Heller (3 page)

“You buy the
first drinks while I find us a table,” commanded Dixie, haring off
before I could protest. I gazed after her in annoyance, distinctly
remembering her offering to buy me a drink. I muttered to myself as
I ordered, handing over half of my precious twenty dollars to
purchase two glasses of the nasty house white wine that I watched
the barman blatantly pour from a catering-sized cask. Dixie had
managed to find us a small table up against a wall and I dodged
over-excited children and doddering pensioners, carrying the drinks
safely to the table.

We chatted
casually for a while, filling each other in on our day. I unwisely
made the mistake of complaining to her about my seemingly endless
and depressing single status. She immediately sprang into action to
find me someone.

“What about
him?” she asked, nodding her head towards a good-looking,
fair-haired man in dark blue jeans and a red polo shirt waiting at
the counter to order dinner. He was nibbling on his bottom lip,
indecision stamping his face as he dithered between the chicken
schnitzel special and the roast of the day.

“Nah, he’s not
tall enough,” I dismissed. “You know I hate towering over a
man.”

She sighed
impatiently and looked around. “Well, what about that guy over
there? He’s tall and cute.”

“He sure is,”
I agreed. “But I think that very pregnant woman standing next to
him is his wife.”

She shrugged
as if to say
so what
? Her eyes roamed the crowd again. “Ooh,
what about him? He’s tall, cute and with no knocked-up chick
nearby.”

“True, but I
think he’s gay,” I pointed out. “Look at his t-shirt. It says:
I
want to flout that I’m out
. Sounds sort of gay to me. Plus,
he’s got his hand on that other man’s butt.”

“I suppose,”
she conceded unhappily. “Okay, okay. I’m not giving up. I love a
challenge. Hmm.” She scanned the room again, then smiled
triumphantly. “What about him?”

“He
is
tall and cute, but he’s way too young for me.”

“How can you
tell?”

“Because he’s
wearing a school uniform! It’s probably not even legal for us to be
looking at him.”

“Don’t be
silly – he’s over the age of consent.”

“Barely.”

She continued
to stare at the teenager who must have been dining with his parents
directly from a school function, an appreciatively calculating
smile teasing her lips. “He’s very cute, though. I could teach him
a thing or two that he won’t learn in school.”

“Dixie, stop
it. You’re scaring the poor kid.” The teen glanced over at us
nervously, his protective mother hustling him back to their table
to join the family, throwing us a disgusted look as she did.

“What a bitch!
I was only looking,” sulked Dixie.

I laughed.
“It’s the way you were looking at him that was bothering her.”

Dixie turned
her attention back to me. “I give up. Your problem is that you’re
too fussy,” she said, taking a sip of wine. “You have to stop being
so picky. Just shag the next man who asks and your problem’s
solved. That guy we met at the nightclub the other night was okay.
You should have shagged him. I would have.”

“He was
married! And he tried to grope my boobs when we danced
together.”

“You do have
great boobs, so you can’t really blame a man for trying to have a
feel,” she said, sipping her wine again, halfway through her glass
already.

“Yes, I can!
And besides, you know I’ve sworn off one-night stands. I’m sick of
them, especially after the last one. I always feel so cheap and
dirty afterwards.” My mind took me back to that horrible feeling
I’d had a few months ago waking up in an unfamiliar house, head
pounding with a killer hangover. I’d rolled over to find myself
naked in bed with a snoring stranger who’d sure seemed a lot better
looking the previous evening when I’d been wearing my vodka
goggles. I’d dressed quietly and sneaked out of his place in my
bare feet so as not to wake him, praying that I hadn’t given him my
phone number. It was on that journey home on the bus that I’d vowed
to myself not to do that ever again.

“You’ll never
get laid with that attitude,” Dixie warned, not having any
compunction herself about one-nighters, married men, or apparently,
teenagers.

“I don’t want
to just get laid,” I grumbled. “I want . . . I dunno. I want
something more than that.” She shot me a scathing look, rolling her
eyes with deep scorn. We were worlds apart in our attitudes to
sex.

