We Want Our Dealer Back

We all came to know Spanky through our drinking sessions. He lived just across the road from our pub in Darlinghurst. His apartment, with its balcony overlooking frangipani trees, seemed like a natural extension to the bar. When the pub became overcrowded with tossers from North Sydney, we’d head over to Spanky’s with a case of beer and settle in for the rest of the night. He had a huge plasma TV and a lethal sound system. He’d pass around joints like he was dealing out poker cards, even when we couldn’t afford to buy anything. He’d let us use his computer to surf porn sites and to download acid jazz. 

Not only were his home and his beer fridge always open, he sold pot on tic, loaned us money, and let us sleep on his couches when we were too legless to walk home. And, what’s more, he wasn’t paranoid, not like so many other dealers we’d known in the past. If we wanted to score, we wouldn’t even need to call Spanky beforehand. He never locked his door and we could usually bowl in there, at any time of the day or night, to find him sitting on his couch, surrounded by stoners, weighing buds on electronic scales. If he wasn’t home, he’d never be far away – either drinking at the pub or eating schnitzel around the corner at Maggie’s. 

We all knew that if Spanky got busted again he was going to gaol, but he never seemed to take this possibility seriously. He was so laid back about his buying and selling that most of us were sure he was paying off the cops, something he always denied. 

Everyone adored him. He had blond hair that fell in loose natural ringlets, pale blue eyes, and a set of unusually large teeth that made him look like he was related to the English Royal Family. He was so tall he could hide his beer gut beneath a floppy t-shirt or a Hawaiian shirt. He was in his mid-forties but looked much younger – possibly because he’d never had a full-time job, except for when he’d been a roadie in the ’80s: Midnight Oil, The Go-Betweens, and his favourite, AC/DC. But in all the time we’d known him, he’d never had a steady girlfriend. Oh, there’d been quite a few roots over the years– chicks were constantly in and out of his place, scoring deals, playing poker, updating their Facebook on his computer – but no one girl stayed around for very long and that was exactly the kind of arrangement we preferred. Occasionally, we’d listen to his late-night rambles about his plans for the future: getting a day job, marrying, and moving to the suburbs. But Spanky was flat-out keeping his bathroom supplied with toilet paper, and it wasn’t hard for us to convince him that a normal life wasn’t for him. And anyway, no dealer should have a personal life. And as for love, forget it. If Spanky wanted romance he should’ve been selling bicycles or stationery, not the best hydro this side of Oxford Street. 

Not one of us had a steady girlfriend, either. So we knew what we were talking about. Pommy Pete, a landscaper who sold hot mobiles on the side, his chick had left him a year earlier for a security guard with prostate cancer. Dr Con could only get a hard-on if it involved a lot of coke and several hookers – two things he could no longer afford. Dutch Freddy was a widower who lived with his mother. Mark Stamp said he was writing a novel – a sort of semi-autobiography – and that he didn’t have time for dating girls. Or so he reckoned. As if any girl’s going to go for an unshaven bloke who can only get a job writing articles and reviews for the gay free press.

Spanky started going AWOL a few days after the New Year. One Sunday night, when it was stinking hot in the pub, we’d planned to go over to his place and hang out on his veranda. But as the hours passed, the windows to his apartment remained dark. Pommy Pete tried to ring him on his mobile – the same one he’d given Spanky a few weeks before, a stolen Nokia – but the call rang through without an answer. Dr Con walked across the road and tried to turn the knob, but for once in his life he found the door locked. We dispatched Dutch Freddy around to Maggie’s to collect Spanky from his dinner, or at least to pick up the keys to his apartment, but Freddy returned to tell us that our dealer wasn’t there. 

We found it hard to believe that he would vanish from Darlinghurst without first telling us. Over our next round, various conspiracy theories were tossed about. Pommy Pete wondered if he’d been in a car accident. Stamp reckoned he’d been busted again and was now sitting in a Darlinghurst lock-up. Dr Con was convinced that he’d met with foul play from a customer the night before and was probably still inside his apartment, injured or unconscious or possibly dead. We sipped our beers and gazed at the dark rectangles of his second-floor windows, two doors down from the local funeral parlour, imagining gruesome scenarios. 

In the meantime, more and more of Spanky’s regulars began drifting into the pub, straining for a glimpse of his tousled yellow hair and faded denim jacket. He always wore that jacket – summer and winter, day and night – because Bon Scott had given to him at a Sydney concert the year before he’d died. 

When the regulars couldn’t spot him, they’d buy a beer and sit with us, watching his windows, waiting for the familiar flicker of his fluorescent bathroom lights. Stamp suggested we call the police. But before we had a chance to roll our eyes, he hugged himself and shook his head, appalled at his own stupidity.

We made a few calls to Spanky’s best mates – Aussie Freddy, Weasel Diesel, even his brother, Mitch – but no one knew of his whereabouts. We waited until closing time, but still he hadn’t come home. By then, we were drunk and Dr Con had blown all his cash – three hundred and fifty dollars – on Poker Machine Number 5, which he had nicknamed ‘Elizabeth the First’ because in all the time he’d been playing her, she’d never put out. It was difficult for the rest of us to believe that Con was a gynecologist in one of the best hospitals in Sydney – that he’d passed all those exams and that women actually paid him to examine their insides. No wonder he couldn’t get it up any more. 

Probably Con needed a joint more than any of us that night. He never drank grog and getting stoned kept him away from the pokies and prostitutes. Pommy Pete, he had his own problems. While he was stealing and selling-on phones on weekends, he did a lot of speed and would stay up two nights in a row; he had to have at least three bongs on a Sunday night to knock him out for a few hours so he could get up at six and start laying bricks, pouring cement, or pruning roses for rich ladies in Woollahra. Dutch Freddy didn’t smoke pot, but used to score for his mother, who was undergoing chemo for bowel cancer. Without grass, Stamp reckoned he suffered from writer’s block – the words and images just didn’t flow as well. He was dead keen on finishing his novel by May 31 that year so he could enter it into the Vogel. 

