Viva Baby, Viva!

Jan walks towards the small dark crowd of people with a lemon branch held in front of her, at her heart, like a shield. She can smell the oil from the fruit as the sun warms it, feel its heaviness lolling against her breast like a baby's head. Everyone's holding something. Sprigs, branches, just about whole fucking trees some of them. She can see Clay's sister—she hasn't changed in fifteen years, how weird is that?—carrying a spray of flowering gum, bright red and spiky. She has a little girl by the hand, it must be her daughter, and the girl's carrying a banksia man on a branch. The banksia man looks evilly out of his slitty hooded eyes at Jan. Shit, Jan thinks, I shouldn't've had that smoke, should not have had that smoke in the car, this is too fucking weird anyway.

She vaguely recognises his aunts and cousins, but can't place their names, knows they're Mary and Rona and Jim and Peter/Alan/Richie (never could tell them apart, even then). Then she sees a group in black that looks blacker than the black the rellies are wearing—people used to wearing black—and the faces are faces she knows, and they're all clutching their sprigs and branches for dear life. For dear life all right, she thinks. Dear life. Poor Clay. She takes a deep breath, and gravitates towards them and their black and their greenery.

‘Heya,’ she says when she gets to the periphery of the group, leaning her lemon branch to the side so she can see past it. Faces turn—because there aren't conversations to break into, they're not talking much, that's the thing at funerals, they can be quiet affairs—eyes peer down noses and over cigarettes at her, and she gets a few nods, a few ‘Hey’s back. But no one really meets her eye, gives her a smile. She feels as distant, as peripheral as she always did with this mob. His mates. His mates.

But she feels a tap on her shoulder, and turns around and it's Liz, and she's holding a huge bunch of rosemary, a whole bush of it. They page 191 hug, long and tight, and Liz doesn't move the rosemary quickly enough, and the rosemary crushed between them scents them and envelopes them and it's just them, not the black-dressed excluders, just Liz and Jan and the rosemary and the oily lemon, and remembering Clay.

Music draws them inside the church. Liz and Jan walk together, close, into the cool dark, stepping—without trying—in unison, shoulders pressing against each other for support. They each hold their bouquets formally in front of them, two hands, bridal. They choose seats near the back of the church, on the right.

‘The groom's side,’ Jan says quietly as they sit.

There are folded colour pamphlets on the hard wooden benches. They pick them up as they sit down. There's a photo of Clay on the front, his name, his full name, Clayton James Hanson, in script over the photo. Underneath it, 1961–1999. The photo must be a few years old, Jan thinks, and it's exactly the sort of photo family would choose—well-groomed, smiling (but not too much), shirt and tie. Fuck, she can never remember seeing Clay in a tie. Then she remembers the photo, it was from the paper, when he won an award for his writing, some big do he had to go to that he whined about having to dress up for.

She thinks about Clay the way she always remembers him, from all those years ago when they'd been together—T-shirt, mussied hair, just awake. Looking out of it, even when he wasn't.

She looks back to the paper in her hand, opens it. On the inside, the words Order of Service head the page, and then there's a list that she can't bring herself to focus her eyes on, words and phrases that don't seem to be related to Clay, that she can't believe have anything to do with him, Address by the Minister, A Short Prayer, Offerings from Friends and Family. In small type at the bottom of the page, it says, To celebrate Clay's life, you are invited to bring a sprig of a native plant.

‘Shit, I didn't know it was supposed to be native plants,’ Jan says.

‘Me neither.’ Liz runs her hand up one of the stems of rosemary she is holding, then leans in front of Jan and cups the lemon on the branch in Jan's lap, running her fingernail along its side to release the hot scent. Liz inhales, strong. She lifts her hand to Jan's face, ‘Smell,’ page 192 then lifts it to her own, covering mouth and nose, closing her eyes.

‘God,’ Liz whispers, ‘we smell like roast lamb.’

‘Lucky they're not cremating him,’ Jan whispers back, and clamps her hand over her mouth almost before she's said it, but it's out, and her eyes are wide with what she's said. And then she cries, but silently, collapsing against Liz, and they hug again, awkward in the hard wooden seats that force them to be adjacent, to face forward, that don't let them fall into each other face to face, as they need to.

