Except here. Right next to the hot pink salon chair where it still drips red from its source.
Slumped back in the seat he has spilled his stupid thoughts and his privileged brains all over the parlour floor. Lolita surveys the damage with a smile and ponders that she prefers her men like this.
Silent.
It was the main thing that had drawn her to Eddie.
And now, with some stranger’s blood on her ‘fab’tasticly talented hairstyling fingers, So So Lolita, picks up a phone and a mop in tandem. The phone clicked to a quiet hiss when he answered it.
‘Eddie, Baby?’ She knows he’s on the line. ‘Don’t speak. But I’ve done it again’ She paused to adjust her hair in the mirror and smiled at what she saw, ‘We need to get together Eddie. I need to talk to you about what we’re doing…’ then after a pause of almost perfect silence from him, ‘Because I know it’s not just me Eddie. I know you’re still doing it too.’
Lolita looked in the mirror again. This time she nodded her head forward, chin to chest and closed her eyes. With a sudden jerk she flicked her head back upright and opened her devil lashed eyes as far as they would go.
‘Did you see that?’ She asked, but not down the phone, to the dead body whose shoulder she now rested the phone on. ‘I’m like a doll baby. A plastic baby doll with sit-up eyes. Did you like that?’
But the corpse stayed silent.
She walked, determinedly with just the hint of a sway, over to the shop front and there she pressed the button that started the shutter’s descent, before talking down the phone again.
‘Eddie Baby. Can you send me an Auntie?’ Then she clicked the line dead.
‘Better than that’ thought Eddie ‘I’ll send them both.’
In a place not far from here, Eddie lay down the phone and went back to his place at the table. His family originated from Tonga and meal times were noisy, busy plentiful and enjoyed. Leaning a little to his left he whispered something to the lady with a mouthful of corn, who in turn whispered something to the boy with a mouthful of meat, who laid down his knife and nodded. He nodded to the white boy on the other side of the table who had mouthful of contempt which he proved by kicking the woman to his left who was better known as Aunt One. ‘Oi Mum,’ he said ‘It’s time for us to go.’
Eddie was never quite sure about Aunt One. There seemed no decent explanation as to why this white woman and her white husband and their even whiter son called themselves relations and sat at their table. But Eddie was never one to ask too many questions. In fact, Eddie was known not to talk very much at all. To his friends he was ‘Silent Eddie’. Others called him ‘Eddie No Voice’. It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak; more that he didn’t much need to. Eddie had Lolita and Eddie had a gun, and both of these did a lot of talking for him.
He returned to his plate of bread and chop suey with knowledge that the job was as good as done. The rest of the people seated at the table asked no questions. Perhaps they already knew the answer. Perhaps they didn’t care.
Two Plus Two Plus Two Makes Seven
The Aunties (One and Two) and sons (Two and One) all stand in the salon waiting area and listen to Lolita sing. It takes a moment, you see to evaluate each situation, and so it seemed to them that a performance was an apt way to pass the time.
As the song ended, Aunt One winked at herself in the mirror and Aunt Two asked the pertinent question. ‘Girl, where the fuck are the chairs?’
‘On the Shore by now I’d wager.’ said So So with a frown. ‘The finance company repossessed the waiting area yesterday morning.’
‘Well that’s a damned shame and then some.’ Said Aunt Two, and her son, Son One, echoed the sentiment.
‘A Damned shame.’ which earned him a clip round the ear.
‘More importantly,’ said Aunt One to So So, ‘Girl, where the fuck are your clothes?’
Lolita looked down and saw that she was indeed not wearing as much as before. She pointed a delicate finger towards the almost empty bottle of Absinthe that stood in the salon sink. ‘This,’ she said with frustration ‘always happens on Tuesdays.’
Aunt Two had lived in Tonga for her entire life with all its troubles. She had found herself on the sweet, tropical shores of South Auckland after leaving her idiot of a cheating husband and coming to stay with a cousin in New Zealand. She brought with her seven children, aged from fifteen to three, but only one child accompanied her wherever she went. Son One. Son One and Aunt Two were a team.
Aunt One is South Auckland to the raggedy-ass tips of her fake ‘nigga hair’. She had been a part of Eddie’s family from the days when his lips were white with milk. White. Like her skin. She has one son and one husband. Son Two follows her a lot, although she mostly wished that he didn’t. Son Two and Aunt One are not a team. In fact, they don’t like each other much at all.