None of us had actually read anything that Stamp had written – unless you count a film review of Brokeback Mountain in the Gay Times (three stars – not a bad flick). In private, we suspected that there was no manuscript at all, no book that he was working on that would one day be published, let alone sell. In the pub, Stamp told some great stories about his shitty childhood – how his father murdered his mother, how his sister gave birth to a kid when she was only fourteen – but we never took him seriously, let alone believed him. Unlike the rest of us, he was pretty young – in his mid-20s. And he’d only been drinking at the pub for about a year and so was a relative newcomer to our circle of mates.

The following day, a Monday, after we’d finished our various jobs for the day, we arrived at the pub one by one and waited for Spanky to appear. Pommy Pete looked ratshit: his eyes were bugged and bloodshot and he was so exhausted his hands trembled. He’d only slept an hour the night before and had been cutting blocks of sandstone all day. Dr Con was depressed and chain-smoking Marlboro Lights. Having lost all his cash on Sunday, within twenty-four hours he’d maxed out his Am-Ex card and was touching us all up for a loan. Stamp was in a bad mood and told the doctor to fuck off. He reckoned he’d rewritten the same paragraph all afternoon – fourteen times – and that if Spanky hadn’t disappeared the night before he’d be on to his final chapter by now. 

We all stared glumly at Spanky’s unlit windows. He still wasn’t answering his mobile. 

It’s hard to say how much time passed – maybe three schooners each – when Spanky’s bathroom lights suddenly flickered on. We slammed down our beers and ran across to his apartment. The front door was unlocked, so we charged up the stairs and burst into the bathroom, where we found his flat-mate, Stone, a plump, one-eyed Samoan, sitting on the can, his shorts around his ankles, having a crap. Stone looked up at us and smiled, like having six or seven blokes watching him take a shit was an everyday occurrence, like the bathroom was a theatre and he was the star.

He grinned even wider and we could see his toothless gums. ‘You just missed him,’ he announced. Stone casually ripped off some toilet paper and wiped his arse. ‘He left the back way.’

We asked him where Spanky had gone, and for how bloody long and all that. Stone stood up, pulled his shorts back up, and flushed the can. Grinning again, he cocked his head to one side and said, ‘I think he’s in Bondi,’ as if being in Bondi were some sort of secret code for robbing banks or having a threesome. 

We asked what the fuck Spanky was doing in Bondi. He wasn’t exactly the surfing type. We couldn’t imagine him sipping soy decaf lattes on the promenade or doing deals with wanker film directors. Stone shrugged and piped, ‘He’ll be back tomorrow,’ and began to wash his hands. 

The following day, we all met up at our regular table, but still no Spanky. We began to doubt Stone and his ‘Bondi’ explanation. Spanky never went anywhere far away, not even to buy his supplies. Two doors down from Spanky’s, still within sight of the pub, sat the Darlinghurst Funeral Parlour, a massive, four-story sandstone terrace covered with flowering vines. Two hearses with tinted windows were parked out the front. Over the years, quite a few of our mates had ended up in the parlour: Old Reggie, the pool shark, who, after he’d lost his voice box to cancer, used to smoke cigarettes through an incision in his throat; Flam, a former furniture removalist, who accidentally set his apartment on fire when he was tripping on mescaline; and then there was Spoony – not really one of us, since he lived in Haberfield – who fell off Spanky’s veranda one night when he was trying to rescue an injured bird. 

We were such regular mourners, we used to joke to the funeral director, Mr. Moss, that he should issue each of us with a Frequent D­ie-er Card. Why, he should just excavate a tunnel between the pub and the parlour so that when we all carked it we could be thrown on a trolley and pushed directly into the embalming room. But as we sat there, staring at the parlour, thinking about all our dead mates and the possibility that Spanky could now be one of them, it didn’t seem so funny anymore. 

Dutch Freddy meekly suggested that we score from someone else, but the rest of us immediately shouted him down. Of course, there are all kinds of dealers with various selling styles, but no one could hold a roach to Spanky. First, you’ve got your Stingies: these are the ones who’ll only sell you a single twenty-dollar bag the size of a postage stamp. Next, there’re the Lonelies: ones who live with a cat, who expect you turn up with a bottle of wine and stay for a two-hour chat every time you want to score a fifty. Then you’ve got your Absentees: these dealers are the opposite of the Lonelies and are never, ever home when you’re desperate to score – but they’ll always call you back exactly two days later when, out of frustration, you’ve already bought some from a Stingy. 

Finally, there’re Paranoids: the ones who, when you ring them, insist you speak in a code so cryptic it’d arouse suspicion in any eavesdropper, let alone a cop. On the phone, you’ve got to say something like you want to drop by and ‘pick up some tickets’, and The Paranoid says, ‘How many tickets do you want?’ And you say, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind a hundred tickets, if you’ve got that many left.’ But every Paranoid has his own code: it could be tickets, CDs, gardening equipment – and you can never, ever mix them up. One Paranoid we knew back in the ’90s insisted that everyone refer to his Mullumbimbi heads as newborn kittens. How would you feel, ringing up a guy from a pub, asking, pleading, to know if he had ‘seventy-five newborn kittens?’ If you didn’t say ‘newborn’ he’d hang up on you.

That third afternoon, the mystery of Spanky’s disappearance was partially explained. Stone turned up at the pub and announced, in his toothless Islander accent, that Spanky was still in Bondi, but the reason he’d been out of touch was because someone had stolen his mobile. 

‘Fucking cunts,’ muttered Pommy Pete, even though it was a phone that Pete himself had stolen. 

He reached into his backpack, rooted around, and pulled out a slim-line black Vodaphone, no bigger than the palm of his hand. They’d only been on the market for a couple of weeks and we were impressed by the fact that he’d got his hands on one so quickly. With a fag hanging from his mouth, he thumbed several buttons in quick succession – we heard the beeps and buzzes – and then passed the phone over to Stone, smoke streaming from his nostrils.

‘Make sure he gets it,’ said Pete.

‘Soon,’ added Stamp.

‘And anyway,’ added Dr Con, ‘what the fuck is he doing in Bondi?’

Stone grinned and we could see his gums lined with bluish veins. ‘I think it’s a girl,’ he said. ‘Remember Freya?’

