Scarlet Stiletto - the First Cut Read online

  As I said, that was a few years ago now, at a party where most people were on the nod around the room with alcohol and dope. With narcotic drugs, in fact. Ridiculously, cocaine is also classified as a narcotic drug, and that evening illustrated for me the misnomer, the vast gulf between cocaine’s effects and alcohol’s effects. Me and a few friends mashed the grass down in the back yard with our dancing. I went straight from the party to work and put in a good day. When I got home and pondered on my energy, rapier-like memory retention and sparkling intellect, I made the decision that, if one day I had nothing to lose, I’d make the trip myself and take the risk, to buy enough coke to last me the distance.

  And, it’s not long to go now, that distance. I have a trusted doctor, Dr Mick I-won’t-tell-you-his-last-name, who’ll keep me out of jail, if it comes to that, on humanitarian grounds. He’ll show the court the X-rays, the images of ‘the shadow’ and its advance and the judge’s heart will be wrung with sympathy. At least, that’s what I’m banking on. A year—eighteen months or whatever it is—I want to spend a year full of energy and memory and sparkle, not dry-retching into a bucket after pointless chemotherapy.

  So, here I am on the plane, inviting intimate disclosures from the squeaker, with my pen hovering over the box that could seal my fate. ‘Have you anything to declare?’Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I have. I declare that if I get out if this airport intact, undiscovered, I will put one bag of cocaine aside and savour the rest slowly, sit up at night feeling awake and powerful and not sick, and write letters to everyone I need to, to be opened at the party at which my will, will be read out.

  My will, for what it’s worth. My spotless record as a youth worker has left me with no assets outside a VCR so ancient that no one can repair it and no one in their right mind would steal, a flat full of furniture that may as well go straight back down to St Vinnies, and a collection of books that my friends will find are mostly theirs, anyway. Not even a car. I sold the car to pay for the airline ticket to South America. So, sue me. And, as for the cocaine, I cashed in my super. Hell, you may as well spend it while you’ve got it; you can’t take it with you. No, indeed.

  I’ve read up a lot about cocaine. A wonder drug, mistreated cruelly More sinned against than sinning. More maligned upon than malignant. A perfect anaesthetic and, many exponents say, completely non-habit forming. I will give that theory a run for its money, and get back to you. If there’s an addiction to be had, I volunteer to be the one to take it on. I now go bravely where no one has gone before, fully cognisant.

  In fact, in all respects, without parallel, it seems to me, it is non-addictive except as a painkiller. No, heroin must take that crown. Hence the third bag. The Exchange Bag.

  Many years ago there was a preparation available in hospices for terminally ill patients called Brompton’s Mixture, which alleviated both the pain and the terror of dying and it was composed—you can look this up if you like—of cocaine and heroin. Brompton’s Cocktail. Brompton’s Elixir. The gods must quaff this stuff in Heaven. I’m not ashamed to say it was this information, about the painkilling, which played a big part in my decision. I’ve taken enough paracetamol to make my kidneys unfit for organ donation, even if anyone was stupid enough to want to take them.

  “I’m not looking forward to the pain side of things,” I told Dr Mick.

  “There’s always morphine,” he said, and I imagined myself, in a bed hard and crisp as a white envelope, tubes up my nose and arms, souped to the eyeballs on morphine and trying to tell my friends what I thought of them. Not a good look. Not at all. I want to be jolly and on my feet and full of the kind of wit that people will repeat at my wake. I’m only thirty-two, God help me. I want to mash the grass down with my dancing, and one day fall as gracefully as a leaf. Once you decide to take a risk with a clear head full of knowledge of all the possible consequences, you’re filled with calm.

  “I don’t want any of these drugs,” I had told Doctor Mick with a firm resolve, gesturing to his happy little chart of radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatments. “You’ve said yourself that it’s too far gone.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have said that,” he replied, in a miracles-can-happen voice.

  “I’ll choose my own drugs,” I’d said, for at that point the Colombian option had occurred to me.

  “Well, you let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” he’d replied sombrely. And I’d looked over at him, suddenly remembering doctors were allowed to sign passport applications,

  The thing is, I still feel reasonably okay. On a sunny day, when you’re about to start a descent through angel clouds to land back in your home town, it’s just too hard to comprehend. I have an image of this thing on my X-rays, and it’s low and it’s dark. And so I will combat it, with high and with white. Narcotrafico. My magic crystals. The no-smoking lights go on and I tune back into the guy next to me, who’s setting off a volley of new squeaks as he settles into his seatbelt.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever smoked,” he’s saying to me.

  “No, never.” I allow myself a small smile. “We-e-e-ll ... maybe a few puffs at school once, when we were all trying to be daring.”

  He smiles and nods as I go back to my declaration, and tick that yes, I do have something to declare.

  Then I fold up my table, get out my passport, and it’s all in the hands of the gods.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph. A perverse decision on my part, a memory of my Irish grandfather’s favourite oath, A handful of coins each at the stall. All three looking grave, as if understanding what was going down. Jesus, like his dad, holding a carpenter’s tool against his flowing cloak. I wonder if, had they made him make his own cross, would he have chiselled and mortised the joints? Now that would be dying with dignity.

