The Taming of the Bastard (21 page)

Using her
elbows as battering rams That-Slut-Courtney barged through the room
and over to the corner where Womble was entertaining the crowd with
Eye of the Tiger’
. Jumping onto the chair beside him, she
ripped the microphone from his pudgy hand and wiggled around a bit,
adjusting her teeny tiny top.

“Hey! Whadja go
an’ do that for?” Womble cried.

“Move it fat
boy, it’s my turn now.” With a malicious grin in our direction,
Courtney turned her back to the crowd, giving us prime view of her
bum. She fiddled with the dial on the karaoke machine. Then, after
inserting her own CD, she coughed and took a few deep breaths,
preparing herself to sing.

“This one’s for
you, Snookums.”

The crowd was
deathly quiet. Snookums, whoever he was, wasn’t keen to share their
love in public.

“I. Do. Not.
Fucking. Believe. This.” Mel whispered. “Surely she’s not going to
sing to him?”

But oh, yes,
she was.

The intro
started. That-Slut-Courtney’s hips were wiggling in time. Her
auburn locks were bouncing to the beat. Other body parts were not
so lucky.

“Hey, I, like,
totally love this song,” Kirby chirruped, tapping her side with her
hand. It seemed to have slipped her mind we didn’t like
That-Slut-Courtney or any song she would sing until a pinch to her
tricep from Mel reminded her.

“Like, what the
hell? Oh… right. Oh, she totally sucks. So glad I didn’t buy the
album.”

Courtney may
have looked like a beauty queen but, somehow, I don’t think she’d
taken choir at school and if that comment about
The Voice
was true the judges must have been delusional on the day. Her
whiny, nasally voice, blared through the speakers singing a the
worst rendition of Avril Lavigne’s
Girlfriend
I think I’ve
ever heard. And from the way she was flinging her arms while
singing “
Hey you, I don’t like your girlfriend. Hey you, I think
you need a new one,
” I’d say she’d seen the video clip on more
than a few occasions. Still, it was amusing. Or so Sam thought, he
was pissing himself.

Magically, the
object of this dedication had also re-appeared, propping himself in
front of the fireplace like he’d been there all night. It would
have been believable if not for the fact his neck was sporting a
rather large and unwieldy love bite. Nursing a large ale and doing
a relaxed lean across the mantle, he tapped his fingers to the
tune.

Totally
guileless.

Utterly
bastardly.

Devastation did
not describe the look on Sasha’s face as the realisation hit her.
Courtney and Simmo had been up to God knows what, and for God knows
how long, right under her nose. The proof was right there on his
neck. Now it was up to her to make the next move.

“How could
Courtney do this? What a cow,” I whispered to Sam.

“You bet,” he
agreed, sipping his beer. “Great tits, though.”

I ignored it.
Sam was Sam, even in the toned down, behaving himself version.

The song over,
Courtney moved on to
Toxic
, writhing around like a slutty
version of Britney Spears and singing pointedly at Simmo. At first,
he seemed oblivious that everyone—including his wife—was staring at
him waiting for some kind of embarrassment that Sasha knew what we
knew to cross his face. But, as he looked from Woody to Womble and
raised his glass, something appeared to click inside Simmo’s thick
head. And as Courtney’s routine grew more feverish, her dance moves
akin to porn. Simmo squinted nervously into the half-light from the
fire, pushing a hand through his hair. His eyes met Sasha’s across
the room. His lip twisted into a guilty smile and he shrugged as if
he had no idea what Courtney was on about. Because everyone knew
Courtney was a psycho. He wasn’t doing anything. Surely, Sasha
could see that.

Beside me,
Sasha tensed. Her back was ramrod straight as she glared back at
him, icy daggers shooting from her pupils. Her voice was little
more than a strangled whisper. “Enough is enough. It’s a time I put
a stop to this rubbish.”

Watching her
purposeful stride through the back door, I knew I should have
followed and made sure she was okay but, really, the sight of Simmo
and Courtney was so ludicrous I couldn’t tear myself away.

“What the
fuck’s she doing now? She’s lost the plot,” Sam said.

