Limbo (22 page)

And the hook-ups had helped. They’d been a good circuit breaker. Ironed out the kinks and satisfied her cravings. But it
had
been a while and reading Dash’s increasingly desperate texts about Ralph’s energizer-bunny sexploits was making her decidedly horny.

Being envious of a goldfish was just plain crazy.

Ralph has three years to make up for and a seven-second memory. He probably keeps forgetting. Give him some privacy and let him get on with it.

Her phone vibrated again quickly.
It’s on my brain now!

Joy knew how he felt. Thanks to him all she was thinking about was sex. And not of the goldfish variety.

Need something to distract me. Take me through the steps of embalming somebody.

Joy shuddered. Embalming was something that could put you off sex for life and she was pretty sure that was not Dash’s objective. She knew a much better way to distract him from fornicating fish and it had nothing to do with draining blood from anyone.

She slipped into the staff loo and lifted her shirt. It was freezing in the tiled cubicle and her bare nipples (A-cuppers didn’t have a lot of call for a bra) reacted predictably to the blast of cool air. She pushed her biceps into the sides of her breasts so they looked a little fuller and snapped a picture with her phone.

Quickly pulling down her top, she hesitated for a second, her finger hovering over the keypad. Should she? Shouldn’t she? Hadn’t she’d decided not to go down this path with Dash? That they’d had a one-time thing?

Screw it
.

This didn’t
mean
anything. It was just a bit of fun. A bit of banter between friends. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t already seen them.

Will this do?
she typed under the picture and then,
See you tomorrow xxx

And she hit send.

***

Joy finished at five and stepped off the bus at her stop at five-thirty. It was already dark and she hunched into her jacket as what promised to be another cold night settled around her.

She laughed at the sign towering over the Good Shepherd as she turned into the grounds and walked up the path.

A shut mouth gathers no foot.

She wished it had said that earlier this morning, instead of
Is your prayer well done or rare?
Maybe then she would have exercised a little mouth shutting (or finger stilling as the case may be) with Dash. Or at least kept it all clean and above board. Told him he was a poor baby and sent him on his way. Instead she’d let horniness (she suppose Stan would call it sin) temporarily get the better of her and sent him
that
picture and she hadn’t heard a word from him since.

She’d either given him some kind of a sudden debilitating medical condition like a heart attack or a stroke that had prevented him from replying or he’d reported her to whoever it was in the police force that dealt with pornography.

Because he certainly hadn’t responded with a flirty text or even a quid pro quo picture of his anatomy. There’d been silence. Deafening silence.

Oh well.
What was done was done
. The picture had been sent — not much she could do about it now.

She stepped into the church, welcoming the warmth, trying to think about the church and not about the picture or how it was going to be when she faced Dash tomorrow because
that
was going to be awkward as fuck. Lucky for her she was fairly practised at ignoring the elephant in the room. Two years with Chris had honed that skill particularly well. And there would be plenty to discuss with the case.

If all else failed she could ask him about his fish, because that apparently distracted him from everything!

‘Hey,’ Lance said, striding up the central aisle of the church in blue jeans and a Nirvana shirt, his floppy blonde fringe bouncing with each footfall.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Where do you want to do this?’

‘I was thinking we could go into Dad’s office. It’s not quite as intimidating in there.’ He grinned, looking around him. ‘Or as echoey.’

Joy looked around too at the grandeur of the architecture. It
was
imposing. And she wasn’t exactly feeling worthy of its splendour after the nudie pic debacle. Today she was definitely feeling like a sinner. And considering the things she’d done in the past, that was saying something.

‘Sure,’ she nodded, and followed him back down the aisle to the side of the altar and through a wooden door into a poky room.

Stan’s office was cramped, about three by three, with a huge desk and old, frayed, red carpet on the floor. Apart from a framed poster of the Harry Potter crew done up in KISS make-up, every inch of available wall space was bookshelves. And they were
crammed
with books. In fact there were books just about everywhere she looked, piled high in higgledy-piggledy stacks on every surface.

Fiction and non-fiction. The latest Dan Brown thriller fought for space with textbooks, biographies and about a hundred different versions of the bible. It looked like Stan had been living here for the last hundred years instead of the last few weeks.