I sighed in
self-pity. Not only was I unsuccessful romantically, I was also
pretty much a flop at scoring jobs in the two years since Dixie and
I had both decided to chase our dream to become actors. Well, to be
honest, it was more Dixie’s dream than mine. I followed her because
I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do with my life and
it had sounded fun. But it wasn’t. I’d only managed to notch up a
bare handful of acting jobs since I started. One had been a
non-speaking role as an extra in a locally-made turkey of a movie
that I’d done primarily for the free catering. I’d also managed to
land an unfortunately long-running commercial for a high-fibre
breakfast cereal. My overjoyed and un-constipated enthusiasm for
bran had mortified me every time the ad showed on TV, but gave my
family and friends endless fodder for teasing.

About six
months ago, in what I mistakenly believed was going to be my big
break, I’d scored a brief stint on the soapie
Summer Days
.
I’d played the conniving and slutty half-sister of the town’s
doctor, but she was killed off after a few weeks in a gigantic
fireball after sleeping with half the town and breaking up a
popular character’s marriage. I was still getting hate mail about
that.

My other big
role was as the Third Hottie in a low-budget and low-talent slasher
film called
The Harvester’s Crop
. My character was hacked to
death in the first ten minutes with a scythe by a madman known as
The Harvester. It still rankled that I’d missed out on the First
Hottie and Second Hottie roles. As far as I know the movie didn’t
make a single cent, bypassing all normal avenues of distribution
and ending up on some obscure horror website. I’d always had my
suspicions that it was never meant to be released at all, and was
made solely for the private entertainment of the three pimply, but
well-off young directors. That made me especially glad that I’d
refused to wear a bikini during the shoot. I mean, seriously, who
wears a bikini and high-heels running around the fields at night
when a psychopathic murderer was trying to kill you with a
primitive farming implement? The other two Hotties didn’t object to
wearing their bikinis though and that’s probably why my character
was bumped off first. But you see, I do have
some
artistic
integrity.

I sagged into
depression thinking that I was almost down to my last dollar and if
I didn’t find some acting work soon, I wouldn’t be able to pay my
share of the rent. I really didn’t want to ask my parents for money
yet again. I pictured Dad’s stern face, his eyebrows slightly drawn
together, mouth pursed, as he gave me what I had dubbed ‘The
Lecture’. I could recite it by heart: how I should be more
responsible in my life and get a steady job like my two older
brothers; how when he and Mum were twenty-five they were already
married with a toddler, a baby and a mortgage; how I should settle
down with a good man.
Have to find one first, Dad
, I always
said back to him at that point, looking up at him with my big eyes,
my most pitiable expression on my face. That made him pause for an
instant and pat my cheek with affectionate consolation before
resuming his spiel. And even though each time he coughed up some
cash in the end, I was becoming tired of hearing The Lecture. I
didn’t need any reminding about exactly what was wrong with my
life. I was the one living it, after all.

My mobile
suddenly chirped. Dixie and I exchanged hopeful glances as I
answered, hearing the grating, coarse voice of our shared
third-rate agent, Kristo.

“No good,
Tilly,” he rasped down the phone line. He inhaled from a cigarette,
paused briefly, then exhaled with a disagreeable deafening roar of
air in my ear. I could almost smell the nicotine through the phone.
“Sorry, love.”

“Yeah, no
problem, Kristo,” I said, dejected but unsurprised.

I’d tested earlier in the week for a role on
Learn or Earn
, a shockingly bad show set in a fictional
university town that relied heavily on the tense standoff between
the university folk and the townsfolk for its story-lines. The
character was the psychotic, alcoholic secret love-child of the
university’s vice-chancellor. She gets it on with the married town
mayor then tries to kill him, sparking – yep, you guessed it! – a
tense standoff between the university folk and the townsfolk. Just
like every other frigging week. It was utter shite and the director
had stared at my boobs the whole audition. But at least it would
have kept the landlord off my back. Not that the creepy jerk hadn’t
offered several times to climb onto my back in lieu of me paying my
share of the rent.

