Shoot you in the back

It's suicide
To live on pride
You claim you own
Your skin, your bone
Your own life
Cuts you like a knife
The rider wearing black
Is gonna shoot you in the back
- Motorhead, 1980

Technically, the photos weren’t the problem. The photos of Selena and I, of course, was a distant, resolved issue. Resolved in that it’d proven once and for all Beth and I couldn’t be together. Which had precipitated a whole bunch of horrible shit which I didn’t care to revisit, but which had put Beth in hospital, me on the run from the cops and my house in need of some attention from Renovation Rescue. That’s resolved, ain’t it?

So if we couldn’t be together, you might ask what we were doing facing each other along a walking trail on a remote headland in Western Australia, with just a grumpy, embarrassed, apparently-special-ops dude lying face down on the dirt between us. Didn’t really matter what your black-ops training was, when someone comes up behind you and says ‘Lie face down on the ground or I will shoot you in the back with this speargun’ it’s a bit hard to kung-fu-panda your way out of it. In fact a great swathe of aforesaid training amounts to figuring out which battles to fight and which to hide from. Or as Kenny Rogers would have put it, knowing when to hold ‘em, fold ‘em, walk away and/or run. To which Lemmy Kilminster - or even possibly Marty di Biagini - might have countered that the only card you need is the Ace of Spades. Roight.

Long story short, it was pretty obvious what we were doing facing off against each other. The context for this discussion was gripped in her left hand. The butt of the speargun, which overhung the pistolgrip trigger, had been fixed to her wrist cast with gaffa tape, for extra support and rigidity. The other end - the pointy end - might have been pointed at either Mr Smith or me, depending on how you read the intent in Beth’s face and the momentary wavering of the speargun in her hand.

“Angus,” she asked, “why is my little brother in hospital?”

Mmmm. Nothing like the taste of sick in the back of the throat. That marinara from lunch didn’t taste as good on the way back up. I said I didn’t know. She shook her head. She didn’t like that answer. I didn’t like that she didn’t like that answer and probably neither did Mr Smith.

“You don’t know,” she mimicked, in a voice cracked and serrated. Nope, neither Mr Smith nor I were liking how this was turning out. “Funny, Brad seems to think you beat the fuck out of him for being gay.”

Normally, when someone is pointing a speargun at you, the idea is not to laugh at what they say. No matter how desperately fucking ironic the statement. No matter how laughably appalling your situation now looks because of it. So the noise I made was sort of a strangulated splutter, which probably didn’t help either. It wasn’t quite the sort of noise a fat lady’s thighs make slapping against each other as she runs for a bus, but it wasn’t too far from it.

“You believe that, Beth?”

Sullen silence.

“Does it sound like anything I would do?”

“You tell me. You’re the one with anger management problems.”

Says the girl waving a speargun about the place, I didn’t reply.

“Is he OK?” I asked gently.

“You care?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I shouldn’t. He wanted to kill me, Beth. Tried very fucking hard to. Seemed to think that would solve his problems. But I do.”

“He’ll live,” she reported curtly. “Sedated, but conscious. Able to answer questions.”

“By making shit up,” I replied by reflex, before my self-defence instincts could stop me.

Time stood still. Glaciers melted and refroze. Entire galaxies were created and destroyed, while I waited to be killed to death by fatal pointy sharpness.

“See, you might think that,” she said coolly. “And so does he, apparently.”

I had no idea what that meant. I wondered if she knew either. If she actually wanted to hear my side of things, she’d be unlikely to shoot me. Possibly that explained why I didn’t have a speargun barb hanging out of my solar plexus. Yet.

“See the thing is… elephant sedatives are just the greatest truth serum known. Making shit up takes effort. You have to concentrate so hard you look like you’re having an aneurysm.”

The odds on me getting out of this one alive suddenly seemed to be improving.

“You don’t believe him?”

“Of course not,” came the withering retort. “He’s an inveterate fucking liar, and a meth head. I figured he’d made the whole thing up, and you had nothing to do with it.”

Holy fuck. Might just get away with this one.

