Theft: A Love Story

16

Marlene would be my brother's girl, that ripped my sausage casings when I saw it, but it was not new that I should understand this before the man himself. Sometimes I have wanted to smash and bash him smite him for his cruelty and he never knows I was in love with the so-called Alimony Whore even worse than he was. In that way we were twins, the best part of us identical. In the Buchanan, I laid my hand on Marlene's tiny arm and I watched all her sad water seeping from her lovely eyes you never saw such blue—hair threads of ultramarine, the blues of an opal, bless us, arranged in the pattern of a human eye.

Butcher always said there was no god, no miracles, he had sat in judgment and found Marlene guilty as a thief but then I saw that ugly smirking look on his face and it made me sick to picture what he would do, his fat dick being in no way deterred by having condemned her without a trial. The artist is always for himself alone, allegedly a MONK, a PRIEST or KING, in spite of which assertion he was always seeking a woman who would let him lie with his BUG IRISH face between her breasts. Who could not fall asleep with the scent of lavender rising from a woman's skin?

When previously resident in Sydney my brother would drive me to A TOUCH OF CLASS in Surry Hills, although not before he had scared the living Christ out of me with condoms and instructions on where my mouth could go. I knew more than him and always had. The girls were very nice NO BATTERIES NEEDED, YOU'RE MY LOVE TOY BABY at least three of them saving to put their children through Sydney Grammar, but Butcher was always waiting outside for me to finish. He said he didn't mind the time, was just thinking, but there were many thoughts that never crossed his mind and when I touched Marlene's arm my feelings occupied a country closed to him, denied entry, UP SHIT CREEK without a paddle.

In Bacchus Marsh we knew many girls with names we pronounced Mah and Wah and Lah. That was a joke. Doo-Wah!

That's another.

MAH-LEEN and not MAH-LANE—they included Marlene Warriner, and Marlene Boatwright and Marlene O'Brien and Marlene Repetti so I was not surprised to learn Marlene Leibovitz was really Marlene Cook and she had been born in Benalla, a very nice town in north-eastern Victoria, not much bigger than Bacchus Marsh.

This surprised my brother greatly as he had her pegged as a NEW YORKER. But she was Marlene Cook, whose mother had the COFFEE PALACE. She was the girl who always WROTE AWAY for information about THE STORY OF SUGAR or the history of AUSTRALIA'S OWN CAR. When I learned this I sadly knew she would be well suited to my brother for he had always caused trouble at our post-office box number forty-six, causing it to get clogged up with BROCHURES and FREE SAMPLES to the detriment of more important business.

All this writing away was what led them apart from their own people, in her case to become an IMAGINARY AMERICAN, an expert on the work of Leibovitz when her only education had been getting thrown out of Benalla High School for insubordination—she admitted so herself, so who would doubt her? Never did I forget I also was cast out from fourth grade. I hid inside my bed for a whole week drawing on the sheets. They never knew what pictures I saw, how close they came to violent death, God save me. Blood pouring through their eyes and noses.

And here you are too, Hugh, she said, eating pork cevapi in Taylor Square. Who could have imagined this in Bacchus Marsh?

I did not share her opinions but I did not care because it was very nice to be with her. She made Butcher quiet, soothing that MAD RAGE which had been brought about by the work of the pretty-boy painter and the general problem of being OUT OF STYLE. She went for the plum pancakes and THREE FORKS and when I was completely STONKERED we all drove back to Bathurst Street, although not before the Butcher bought two bottles of D'ARENBERG DEAD ARM SHIRAZ @ $53 per, the unit price being an indication that he planned to make her like him more than me. Such is life. Who knows what he remembers about the night where his entire life began to change? All he ever mentions is that we left my chair behind in the restaurant and we had to go back and explain to the waiter it was legally our property. It is not my fault that there are so many aggressive drunks and criminals in Darlinghurst at that hour of night.

Finally we came up the stairs at Bathurst Street, not even pausing on the first floor but heading on up to the second. The lights of the dancing school were better than we might have hoped and Butcher had previously banked and aimed them at the longest wall and now, in spite of the injury suffered when retrieving my chair, he was able to assist me when tacking the canvases in place. One for the money, two for the show. He was a bloody bower bird displaying snail shells and dead spiders to the female, puffing up his feathers to make himself look larger, running back and forwards, bless me chook-chook-chook.

Until now Mrs. Leibovitz had been VULNERABLE, but now her eyes lost all sign of feeling and she revealed what is known as a professional character standing in the EXACT SAME way as Detective Amberstreet on a later date, supporting her left elbow with her right hand while the left cupped her chin and covered the evidence of her pretty mouth. Surely this was not the result my brother wanted?

She did not say a word, preferring to nod when she had seen enough, and at her bidding we two large men rolled up one canvas and tacked up the next one. Bless me, I was not sure what was happening. No-one touched the Dead Arm Shiraz, although it had been offered with the shells and spiders.

Then she said, I can get you a show in Tokyo.

Bless me.

This was not what I had expected. Had he? I cannot guess. If I had been him I would have set off hollering and running around the room, THE BUTCHER'S DANCE by Arthur Murray. But his Boone-eyes stayed dark and tiny like my father when considering the possibility a well-priced beast might be hiding a NOTIFIABLE DISEASE.

Where?

The male's mouth was just a slit, a contrast to the female's which was parted in surprise. The windows were open to the street and we could hear shouting, perhaps the WESTIES had come to beat up the SOFT FACES as they were called. The woman scratched her bare brown upper arm and asked him, Did he know Tokyo? He treated her as if she was trying to pick his pocket.

How can I get a show in Tokyo? His face was an egg or river stone, no place to crack it open.

At Mitsukoshi, she said, smiling and frowning to a very large degree, her forehead corrugated like low tide—sand worm in secret panic beneath the feet.

Mitsukoshi?

The department store.

A department store, says he, as if it might be disgusting to buy a pair of socks or that he had never lived fifteen years behind a bloody shop which had been his heritage and obligation.

Marlene could not have known we were in danger of a sermon based on ideas put up his batty by the German Bachelor. Just the same she CUT HIM OFF AT THE PASS, firstly uncorking the fifty-dollar shiraz and pouring it into a coffee cup, then explaining to my brother, as he walked up and down like a horse on a lunging rope, that all the most important shows in Japan were in department stores. I could not see why she would tolerate him but of course this is the LIBERTY given those of so-called genius that they are permitted to act like TOTAL MORONS. Marlene Leibovitz persisted, finally producing from her purse a notebook inside which she had stuffed papers big and small amongst them a card with silver on its edge. On this card were three important things. The first was the name of the Mitsukoshi department store and the second was the angry Duco-dripper Jackson Pollock but it was not until a CROWN PRINCESS was revealed that my brother finally WHOA UP.

Well fuck me dead, said Butcher.

It is a big bloody mystery to me that a man so dead set against QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND could get himself so rigid about the crown princess of Japan, but soon he had a great STIFFY, THROBBING LIKE A SOCK FULL OF GRASSHOPPERS. And who am I to understand his secret squirming brain? All I know is that Butcher saw the silver Japanese characters on the back and was therefore so completely converted to Mitsukoshi that he could never change his mind, not even when he discovered the Jackson Pollock exhibition had been opened by a TELEVISION PERSONALITY.

From that night began his enthusiasm for uncooked fish of every kind and as a result of eating TUNA RIGHT OFF THE BOAT he was infested with a parasite producing bloating, cramping, diarrhea and unusual bowel movements. This was not the least of the excitements in the months ahead.