We groaned and gazed into our beers. Sure, we remembered Freya. She’d hung around Spanky’s for weeks the year before, playing poker and cock-teasing us all, even though she had a boyfriend. She’d turned up at Spanky’s nearly every night, wearing tight leather pants, even though her arse was the size of Tasmania. She never brought her boyfriend around – some sound technician that none of us had ever met – but she’d always have her dog, Darwin, on a leash, a prize-winning Great Dane that she’d won custody of when her marriage collapsed. Spanky had met her late one night at The Silke Purse, a bar in the Cross that she managed on weekends. 

Freya would play Spanky like a video game, flirting all night, letting him squeeze her tits – just so he’d score some high grade coke from another dealer and sit up all night, chopping up rocks and passing her lines. OK, she was sort-of attractive, in a chubby, slutty, Britney Spears kind of way – bleached hair, three nose rings, lots of cleavage with no bra – but after we’d witnessed the way she’d use Spanky, week in and week out, and the amount of money he’d spend on her without her ever coming across or even giving him a hand job, we didn’t think she was that sexy any more. 

What’s worse, back then, it was obvious that Spanky was actually falling for her. He began buying her necklaces and bunches of flowers and downloading schmaltzy country music for her. They started going to see movies together, chick-flick crap like Cold Mountain and A Good Year. For a while, he was even walking her beloved dog every day so she could sleep in until mid-afternoon. 

But that all changed when, in Waverley Cemetery, under Spanky’s care, Darwin got into a fight with a Rottweiler and was badly mauled. You have to understand that Freya loved that dog even more than she loved herself and, after Spanky dragged Darwin home, and Freya clapped eyes on Darwin’s guts ripped open and hanging out, she tried to attack our dealer with a broken beer bottle. Fortunately, Spanky escaped out the back door with only a gash on his chin that made him look like he’d cut himself shaving. Freya was never heard of again after that – never came to the pub, never dropped by to sponge off Spanky – and we were relieved of course. She had a reputation for being violent, even when it didn’t involve an accident with her dog. It was rumoured that her ex-husband had taken out an AVO against her and fled to Far North Queensland. 

Well, since the year before, things had obviously changed between Freya and Spanky, and our dealer had somehow found a way to make amends over the injured dog. But for us, it wasn’t good news. Spanky had been gone three days. He’d lost his mobile. Nobody knew for sure when he’d come home. We missed him dearly. We wanted our dealer back. 

Trust Doctor Con to come up with such a perverse idea. At first we thought he was just kidding around, like he always did at in­appropriate moments, like when he invited Dutch Freddy’s mother to a screening of a documentary about Deep Throat (he’d convinced her it was a medical drama). 

Con’s theory was that Spanky was now so cunt-struck by Freya that we wouldn’t be able to convince him with words alone that she was a grifter and that he was better off without her. He’d have to see it for himself, said Con. He’d have to have a demonstration. 

At first, we all agreed it was a pretty good solution but not one of us wanted to be the guy responsible for its consequences. We loved Spanky and had known him for years, and no one wanted to risk getting into his bad books. Pommy Pete wasn’t posh enough for a chick who wore leather pants and owned a Great Dane, and that picking him for the job would simply be a waste of time – or so he said. Stamp reckoned he couldn’t afford a night out with his own shadow, let alone a blonde chick from Bondi. Dutch Freddy, when he was nervous, suffered from asthma attacks, and we knew he wouldn’t be up to the task. We doubted she’d go for Stone, either, with his lack of teeth and missing eye. Weasel Diesel was now up north and Mitch, Spanky’s brother, was happily married with four adopted kids from Indonesia. It had to be the Doctor or nobody, we decided. Besides, he was the only professional man amongst us and, as Con often reminded us, the fact that he was a gynecologist was, for a lot of women, a massive turn-on. 

The first thing we had to do was to make sure Spanky got hold of his new stolen mobile so we could keep in contact with him. We asked Stone to press the ‘last call’ button on his phone – and bang, an unfamiliar number came up, which we knew would have been from the mobile Spanky had borrowed to call Stone in the first place.

It rang several times – we all crowded around the phone – and finally a woman answered. It was Freya in her high Kiwi twang. We could hear the dog barking in the background. She seemed irritated and told Stone that Spanky was in the shower. He explained that Pete had another mobile to give to Spanky – a slim line Vodaphone – and that he could drop it around to her place within half an hour.

After a long pause, she sighed and we heard a door close. ‘Put it in a cab,’ she said, ‘15 Consett Avenue.’ Then, before Stone had a chance to agree or say goodbye, she hung up.

We were a bit offended that she didn’t want any of us dropping over to her place uninvited and her lack of manners made us even more determined to break up her affair with Spanky. We did as we were told, and handed the new phone to a cab driver who’d stopped at the lights outside the pub, gave him a twenty, and Freya’s address. 

Half an hour later, Pommy Pete rang the new number. Spanky didn’t answer, but at least he’d already recorded a greeting for his messagebank. We each left drunken rambles about how much we missed him and then ordered another round. 

The good news was that, apart from being back in touch with Spanky, we now had Freya’s phone number and home address and we could begin to break them up. 

We waited two nights, until Friday, when Con arrived at the club Freya managed in the Cross, wearing a new pinstripe shirt, and with half a gram of coke concealed in its front pocket. He bought a bottle of mineral water and sat in a corner, biding his time. He smoked several cigarettes in a row. The bar was crowded and candlelit, and he found it hard to see the faces of any women more than a few metres away from where he was sitting. At around midnight, when he was about to leave, a tanned blonde woman, wearing a black corset and skirt, emerged from the back office, walked behind the bar, and poured herself a glass of white wine. 

At first, it was hard for Con to believe this was Freya – the same Freya that he’d known from Spanky’s a year earlier. For a start, she’d lost a lot of weight – maybe it was just the corset – but Con was sure she was now at least fifteen kilos lighter and had a waist so tiny he was already imagining his two hands encircling it. Her hair was now twice as long and there was much more of it cascading down her back in shiny, careless ringlets. Maybe she’d had some work done, some liposuction or hair extensions or whatever it is that women do to make themselves look ten years younger. The only thing Con knew for sure was that accomp­lishing his mission was going to be harder than he’d first imagined. 