  We descend, land, and taxi into the unloading zone. I’m hot in my blue dress; it’s sticking to my back. It’s a wash and wear synthetic and I’m going to bundle it up and throw it in the garbage first thing when I get home. When I get home. I close my eyes and call up a vision of the kitchen, the smell of the lino, the chug of my ancient fridge. If all goes well, I can be there in a couple of hours. Just through Customs, a short trip through the airport, past security, and into the taxi rank. I imagine pulling away in a cab, away from the airport and home free.

  The thing to do now is to forget about the cocaine, pretend I really am an innocent person. I keep my face demure as I watch the luggage turning on the silver conveyers. My case is an absolutely nondescript black. A luggage label is tied carefully to the handle in Spanish and English. Inside there are two changes of clothes, my toiletries and towel, a spare pair of shoes and three kilos of cocaine. Wonderful, splendid cocaine, meltingly pure and snowy. My superannuation fund brochure had outlined many exciting ways to spend your payment, but up your nose was not one of them.

  I pick up the case. I carry it carefully to the Customs declaration points and stand in a queue at the first gateway. I find that if I keep my mind on home and refuse to think about where I am, I can keep my heart rate down. Meditation, taken under sufferance at Dr Mick’s urging, is proving to be an unexpected bonus. I meditate on the Customs Officer’s hands as he takes my passport and declaration and notes things down, ticks boxes, glances into my face to check the likeness in the photo. His pen hesitates.

  “Something to declare?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go to number seven at the end there. Thank you.”

  Thank YOU. Gates one to six, green lights, are choked with people, children, luggage trolleys, and bags. They will be hours. Number seven, a red light, has two people standing in it, both holding yellow plastic bags of duty free and whatever else they think is declarable. As I move into place behind them the first one sorts out his query about camera lenses and moves off. Through this gateway is the escalator, then the forecourt, then the self-opening doors to international arrivals, then onto the windy pavement of the airport and the taxis. God, God. Hold it together.

  “I bought th
ese lily bulbs in the airport in Hawaii,” the punter in front of me is saying. “And the girl said they’re vacuum sealed and okay to take through without quarantine.”

  “I’m afraid there’s always someone who’ll tell you that,” says the man in the uniform shortly. My heart rate, despite me, goes up a few notches. A closed face, an unhappy mouth, a stickler for the rules and in a bad mood to boot. “They’re illegal to import.”

  “What do I have to do? Have them sprayed?”

  “No, I’m afraid you have to surrender them to Customs to dispose of.”

  Down into the big chute they go. The passenger looks glum, but he’s also through declarations in record time. I wonder if it was a deliberate ploy. His bags are searched in a rudimentary fashion. Cocaine is also surrendered to Customs upon detection, and destroyed. Breaks your heart to think of it. All that brain-sharpening, energy-giving, nausea-suppressing potential chucked away. I make my brain go somewhere else, focused anywhere rather than on the case in front of me. It has been my experience working with juvenile offenders that when they have stolen something their eyes keeping swerving back to where they have hidden it. If it is secreted on their person they can’t seem to stop their hands going to the place. I look away but suddenly there seems remarkably few other places to look. My turn. Five minutes and I’m out. Five minutes. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

  “Good morning. Something to declare?” A deep breath. Hold body still, hold head still. Head waggers are liars.

  “Yes, I think so.” I reach over and snap open my own suitcase, and dig down the side. “I thought I’d better check. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  I find the bottle and bring it out. He looks at it, noticing the seal, the liquid inside. He doesn’t look surprised. Oh God, has this been tried before?

  “It’s holy water, you see. From the font at the Sisters of Mercy mission in Popayan.”

  He checks my passport stamps. “That’s where you’ve just come from?”

  “Yes, for the Semana Santa. I promised I’d try to get some for an ill friend. Does it have to be confiscated?”

  He pauses, rubs his chin. “Look, I’m afraid so. That water could contain all kinds of bacteria.”

  “I just thought ... since it was sealed ...” I trail off. “That’s all right, I don’t want to get you into trouble. I suppose the idea of water having healing properties seems quite ridiculous to you?”

  He looks up briefly and gives me a quick, tired grin. “Not at all. I’m a Catholic. Or was.” He reaches over and opens the suitcase. “Is this your luggage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you pack it yourself?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “Are you aware of its contents?”

  “Yes”

  He moves my clothes aside and takes out the three newspaper-wrapped packages. As he unrolls one I have a sense of standing looking at this scene as if through a long lens, the edges grey and prickling. When this happened when I was a child, it meant I was about to faint. Blue and white plaster appears, the face simpering with goodness. He raises his eyebrows enquiringly.