The funeral service passes for Jan as if she's in a dream. The church smells like a garden centre, the mix of scents of the plants too strong in the space. Eucalyptus predominates, but there's the awful cloying of wattle there too, and some other smell like a sick room. Jan buries her nose in her lemon, scratching the skin as Liz did, while a series of people fill the room with words about Clay.

Clayton's death hit me the way his life hit so many people, that's his brother, Michael, the older one, the quiet one Jan always thought of him, Clay was a force in life, a person you couldn't ignore. For him to be taken so young, so tragically, is—well it's just bloody dreadful.

Was he so young? Are we young any more, Jan wonders. Thirty-eight. It's not old, but it's still too young to die. Not young enough to be remarkable though, not even really tragic. Way past the Magic Rock Star Death Age that Clay always used to talk about. Twenty-seven. Janis, Kurt, the Two Jims (Hendrix and Morrison), Brian Jones. Clay'd thought Gram Parsons' death at twenty-six was all the more tragic for not reaching the Magic Number.

We can be soothed in the knowledge that Clayton will join his mother and father now, so sadly taken from us in recent years. That's the religious uncle now, Lionel, the one everyone hated sitting next to at Christmas. … celebrate his life, rather than mourn his loss. I'm sure that's what he would have wanted. Well, that's bullshit, he would've wanted us to have a big cry for him. Of course he wants to be missed, who doesn't? Seeking to block out the rest of the talk by just not listening, Jan looks down at her hands, looks at the pattern of the lines in the skin, patterns that were only beginning to form all those years ago when she passed those hands over every inch of Clay's body at every page 193 opportunity she could get. He'd aged and lined too, like her hands, of course he had, but she retains a fixed picture of him in her heart and mind, a picture that overrides all the intervening years when they'd met and talked and had coffee and dinner and met each other's new boyfriends and girlfriends and got drunk and avoided talking about the past and laughed, and laughed. She keeps twenty-one-year-old Clay firmly in her heart where he's always been, for her heart to clench and unclench around, for the muscle to grow strong on like some constant resistance exercise. Abs of steel. Heart of steel.

When finally the people have stopped their talking, their talking that won't ever bring him back, their talking to hide the pain, a man in black stands at the front and asks them—invites them—to please bring forward their offerings of native plants, to leave them with Clay, to say goodbye. There's a shuffling of feet, like eight-year-olds in a hot classroom. The first up are in the front rows, the family rows, taking the short walk to where the long box lies midway between the two rows of seats and the preaching place. The pulpit, Jan supposes it might be called, but it doesn't seem grand enough for that. Soon there's a long line of unsteady mourners snaking its way around the church, along and between the rows of benches, sprouting foliage and smelling of the bush. A sad botanical conga.

Liz grabs her hand.

‘Come on.’

They join the end of the conga line, holding their plants low in front of them, shuffling forward, closer and closer to Clay. There's a muttering, a low rumbling, starting to come from the people in the conga line as well as those who've left it and returned to their places on the benches, and the muttering is increasing in volume with time. As they get closer to Clay, the sound of the muttering decreases though, as if people are silenced by the proximity of the man they're all there for.

They reach the foot of the coffin where, already almost obscured under a pile of eucalypt and acacia, a framed eight-by-ten photo of Clay is propped. Clay smiles out from between the fragrant leaves, the stinking wattle pompoms, the same odd, not-really-Clay photo that's on the Order of Service, where he's neat and posed and cold. page 194 Already dead-looking. Not the warm Clay, the real Clay Jan knew. She only ever remembers the warmth of him now, years—fifteen years, shit, practically twenty by now—after the breakup. Her first love. Not the first she had sex with, god, not even the first she thought she'd been in love with. Just the first real love—long faded to friendship, but she remembers.

Liz is ahead of her now, and she's putting her long spray of rosemary beside the coffin. The lid is closed so they're spared the anguish of wanting and not wanting to look, of having to anyway.

And now Jan is beside the coffin, two-thirds of the way along it, right in line with his chest, his heart. Her own is thumping hard enough for the both of them, hard and hot and hurting, pumping the awful smell of the wattle to her head. She tries to rest her lemon branch, aware now of how damned big it is, against the side of the coffin, but it's awkward, hard to balance especially with her hands shaking and her heart pumping and the wattle smell in her brain and the pain of it all. She fiddles with the branch, and a twig of it screeches against the polished wood of the coffin, loud and echoing into the high vault of the church's ceiling. She mutters a fuck under her breath. She's left a scratch on the wood of the coffin, as long as her hand, obvious and irremoveable, like graffiti scratched into a schooldesk. There's a little something to take with you, from me.