“But now, you’re say you were there, and it did happen…”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“He and some backpacker kid were going at it in the gents, out on the headland. Tripped over them, visiting the facilities. The kid was trying to get away. Me turning up helped him to do so. Your brother objected to that. And his general being-found-out.”

“I’ve gathered that,” she replied. “I’m not a total fucking moron.”

“Well do you think you could stop pointing that thing at me now?”

“I’m not pointing it at you, you idiot. I’m pointing it at this bastard who wants to kill you for no apparent fucking reason…”

“Oh, Smithy?” I replied dismissively. “Nah, Smithy’s alright. Not very talkative, but he’s alright.”

“Can I get up now?” he croaked, surprising the hell out of me. Give Tommy Raudonikis his larynx back, buddy.

“No,” replied Beth, redirecting her anger groundwards. “You want to explain why the fuck you kidnapped Angus and Lena last night?”

“Erm… I can probably explain that,” said a wavering voice over my shoulder.

“And who the hell are you?” Beth challenged.

Fuck, I thought, mind reeling from a scenario where a clearly unstable Beth fatally harpoons father-of-two Sam McCarthy. Technically he was already dead, but it’d still be a dampener on the afternoon. As far as your all-time-weirdest introducing-your-girlfriend-to-your-mates events went, this had to be on the shortlist, surely.

“Holy fuck,” bellowed a disbelieving voice advancing out of the bush, cutting off further scenario development. “There’s a voice from the past. Jesus fucking Christ on an inflatable fucking pedal-boat…”

Bear was brandishing a speargun, but around the neck, clamped in his paw with the disregard of a kid on a paper run about to lob the Saturday SMH into someone’s yard. He’d outrun Mr James, who was jogging down the path with a faint look of bemusement on his face - his original concern Mr Smith would end up with a speargun barb through his vitals melting away as he surveilled the scene.

“Put the pointy stick down, Beth,” directed Bear. He didn’t threaten consequences, but she took the hint. Didn’t look too happy about it, but she did as she was told.

Which left us all standing around looking at each other. The bearded degenerate, the agitated spearfisherwoman, two confused/bemused private security guys and one dishevelled half of Flange Gasket, Perth BDO 2009 Edition.

It was Uncle Sam, with timing I’d figured had long left him, who broke the silence.

“Well, I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve gathered you here today…”

It was Bear who asked. I figured it wasn’t worth the trouble, but Bear was always willing to have a crack.

“Hey, if you’re not doing anything tomorrow, Sambo…” He grinned. The rest he left unsaid. “Only a couple hours’ drive, after all.”

McCarthy was helping little Andy and Maggie distributing Duplo blocks across as much of the living room floor as possible. Construction and destruction was happening at a roughly equal rate, but they were having fun, which after all was Job #1. Kate, who’d brought the kids back from her mum’s, was sitting at the breakfast bar with the grownups, watching the budding Bob the Builders at work. She answered for Sam.

“Sure, if you want to watch someone have the biggest psychological meltdown in backstage history.”

McCarthy looked up from his half-built Q1 Tower replica, just in time for Andy’s Tonka dumptruck to plough into it and wipe it out completely. Like father, like son. McCarthy, reluctantly, nodded.

“Crowds. Noise. Heat.” He shook his head. “Could be ugly.”

“Would be,” Kate corrected him.

And she was right, which was why I hadn’t asked. He couldn’t handle it, he’d just disintegrate. He had more important things to do - more important people to be on-message for - than fucking about at Gasket’s last ever show. Bear recognised it too. Still, he had to ask.

“We’re good to go,” called Mr James, who’d appeared at the door. “Who’s going with who?”

“I’m going with Bear,” Lena said, winning this afternoon’s round of Who Wants To State The Fucking Obvious.

“Gonna christen the Sandman?” I quipped.

Lena rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, think so. Think I’ll christen it Dave,” Bear grinned.

“Leaves you and Buffy to come with us,” Mr James told me. “Is she going to be OK on a chopper?”

“Well, it’s a shorter flight back I’m guessing?” I smirked. Mr James conceded the point with a nod. No random spirals this time, since we knew where we were and where we were going to. “Doesn’t get vertigo, she should be able to cope with it.”