All of a sudden, his new shirt seemed at once prissy and old-fashioned, something his colleagues would wear to a cervical cancer fundraiser or an overseas conference on vaginal thrush. Glancing in a mirror behind the bar, he saw that his new haircut emphasized his salt over his pepper and that the barber had left him with what looked like 1970s sideburns. 

When Freya finally walked past his table, towards the toilets, not only did she not recognise him from the year before, she didn’t so much as give the Doctor a second glance. He raised his hand; he opened his mouth to say something to her, but to his surprise nothing came out – he couldn’t think of anything – and the last he saw of her was her swaying arse disappearing behind the Ladies Room door. 

He told us this in the pub the following afternoon and we cursed him for being such a wuss. Besides, none of us could imagine the Freya we knew transforming herself into a babe so intimidating that she could render our Doctor speechless – all except Stamp, of course, because he had yet to meet her. A few of us suspected that Con had concocted the whole story because she’d knocked him back and he was trying to save face. A more likely scenario was that he’d snorted all the coke that had been earmarked to help him in his seduction before he’d even arrived at the bar.

Whatever the truth, it was clear that Con couldn’t be relied upon to carry out the task, and we began arguing over who should be our next candidate. After two more rounds Pommy Pete won the majority of our votes, though we all agreed he needed a bit of sprucing up, a shave, clean fingernails, and Dr Con’s leather jacket. But this time we wouldn’t take any chances. The next night, a Saturday, we were all going to turn up individually at The Silke Purse before Pete arrived, and sit in different parts of the place, so we could spy on the supposedly new Freya for ourselves and check out the success of our scheme. 

By around ten o’clock, we were seated throughout the club, in shadowy corners where she wouldn’t recognise us: Dutch Freddy, Weasel Diesel, Aussie Freddy, even Dr Con. Stamp didn’t need to bother with hiding, since he’d never met Freya before: he just bowled straight up to the bar, ordered a beer, and sat down with his notebook, which he was always scribbling in. 

The club was all burning tea lights and brown leather banquettes, with hanging plants and a mosaic feature wall of two winged angels, or maybe they were supposed to be goddesses, who the fuck knows? It certainly wasn’t our kind of place. And the music was terrible, Michael fucking Bublé doing a lousy imitation of Frank Sinatra. The place was slowly filling up with girls in shiny miniskirts and halter necks, gabbing on their mobiles, reapplying their lipstick, and taking photos of one another. We searched the club for a glimpse of Freya – or a woman fitting Con’s recent description of her – but as far as we could see, she either hadn’t arrived or was holed up in the back office. 

Finally, Pommy Pete rocked up in Con’s leather jacket, clean-shaven and looking pink and scrubbed. From a distance, to us, he looked pretty suave. His washed ash-blond hair shone in the candlelight and his hazel eyes seemed wider and more alert than usual, enhanced no doubt, by his weekend speed binge. He was wearing a pair of black cowboy boots that we’d never seen before – and we’d known Pommy Pete for years. 

He sat at a table near the bar and, when the waitress came up to him – God bless the Pommy bastard – he ordered a mojito, just the kind of wanker cocktail a guy in that club would drink. His eyes c­asually roamed over the girls, his thumb and index finger gripping the stem of the glass, as if he owned the joint or at least was a relative of the guy who did. Let’s just say he looked the part. 

Stamp was still scribbling away at the bar. His black hair fell over his eyes as he wrote. The head on his beer had gone flat because, in half an hour, he’d barely taken a sip. To us he looked like some nerdy uni student, in his frayed jeans and white t-shirt that had gone slightly pink in the wash.

The music was cranked up. Two girls near the toilets began grinding against one another. A third slipped over and, down on the floor, deliberately flashed her fanny to anyone who cared to perv, which was almost everyone – even the chicks.

Then a new girl walked into the club, wearing a low cut red dress and killer stilettos. She was tall and slim and had masses of blonde hair held back from her face with clips that glittered so much it looked as if tiny stars were circling her head. She sashayed across the room as if she were a model on a catwalk. She walked behind the bar and poured herself a drink. We glanced at each other, from various parts of the club, with wide-eyed shock, all of us except Stamp of course. And then all eyes were on Dr Con, especially Pommy Pete’s. Con just grimaced and nodded, clarifying to the rest of us that, yes, the babe in the red dress was indeed the new Freya and that Pete, despite his leather jacket and cowboy boots, would have his work cut out for him.

We watched her as she picked up a hand towel and wiped down the bar, sponging gently around Stamp’s open notebook. Stamp put down his pen and took a sip of his beer. Freya glanced at the book and asked what he was writing, and he told her the truth, that he was writing a novel based on his shitty childhood. Freya smiled and leaned over the pages, trying to read Stamp’s small, crablike handwriting. In profile, Stamp looked like he was actually blushing at the sight of her cleavage hovering over the beginning of his fifth chapter. 

Of course, the rest of us only learned the details of their conversations later on, back at the pub, when Stamp told us everything. She asked him if he’d ever published anything, and he was he so flattered by her attention he couldn’t help himself. He grinned and nodded and said yes, he’d already published four novels. 

Freya smiled and tilted her head and asked him what his name was, maybe she’d read one of his books. 

And – we have to give him this, he was quick on his feet – Stamp replied that he wrote under a pseudonym, under the first name that managed to come into his head: ‘Peter Carey’.

Freya thought for a moment and shook her head, and said she hadn’t really been to the library for years, but she’d always loved books, especially romances. 

‘Is your book a love story?’ she asked, fingering her hair. 

Stamp sipped at his flat beer and nodded. ‘All my books are love stories,’ he replied, ‘in one way or another.’ 

Freya poured him a fresh beer and, when Stamp reached for his wallet, she waved his offer away. ‘Who do you write your books for?’ she asked. 

Stamp hadn’t anticipated this question. He picked up his pen and fiddled with it. ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked. ‘Like who buys my books? Who’s my audience?’ 

She shook her head. ‘No, like – you know – in the front, in the front of the book, before it starts, the writer says stuff like –’

‘You mean a dedication?’ asked Stamp. 

She smiled and rearranged her bra. ‘Yeah!’

Stamp gulped at his fresh beer. He’d been thinking about d­edicating the novel he was writing (if it was ever published) to his two sisters, or to the memory of his mother, but he knew instinctively that these ideas might not impress the woman before him.

