year-old amateur scientist who was touring the world, at his own expense, to convince skeptics to change the week from seven to eleven days. “Son, we made a terrible calculation ’round about the Roman times.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Fortunately, just then one of the stewardesses gave us customs forms to fill out. Welcome to the United States of America, are you carrying fruit?—that sort of thing. Angus, who had awful breath from the flight, leaned over. “Tick no for everything.”

  “Angus, do we fill out this form even though we’re flying on to Canada?”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t we going to Canada first for the Buffalo gig? The plane at two o’clock—”

  “Buffalo’s in the States, Colin, in New York State.” He was looking at me like I was a dunce. “Remember, you only got a visa for the States?”

  “Sorry, I’m talking crap,” I said, trying to suppress a class-A heart attack. “I thought it was right near Toronto, that one visa is good for North America, and—”

  “Well, Buffalo’s right up there on the Canadian border, but mate, you better not say idiotic things like that to the press.”

  I tapped Phillip on the shoulder and motioned for him to walk to the back of the cabin with me, past the curtain to the economy toilets. I pretended to be stretching my legs as I poured water into a paper cone. “Buffalo’s in the States—Angus told me—the top of New York State. Our flight from LA goes to Buffalo, New York State, not Buffalo, Canada.”

  “I was sure Buffalo was in Canada,” Phillip said nervously. “Maybe there’s a Buffalo in Canada, too, like Perth in Scotland and Australia.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look, when you and Peter m
ade up that Ian MacKenzie ID for Stuart, did you get Stuart a visa for Canada or the States? Did the plane ticket say Canada or the States?”

  “Fuck, Phillip, I don’t notice things like plane codes. We didn’t even look at ours, right? I told Peter that ‘Ian MacKenzie’ needed a visa for Buffalo, and he gave it to me with the other papers. What country was it for?—you saw it, too.”

  “I can’t remember,” he said. “Christ. Let’s calm down though. What’s the big deal if he’s in New York State? He’s not about to come to our shows—”

  “What if he thinks of blackmailing us for more drug money?”

  “He’s not going to do that. He’s not that smart—Mick-O told me he thinks Stuart can’t even read. He never signed his name to anything; he x-ed the paper. He tried to tell Mick-O that he heard Danny Death used to do that for autographs. This is a bloke who thought the mob was after him. Nah, it’s going to be fine. We’re driving ourselves crazy. Let’s go back and get on with becoming mega-stars, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. We walked back to our seats.

  “That must have been some dinner,” Angus cringed after another whammy of air-pump-fiasco air came out when I sat down.

  After clearing customs, we raced across the street to catch our connecting flight. Everything in that mad rush between terminals seemed different: the big palm trees, the cars, the air, even the metal looked sturdier to me.

  We landed at Greater Buffalo International Airport five hours later. Angus handed us each $500 in mixed American bills. Then Kerri made us wait while she changed some of her money. American money all looked identical to me—who’s the idiot that decided to make every denomination the same green? I used a fifty-dollar bill for a cigarette packet at the airport newsstand. I wouldn’t have taken the change if the cashier didn’t come running after me.