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2. don't touch the fucking dog
'Protect her,' Frazer said. 'If anything happens to me, I want her to have protection.' I pushed my way past the big blue suits, wishing I was invisible. The gangsters stood in the room like a slick modern city of silver and blue skyscrapers. I was a wild bird that had just flown in from bad weather, only to find that the most dangerous storm was within the city limits. Then Nigel grabbed my chin gently, but too firmly for me to face away without offending him. You could never be sure of what it was they wanted because they never let you know. I felt nervous but tried not to show it in front of Frazer, who was drunk again. Nigel held my face and said, 'Could I have a kiss goodnight?' Before I could turn back to look at Frazer, like a dog for reassurance, he kissed my lips on the puckered bit. For the next four weeks he called me 'petal lips'. Then just for fun, for a break and in-between the other things they did, Nigel's mates were ringing me from interstate on mobile phones, telling me to invest some money into a day out at the Adelaide casino. 'Frazer, does she want to double her money or not?' 'Look, she hasn't got none, so fuck off,' Frazer said into the receiver, smiling, his blue-grey eyes on mine. They lost interest quickly. They had plenty of everything, it seemed. You never knew how far in you got, until you were drowning. But I had trodden dark water since infancy. I had this rage inside me and this no- boundaries way about me that they liked. They liked to try and push those buttons, until my response extended outwards, into all time and space. Since they played out life and death on a mind games board, this would amuse them briefly. Then I'm sure when I was weak, or it would be more likely because they were bored, they would knock me down for good. So I never revealed a thing, and then they liked the hidden stiff-lipped part of me. There was an intensity that my eyes couldn't hide. So I tried to trick them and glaze my pupils over, making them nice and hard and perfectly empty, as though there was a body concealed somewhere inside. 'She doesn't say much,' they said to Frazer, 'but she's thinking pretty hard'. And they were right, but I didn't let them know that. My upper lip still moist from the kissing incident, I was feeling sulky, my eyes raging like hot black coals. I distracted myself by taking out my book of polar bears and northern lights. Then Frazer spilt his beer all over it and apologised, as if bumping into a wooden door and apologising to his shoe. The room was a blur of cigarettes, swearing, diamonds, mobile phones, gold, alcohol, court briefs, freshly cut cash, the cold glint of buried guns, the boasting and game playing. Stuart was in a dark and wild mood, saying, 'Don't betray me, okay? Do anything you like, but don't betray me'. The warnings came often and with force. Of course you never knew what 'betraying him' meant, so you became frightened to do anything lest it be seen as betrayal. Then you felt that anything you did, was with his permission. No one here was listening, as they had heard it the night before. No one was going to betray him. After they had all gone the house sighed and seemed empty. Frazer and I got into bed and he tugged at my black bra, playing it a bit rough. I turned my back to this drunken slobbering. Then he ripped my bra strap, saying, 'Why don't you just give me some, you slut'. I hated it when he was drunk and he was not interested anyway. He'd be blubbering for his mother the minute I touched him, his drunken body reeking and pliable like plasticine. His warm wet face on the back of my neck. He was grabbing at my body like you'd grab onto a shower curtain after being shot. Then my dog Flash came into the bedroom and over to the bed, disturbed and cranky inside. Frazer tried to lean over me and touched Flash's face. Flash growled. I said to Frazer, 'Don't do that again'. My voice was already tense and on the verge of losing control, as though the second my dog is touched an alarm goes off inside me. I said, 'Don't touch the fucking dog. I told you not to touch the fucking dog'. That was my limit and Frazer knew it. Flash was the limit beyond my own body, that he now stupidly reached for. We both knew that Flash was something I would defend well. Flash growled and then gave a little nip to Frazer's forearm as he suddenly shot out of the room. Immediately, Frazer got up and stumbled down the hallway after him. I half fell out of the bed as he dragged the nicotine blankets across my legs. I struggled briefly in the twisted bedclothes he had left behind. Then I got up and ran down the hallway with the sheets wrapped around me. I arrived at the kitchen to find Frazer calling both dogs outside into the backyard. 'Tammy?' I shouted feeling desperate. 'Flash?' Frazer leaned against the wooden frame of the backdoor with the dog growling into his hands again. Tammy whined nervously from a safer distance. He was touching Flash's face in a hard and forceful manner. There was a hammer on the kitchen sink and the bread knife in the drawer. I saw Frazer clumsily hunched over and Flash's face growing snarly beneath him. Rage filled the room like blood dripping down the window glass, so that the moon and stars outside had turned themselves into blood. 'Don't touch the fucking dog!' I shouted. Frazer turned towards the thunder. Both dogs rushed past him, through his open legs. A blur of ears, backs, collars and paws scooting beneath his stupid little underpants. I said, 'In the car, quick!' Both dogs raced down the hallway bursting through the wire door and waited at the front gate for me. I snatched up a few clothes and was throwing them on in the front yard in my hurry to leave. Frazer just went back to bed. |