“I’m more concerned whether we can cope with her,” Mr James observed.

‘Buffy’ had gone quiet since her staking authority had been revoked. She’d been sitting in the corner - not sulking, not ignoring everyone, just quietly observing. Social chameleon, data upload mode. It was rarely a good thing when Beth went quiet, and I wasn’t looking forward to the flight back. Not worried she was a flight risk like Mr James seemed to be, just didn’t want to enter into further discussion over that fucking awful night with her brother, or further speculation as to who she believed and why she’d even come all this way to ‘interview’ me if it wasn’t him she believed. I didn’t have a lot of doubt that if she’d heard something she’d not liked - even more than the stuff I’d said which she hadn’t - I’d have been on my way to the local A&E with a spear through the guts. Which is a tricky thought to resolve with the concept of sitting next to that same someone in the confines of a Bell Ranger for an hour or three. Or, for that matter, being in a romantic relationship with that person. Fuck knew where we were at with that anyway. I thought we’d had fatal exception errors on that count at least four or five times already, yet here we still were. Wherever ‘here’ was.

All that meant I was pretty distracted when time came to say goodbye, which I regretted. Sam and Kate had put a lot of effort into having us come up and see them and the kids - not to mention the budget for this little operation, which would have been a good few weeks’ worth of Superbad royalties for Daniel Fyfe - but my mind was elsewhere. As you’d expect, I did remember to give the old bearded bloke a hug for old times’ sake. Lena wasn’t going to, you could tell - not with Bear around - but Bear himself had almost squeezed the life out of Sam with a big Bear hug immediately beforehand, so she had to give in. And had a little cry. I glanced over at Kate, and she had a smile on her face - a real one, as much as I could tell. Maybe that was part of the reason for getting us up here. Resolve some unresolvables. If it was, I had even more respect for her. Hell of a thing inviting (well, kidnapping) your partner’s ex-girlfriend up to visit your new family, without any idea of what might come from it. Having the meeting of minds gatecrashed by the ex’s new BF probably wasn’t in the script either. But Kate was cool with it. Possibly because she didn’t actually give a shit so long as the kids were happy and the bills were paid, but cool with it nonetheless. Could have been awkward for Bear, but Bear didn’t do awkward. And whatever residual resentment Lena had towards Sam had pretty much disappeared into pity, after finding what had become of him.

So we said our goodbyes to Kate - probably the last person on Earth I expected to get a hug from at the start of the day - and McCarthy trundled us back to the chopper at glacial speed in his beaten-up old Rangie. Lena and Bear jumped into the Sandman and thundered off, waving arms and blowing kisses out the window. Well, on one count anyway. Bear was an affectionate old lug when the mood struck him.

And suddenly, it was time to go. Christ knew when we’d be back. If we’d be back.

“Y’all come back now, y’hear?” quipped Sam gently. “Don’t be a stranger…”

“Well, if I knew where here was…”

“Bear knows,” he said. “And you’ll figure it out once you’re in the air, most likely.”

“I’m sure we will,” Beth said. “Next time we’re in the area…”

We’re. Slightly scary how quickly she’d slipped back into projecting the role of long-term partner. Like the whole interrogation-at-spearpoint thing was just a funny little misunderstanding.

“Might be a while,” I clarified. “It’s a long way from anywhere.”

“That’s kinda the point,” McCarthy grinned. “That’s cool. Keep in touch, yeah?”

We’d swapped contact details. Even talked about writing together again. Just for fun, by correspondence. Email each other stuff to work on. His way of getting me a few writing credits and squaring the ledger re the Superfun royalties for Sandra Sultry. Christ knew if he’d even remember about it tomorrow, let alone the next time we got in touch - that’d been something Kate had quietly warned me about.

“For sure.”