‘Meet Derek.’ said So So, gesturing to the bloodied man in the chair. Then she lifted his hand, limp and marble-white and she shook it at them in a floppy wave. “Say hello Derek. Derek owns a finance company on the North Shore.’
‘Then I hope,’ said Aunt One ‘that he likes his chairs a lot.’ And when Son Two laughed, she kicked him hard, but not for that, for the fact that he came at all.
Sons Two and One each took an arm of Derek’s hot pink chair and they wheeled him out the back, pausing momentarily to look up at the skylight above the sinks and smile.
‘Is that your Dad?’ asked Son One.
‘Probably.’ said Two.
And then there were seven.
Shoes to Boot
Blood Dedd is fast. Fast as the wind with shoes to boot. He had swapped these shoes as part of a drug deal gone bad; or maybe good. It depends which way you look at it because they really were fantastic footwear.
Blood liked to run and he liked to climb.
But tonight on the roof he doesn’t look well. At this time of day when the sun shrinks back and takes his pallor with it, his skin is marbled whiter than the corpse below. Blood liked to climb because he liked to see. Looking down now into So So Lolita’s Salon, he couldn’t help but think that it was an interesting place indeed.
He nodded to the two boys as he slipped through the back door, then rolled his eyes at the results of So So’s tantrum slumped in the chair.
‘Auntie did a good job on this one eh?’ Said Son One. He leaned down and tried to adjust Derek’s head so it sat on his shoulders again but was unsuccessful. ‘She almost hacked his head right the fuck off this time eh?’
‘She’s getting worse for sure,’ said Blood ‘the freezer trucks out back boys. Toss him in with the others; I’ll take him to work tomorrow.’
The dolls freaked Blood out.
Sat in stiff rows on endless shelves amidst the hair dyes and combs, he felt eyes everywhere. He really didn’t get the doll thing, he hated everything from the orange plastic of their skin to the transplant dots of hair on their empty little heads. Then he swung into the salon with a walk that said ‘Weird Mutha-Fucka’ – at least it did to Aunt Two, the only one in the room sane enough for an opinion to matter. Blood’s wife was too entranced with the task of teasing her hair in the mirror to give a shit that he was there. And So So thought he probably always had been.
She was right.
‘Where the fuck are the chairs?’ he asked, taking the mop that So So offered him without protest and beginning the task at hand.
She thought that Blood probably knew exactly what had happened to the chairs, as she had been vaguely aware of his presence on and off throughout the day; but she answered anyway.
‘Derek took them.’ She smiled ‘So I cut off his head.’
‘People gunna need somewhere to sit girl. You leave it to me. I’ve got just the thing’ and he plunged the sticky mop back into the bucket of water before sweeping again.
‘What you mean you got just the thing?’ said Aunt One. ‘Ain’t no shit like that in our house! You’re not taking my chairs. You hear me. Not taking my fucking chairs!’ And then, as an afterthought ‘Its too fucking hot for this shit anyhow.’
Blood tossed his head so fast to glare at her, that his scarlet tipped dreads whipped the mirror with a thud. ‘Shut the fuck up.’ He fumed.
And he meant it.
Aunt Two, cleaning the walls, reached out to wipe a smear of red from the shutter switch.
‘So So?’ she said, looking up from her job deep in thought ‘Were the salon shutters still up when you cut off Derek’s head?’
And So So Lolita couldn’t be entirely sure that they weren’t.
‘My five o’clock Cut & Colour could be a problem.’ So she danced for the boys again.
Meanwhile...
‘So So working late again Eddie?’ asked his brother Sone.
Eddie nodded before pushing his plate away and repositioning his coffee so it now sat where the plate did. There was just Eddie, Sone and Nana left at the table now but Eddie was fairly certain that Nana was asleep.
His brother gulped more beer. ‘Aunties are helping eh? And da boys?’
Eddie nodded again.
‘Fucking thought so eh.’ Said Sone, then he drank more beer.
Eddie stood up and taking the bowl of bread from the centre of the table he threw in some left over meat from the discarded plates. He was already half way out the room when his brother called out,
‘That’s for the girl eh? She’s still alive eh?’
This time Eddie paused and stiffened momentarily before nodding, but he kept his back to his brother. His mind was already with the girl upstairs.
Soap Da Fucka Clean
‘You hear about that shooting in Pap?’ asked Son One as they strolled down the road towards Otamariki.
Son Two nodded, ‘Nana says it all going bad in Two Toes. You know Nana though; she’ll blame it all on the lack of a tree on that bloody hill.’