  “It’s a statuette of Our Lady, from the sisters at the convent,” I say. He holds it in his hand. I concentrate on the bottom of the statue for a moment, down by the foot where she’s crushing the snake, down where the minutest crack can be seen in the plaster. It’s smooth but not machine smooth, not solid-cast. No, it’s been smoothed by hand, sitting on the floor of Emilia’s kitchen with plaster mixed up in an old tin. Me having an attack of nerves and gabbling about taking it back, forgetting the whole thing, pissing off home. Emilia’s low and sombre voice as she crouched there: I took this risk for you, yeah? Now you take risk for yourself. It will work, you trust me. It will work.

  I can’t drag my eyes away from that rough spot of plaster. Maybe it’s an uncontrollable reflex after all. I look at the newspaper. The hands start wrapping the statue up again with quite careful deliberation, and he goes to unwrap the other two. Then hesitates. Oh Jesus, oh God, I promise that with whatever time I have left I’ll sing nothing but glory and praise to the short gift of my life, just please don’t let him look too closely. I look at the coloured stamps on my passport, the ridiculous photo that Dr Mick had signed after a similarly long silence of fervent prayer on my part, and professional hesitation on his.

  The Customs guy smoothes the newspaper and packs the statues carefully back in the case.

  “I’m afraid I have to confiscate the water,” he says, his face grave.

  I lower my eyes. “Well, don’t feel bad. I should have known you’d have to.”

  He leans closer to me—God, another person about to betray an intimate confidence. “You know what we sometimes do,” he says in a low voice. “If the person’s a really devout Catholic, say, and they’ve just made a lifetime trip to Lourdes, and the bottle’s unsealed, then I say I just need to take the holy water into the quarantine office for a moment. Then I tip it into the disposal bin, and fill up the vial with ordinary water out of the tap, and take it back out to them. And they’re as happy as Larry.”

  He smiles again and I smile back, finding it easy now to look straight back into his eyes. “Thank you for telling me that story,” I answer, “because it doesn’t matter a bit, you know, whether it comes from Lourdes or the tap. It’s the faith that matters, the faith that heals. That’s how you’re blessed.”

  He snaps my suitcase shut for me and turns it towards me, stamps my passport and hands it back.

  “I’ll let you get on your way then, Sister,” he says. “Best of luck for the future.”

  “Thanks,” I say, moving away towards the escalator and the doors out. There’s a future out there all right, and once I get this outfit off I’m not going to miss one sweet open-mouthed breath of it. I am as light as a cloud as I walk towards the doors. I am as free as air. I am blessed.

  Cate Kennedy

  First Prize Trophy, 1995

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  ~ * ~

  Slasher’s Return

  It’s eleven o’clock in the morning and I am empress of all I survey. True, what I’m surveying doesn’t amount to much ... A large rectangular room, its walls covered with layers and layers of faded and fading posters. A pool table jammed into one corner and a broken jukebox collecting dust in the other. A spray of battle-weary wooden tables and shabby plastic chairs litter a threadbare carpet of an indeterminable colour and pattern. Dirty windows line two walls. It’s sunny outside but you wouldn’t know it from in here. Still, the pub is well known, having been voted the grungiest pub in Melbourne. No mean feat, I have to tell you.

  I wipe the bar clean with a wet cloth and cast an eye down one end where Percy and Gil are silently enjoying their third beers for the day. Their glasses are three-quarters empty, so I pour two more.

  “Ta, love.”

  I’ve been here for eight months. And it’s been my one, constant link to human beings. My handful of shifts keeps me sane.

  Occasionally, on busy nights, I look around the room and see a face I remember from my former life. I marvel at how well I remember the person’s details. Their life story.

  A few times I’ve noticed someone studying me with a frown. I know they are trying to place me somewhere. I don’t worry that they’ll remember. It’s unlikely that the last time they saw me I was wearing a tight t-shirt and a pair of faded black jeans, pouring drinks in the grungiest pub in Melbourne.

  Things have changed since my meltdown. My life, my friends, my ambitions. Many of my former work colleagues have disappeared. Superstitious. Scared that my demons may tap them on the shoulder. Scared, too, by vulnerability.

  The door to the public bar swishes open. A solid man in a shabby grey suit saunters in. He steps out of the shadows and a neon shower lights his face, catching the hooded dark eyes and large blotched nose. Catching me unawares. I take an involuntary step backwards and scan around me for a quick exit. Three big steps and the man is leaning over the bar. His beefy hands are like
baseball mitts and they splay out across the Formica in front of me. I glimpse his knuckles to confirm my suspicions. A patchwork of faded blue tattoos covers his skin. Crucifixes, spiders’ webs, people’s names. A living history. It’s him. I lift my face and look him straight in the eyes.

  “What would you like?” I ask, although I already know the answer.

  “Scotch and coke.”

  The man shifts his bulk onto a barstool and waits as I pour his drink. I place the glass on the coaster in front of him and take his money. It’s him.

  The shift manager, Joe, taps me on the shoulder.

  “Smoko, Lizzie. I’ll take over.”

  I nod and walk away, leaving Joe with the man.

  I grab my handbag and stumble outside, shading my eyes and squinting into the bright sunlight. I usually go behind the pub into the smelly back lane for a smoke, but today I sit on a park bench on the main street. From there, I can watch the door to the public bar. I light up a cigarette and pull out my mobile phone.