And that was it. We waved our goodbyes, Beth and I, and jogged after Mr James who’d already joined Mr Smith aboard the Bell Ranger. Soon the rotor downdraught was beating a duststorm out of the surrounding dirt, and we lost visual on the old bearded bloke. When we cleared the ground and the dust cloud, he was just a speck on the ground, waving forlornly. I suddenly got a vivid memory of the first time I’d seen him, first day of kindergarten - the same lost little kid - and wondered if the circle was somehow complete, whether it’d be the last time I’d see him. I quickly wiped my eyes on my sleeve - blaming the dust, of course - and got back on message. The tiny speck that was McCarthy and his Rangie were lost from sight, behind and below us, and we were away, following the coastline back towards Perth.

“You OK?” asked Beth. Maybe for my benefit, maybe for the benefit of the guys in front.

I nodded. “Just tired.”

“You can sleep,” she said. Then added with something that could masquerade for a knowing smile, “We’ve been here before, haven’t we?”

We had. Her Beetle, coming down the coast for her grandma’s funeral (not that I knew it at the time) after BDO Sydney. About a thousand years before. Too much stuff had changed since then for me to take her up on the suggestion. I stayed awake, and we flew in silence. Well, apart from that whole we’re-in-a-chopper-it’s-quite-loud-in-here thing. Otherwise, totes silence.

“So what do we do now?”

Seemed a fair question. Messrs James and Smith had flown us back to Perth Airport, then Mr James had chauffered us to the Crowne in the rented Sportwagon. We’d shaken hands, me acknowledging his bemused grin which seemed to say ‘All yours now, good luck to you managing this one.’ Then he and the Sportwagon had melted away into the dusk, leaving us alone.

I hadn’t been looking forward to this moment, really. Hadn’t been looking forward to being alone with her. A bit like New Years. Except this time, the reason her brother was in hospital was standing in front of her. We went upstairs (well, up-lift) to the suite. Swipe-carded the door open. Everything was as I’d left it last night - or as Beth had left it this morning. The door to the adjoining suite was unlocked, but Bear and Lena were still a couple of hours away, cruising down the highway in the Sandman. Adventuring together. Happy. Content. In love.

While Beth and I were facing off wordlessly across a hotel room.

So what do we do now?

We couldn’t even watch the sunset because our room faced away from the ocean, into which the sun was drowning itself; the floor-to-ceiling windows would have showed only other buildings, if we’d bothered opening the blinds. My recently-reanimated iPhone had a thousand emails and phone messages which I didn’t want to face up to. Tired, shattered, over it. I’m alive, ain’t that enough for you people?

“So what do we do now?” I asked, just to break the silence.

“What do we usually do?” she replied, answering a question with a question.

“When things are fucked up and confused, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

May as well throw it out there.

“Usually,” I recalled, “we fuck.”

She nodded.

“Got any better ideas?”

I didn’t. And even if I did, I didn’t.

It was the sounds of stirring next door that woke me. Maybe I was subconsciously on edge from feeling like I was one bad move away from being deaded for the past 24 hours or more. It was just Bear and Lena making it back to their room - I could hear (without being able to decipher) Bear’s low voice, and Lena’s wicked cackle. They’d clearly stopped for a meal and several drinks somewhere. Ridiculously happy. Bastards.

Beth was asleep.

I’ll run that by you again, because it surprised me too. Beth was asleep. I was trying to remember when I’d last seen her asleep. If I’d ever seen her asleep. But here she was, curled up under a mess of black fringe, dead to the world. Well, not literally. I checked. She was breathing. After the last 24 hours of random… the last 24 days of random, actually… I wasn’t taking any chances. Nope, she was asleep. And just about the cutest thing in the universe at that moment, somehow.

A gentle tap at the door between the suites. I climbed out of bed, found some sort of clothing and sidled over to the door to open it.

“Shit, sorry mate,” Bear said, seemingly surprised to have gotten a response. “Just checking you made it back alive.”

I nodded. “No permanent injuries.”

“She asleep?”

I nodded again.

“Good,” he said. “Just quietly, I reckon she needed it. Strung right the fuck out. Wasn’t sure if she was going to kiss you or kill you.”

I nodded again, this time with an ironic smirk. “Still wondering myself.”