‘Dad says she’s been watching too much of that bloody Maori Channel. Dad says if we got Sky, Nana wouldn’t talk so much shit.’
‘Reckon your Dad’s bloody right.’ said Son Two as he knocked on the wood of the door in front of them with white knuckled urgency.
As the door opened, Two and One both threw their arms wide, like they were greeting a long lost friend.
‘Mrs B!’ exclaimed Two. ‘Well aren’t you gunna invite us in?’
And Mrs B’s face fell with knowledge.
The door closed behind them and the hall suddenly seemed infinitely smaller. She stood before them with just a towel wrapped around her. Nothing to save her here.
‘I’m about to have a bath. What do you want? Why are you here?’ although in part she wished she hadn’t asked. She had at least a foot over them in height, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think that a real advantage. Her eyes stayed firmly on the barrel of the gun that Two held with a smile.
‘Johnny still in Raro Mrs B?’ Asked One as he moved back towards the sound of running water.
She shook her head.
‘I think you’re lying Mrs B.’ Called out One as he disappeared into the bathroom.
Two, gestured with the gun for Mrs B to follow and all three found themselves in the white tiled room, which was a squeeze as the State didn’t build these rooms for company.
‘Get in the bath Mrs B.’ said Two, waving the gun again
And Mrs B surrendered, doing exactly that.
Meat...
Mr. Blood.
In name, hair and job he wore that word with pride. He had worked at the Clevedon Fields Meat Processing Plant for five long years and only two of them good. The last three years had frankly been a drag, but that was ok with him. His expectations in life were reasonable – and he reasonably expected very little.
It had been a stroke of genius though getting his wife the cleaning contract at Clevedon. Now he had free access after hours and the difficult job of getting rid had gotten a whole heap easier overnight.
And then there was this. His second stroke of genius this summer.
Sitting alone in the newly refurbished Salon waiting area, he stroked and admired the candy striped fabric with dirty fingers and a smile. Blood liked to be alone.
‘It’s like being at the fucking beach!’ he said. And then he thought of his lovely wife and when they met and he wished that there was sand between his toes tonight.
With the salon refurbished, Blood made his way back to Clevedon to collect Aunt One and do some processing of his own.
South Auckland style.
90.2 blasted from the radio and his fingers swept the dial higher. Where would they all be without me? He wondered as the suburban streets were replaced by the roll of hills. The clock showed 9:50pm when he first heard the tapping noise in the back of the truck. By the time he had pulled into the loading bay, the tapping had built to a bang.
Winding down the window, he wiped his mouth and grinned a grin of bad teeth and bourbon at his wife. ‘Hello my bitch!’ He winked, as his left hand reached for the cold of metal on the passenger seat. ‘I’m afraid we got ourselves a problem.’
Desire...
‘Fucking deck chairs!’ screamed Lolita in an almost operatic onslaught to their ears. ’Blood, are you crazy!’
Aunt Two actually quite liked the new seating.
She closed her eyes and felt the warmth on the back of her neck, just sun through glass, but she felt it and she thought of home.
Home had been sweet for the longest time. A childhood of simplicity had been more than enough for her, the sun and the ocean all that mattered then. She and Christopher had been friends back then, which she recalled with a sigh of fondness. Happy thoughts. Not like her last memory of him, the one she found hard to shake. The one that had driven her to come here and driven her to do that thing that she hadn’t really wanted to do.
‘Tell her!’ Protested Aunt One, ‘Tell her about that one of Eddie’s. The one in the back of the truck. Tell her what happened.’
Blood looked at Lolita for longer than appropriate before stating calmly, ‘No. That’s between us, Eddie and the truck. No need for bothering So So.’ He positioned himself in a deckchair to the right of Aunt Two, brushing a trace of sand from his leg and remembering it all in the process.
‘Auntie?’ He spoke to Two who still had her eyes closed deep in fantasy. ‘We need us those guns a whole shit-fuck sooner than tomorrow.’
Two reached into Blood’s pocket and took out his phone. She dialed ten numbers and pressed green. ‘Siaosi? George. We coming to the range bout that stuff I asked for. We coming now.’
Son One put the PSP down and gave a wide eyed grin to Son Two, who high-fived him in return. ‘Fuck yeah!’ said One, which earned him a well placed kick from the deckchairs.
‘We’ll take my car.’ Said Aunt Two. She didn’t much fancy traveling in the back of the meat truck again. Not after last time.