The walk back to her seat is quicker than the walk up, the conga line has dissipated and she walks, following Liz, the long way back up the aisle, like a newly-wed bride but much, much sadder. They squeeze back into their seats, nearly the last to do so, sliding along the slick wood of the bench to huddle in the heat, sick of it all, wanting out.

And then it's over, it's nearly over, and there's the hiss of stylus on vinyl over the speakers and the simple guitar pick and then Elvis sings to them, his voice melting into the cracks in every mind, the cracks in heart and mind where Clay was but isn't any more. Love me tender. Yes I do. Yes I did. Yes I do. And even the black-clad excluders are feeling this one. Or especially the black-clad excluders are feeling this, this, finally, is the language they can understand, the language that relates them to Clay, the music they've always shared. Not all the talking in the world can help like Elvis does.

page 195

Jan and Liz walk together out of the church. Like half the other people there, they've put their sunglasses on as they've left their seats, to protect their eyes from the sun, to keep the tears under control, to cover the smudged eyeliner. Liz ferrets in her bag and pulls out cigarettes and a lighter as they're walking out the door, as the sunlight hits them.

‘Give us one,’ Jan tells her, holding out her hand in supplication.

‘I didn't think you did any more.’

‘I don't. It's in celebration. To honour a man who truly loved his ciggies.’

‘Fair enough then. To Clay and his ciggies.’

Liz shakes the packet at her, a cigarette wiggling out of the top. Jan takes it, bows her head to the lighter and draws in deep to fill her lungs and feel the pale lightheadedness the nicotine offers. They find a place in the shade under a tree and stand, quietly smoking, watching the people flow out of the church. Despite the heat, the sweat in her armpits and between her thighs, Jan clutches her arms around her body tightly, not letting anything in, not letting anything out. Liz mirrors her.

Liz drops her cigarette onto the ground, stamps it out.

‘Fuck it, let's go.’ She stares into Jan's face.

‘But we have to wait, we have to go to the grave bit—’

‘Do you want to?’

‘No, but—’

‘Come on. We've said goodbye. And he's not here to hear it anyway, no matter how many times we say it any more. Let's go.’

‘OK.’

Liz grabs Jan's arm and whispers ‘Head up, blossom’ into her ear as they march past the gathered people. But nobody really notices them. They pass the last of them and emerge beyond the trees that ring the church, cross the road, then Jan steers them down the street towards where her car is parked.

‘How'd you get here?’ she asks Liz as they walk.

‘Bus.’

‘Should've called me. I could've given you a lift. We could've come together.’

page 196

‘Mmm,’ Liz mumbles over the fresh cigarette she's lighting, exhales clear blue smoke.

As they walk down the road, away from the church, the sound of children playing is approaching them, little kids shouting and balls bouncing. She hadn't noticed she'd parked next to a school but, she tells herself, she had other things on her mind.

‘Must be lunchtime,’ she says to Liz.

‘Grated cheese and tomato sauce sandwiches,’ Liz says.

‘And a slice of swiss roll, wrapped in rainbow paper.’

‘Bought cake?! Rainbow paper?!’ Liz mocks back at her. ‘You're the kind of kid I would've beaten up. Rii-iich bii-iitch.’

They're both smiling, and it feels good. It's hard not to smile when you hear kids playing, Jan thinks.

‘This is me,’ she says to Liz, as they reach her car.

‘Nice,’ Liz says, dragging her hand across the back window as she passes around the car to the passenger side. ‘New. Sensible.’

‘Doesn't break down all the time like the Golf. I got sick of never knowing if I was going to make it anywhere,’ Jan says as she unlocks the car, aware and kicking herself for it that she's justifying it to Liz.

‘New York, New York,’ Liz says through her cigarette as she climbs into the car.

‘What?’

‘If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere.’

They're in the car, strapping themselves in, grinning at each other like mad things. Jan clamps her hands on the steering wheel.

‘OK funnybum, where are we going?’ she asks to the windscreen.