Bear grinned. “Keeps it interesting I guess. Catch you in the morning. You get that message from Marty about a rehearsal first thing?”

“Which of the fifty fucking thousand was that?”

He grinned again. “Catch ya mate.”

“Cheers,” I said, and shut the door.

Back to bed. Just quietly, I reckon I needed it too.

It’s a remarkably peaceful place, Sunday morning at the Perth BDO, Claremont Showgrounds. You wouldn’t call it quiet - too much stuff going on for that, punctuated by the occasional decibellious explosion of sound equipment being tested and bands clearing their collective throats - but peaceful, yeah. Before the crowds have arrived and the dust has started being kicked up, before the heat is in the day, before the end-of-term vibe - part-relief, part-melancholic nostalgia - has been blown aside by the adrenalized reality of actually playing that last show of the tour, rather than dwelling over the idea of it - it’s peaceful out there. Or maybe I was just transposing my own Sunday morning vibe onto the day.

I was feeling fairly zen, all things considered. Today was the end of Gasket. Never say never, of course, but this was meant to be the end, and this was as good a place as any to call it an end. Big festival crowd, sunny skies, good mates of ours in the vicinity here to say farewell. There’s an art in knowing when to call it quits and take your curtain call. A hell of a lot of bands had failed that test. If you have the opportunity to retire gracefully, take it.

“Can I have a word?”

Marty looked perplexed, defensive even. He’d grabbed me basically as soon as I’d loped into the backstage compound that morning, with Lena, Bear and Beth. He seemed to want to have aforesaid word without Lena, Bear or Beth about the place, so we made our apologies and ducked away to the coffee cart which was doing a healthy trade reanimating hungover souls with large flatties and the odd Sunday morning cappuccino. We placed our orders and commandeered one of the small plastic café tables under the trees, a little way removed from the rest of the punters.

“What’s up?” I queried, as if I didn’t know.

Marty looked like he was trying to figure out the best way to say it. He gave up, and just blurted it out. “He’s alive then?”

“Yup,” I nodded. “Not in the greatest of nick, but yeah.”

“Wife and kids, Lena said?”

“Kids. No wife. Kate looks after him, and vice versa, but they’re not… like that.”

“They were at some point,” Marty observed conspiratorially. “Thought she was gay?”

“Celibate, seems to be her official status. Anyway, it’s all weird and messed up, but it seems to work for them. Kids seem normal. About all you can hope for.” I frowned. I wasn’t that thrilled about discussing this in an open paddock, and Marty nodded his acceptance of that. He was looking around nervously, head twitching this way and that like a small finch scanning for birds of prey.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Trying to avoid people,” he admitted.

“By coming to the coffee cart everyone backstage goes to?”

“Yeah, I know. Hide in plain sight. Was hoping that by standing next to you I’d avoid media attention.”

“Great idea,” I mused. “Because we know I’m not even remotely on their radar at the moment…”

My Dramatic Public Meltdown from Adelaide on Friday had apparently continued over the weekend, according to media reports. Not sighted at band soundcheck on Saturday. Interweb speculation about likely replacements. No comments from dB management on my whereabouts. No comments from dB management at all, in fact.

“Was hoping to use you as a decoy,” he admitted.

“You gonna tell me what’s up, or do I have to beat it out of you?”

He nodded, benignly. “It’ll blow up Monday, I’m just hoping to keep it quiet until then. Reason why dB weren’t commenting on your situation yesterday. dB aren’t commenting on anything anymore. Reason being, dB doesn’t exist. Effective immediately.”

“What the f…”

“I mean, everyone’s still getting paid and all, but basically dB as an entity is no longer managing the operation.”

I quickly worked that through in my head. The double-shot flat white helped.

“You’ve fired Maddy as your manager.”

“Basically, yes.”

Gobsmacked. Blindsided. Bewildered.

“For what… the tax evasion stuff??”

“Partly,” he conceded. “But the business relationship hasn’t been working well for some time. dB’s corporate vision and mine aren’t intersecting as coherently now as…”

“Enough buzzword bingo mate. You’re firing your girlfriend.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’re not firing her?”

