The Unexpected Salami: A Novel (22 page)

“But she came. Look, I’ll leave that to you lovebirds to work out. I have my own problems. I have to spend a night at Rachel’s motel, and Hannah would never let that happen.”

Phillip grinned. He was not alone in Kingdom Slimedom. “How should I cover?”

“I told her I was getting a packet of fags. Can you knock on my
door in fifteen minutes and say I need to do a sleep-over TV interview in New Jersey? Tell her you have to do a bigger one for
Musician.
”

“That’s ridiculous. She can check it out with Kerri.”

“Kerri hates Hannah, you know that. She once told me that she wants to pull the rod from her bum. After you calm her down, she’ll be into it.”

“You are one evil bastard, Colin. All these years I thought you were an angel. But that’s silly. Who sleeps over in New Jersey for an interview? It’s half-baked.”

“Make it Boston then. I’ll get some facts about Boston from Rachel.”

“Hannah might want to go along on your trip.”

“I’ll cover that.”

“So you’re not going to tell Rachel about Hannah?”

“I’m not sure about that yet.” I wanted to ask him about the back-stabbing nonsense Kerri was on about, but it was easier to keep to one mess at a time. “See you soon,” I said, heading for the lift.

“That was a long five minutes,” Hannah said.

“Sorry, I had to take a crap in the lobby.”

She cringed her nose. “Disgusting.”

“I’m going to take a shower now.”

“I certainly hope so,” Hannah said.

I had a head full of suds when I realized that I’d left the note Rachel’s mum brought me in my jeans. I should have given the court address to Phillip and binned the note in the lobby along with my cigarette stubs. Hannah might see a corner of the letter
peeking out of the back pocket. But nothing seemed strange when I got out of the shower.

About twenty minutes later, Phillip and Kerri knocked on the door. He had his arm around her. They had patched things up. Poor Kerri.

“
Bass Player
magazine rang,” Phillip said. “You’re going to have to do that interview in Boston for this afternoon. The car’s coming in an hour.”

“What interview is that?” Hannah said.

“It was supposed to be in two days. It’s my only solo interview. I have to do it.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“I thought you might like to spend the day with us,” Kerri said. I was right. She was going along with us; she hated Hannah that much. “An EMI executive’s taking us in a helicopter to the Hamptons. He told us that’s where New York’s beautiful people go for the summer. They don’t have to work during the week. Phillip has his interview at seven tonight, and then maybe we can go see a show on Broadway.”

“Actually, that sounds fun. I got a new bikini.” Mentioning the upper classes to Hannah is like putting out sugar water for a fly. She was happy. But although they were carrying out our lie perfectly, I was a tad miffed that I hadn’t heard about this helicopter earlier. Did this support Kerri’s conspiracy theory? And I was nervous about Hannah in a bikini surrounded by rich New York men. When she left with Kerri and Phillip a half hour later, I grabbed a cab to the court address where Rachel had promised transportation to her motel would be waiting.

Walking down the blue
carpeted halls of Rachel’s New Jersey motel, I had a gratifying shock. Even if INXS’s entourage didn’t treat me like a first-class citizen, and there were rumblings of a rocky path ahead orchestrated by Marty and Angus, I was—at that precise moment—a successful rock musician. And while I wasn’t sure what lay ahead sexwise, I was about to spend the night with the woman I most wanted to be proud of me. My mum would accept me no matter what I did. Even Hannah would be pleased if I read enough and tried my hardest to be genteel. But not Rachel; she expected perfection of everyone around her, even though she admitted she in no way held taut reins on her own life. That is Rachel’s ultimate charm. You can spend your life with people who will let you relax in mediocrity, like Mick-O and even Hannah. You’d have a pleasant, stress-free existence, and maybe that’s the way to go—die among the salt of the earth. Or you can surround yourself with exasperating friends and lovers who respect your intellect and demand that you use it. Rachel could see through an idle bastard quicker than anyone, having dabbled a bit too much with lack of direction herself. But as I neared the end of the corridor, I knew she had to respect me more than when I’d last seen her. Having performed in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden was pretty bloody close to perfection.

“Wendell,” the guard at the door told another blue-clothed guard, “let Rachel Ganelli know her fiancé’s back from Australia.”

“She the pretty one?”