Liz winds the window down, blows smoke out into the air that still sounds of children. ‘Pub? A bit of a wake is in order I think.’

‘Nah. Let's just go to my place. We can drink more there, have a smoke.’ Jan turns the key and the sound of the engine starting is drowned by the music that blasts from the speakers as the tape in Jan's player starts up where she'd left it, the swirling, whirling guitar break in ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’.

‘Jesus, I haven't heard this for ages.’

‘It seemed appropriate,’ Jan mutters over the gurdying guitars, as page 197 the voice whines back in for the last verse. ‘I couldn't stop listening to it. It was on the tape and I just kept winding it back and listening again. It always reminds me of Clay, when I hear that song.’

‘Fuck yeah.’

‘I remember the first time I heard it, someone was playing the record at his house, when we'd just started going out together, and he tells me—presuming I don't know the record, which of course I didn't, but that wasn't the point—It's about heroin, you know, explaining the song, like a teacher. He used to do that. He was like a guru. It was as if he was the keeper of knowledge, you know, especially about music. Music and drugs.’

‘He did that with me too, or tried to. I wasn't as young as you though, when he and I were together. I was a bit more stroppy.’

‘Yeah, that was kind of the problem between us, I think, he was always the one teaching, imparting. I was too nervous to have my own opinions about anything, in case he thought they were wrong. I just got more and more like a sponge, soaking up everything I could. I guess I soaked him dry.’

‘Come on then spongey, let's go and soak up a drink. This funeral-going is thirsty work. Pub, your place, whatever. Your choice. Just fucking drive.’ Liz reaches for the volume knob on the car stereo and cranks it. The car fills with the sound of happy guitars introing Keith Richards' cartoon voice, and ‘Happy’ leaks out the windows and sings to the happy-sounding children contained in the school playground. Jan does as she's told, and drives.

They head for Jan's small cool house near the sea, where they can sit in the dark waiting for the sea breeze to hit, smoke a joint, be miserable, drink the whole bottle and then start all over again. They pick up party supplies on the way home—Twisties, smoked salmon, mangos, bread, licorice, avocados. A bottle of tequila, limes, beer, a bottle of bubbly. The rest of this strange day, they know, will shape itself around the food and drink they've bought.

They walk through the door, down the hallway and out to the back of the house, to the kitchen, and put the shopping bags onto the kitchen table. Liz takes the bottle of bubbly from the heaviest bag and page 198 hands it to Jan. Jan pops the cork from the cheap green bottle, opening the back door from the kitchen and pointing the bottle gardenwards. The cork hits a dark red sheet that hangs drying on the clothesline, hits it with a dull thud then drops onto the grass below. She closes the door against the heat, turns back to the table and pours the bubbling wine into two glasses, hands one to Liz.

‘To Clay.’

‘To Clay. Silly cunt. I miss him already.’ Liz upends her glass, down her throat in one. ‘More please.’ She holds her glass out to Jan, who finishes her own to match Liz, and fills both the empty glasses. ‘OK, my turn,’ Liz says over their second glasses. ‘Um, to the past. No, to the future—no, fuck it, to the past. OK: to our shared past, you, me and Clay. To the very civilised way we ebbed and flowed our relationships, the three of us.’

‘Shared past.’ Jan's the one to toss her drink back first this time.

Jan reaches into one of the shopping bags, pulls out the bag of Twisties, rips it open and empties them into a heavy blue bowl she takes from a shelf.

‘Health food,’ she says, grabbing a handful and crunching into them.

Liz fills their glasses again.

Jan lifts hers in salute, takes a genteel sip this time. ‘You know what?’ she says.

‘What?’

‘I realised today, at the thingy, that it's nearly twenty years since I broke up with Clay.’

‘Nah, can't be! No, think about it, it's not that much—’

‘OK, well it's more than fifteen years now, so I'm rounding up.’

‘You were babies, you two.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It's funny how we all stayed friends for so long. I mean, how you and I only know each other through Clay, through both going out with him. And in the end, now, it's you and me still together.’

‘He was like a common factor. Mathematically,’ Jan says.

‘Oh god, yeah, he was the one who went into both of us,’ Liz squawks it, in that voice of hers, harsh and soft at the same time, page 199 making Jan laugh. It's what she's always loved about Liz. She's always made her laugh. Liz used to make Clay laugh too, but that was pretty easy to do.