He shook his head.

“She’s not my girlfriend.” And with a bemused grin, added, “The relationship full stop hasn’t been working well for some time…”

“Jesus,” I said. “Sorry, mate.”

“It happens,” Marty replied. The fact that I couldn’t remember it happening to him before, ever, seemed to dilute the nonchalance of his point.

“So who’s managing dB… I mean whatever you call dB without Maddy in it?”

“Me,” he said. “Assisted by Josephine Fang.”

“Joey’s allowed off the bench then?”

Marty rolled his eyes. Joey being ‘grounded’ in Sydney on what appeared to be Maddy’s own moralistic grounds - consorting with the hired help, i.e. the Duffer - clearly hadn’t sat well with him. Another little annoyance. They all added up. Sounded like it’d been death by a thousand cuts which had put paid to his and Maddy’s relationship. Jesus Christ, I reminded myself, Marty and Maddy had broken up. Holy suffering fuckballs.

“…And also with help from Exocet A&R.”

“Danno.”

“Daniela, yes.” He seemed particularly defensive on that point. The Marty doth protest too much, methinks.

“Marty,” I said, “you wouldn’t happen to be sleeping with Danno, by any chance?”

“Absolutely not,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

“We don’t get much sleeping done,” he clarified.

I burst out laughing. “That’s fucking awesome,” I roared. Then remembered this was supposed to be kept quiet, just as everyone turned to look at us. “That we finally won a fucking ODI against the Kiwis,” I added, for the benefit of anyone eavesdropping.

Marty smiled sheepishly. “You’re just happy because you’re finally going to be off the front page of the music papers…”

“Yeah, well there is that.”

“Crap,” he observed. “She’s coming over.”

So she was. In fact, she wasn’t just coming over, she was here already, with a weak soy decaf latte (must watch the figure) in one hand and a hipsterriffic laptop case in her other.

“Mind if I join you?” asked Kas Casoli primly.

“It’d be your pleasure,” I quipped.

Kas shot me down with a sour look.

“What brings you to our neck of the woods, Kas?” asked Marty.

“Oh, this and that,” she said. “Just interested to see if you had any comments on a story which I’ll be breaking tomorrow…”

I could sense the air imperceptibly starting to go out of Marty’s balloon. Counterattack mode engaged.

“You’ll be breaking? All on your own?” I shook my head. “The Danny Weidler of music journalism, are you now?”

“Who’s Danny Weidler?” she wanted to know. Ooh, he wouldn’t like that. She was flipping open her Macbook Air and rattling away at the keys. “Some pictures you may be interested in,” she told us, and turned the laptop around to face us.

It wasn’t Marty and Danno, if that’s what you were thinking. It was grainy, darkened cameraphone stills of a boy and two girls in naked congress, mocked up ready for publication. The girls’ faces were obscured - by hair, or by judicious cropping - but the guy’s face was just about discernable. Mine.

“Bit early in the morning for that ain’t it?” I remarked.

Marty’s birthday. My hotel room. Anna’s phone. Hadn’t even noticed she’d been taking happy snaps. Was kinda busy at the time. Probably a fair guess there’d been some sort of trouble in paradise between Anna and Carmen, possibly related to Carmen finding the photos on her phone, and leaking them to the papers was the get-square. Rightio then. Here we go. Game face.

“You want to tell me what’s going on here?” Kas asked.

“Well, Carola, when a man and a woman love each other very much… actually, when a man and two women love each other very much… what the fuck do you want me to say?”

“Well, the standard issue denial that it’s you would be a good start.”

“It is though. Should have left the fucking Stig helmet on, that would have been advisable. As well as being an excellent look.” I grinned. “Seriously though, what’s your angle on this? Rock star has sex with women? Hold the fucking front page.”

“The girl,” she informed me, “was seventeen.”

“I know,” I replied, “she used to be one of my students. Your point being?”

That was about the point where Marty, now convinced I was committed to self-harm, buried his head in his hands, almost headbutting his coffee in the process. I’d probably have appreciated the distraction, to be honest. Kas, for her part, seemed set to explode with OMG-SUPER-AWSM-EXCLUSIVE excitement.