‘Your Dad likes to read.’

‘Oh yep,’ Lance nodded. ‘You should see his Kindle.’

The thought of Stan, a fifty-something excommunicated priest who had a ponytail, wore Def Leppard t-shirts and was clearly a bibliophile reading a digital book struck Joy as absurdly funny and she laughed. ‘He’s…’ she looked at the poster, ‘eclectic, isn’t he?’

Lance laughed as he shifted a bunch of books stacked high on a beat-up old leather chair for her. ‘If by that you mean eccentric then yes.’

He gestured to the seat and she took it, swivelling it to face Lance as he sat opposite in what she assumed was Stan’s chair, behind the desk. Her gaze fell on the huge shiny Mac computer that seemed out of place in this cluttered old room .

It was a sleek bit of gear. ‘Your dad
does
appreciate technology.’

‘Ha!’ Lance snorted. ‘This is mine. Got some rad design programs on here. But Dad uses it for church business as well.’

‘Is that what you do? For a living? Design?’

He nodded. ‘I work with artists and musicians designing all kinds of things. Album covers, posters, websites, YouTube channels, advertising material. That kind of thing. I’m working on this Sydney-based graffiti project at the moment. Here,’ he said, tapping at the keyboard, ‘I’ll show you.’

For the next fifteen minutes Joy looked at samples of Lance’s work that were simply mind-blowing. The graffiti images were beautifully arranged and he’d composed the music himself and mixed it all together. Clearly he was an artist, and his passion for what he did shone through.

Chris would have totally dug Lance’s style — someone who understood music as well as other artistic mediums and who had an instinct for blending them together.

‘Okay,’ Joy said eventually, taking her seat again. ‘Enough of the stuff we
do
know about. On to what we don’t.’

‘Dude, you don’t know anything about choirs?’ he asked. ‘Joy from X Factor?’

Joy shook her head. ‘No. I’ve
never
been in a choir. I figured Lance
from the church
would know all about that sort of stuff.’

He shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘You weren’t a choirboy?’

He gave a loud laugh. ‘Hell no.’

‘But you must have been exposed to them, surely?’

‘Well sure. I guess. A little. What about you? Aren’t you singer types into all that kind of stuff? High school musical, the rock eisteddfod, clash of the choirs. Any chance to sing?’

Joy snorted. ‘Do I look like someone who joins choirs?’

He grinned. ‘Nope.’

‘The choir at my school always sang African tribal songs or ancient Finnish lullabies.’ She shuddered. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that kind of music but I wanted to sing rock and country. So I busked. And jammed wherever I could. Oh, and I sang at a lot of funerals.’

‘Funerals?’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘My parents own a funeral parlour.’

His mouth dropped open. ‘No way!’

She nodded. ‘Yes way.’

He laughed then. ‘That’s totally cool.’

Joy shook her head. It had not been
cool
at all as she was growing up. She’d felt like a freak at school with kids always asking questions about dead people and ghosts. She’d learned pretty early to shrug them off — all honesty got you was a weirdo label.

‘You’re as eccentric as your father.’

He sighed. ‘It has been said.’

Joy figured growing up the son of an eccentric priest couldn’t have been any easier than being the daughter of an undertaker. ‘So…how do you propose we go about this whole crazy idea of your father’s?’

‘I guess we hold auditions first?’ he mused. ‘Sort the wheat from the chaff?’

‘Do we just rely on word of mouth for that?’

‘Sure, Dad’ll talk it up. But I can make some posters that we can put up around the place. Some here and in the local shelters and community centres. Maybe the health clinic. I might be able to wangle a spot on a free community radio station.’

‘Your father could put it up on his sign.’

‘Dude, don’t encourage him. He’s going to fall and break his bloody neck one day.’

Joy hoped not. She found herself looking forward to the daily messages. ‘I guess once we’ve chosen the members we’ll need to run some practise sessions?’ The choir at her school had
always
been practising. ‘I take it we can do that here?’

He nodded. ‘Yep.’

‘Will there be any…restrictions on what we can sing?’

Lance frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Does it have to be the Hallelujah chorus or a bunch of psalms? It is a church after all.’