‘My fiancée…’ Mark replied, looking down at his open palms. When he glanced up he noticed Freya flushing with disappointment. He tried to look sad and then softly added, ‘…before she died, that is.’

Well, that answer was the olive dropped into the dry martini. Freya rested her hand on top of his and squeezed it gently. Her eyes grew moist. She told him that she’d been married briefly, but it hadn’t worked out. Her husband had been an artist, and he had painted her often – in the nude. And then, before Stamp even had a chance to imagine her posing in the nude or to respond to her remark, she asked him if he’d like to have a drink or maybe a meal the following night. There was a new place in Kellett Street she wanted to check out.

Pete had finished his mojito and was looking at his watch, not knowing that Freya was keen on Stamp and that the two of them had just arranged to meet for dinner. He walked over to the bar and said, ‘Hi, remember me?’

She looked at him and frowned.

‘Pete,’ he added. ‘From Spanky’s.’

She nodded shortly and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

‘Geez, you’re looking hot,’ said Pete, striving to be charming. ‘Your hair looks different.’

She smiled politely. ‘Thanks for the new phone,’ she said. ‘Spanky really loves it.’

Pete gave her a regal ‘it was nothing’ kind of wave and ordered a drink – another mojito – and, as she was chopping up the mint or whatever the ferny stuff is that they shove into those cocktails, he asked her casually if she’d like to go drinking with him on her next night off. Scowling, she raised the knife and pointed it directly at his chest. ‘I’d rather eat ear wax and screw small animals.’ 

 Who would have thought she would have gone for ol’ Stampy? A shy scribbler in a pink t-shirt? It was obviously all the lovey-dovey-I-devote-this-book-to-my-beautiful-girlfriend stuff that she found so appealing.

Anyway, we were relieved that our operation had gone according to plan, though it now featured Stamp instead of the doctor or Pommy Pete. 

Freya had arranged to meet him the following night, at a new Tapas Bar called Tiny’s. We didn’t expect any immediate results, no abrupt seductions or romantic declarations – well, not on their first date, anyway. But if Stamp could just keep his wounded genius routine up for long enough we figured we’d maybe have our dealer back by the end of the week. Each of us threw in ten bucks to help him pay for the meals and wine. 

All through that week, we still hadn’t seen Spanky. According to Stone, he’d slipped back home from Bondi once, to change his clothes and pick up his mail, but it had been during the day when we’d all been at work. We’d rung him a couple of times on his new mobile and asked him when he was coming home, but he remained evasive and aloof, as if Bondi was a drug he’d become addicted to and was in denial about. 

On Sunday night, most of us were back in the pub, all except Stamp of course. On his way to Tiny’s, he dropped into see us and, we have to give him this, he scrubbed up pretty well. His Aunt Candy had cut his hair for him and he was wearing a new, white t-shirt that still had horizontal fold marks. He seemed boyish and slightly embarrassed, but not unhappy, and after he left for his date, we wondered if Stamp might actually be falling for Freya and taking his mission a little too seriously. 

We also wondered what Spanky was up to in Bondi, and what excuse Freya had used so she could go out and cheat on him. Doctor Con pulled out his mobile and punched in Spank’s new number, but it just rang and rang and finally transferred to the message bank.

Surely he couldn’t have lost this second phone so quickly – maybe it, too, had been pinched. We worried about him being unavailable to his customers, and for so long, and what this would do to his once-thriving business. It had taken him years to build it up to the point where he could rent a $500 a week apartment with all the mod cons – computer, plasma screen, a Sony sound system that piped music into every room. Sure, we wanted our dealer back, but we were mostly hatching the plan for his own sake, for the sake of his financial future. As we said before, being a successful dealer is dependent upon being available – or, at the very least, contactable. 

But not half an hour passed before Dr Con’s mobile chimed its corny melody and Spanky himself was on the line, frantic and begging us to come straight over to Freya’s. ‘It’s an emergency,’ he added. ‘I’m in fucking deep shit.’

In the cab over to Bondi, we felt relieved and even a little chuffed that Spanky still needed us, his mates. We speculated that maybe Freya had already broken it off with him before she’d gone out on her date with Stamp and, as a response, he’d OD’d on something and had to have us – especially the doctor – to help him out. 

Freya lived in a ground-floor garden apartment and to get to the entrance you had to walk in single file down a paved passage to the yard. The door was open and we walked in, expecting to see Spanky frothing at the mouth or comatose on the floor. 

Instead, we found him sitting hunched on the couch, dragging on a cigarette, still wearing his beloved denim jacket. He seemed perfectly sober – clear eyes, washed hair. He’d even shaved recently. He swigged on a can of VB, crushed it into an hourglass and tossed it into the recycling bin. 

‘Thank fucking Christ,’ he said, and burped. 

The dog, Darwin, was asleep on the other couch, using one of Spanky’s runners as a pillow. His fur was light brown with white patches and he was so big he was stretched across three cushions, his tail hanging over one of the armrests. 

Spanky jumped to his feet and went into the kitchen, returning with a six-pack. Freya’s flat, we noticed, was very girly: lavender walls, a framed poster of Desiderata, a feathered dream catcher hanging from the ceiling fan. 

‘So what the fuck’s up?’ asked Con, as the rest of us cracked open the cans. 

Spanky groaned and sat down again. ‘She’s gunna fuckin’ kill me.’

Right then, we heard a dull beeping noise, as if from another room, or maybe even from underwater. The dog stirred for a moment and turned over on his back. The muted ringing continued. We noticed Darwin’s belly twitching. 

Spanky sighed. ‘The dog ate my mobile.’

We all glanced at each other and then at the dog’s vibrating tummy. 

‘How the fuck am I gunna get it out before she gets home?’

The ringing finally stopped and the dog turned on to his other side, nuzzling the inside of the shoe. 

Well, this was a turn of events none of us had anticipated and we each sat down and solemnly sipped our beers. Dutch Freddy suggested calling a vet but, as Spanky pointed out, it was now almost nine o’clock on a Sunday night and no surgeries would be open.