“Yeah.”

She’d eat up that compliment if I repeated it. Rachel never thought of herself as pretty. She wasn’t conceited in that way,
which is what made her pretty. She was conceited about her brain, which is what made her, if you weren’t in the mood for her, annoying.

“Rachel!” I called. The guard let me through to a lobby. I spotted her black hair. Was it combed out for me? She always wore it in a ponytail, and I used to tell her in Melbourne she should wear it down. “Rachel!” I called.

“Sweetheart, you’re dripping!” She kissed me with closed lips. Outside, it poured relentlessly and the wind whistled, amplifying my Heathcliff-arrival effect. My mother used to joke over rainy breakfasts that she was waiting for Heathcliff to ride up our driveway in hot pursuit of his destined Cathy so Dad would have to fight for her affections. I could tell the others in the lounge were dying to be introduced, but Rachel used the thunderstorm to rush me down the hall into her room.

“Let me get you towels, honey!” she said, as we were leaving the lobby. It felt great to be near a real friend. I liked our little engagement play. In her room I plopped down on the hideous bedspread with my jeaned legs spread open. “Come on, Sheila,” I continued the game, “I came here for me conjugal visit. Woman, you ready for your root?”

“Sorry, Bruce,” she said, in equally put-on lower-class Australian. “I haven’t seen you in so long, I’ve gone lesso with the other bird jurors.”

“Right, there’s my sarcastic wench,” I laughed. “Pretty good. You’re not emphasizing the first syllable anymore. Been practicing?”

“I had an Australian houseguest before I got sequestered.”

“Yeah? One of your friends from Dog’s Bar?”

“No—”

“Wait, before I forget,” I said, unzipping my duffel and handing her a Safeway shopping bag. “Australian goodies. As promised, bikkies and coffee-in-a-tube. And I got you a snowglobe from guess where?”

She picked up the Niagara Falls snowglobe, shook it, and put it down again on the night table. “Thanks. I don’t have this one.”

“So who’s your guest?”

“Someone you probably don’t remember. So, Mr. Rock Star, how was Madison Square Garden?”

“Amazing. It’s crazy that we got these opportunities after Stuart’s death.” How easy it was to lie now. But this wasn’t hurting anyone. “I wish there was another way, but I’m not taking this trip to mourn too much. We might be back in the States in a few months if the record sells here. It was intense to be on stage, Rachel, to feel accomplishment. We went to a pub near the Garden afterwards, and a girl asked
me
for
my
autograph, can you imagine?”

“That’s great.”

“I’ll shut up for a bit. I’m sure you have heaps to tell me. Like how the hell you got on this trial?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out.”

“Bet you have a mega-job you’re on leave from.”

“In a way you can say that.”

“Tell me about it then.”

“A little later,” she said.

“I heard on one of your news programs that there was a grandmother involved.”

“Yeah, Grandma Rambo blasted a fourteen-year-old’s head open.”

“Keeping an open mind?” I teased. “Wasn’t he a dealer?”

“I haven’t discussed it with anyone in detail, but I don’t need to fuck up six weeks of my life to know she’s guilty as hell.”

“Poor Grandma. If I know you, you’re the jury ringleader, and she doesn’t have a chance.”

“You’re off. I’m the outcast. They think I’m an oddball.”

“It’s like calling Kojak bald.”

She did this weird fake giggle.

“Hey, another thing I almost forgot—we were in Buffalo and Syracuse—I saw your old uni, we played the Carrier Dome. I talked a bit with the current work-student security—”

“Work-study.”

“Work-study girl—”

“Person.”

“Rachel, she’s a girl, she’s nineteen.” I threw a pillow at her. She didn’t throw it back.

“What have you done in New York City?”

“Mick-O and I went to Bloomingdale’s,” I said.

“Together? That’s somewhat a gay male stomping ground in the city.”

“Now you tell me. I could’ve scored.”

It looked like Rachel’s mouth was stuck.

“The trial’s giving you the shits, isn’t it? Talking to you today is like getting ink from a dried-up well.”

“Colin!” she said suddenly. “How could you?”

“What? I was kidding—”

“Colin—I know—I know about the murder you concocted with Phillip.”

I could have slit my wrist that second, but I said nothing.