Sasha had
returned. Holding the previously banned barbecue fork before her
like a baton, she snaked her way through the crowd. Politely, she
excused herself and apart from the fact that she was walking and
balancing a rather large piece of raw meat on the end of the
implement, she looked completely sane. If you didn’t look at her
eyes, that is. Or the set of her jaw.

“Think we
should stop her?” I asked.

By this stage,
Sam was laughing fit to kill himself. He could hardly hold his
beer. “Let her go. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“She could
decapitate Simmo with a cooking utensil?”

“Let’s hope she
goes for Courtney’s boobs, too,” Mel added. “I’d love somebody to
deflate that bitch.”

Sasha wended
her way through the group, approaching the spot where Simmo and
Courtney were leaning against the wall, pretending they didn’t know
each other and had not, only seconds previously, been engaged in
some sort of pornographic mating ritual.

“Darling,”
Sasha addressed him, the muscles of her face so smooth it could
only be a cover.

Simmo gave her
a weak smile. For once he looked worried. “Hey Sash’.”

“Would you like
a bit of meat for your dog?” Sasha enquired sweetly, at the same
time raising the steak to Simmo’s lips.

“Fucking
brilliant,” Mel laughed, “Even I couldn’t have thought of
that.”

Then, as we
continued to ogle, Sasha put the steak down on the mantle, pushed
up her sleeves and calmly punched Simmo so hard in the nose and
eye, the sound of cracking cartilage echoed through the room.

“Oh. My. God!
She’s, like, totally punched him out. I hope she hasn’t bruised her
knuckles.” Kirby giggled.

“That’s one
hell of a left hook,” said Sam.

Mel just
snorted. “I warned Simmo not to fuck with her. Zumba isn’t the only
thing she’s been doing at the gym lately.”

Over in the
corner, Simmo was howling like a baby. Holding his nose, he tried
to contain the flow of blood with his shirtsleeve. “What the fuck!
Saassh
!! What was that for?”

Sasha twisted
the ring on her wedding finger. Slowly, she pulled it off and
slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt. Her smile didn’t
falter, her eyes stayed locked on his. Helpless to retaliate, and
with blood pouring from his nose, Simmo looked to Courtney but she
was too busy creating yet another hysterical scene.

“Shit, fuck,
Alan! Will you do something please? There’s blood all over me. My
top will be ruined.”

Sasha didn’t
flinch. Even the sound of Simmo’s real name springing from another
girl’s lips wasn’t enough to make her lose focus. “Oh dear, you
look a little dirty. Let me help you clean up a bit,” she said,
lifting her arm and dispensing the contents of her husband’s beer
down Courtney’s front.

“Stay away from
me, you psycho cow.”

“Better to be a
psycho cow than a man-stealing whore like you.”

“Take that,
bitch,” whispered Mel.

Sasha turned
back to Simmo. Her calm resolve was astounding, awe-inspiring. “If
you were going to humiliate me in front of the whole club, you
could at least have picked a girl worth having. It’s no achievement
to say you’ve done Courtney. Every lad in the room’s ridden that
bike. As a matter of fact, it’s an insult to me,” and turning away
she picked up the meat and tossed it at his head. “You’ll probably
need this. It looks like that eye is going to bruise.”

*****

“You’ve, like
totally gone and done it this time,” Kirby admonished Simmo, after
seeing a shaken Sasha to her taxi and giving the driver her
address. “You’ll like, totally, want to be having a serious talk
when you get home.”

“I agree, mate,
you can’t have your steak and eat it too.” Sam was trying not to
laugh at the massive welt growing on the left side of Simmo’s face,
not to mention the fact that his nose was the size of a mango. It
was the first time he’d ever seen a bloke get punched out by a
girl. A few bottles over the head maybe, but never punched out.

“Bud whad did I
do?”

Mel banged
Simmo’s forehead with her palm. “Are you retarded or just extremely
fucking slow? Everyone knows you’ve been hooking up Courtney. Do
you think Sash’s blind? And where have you been for the last hour?
It’s not much fun chasing your crazy wife around when she’s
wielding a barbecue fork, you know. I had drinking to do.”

“I was helbing
Courtney chage her flat tyre.” He seemed contrite or maybe just
sorry for himself. No one was going to be able to get him out of
the ridiculous emerald green corner he’d painted himself into.

“With what?
Your dick?”