“They gave the
part to that blonde bird with the big tits. They said she had the
attributes they were looking for,” Kristo told me.

I replied
tartly, “Is that what they call them now?”

“What? Very
talented girl, that one though. Very promising. I’ve offered to
look after her career. Already found another job for her when she’s
done with
Learn or Earn
.”

That made me
see red. “Well, bully for her! But what about
me
? What have
you lined up for
me
next?”

There was an
awkward silence down the line. He cleared his throat noisily. “I’ve
been thinking about you lately, Tilly.”

Uh-oh.
“Thinking what exactly?”

“Thinking that
you might be better off with another agent. That I might not be the
best fit for your . . . ah . . . talent.”

I stared at
the phone, mouth open in shock, before slamming it back to my ear.
“You’re
dumping
me as a client?”

“Now don’t go
putting it like that. Let’s just say that I’m freeing you from your
contractual obligation with me to allow you to explore other
options.”

“What about
Dixie? Are you going to dump her too?”

Another
silence. “Dixie’s more serious about being an actor. And at least
she turns up to the auditions I organise for her.”

“Kristo!
You’ve sent me to three porn movie auditions this year! I’ve told
you a million times that I refuse to do stuff like that. I want to
keep my clothes on!”

His voice
hardened. “Like I said, Dixie turns up for her auditions, no
complaints.” I glanced over at my friend with fresh eyes. “And
besides, I haven’t made a cent from you for months. I don’t do this
for fun, you know.” He thawed a little. “Look, love, take a word of
advice and find another job. Acting’s not for you.”

I couldn’t
argue with that, but I was so angry that I hung up on him. The
arsehole! I’d put up with a lot from him in the last couple of
years. He’d tried it on with me a few times in his shabby downtown
office, but I’d played dumb, staring at him with my eyes wide, a
slightly puzzled expression on my face as if I didn’t quite
understand his
double entendres
and dirty suggestions. He
gave up on me after a while, writing me off as someone with great
boobs but sadly lacking in the brains department. And he thought I
couldn’t act!

Well, that
was your last chance
, I warned myself. If I wanted to pay the
rent this month and avoid the landlord’s lechery, I had to find a
real job. I leaned over to the next table where someone had
abandoned the local news rag. I skimmed the employment ads,
dismissing them offhandedly.
Boring
.
Boring
.
Boring . . . no wait
. I read the ad more carefully.
Nah,
boring
.
Boring
.
Really boring
.
Weird
.
Boring
. Then I noticed the little ad wedged at the bottom of
the second page. It was inconspicuous, not designed to catch your
attention, restrained and uninformative. I wondered briefly if
noticing it was the first recruitment test, given the nature of the
business.

Client Manager
Security & surveillance business
Must be discreet and experienced
Enquiries: 0400 xxx xxx

Hmm, client
manager? Security and surveillance? That sounded a bit
cloak-and-dagger, a bit exciting, maybe even a bit dangerous. I was
immediately interested, my boredom slipping off my shoulders like a
silk cloak. Before I became a professional actor (and please don’t
laugh when I say that), I’d done some client relations work. As
long as you could stay calm under extreme provocation, keep a
straight face while blatantly brown-nosing and could tolerate being
a drudge, there were worse ways of earning some money.
Like
acting
, I thought bitterly as I carefully ripped out the ad
from the paper. I’d ring about the job first thing in the
morning.

I pressed the
buzzer next to the glossy black front door and waited as I’d been
instructed. When I rang to enquire about the position I was told by
a polite and mellow male voice to send in my CV via email. I had
sneaked onto Jon’s (or Don’s?) laptop to do so and barely an hour
later received a phone call from the same man inviting me for an
interview the following morning and providing me with directions.
The suburb was one I’d never visited before. It was shabby,
previously industrial but slowly morphing into an uneasy mixture of
high-density residential and white collar commercial businesses.
Property there would be worth a fortune in about ten years, but it
was still distinctly grungy right then.