Dr Con lit a Marlboro and asked what time Freya was due back. Spanky just shrugged and shook his head. ‘She’s out with her brother. It could be any time.’

Half-smiling, Pommy Pete said, ‘I didn’t know Freya had a brother.’

‘I dunno,’ said Spanky. ‘I think it’s her half-brother. From Alice Springs.’ 

The rest of us traded knowing looks. Spanky was still staring at the sleeping dog. 

‘Well, the first thing we should try,’ said Dr Con, ‘is to see if Darwin can expel the mobile naturally.’

‘Like shitting it out?’ asked Freddy.

‘That’ll take ages!’ said Spanky.

‘Not with a little help.’ Con dragged on his cigarette and blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

We dispatched Pommy Pete to the pharmacy on Campbell Parade and he returned with a bottle of Agarol. By this time, Darwin was awake, chewing on a corner of the carpet, while every few minutes, the dull, rhythmic beeping echoed through his torso – so many of Spanky’s customers still desperate to get in contact with him.

 Con measured out two tablespoonfuls of Agarol and mashed them into a bowl of raw mincemeat.

‘Y’sure that’s enough?’ asked Spanky. 

Con frowned and thought for a moment, then added an extra spoonful.

He put the bowl down on the kitchen floor and called the dog. At first, Darwin sniffed around the bowl suspiciously, his long tail wagging slowly, as if maybe we were going to poison him.

‘Fucking mutt can eat a mobile,’ muttered Con, ‘but not his own fucking dinner.’ Con pushed Darwin’s head closer to the bowl but the dog just baulked and ran back into the lounge room.

‘How long ago did he swallow it?’ asked Con.

Spanky pursed his lips and stared at an empty bottle of Bundy on the sink. ‘I dunno. Arhh…’ he raked his fingers through his hair ‘…I guess I took my last call at around seven o’clock or so, just after Freya went out.’

We walked into the living room and gazed at the dog, which was back on the couch, chewing on the laces of Spanky’s shoes. Con slipped his hand beneath Darwin’s belly and felt around, trying to find the exact location of the phone in the dog’s body. 

‘Upper intestine,’ was the doctor’s diagnosis. ‘Could take days to shit out.’

Spanky groaned and collapsed on the opposite couch, burying his face in his hands.

‘But it was an accident,’ said Dutch Freddy. ‘Surely she can’t blame you for that.’

‘The Rottweiler was an accident, too,’ said Spanky, ‘And she tried to glass my eye out.’

We watched with surprise as Spanky began a kind of sniveling, as if he were trying to stop himself from bawling. 

‘Next month I was going to fly her over to New Zealand. For a holiday. She was going to meet my parents.’

We all glanced at each other, taking in the fact that Spanky was obviously, madly in love with Freya – or thought he was – and we’d been spending the last two weeks making every effort to split them up. What kinds of mates do that to one another, we thought. What had Spanky ever done to us? We realised, without even discussing it, that we were all a bunch of selfish cunts and that we should now try to make it up to him. It was too late to call off the date with Stamp but not too late to deal with the mobile.

‘Y’know,’ suggested Pommy Pete, ‘if we could somehow manage to turn the phone off, she wouldn’t even know that Darwin’d swallowed it.’

The rest of us hadn’t thought of that and so we surrounded the dog and turned him on his side. In that position, we could see Darwin’s scars from the Rottweiler attack the year before, a raised pink seam zigzagging between his black nipples and over his ribs. Dr Con pointed to the slight lump in Darwin’s chest. He pressed it, massaged around it, even did a little kind of acupuncture pressure pointing against the fur, but the phone began ringing again and Darwin yawned deeply, exhaling a puff of stale meat breath into our faces. Dr Con took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘If we could get him to my surgery,’ he said, ‘I could have the phone out in fifteen minutes.’

Spanky frowned. ‘You’re a fucking gynecologist, not a vet.’

Con shrugged. ‘I’ve done caesareans before,’ he said. ‘I even performed an emergency in the middle of the bush, when I was still doing my residency.’

Spanky cracked another beer and stared at the dog. ‘If she found out she’d kill me.’

‘Well, if you don’t get it out,’ said Pommy Pete, ‘she’ll kill you anyway. You said so yourself.’ 

‘It’ll leave a scar. She’ll twig immediately.’

Con pursed his lips and shook his head. He fingered the pink ridge rising out of Darwin’s belly. ‘That vet was a butcher compared to me. I’ve been told my needlework is almost a work of art. Invisible stitching. Self-dissolving. She won’t even notice it.’ 

Spanky sighed and shook his head. ‘How we gunna get him there?’

Dr Con owned a company Commodore but it was currently in the garage. Pommy Pete had a ute but it was back in Darlinghurst – and anyway, he was too pissed to drive. We though about maybe having Con catch a cab back to where it was parked, picking it up, driving to Bondi to collect the dog, and then transplanting it to his surgery at St. Vincent’s. But then we’d have to get the dog back to Freya’s before she arrived home from her date with Stamp. Dutch Freddy wondered if we could get Darwin into a cab, but the rest of us decided this would be highly unlikely, even with a generous tip. 

We decided that if Con could perform an emergency caesarian in the bush, he could certainly perform a neat incision in Darwin’s belly right there in Freya’s living room, given the correct surgical instruments and anesthesia. 

We shoved him into a cab on Hall Street. He reckoned he could be back within half an hour, with everything that he needed. 

At this point, it would have been a good idea to call Stamp so we could ask him to keep Freya out with him as long as possible in the coming hours, but he didn’t own a phone. He was too cheap or broke or Bohemian for a mobile and was only contactable via his Aunty Candy’s landline. When she wasn’t working the wall around East Sydney Gaol, Candy would take his messages and write them on the back of his manuscript pages. We decided not to bother ringing her.

In the meantime, Pommy Pete slipped Spanky yet another stolen and reprogrammed mobile – well, actually it was a Blackberry PDA – nowhere near as small as the phone Darwin had swallowed and therefore not as dangerous. Spanky was impressed. It provided a stopwatch, MPEG player, Internet access and digital movie options. Spanky sat down and immediately started playing with it, while Pete wrote the phone number for the new Blackberry on a whiteboard hanging beside the fridge. Spanky recorded a new voicemail message, surfed the net for a few minutes, set up a hotmail account, then he rang several people, including his brother, Mitch, his roommate, Stone, and his own big-time pot dealer in Lismore, all to let them know his new number. When he slipped the Blackberry into the inside pocket of his denim jacket, it was the first time all night that we’d seen him smile. 