‘When I first met you,’ she tells Liz, ‘when you were first going out with Clay, I didn't know your surname. It was just Liz-and-Clay, Liz Ann Clay, like your middle name was Ann and your last name was Clay.’

‘And you were this weird creature who he was always visiting, the ex, but his friend, and I was so jealous of you to start with. It took me ages to work out that you weren't ever a threat. That you didn't want him back,’ Liz says, draining the last of the bottle into their glasses. ‘Salut.’

‘Up your bum. Yeah, by the time you went out with him, I didn't, you know, I really didn't want him back any more. I'd moved on. You know, he was still the most precious of friends to me, but he was like that clichéd thing, like a brother to me. So weird. Considering how he'd broken my heart, the bastard.’

‘Why was it, do you think?’ Liz asks her, lighting another cigarette, offering Jan one.

‘Was what?’ Jan shakes her head, gets up, moves to the dresser.

‘That everyone loved him. That we kept on loving him, that he was a kind of best friend for us both? What makes a person like that?’

‘If I knew, I would've bottled it, sprinkled a bit on myself and pressed the rest into happy love pills and sold it to make my fortune.’ Jan pulls a small orange and green glass bowl from the drawer of the dresser, and puts it on the table in front of Liz. In it are the leftovers from the joint she rolled herself before she left for the funeral, papers and card, a lighter, little blunt-nosed scissors.

‘Would you do the honours, O Rolling Queen? There's more—’ she reaches back into the drawer, pulls out a stuffed ziplock bag, places it next to the bowl, ‘—if you need it.’

‘Delighted.’ Liz gets to work.

‘I think, I think Clay, I don't know, I can't explain it, it's as if he has a good heart or something. I mean, why everybody loves him. Like the Dalai Lama. Or Princess Di.’

page 200

‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah, him too.’

‘No, I meant Jesus, exclamation mark.’

‘Oh.’

‘As in Jesus, exclamation mark, I thought Clay was just a nice person. Sense of humour. Nice smile. That sort of thing.’

‘I guess. Well. Time to start on the tequila, I think,’ Jan says, almost under her breath, and while Liz carefully rolls them what will be the first of many smokes for the afternoon, Jan empties the shopping bags, piles the limes next to the chopping board, and starts slicing them into wedges. It feels good to slice the flesh, to have something to do, to have Liz across the table doing what she does best. And the nice thing is that Clay's not so much missing, as there in spirit or something, the sort of thing she'd never imagined herself thinking, let alone saying, and maybe she'll save it for a while before she mentions it to Lizzie. After a few tequilas. After a smoke. Let the day progress as it will. Such a strange day.

The afternoon just gets hotter outside, but it's cool in Jan's dark kitchen. The tequila gets lower in the bottle with the sun. They venture outside briefly, at some stage, to eat a mango each, to make a mess with them, as you should with mangos. Sucking on the stone, picking the strings of flesh from between her teeth, Liz looks sideways at Jan.

‘We had sex once with a mango,’ Liz tells her.

‘Who, you?’

‘And Clay.’

‘How do you—nah, I don't wanna know, I can imagine. I think.’ She throws the mango stone into the mass of bushes planted down the side fence, wipes her hands on the grass, then touches one hand to the other, feels the remaining stickiness. ‘We just used to watch telly all the time. Come on. It's too fucking hot out here.’

They move back inside, to the cool, wash their sticky hands over the mounting dishes in the sink, and return to their places at the table, resume their drinks.

‘We spent a whole weekend in bed once—no mango—watching Elvis movies,’ Jan says. ‘Remember, when they used to be on all the page 201 time? There'd be one at lunchtime on Saturday, and another one straight after, you could always find one on.’

‘Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Elvis and … Elvis.’

‘We watched Viva, you know, I fucking love that movie. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, and I'd loved it when I was a kid, but I fucking loved it even more after that weekend. Viva Las Vegas. The costumes. The cars. The style of it. Ann-Margret was so hot, and Elvis was such a spunk.’

‘I liked Kissin' Cousins better.’

‘Ew, you sad bitch! And which Elvis, Blond Elvis or Dark Elvis?’

‘Blond Elvis was creepy, Blond Elvis always freaked me. Definitely Dark Elvis. I've always been a Dark Elvis kind of gal.’