“Do you not think,” she rabbited on, “that this sets an appalling example for you as a role model for…”

“You fucking what now?” I laughed? “A role model? Do I look like a fucking AFL footballer to you? Go on, fuck off Kas. This is just rubbish. Tabloid shite. I thought you were a serious journalist now you work for Fyfe…”

That set her back. She glared at me, warily.

“I haven’t signed for FPB, or anyone else. I’m contracted for News Ltd.”

“But you already work for Fyfe, even when you’re behind a News Ltd desk. Like when you spiked Lena’s story about Fyfe’s dodgy financial arrangements around Superfun...”

Kas coloured up. Bingo. Lena’s guess had been right.

“And this just in,” I added, “moonlighting at Fyfe’s glossy music rag by writing feature articles under a piss-weak pseudonym is probably not going to get you off the hook when your fucking derivative hack clichéd writing style is easier to identify than testicles on a fucking goldfish…”

“I…”

“Am going to spike that article and never speak of it again, because I really like my career and would prefer it to continue?” I grinned. “I thought you’d say that.”

The look of pure seething fury in her eyes was worth the price of admission even if you’d had to pay four times face value to some dodgy Claremont Showground carpark scalper. IMHO.

“You’re a fucking bastard, Andrew Young.”

“Yup,” I said. “World’s best practice. Anything else?”

Kas and her hipster laptop case got up and stalked away. Then came back for her coffee, and stormed off again, suitably embarrassed.

“You do realise,” Marty began, “that there’s this thing called ‘the internet’ where those photos will end up…”

I shrugged. “So be it. So long as Anna and Beth’s faces are out of it, which looks the case, I don’t care.”

“You’re incredibly relaxed about this. I’d be totally freaking out.”

“You wouldn’t be dumb enough to get your arse photographed nude in bed with two girls in the first place.”

“True,” he admitted. “This was my birthday, yeah? I was lucky to even have one to be photographed with...”

“And not even the one you were supposed to be with, either…”

“Well, if the encumbent’s not even willing to turn up to my fucking birthday party because of ‘work commitments’…”

I nodded. “So what’s the plan for you guys, I thought Danno was off overseas?”

“She is,” Marty conceded. “So I figured fuck it, I’ll go too. Live in London, have a crack at the UK. The US too, may as well, easier to get at from across the pond. Figured I’ve achieve as much as I’m ever going to here…”

“Guess so,” I said. “And less baggage in the industry over there.”

He frowned. He knew what I was getting at. “Maddy was never interested in the industry,” he said, “just the money to be made from it. You won’t see her for dust. Why she never came to gigs, if she could avoid it. She’ll slot straight back into Corporate World and forget she ever wasted her time fucking about with musos and artists and other dole-bludging lefties.”

“At least you’re not bitter…”

“Got a right to be, surely? A lot of years I’m not getting back…”

“They weren’t all bad years,” I pointed out. “And you’re not getting ‘em back, so enjoy the ones you have in front of you.”

“Philosophy too, at half-eight on a Sunday morning? Alright who are you and what have you done with Angus?”

“It’s good coffee. What can I say.”

“Bet you’re looking forward to things quietening down,” he offered. Inevitable question seemed inevitable. “What are you going to do next?”

“This and that,” I said. “Working with Mick. Writing with Sam… actually, I have no fucking idea,” I laughed. “I have no idea what I’m doing tomorrow, let alone the rest of the year.”

He paused before Inevitable Question II. “…And Beth?”

“Pass,” I said. “Even less idea. Put it this way, yesterday she was waving a speargun at me asking why I’d put her brother in hospital.” Both of these nuggets of information were news to Marty, which explained why his face almost fell off. “Today, we’re happy-happy. Apparently. Tomorrow…”

“Those photos will come out on the internet.”

“Probably. Hey, could be worse, at least they’re not of me with my hand on a newsreader’s arse in the Qantas Club.”

“What is it with you groping Lee Lin Chin in airports?”

“What can I say,” I admitted. “The tramp was asking for it.”