Con took longer than half an hour to get back to Freya’s because a fire alarm had gone off at the hospital and part of the building had needed to be evacuated. While the team of firemen checked each floor, he’d had to wait outside on the footpath for over twenty minutes, along with a bunch of humidicribs and stretchers, screaming pregnant women, and patients wheeling around IVs hooked up to their arms and flashing their bum cracks through the gaps in their gowns.

By the time he got back it was after ten o’clock and the dog was drooling and rolling around on the carpet, trying to scratch himself or perhaps even to dislodge the object he’d swallowed. 

Thank Christ Con didn’t drink alcohol, because the rest of us were too far gone to handle something as sharp as a scalpel. We cleared the laminex table and wiped it down with soap and hot water. Con squeezed out some liquid from a tube and washed his hands, then laid out all his instruments on a white towel on the sink. 

He gravely pulled on one latex glove, unrolling it like he was Dr fucking Kildare or something, while the dog began whining and pawing at the back door.

‘Can you fuckin’ hurry up?’ asked Spanky, glancing at his watch.

‘Just hold him still,’ said Con, pulling on the second glove.

‘Let’s get him up on the table first,’ suggested Dutch Freddy, ‘before we put him down.’

‘We’re not putting him down,’ objected Con, ‘it’s a general anesthetic.’

‘How long will that last?’ asked Spanky, ‘Can’t you use a local?’ 

Con reminded Spanky that he’d spent eight years at medical school and that he knew what he was doing. The general would probably put the dog out for about an hour or so, depending on his weight, and whether or not he was a regular user of narcotic drugs. Spanky didn’t think that was funny and told the doctor to get a move on. For some reason Con thought that his sarcastic humour was amusing, and kept on riling Spanky, asking what Darwin’s blood type was, and if the dog had any private health insurance. Pommy Pete cracked another beer and Dutch Freddy began reading a recipe stuck to the refrigerator door.

It was almost ten thirty by the time we cornered Darwin in the bathroom and held him still. He whined a little and his tail wagged nervously. Con kneeled beside him, patted him a few times, and then plunged the needle into his left flank.

The dog flinched and let out a whimper that sounded like a squeaky hinge. 

We led him back into the kitchen. He was already heavy on his feet and panting like a woman about to give birth. We tried to coax him up onto the laminex table, but he was too drowsy and it took all four of us busting our guts to lift him up onto it. 

When we laid him on his back, he was so limp we thought he might have passed away. His eyes were closed and his legs were splayed open, as if he’d already surrendered to whatever it was we were going to do to him. Con assured us that the dog’s heart was still beating and began prodding his belly, trying to find the current location of the mobile. He eventually discovered a hard, corner-shaped ridge sticking out just below his right ribcage. He rubbed some sterilising cream onto the area and shaved away a small rectangle of fur. For someone who wasn’t a vet, he sure looked like he knew what he was doing.

Con finally picked up the scalpel and held it to the light. We all gathered around the table, watching the way the blade glittered beneath the electric globe. 

Dutch Freddy cleared his throat. ‘You sure you know what you’re fucking doing?’ 

Con smiled crookedly and murmured, ‘Con the Ripper’.  He was just about to lower the scalpel and make the first incision when we heard what sounded like someone frantically hopping up the side passage. The door suddenly slammed open and, to our horror, there was Freya, her hair all wild and messy, her lipstick smudged, wearing only one red stiletto; she was holding the other one, which had a broken heel. She took in the sight of us crowded around the table, the scalpel in Con’s hand. And then we saw Stamp hovering behind her, bleeding from his left temple. He was wide-eyed and waving at us like a drowning man.

‘What the fuck?’ she yelled.

‘Freya – ’ pleaded Spanky. 

Con put the scalpel down and said, ‘It’s not what you think…’

And, well, what happened next we really couldn’t have predicted or prevented because Freya didn’t give us a chance to explain what we were trying to do. 

‘Don’t you see?’ she barked at Spanky. ‘These arseholes are trying to split us up!’ 

First, she hurled her broken shoe at Con. It hit him hard on the bridge of his nose; he dropped the scalpel on the table and, howling with pain, fell against the fridge. Stamp tried to restrain her from behind but she ducked to the left, swiped up half a bottle of beer and smashed it against his head. The force of the blow propelled him backwards. He hit the wall with a thud and slid down to the floor. Dutch Freddy and Spanky were both cowering behind the door. Pommy Pete was already on the phone, trying to call the cops.

‘And you – ’ she swiped up the scalpel, pointing it at Pete. ‘You and your fucking mobiles!’

She edged toward Pete and began slashing at the air, as if she was trying to perfect her aim. Pete raised one shaky hand and inched sideways towards the door. For a moment she frowned and glanced around the room, as if she didn’t quite recognise her own apartment. We all thought then that she’d come to her senses and was calming down, that everything was going to be all right, when Pete couldn’t stop himself from saying, ‘Don’t worry, your dog’s going to be fine.’

She glanced at Darwin lying unconscious on the table, as if she hadn’t noticed him earlier and, before anyone could stop her, she let out a strangled cry and lunged towards Pete. At the same time, Spanky yelled, ‘No – ’ and leapt between them, and we watched with horror as the scalpel sliced into Spanky’s neck as quickly as a knife through a sponge cake. 

He gurgled for a moment, dropped to his knees – like he was praying or maybe even asking for forgiveness. Then he fell forward against Freya’s legs and slumped to the floor. The kitchen was splattered with blood and looked like an abattoir. The dog was still asleep on the table. Freya stood completely still, gazing at the scalpel in her hand, like it was a shiny sporting trophy she hadn’t expected to win.

Of course, none of this would’ve happened if Stamp hadn’t fucked up and blown our plan at the last minute.