Simmo sniffed.
“She’s bwoke by dose.”

“You’re lucky
that’s all she broke. She got her black belt in Judo last
week.”

*****

The next
morning I was in the laundry sorting through the children’s clothes
and mine. Somehow my top had become stained with Simmo’s blood and
I needed to soak it before it went into the wash so if I was going
to do that, I thought I might as well do the rest of our laundry at
the same time. I was feeling somewhat guilty about the amount of
time I’d been spending with the children of late. More often than
not, snippets of weekends that had been reserved for them were now
given over to my boyfriend. It was as if I had been given a choice
between him and my surrogate family and I’d made the choice—well,
Adele had made it. Oddly, she seemed determined to get us together
at every opportunity, giving me more time off than I’d ever had
before. My theory was she hoped if Sam and I became serious, I’d
give up on my dream and stay with the family and him.

Carrying a
basket of dolly clothes, Paige came in.

“What are you
doing?” she asked, sliding the basket onto the counter beside my
pile of clean clothes.

I looked down
at her. “Sorting a few things, baby. Are you going to give your
dolls clothes a wash? Princess Voilet’s gown did look a bit
grubby.”

Paige pulled
the plastic step up to the tub and stood on it. She took the mini
peg basket from her ‘laundry’ and put it on the counter beside us,
peering into the washtub as she did so. “Yuck! Millie! Why is the
water all red?”

“I got some
blood on my top so I’m soaking it to remove the stain.”

“
Eww
,
gross. Was Sam bleeding?”

“No. It was his
friend. He hurt his nose and some of it must have splattered on my
top.”

Paige looked at
me. Her creamy brow knitted together. “I hope it wasn’t that nice
blonde man. He’s very hot. He looks like the man from the
Titanic
movie I watched last time I was at Jennifer’s.”

Though shocked
that my charge had used the word ‘hot’ in the correct context,
something else occurred to me. There was no explanation as to how
she could give such a description. Johnny had never been to the
house.

“When did you
meet Johnny?”

Paige shuffled
on the stool. She tipped her doll’s clothes onto the counter and
began to sort the whites from the colours. Her voice sounded
innocent enough but I didn’t believe it for a second. “Who?”

“Johnny. The
blonde man who looks like Leonardo DiCaprio.”

Paige frowned a
little more. “I think it was, um, when we went to the thing.” Now
she was deliberately avoiding the subject. I had seen her mother do
it and seemingly Paige had inherited the gene.

“What
thing?”

“That thing we
went to with the gelato. The festival thing. Sam was there.”

Unconvinced, I
went back to the sorting and folding. Yes, I had taken Paige and
the twins to the Italian Food Festival in Mount Lawley and we had
eaten lemon gelato but I had no recollection of Johnny being
there.

“Are you
sure?”

Paige nodded,
though she didn’t look at me. “Positive. But you were in the
toilets with Tori and Michael. That was it.”

Hmm
. At
least Paige hadn’t inherited the lying gene. She was crap at
it.

Grand Final
Night. The Hornets had been victorious over the black scum for the
first time in twenty-something years. People were dancing—Sam
included— around the room, drinking champagne out of an overtly
large, extremely ostentatious gold cup, the very cup that some of
the younger lads had only ever before seen in pictures. The veneer
clad walls of the Hornets Nest vibrated from the music of Womble
and his backing singers, the Womblets. In karaoke heaven, they were
pounding out,
We Are the Champions
at the top of their lungs
whilst wearing brown and gold club undies on their heads. Never one
to let an opportunity pass by, That-Slut-Courtney was in fine form
preening and primping her way around the room in search of a
target. Having achieved her goal of stealing Simmo from Sasha, she
seemed to have decided was time to move on. We all knew why—Simmo
had consumed a bug of guilt that had made a direct line for his
genitals, manifesting itself in an inability to perform. Unless the
threat of getting caught loomed at the next corner or toilet door,
he couldn’t get it up and Courtney was unable to survive without
her daily fix of illicit sex.

Next to me,
Sasha was propped up against he wall. Glass in one hand, cigarette
in the other; she blew her smoke out the open window. She had
entered the stage of grieving known as bitter and twisted. “My God,
will you look at the pathetic bastard.”