Jan pours them both another shot of tequila, sprinkles salt onto the soft side of her hand, and picks up one of the wedges of lime Liz has cut.

‘Lick sick suck, oh fuck … sip sip sip, I can never say it right … Lick,’ she says slowly and carefully, licking the salt from her hand, grinning over her tongue at Liz. ‘Siiiiiiip,’ and the tequila is slammed, down her gullet, warm and fiery. ‘Shiver and fucking suuuuuck!’ She does the tequila shiver as her body rejects the poison it craves, then shoves the wedge of lime hard into her mouth, biting down on the flesh, her shoulders raised, the lime juice cutting into the broken skin of her mouth inside and hurting and soothing and calming and making it all perfect, all perfect. She picks the cigarette from the ashtray on the table between them, drags on it, perfect garnish to the smoky tequila.

‘Is there an Elvis movie where he gets really hammered on tequila?’ she asks Liz, as Liz mirrors her ritual, licking, sipping, shivering and sucking. ‘Because if there isn't, there ought to be. Something about Acapulco. There's one about Acapulco, isn't there? There must be.’

‘Dunno,’ Liz says, dragging on her own cigarette, dragging hard to drown the tequila. ‘I always used to ask Clay when I wanted to know anything about Elvis. Hey, how come lemon?’ Liz asks her, sucking the lime juice from her left thumbtip, the suck turning into an obsessive chew.

‘Lime, dummy. It's what you have with tequila.’

page 202

‘Nah, at the—today, for Clay. You brought lemon, a big fucking branch from a lemon tree. How come?’

Jan draws deep on her cigarette. ‘I guess I always think of the lemon tree we had in the front of the house in Shenton Park. Did you ever come there? I can't remember.’

‘A party once. I didn't know you then, I was with Don and James, that crowd. Course I went there after, when Clay was there, after you two—’

‘Mmm. Well there was this big lemon tree in the front garden—’

‘Yeah, I remember.’

‘Yeah, well it took up the whole front garden, that tiny little front yard. It was a bit odd to have a lemon tree in the front, they were always in the back garden.’

‘Yeah, with the clothes hoist.’

‘And the incinerator. This one was so beautiful, so old. Thorny, big hurtful thorns that'd cut you. There were lemons on it all year round, you know, there was never a time you couldn't pick a lemon. Big and juicy, the best sourness, big thick skins, you'd get them almost the size of a footy, really huge. Gorgeous. We used to cook everything with lemons, eh, potatoes in that Greek way, legs of lamb, lemon cake, lemon pud, I used to make lemon cordial even, bottle my own lemon cordial.

‘One time Clay made this lemon jelly. You know how he used to cook, how he'd do elaborate things, make an enormous fucking mess, but he'd be so proud of himself? So we were having this dinner party, it's the middle of February, god that's right, it was Tanya's birthday and we were having this big dinner party for her, ten or twelve people, yeah, lots, twelve, something like that. We'd set up tables put together out the back to make one big long table, under the grape vine, like some Mediterranean idyll, and we were making this totally lemon meal. We baked a fish stuffed with lemons, there were those lemony Greek spuds that he used to make, everything. The whole lemon repertoire.’

‘Sounds great.’

‘Mmm. A little obsessive, but great. You know Clay. It was kind of lemon and pot themed, there was basically a big fat honking spliff page 203 passing around the table the whole night as well. Gloriously ripped, we all were.

‘Anyway, Clay spent the afternoon making dessert. We'd borrowed this ice-cream maker from my mum, and he'd made this amazing lemon ice-cream—like an egg custard, full of cream, and lemon-juicy syrup and grated peel, fucking amazing. So the ice-cream's made and in the freezer, and there's already this enormous mess, the whole kitchen covered in pots and dishes and bowls and gutted lemons. Then he starts on the jelly. We'd squeezed a gazillion lemons—that was my job, I was allowed to do that, I had lemon-shaped hands by the end of the day—and he heated the juice with sugar. Then he strained it to get it clear, you know, strained it through muslin—’

‘No way! Nobody does that! I have never ever done that.’

‘I know. Obsessive.’

‘It's why we love him.’