“I ran into Stuart in a luncheonette on Fifth Avenue—he was eating a tuna fish sandwich. A dead man in a coffee shop eating a tuna fish sandwich!—what’s the matter, Stone Fucking Face, aren’t you going to scream ‘Mercy me, Stuart’s alive’? Or is it not such a surprise after all?”

My face must have been stiff and white. (I’ve blotted out those first few seconds.)

“Not like I ever loved the guy, but by your standards I’m his new patron saint. My brother and I took him in, and he’s pretty much off the kick, for now at least. Right now he’s at my folks’ place reaping the rewards of overprotective parents. He had no more money and no home—he was going to sleep on a fucking park bench! While the two of you concocted that horrible plan to get yourselves into fucking Madison Square Garden! You were my best friend. How could you of all people lie to me? Why would you lie to me?” Rachel’s hands were shaking.

When she told me
that she knew about the murder scheme, I think maybe I thought she was kidding, that she would say, “I know you got him shot, didn’t you,” the way I’d say “C’mon! You bribed the examiner!” if a brilliant mate came in dux of the class when final exams were posted. But then I saw her lower lip quivering and realized she was furious and, more than anything, disillusioned—that she did know. I had failed her, a fact that felt worse than lying to my parents and sixteen million Australians,
minus the handful of others in on the scam. Rachel had me terrified. I didn’t know what to say or do. I do remember eventually lashing out at her.

“Are you any better than Phillip and me luring me in here? Torturing me? Why didn’t you ring me and get the whole story? You had to lure me in here like a madwoman?”

“You arrogant bastard. How can you turn this around like that?”

“Do you want to hear the whole story? Or have you already convicted me, too? Pretty bloody fucking hard, Rachel, when you’re handed moral grandstanding on a platter.” I glared at her. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I wanted you to tell me.”

I sat listlessly on my chair for a few minutes. I could hear her breathing out of sync. Finally, I spoke: “Rachel, listen—I was dying in Melbourne. You’ve had a top-rate education. All your life you’ve been told you that you are capable of enormous achievement. My parents are great, but they had no expectations for me. They wanted me to be a good bloke, like one of their friends. My school had the barest essentials: maths, English, history, science, and religion. I would’ve killed to switch places with you. You talked about being editor of your primary school newsletter. You were only ten! Acting out those radio plays. Fencing. Jesus, we had a field and were told to kick a football around. You have no idea what kind of chances you were given. What can I do if my music fails? You used to say it yourself—I’d rot in the print shop.”

“Go to my house.”

“Your house?”

“Go and help my family take care of Stuart until I get out. I won’t do anything to you—I’m not about to turn you in to the cops.”

“I have to go home. I have to tour Australia again in three weeks. That’s when I’ll be able to help you out. Believe it or not, this tour is costing us more than we’ll make. In Australia we’ll start raking in the cash. I can fly back in a few weeks. I can give Stuart money to get him going.”

“He doesn’t want your goddamn cash,” she said. (I suspected if he was anything like his former self, Stuart would more than love my dirty cash.) “You can’t leave me with this. Quit the band and help me fix this mess.”

“How am I going to do that? Give me a month and I’ll come back and help you. How can I break up the band now? Mick-O has nothing to do with this. Our manager has nothing to do with this. I have a special visa for the tour. What am I supposed to live off of? Oh, God, I’m sorry. I don’t know how, but I’ll make this better.”

Rachel lay across the bedspread. She looked up when she realized that I was crying, too, something she’d never seen me do in the two years she’d known me. Whether I was sobbing in shame or terror, even I wasn’t sure. An officer from the court knocked on the door.

“Okay in there?”

“Yes, sorry,” Rachel said, through the crack, “we were catching up, if you know what I mean.” Rachel forced a grin. She closed the door.

I came up behind her and touched her on the shoulder. “I’ll marry you if that’s what you want me to do!”

We were both startled by my sudden solution. Jesus, is that what I wanted?

“What?”

I had opened my mouth, and it seemed indecent to back off now. “I can get working papers then, and help you.”

“That’s not such a bad idea,” she said. “You can sleep in my bed now, and when my parents leave, Stuart can take over their room, and you can move to the sofa bed.”

“I’ll quit the band tomorrow morning and face my hell.”

“Is that what you think—that marriage to me would be hell?”