Lance laughed. ‘Ahh…no. It can be whatever we want.’

‘Stan’s not going to care? It was his idea. Maybe he wants something…godly.’

‘You have
met
my father, right? He wants this to be a community thing. Not a God thing. He doesn’t care about that. He wants people to participate, to find a tribe and a reason for waking up in the morning.’

‘So “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” would be fine?’

He laughed again. ‘It’s one of his favourites
and
it sounds
awesome
on the pipe organ. It’s a shame the organ here is broken, we could use it for the musical accompaniment.’

‘Alright, good.’ Joy stood and held out her hand. ‘Let’s make a pact right here, right now, that this choir sings cool stuff. Only stuff that the people in it want to sing.’

‘What if they want to sing praises unto God?’

She shrugged. ‘We’ll…negotiate.’ She didn’t mind singing the odd thing with religious overtones. One of her favourite songs was ‘Morning Has Broken’ — the Cat Stevens version.

She just didn’t want to work their way through the hymnbook.

‘Okay,’ he laughed, getting to his feet. ‘Here’s to a choir with no crappy Finnish lullabies. Do we need to cut our hands and seal it in blood?’

Joy smiled. ‘I think a shake will be sufficient.’ So they shook. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘is it wildly inappropriate to tell a minister’s son that I fucked up majorly today and need to drown my sorrows and ask him if he wants to go get pissed with me?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘But this is where you tell me you’re a god-fearing teetotaller, right?’

He laughed. ‘
Dude
— no. I don’t even believe in the big guy.’

Joy blinked. ‘You don’t?’

‘Nope.’

She looked around her, half expecting to see the God police leap out from behind the bookshelves pointing fingers at Lance and yelling
blasphemer!
‘Should you be saying that in here?’

‘I haven’t been struck down yet.’ He picked up his jacket off the back of the chair. ‘C’mon, let’s go. Where’s good?’

‘Ha!’ Joy snorted. ‘You are kidding right? The Basin’s not known for its good. But the Purple Parrot’s nearby, it has an open-mic night one a month and serves cheap booze.’

‘Sounds very tropical.’

Joy shook her head. ‘The Tropicana it ain’t. Don’t eat the bar nuts or look too closely at the carpet and you’ll be fine.’

‘Sounds perfect.’

***

Joy was grateful for Lance’s lanky stride as they stepped out into the brisk July night. It was only a fifteen-minute walk but keeping pace with him kept her warm. They talked about the area and only stopped once for Lance to fish five bucks out of his wallet and give it to an elderly man sitting on cardboard just inside an alleyway.

He looked at the colourful sign as they approached. ‘Looks awesome,’ he grinned.

‘No. Trust me on this. Do
not
judge this bar by its sign.’

He opened the door for her and Joy stepped into the primordial darkness, Lance careening into her directly after. ‘Shit, sorry I can’t see a damn thing.’

Joy grinned. ‘Welcome to the Purple Parrot. Find us a table, I’ll get the first round. What are you having?’

‘Beer?’

‘Cool.’

Joy ordered from Jules, who greeted her like a long-lost daughter even though Joy had only been here a few days ago. As far as Jules was concerned, Joy’s performance on the Parrot stage three years ago was a sign of her bigger things to come and she’d totally
discovered
Joy. She never tired of saying, ‘You were
robbed
darlin’,’ about that night on
The X Factor
.

If Joy ever needed an agent, she’d employ Jules.

Joy squinted hard as she made her way over to the tables, finally identifying Lance’s table right at the back when the flare of a poker machine threw some light over the area.

She passed him his beer and took a deep swallow of hers as she sat. ‘I bought chips,’ she said, removing both large packets from under her arms and throwing them on the table. ‘Two actually. I wasn’t sure what flavour you liked and I’m starving.’

Lance reached for them and opened them both tearing, an open flap at the front of each packet so they could help themselves to either. Joy reached for a handful of salt-and-vinegar heaven and shut her eyes as it mingled with the lime of her Corona.

‘So,’ she said after she’d devoured a couple of more handfuls. ‘What does your father think of your non-belief?’

Lance shrugged. ‘He’s cool. Dad believes every person is entitled to their own beliefs.’