‘It is. So he pours in this great slug of gin to the lemon syrup, and he floats in these sheets of gelatin, like you read about in books, no gelatin powder for our Clay and—’

‘So what happened? Was it like a dreadful disaster? Did it not set? Was it awful? Did he use salt instead of sugar?’

‘What? Nah, it was extremely wonderful, the whole night was.’

‘Oh. I was wondering why you're telling me the story. What's the point of the story?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Just a remembrance. You asked me about the lemon. It's just a memory I have, a memory of Clay, of happy times. The happy times are lemony. Lemons remind me of the happy times. That's all.’

‘Oh.’

‘When I die, I want a lemon tree on my grave,’ Jan says.

‘I once read somewhere that when you plant a lemon tree, you should plant it on a dead sheep. Like slow-release fertiliser,’ Liz says. ‘But that must've been on a farm, eh, you'd be hard-pressed finding a dead sheep in the city. So a dead you would be perfect.’ She drops her head onto the table, laughs, ‘fucking dead you, hah! dead ewe.’ She looks back up at Jan, tears in her eyes. ‘The tears of a clown, mate. page 204 Fucking funny even in despair.’

‘What would you have on yours?’ Jan asks her.

‘My what?’

‘Grave, your grave.’

‘Mmmm, dunno. Corrugated-iron sculpture, a really spiky one, so no one would fuck on it.’

‘Eugh, on your grave? No, no one does that, that's appalling.’

‘Yeah yeah yeah, they do! You know, what's his name, you know the guy, that guy, the one whose dad's a spy, the one who always went out with blondes. He did.’

‘No!’

‘Yeah. After some party at that house in Harvey Road opposite the cemetery, where all those guys lived, and afterwards he kept telling everyone the name of the guy whose grave it was, some fucking ordinary name, John Fitzgerald or something, and about holding onto the gravestone for leverage. Oh shit, what's the guy's name? You know who I mean?’

‘Yeah yeah, I do, he's got plastic hair—’

‘What, fake, like a wig? No he hasn't.’

‘No, not fake. Plastic. Like a Ken doll. Doesn't move when he shakes his head.’ Jan shakes her own head, and her hair falls across her face like a heavy curtain. She pushes it back with both hands. ‘OK, well what music would you have at your funeral then?’

Liz smokes, thinks. ‘Not Elvis. Too cheesy.’

‘Is not!’

‘Clay's done it anyway.’

‘Mmm. I guess. His wasn't cheesy.’

‘S'pose. Yeah, well Clay always had a strongly-developed sense of cheese.’

‘It's true, it's so true, his sense of cheese was unsurpassed. OK, so cheese or no cheese, what would you have?’

‘Well, if The Big Chill hadn't spoilt it, I'd choose “You Can't Always Get What You Want”, every time, no question.’

‘There's no every time. You only get to choose once.’

‘Deep.’

‘Nya.’

page 205

‘OK, so “You Can't Always Get What You Want” is out. Big Chilled. Chill cheesed. Popularised.’ Liz mock-shock-horrors it, the back of her hand up against her forehead in a silent movie heroine pose. ‘So, I dunno. Maybe “Dead Flowers” then? Maybe not. Oh, yeah yeah yeah, I know, “All Tomorrow's Parties”. The Nick Cave cover though, I love that. Oh, or “The Carnival is Over”, same album, fucking awesome goodbye songs. Or “Long Black Veil”. Yeah. Any of them. All of them. What about you?’

‘“Calling All Angels”.’

‘Bit predictable. Bit sugary. Bit daggy.’

‘Nah, it's one of those shivers songs, you know, every time I hear it, about a million times now, I still get shivers at the beginning. It soars, you know.’

‘OK, well the one from the movie or the one from Jane Whatsername's album? Christ, you used to play that CD over and over and over when you got it, remember, that was when I stayed here when I was between housemates. It's imprinted on my brain.’

‘Siberry, Jane Siberry. Yeah, her version, it's better than the movie one. It's shiverier. Acoustic-er. I've been listening.’

And Jan pushes away from the table, gulps another gulp of the beer that sits next to the empty tequila glass, and goes to the stereo. She hits buttons, and they hear the gradual rise of drum, like a slow heart beating. Then the room is filled with the eerie litany of saints named over Twilight Zone synth and the occasional sweet twang of acoustic guitar. And that voice, that beautiful sugar honey voice—santa maria, santa teresa, santa anna, santa susannah, santa cecilia, santa copelia, santa domenica, mary angelica—and when she sings, when the voice rises above and over the intoned saints, over strings that ache and moan, Liz and Jan both shiver, feel the goosebumps prickle their scalps, down through to the pits of their tequila-sodden stomachs. And they both know the song so well, and when the last chorus kicks in, the repeat of the chorus, their voices soar with the two women singing over the speakers, and they can't hit the notes as beautifully—no one could—but it makes their own hearts ache, they prickle their own scalps with the goosebumps of a hundred, a thousand listenings, and the words and the music make them almost want to die, almost page 206 want to, so they can float up to heaven or up to Clay or down to the cold earth, or wherever the hell the saints are to tell them how much they love the song.

They'd started drinking at noon. It's one o'clock the next morning when Liz finally curls up on the beanbag in the lounge-room. The still dark heat, or some drunk obsession, keeps Jan from falling into bed, makes her start to clean up—wipe the salt shaker's bottom of its crust of salt and lime juice, put the empty tequila bottle in the recycling bin, swigging the last drop of smoky gold from it on her way.

‘Santa Tequila,’ she whispers, eyes closed against the shiver of it.

She sweeps the stiffening, tooth-stretched wedges of lime into the compost bin, their old floral smell hitting her nose and engulfing her brain.

She carries the warm, wet compost bucket out into the cooling dark behind the door, walks to the compost heaped by the back fence and empties the night's dregs onto the sweetly rotting pile. A browning wedge of lime sticks to the bottom of the tub. Picking it out to add it to the rest, she holds it to her nose, smells salt, the lime, smoky gold tequila and old greyed cigarette smoke on too pale skin. She presses the drying lime lightly to her cheek, and holds it there for a minute. When she drops it to the compost a moist moon stays marking her.

It's one of those nights that won't start to cool down until the sun's about to come up again. Thirst and the first bitter swell of a hangover wake Jan well before that, dry-mouthed, her feet edging out off the side of the bed from under the sweaty yellow sheet. The house is still, quiet apart from the faint rise and fall of Liz's snores from the lounge-room.

Walking wide down the hallway from the bedroom to the kitchen with her arms outstretched for the cool of it, both of her hands can touch fingertips to opposing walls at once. She steps the walls with her hands this way, as if she's holding the walls apart, the careful, stepping hands marking her paces down the dark passage.

In the kitchen she reaches her hand high for a glass from the cupboard. Arm fully stretched, one foot leaves the floor, just briefly. page 207 And still stretched like this she sees that glass pass her eyes, as if it's moving in slow motion from her hand to the floor, and she anticipates the crash, the shattering of calm, before she hears it so that by the time the noise reaches her ears she already has her hands clamped over them, against the hard, bright sound.

Crossing the room puts the table between her and the broken glass. Hands on the table to steady herself, she hums, calming, any noise that isn't shattering. The humming, eyes closed, loosens her hips to gyrate: an involuntary, centring movement. She will dance, to forget. She raises both arms above her head, wrists limp and lolling, elbows loose, and she dances around the kitchen table and back down the hallway to her bedroom, dances away from the shattered, ruined glass, dances like Ann-Margret danced in Viva Las Vegas, slinky and shimmering, but slow, slow.

When Jan wakes again she's on the floor of her bedroom, stretched like a dog on her belly on the dark wood, close to the earth, where it's coolest. Her bladder gets her up and she staggers to the bathroom, to empty the night.

She remembers something violent and shocking, something crashing and breaking, but she can't remember what, can't remember if it's true, thinks it must have been the tequila, the pot. She looks into the kitchen, and the broken glass on the floor tells her what she remembers, tells her it happened. She wraps the broken glass in old newspaper from the cupboard, puts the neat parcel in the bin.

She gets herself a glass of water and walks outside, dropping onto the back step to watch the sun come up behind the lemon tree. There are magpies. There are always magpies, although she rarely sees them, just hears their cool, piercing gargle.

She picks up a lemon, cool from the red cement path, and rolls it, slow, on the back of her neck.

And she raises the glass of water to the lemon tree, to the magpies, to the rising sun and the lightening sky, and croaks on smoke-stale breath, ‘Viva, baby. Viva.’