Apparently, his date with Freya had been a breeze for the first few hours. At Tiny’s, they shared plates of tapas, drank a few jugs of sangria; Freya told him about her broken marriage, her childhood in New Zealand, and her alcoholic father, who’d get so drunk she used to have hold his cock for him whenever he needed to piss. The more she talked, the more Stamp felt sorry for her, and the more he drank, the more attractive she seemed – not just her looks, but her personality, too. There was something about Freya that was both beautiful and damaged, a quality that reminded him of his long-dead mother. She’d been the first person he’d met in Sydney who’d taken an interest in his writing, asking him about the various characters he’d invented and when his next novel was coming out. By the end of the dinner they were holding hands.

Well, that would have been fine if it had stopped right there. But no, after dinner, Freya suggested they go somewhere else for a drink, and Stamp couldn’t resist her invitation. They strolled arm-in-arm up to Oxford Street, looking for a new cocktail bar called ‘Revel Without a Pause’. 

When they found themselves walking past Ariel Bookstore, which was still open, Freya announced she needed a pee and walked inside. Stamp thought it was strange that a bookstore would have a public toilet but the night was going so well, he thought nothing more of it. He waited out on the street, where he rolled a cigarette, and watched people spilling out of the Verona cinema. He was leaning against the display window, finishing the last of his smoke, when she strode out the door, carrying a package. As she approached him, she ripped the package open and handed him a hardback book. Stamp read the title, The True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey. Freya’s nostrils flared and she was glaring like a demon. He hoped desperately that this particular edition of the book didn’t contain an author photo. As he flipped open the back cover, she pulled off her stiletto and whacked the heel against his head. He dropped the book and reeled against the display window. She threw the shoe on the footpath and hailed a passing taxi. He called out to her, snatched up her shoe, and pleaded that he could explain everything.

She opened the cab door and told him to piss off. They tussled for a moment and she snatched her shoe back. The driver complained and was about to drive off, so Stamp shoved her into the back seat and jumped in beside her.

On the way back to her place, he betrayed us and told her the whole damn story: why Con and Pete had been stalking her at The Silke Purse, Pete’s insistence on keeping Spanky furnished with mobiles, and even his own lie about being the author Peter Carey. But that had all changed now, he tried to assure her. His mates were sick in the head and he regretted ever getting involved with the whole stupid idea. Since getting to know her, he really, truly liked her – she was unique, charming, beautiful – and he hoped that they could keep seeing one another when all this had blown over. 

The only time they saw one another again was five days later, at Spanky’s funeral. It was held at our local, the Darlinghurst Funeral Parlour, just across from the pub, and two doors down from where Spanky had once lived. Even though she’d been charged with involuntary manslaughter, Freya was released from remand in the company of two cops to attend the afternoon service. We wouldn’t have recognised her if it hadn’t been for the police escorts and handcuffs. Without any make-up, her complexion was as dry and mottled as cooked pastry. Her eyes were red and her hair was plaited into two crooked braids. She was wearing a baggy orange jumpsuit that made her look fat. As she took her place in the back row, her head was bowed, like she didn’t want anyone to recognise her, or perhaps because she didn’t want to make eye contact with any of us. 

Spanky’s brother, Mitch, had made all the funeral arrangements. His parents and sister flew over from Wellington. The candlelit parlour, packed with over two hundred of Spanky’s friends and customers, was filled with fresh white lilies and Spanky’s favourite sandalwood incense that would always dull the scent of burning pot in his flat. Even Darwin, the dog, was there in the front row, having recovered from the anesthetic and the swallowed mobile. Soon after he’d regained consciousness the following day, he’d shat the mobile out, and was now being cared for by Freya’s next-door neighbour. 

As we filed up the aisle to view his body, Spanky’s favourite song, ‘Highway to Hell’ was piping through the speakers. Spanky was in no way religious, and so Mitch had insisted that there be no prayers or hymns, just his brother’s favourite music, a eulogy, and maybe a few funny stories to lighten the mood. 

When we crowded around the open coffin, we all gasped at Spanky’s appearance: the embalming fluid had plumped out all the lines in his face and he looked so serene he seemed ten years younger. His blond hair was combed and groomed into a pompadour, making him look a little like James Dean. The undertaker, Mr. Moss, had sewn up the fatal gash in his neck and you could barely detect the wound beneath the open collar of his white shirt. Over it, Mitch had made sure he was wearing his beloved Bon Scott denim jacket, neatly buttoned up to the chest. 

We grew teary as we gazed at him. We bowed over the coffin, but not one of us was praying. Dutch Freddy placed a crucifix beneath Spanky’s right hand, Dr Con chucked in a packet of Marlboros. Pommy Pete slipped a medallion of the Virgin Mary into the top pocket of the denim jacket. Weasel Diesel, Stone, and Mitch were sitting next to one another in the front row, resting their arms on their knees, looking like a morose version of the three wise monkeys. 

Stamp was sitting near the back by himself, not far from Freya and the cops. Since the night of Spanky’s death, after he’d explained to us how he’d fallen for Freya, how he’d told her the truth and had screwed up our plans to get our dealer back, everyone refused to talk to him. As far as we were concerned, he was responsible for Spanky’s stabbing, and not one of us considered him to be a mate anymore. 

After the viewing, we took our seats and the music suddenly stopped. Mr. Moss, dressed in a threadbare black suit and tie, asked the crowd to turn off their mobile phones. Then he and Mitch lifted the casket lid from the floor. They placed it on top of the coffin and began turning the screws to fasten it down. It was almost impossible to imagine that Spanky would remain inside that box forever, that we would never see or be able to score from him again. 

After the service, the six of us—Con, Pete, Freddy, Mitch, Weasel Diesel, and Stone—assembled around the coffin. Mr. Moss counted to three and we all bent down and tried to haul it up onto our shoulders. For someone who usually only ate one meal a day, Spanky was surprisingly heavy. Dutch Freddy is much shorter than the rest of us and we lurched to the left, almost dropping the casket and crushing him. Once we’d righted the balance, Mr. Moss counted to three again and we began walking in tandem, carrying the coffin down the aisle, towards the front door. Even though Mitch had arranged for ‘Highway to Hell’ to be played a second time at the end of the service, the only sound coming through the speakers was a faint, rustling wind, like a radio between stations. We could hear people sobbing, sniffing, and fanning themselves with the Order of Service pamphlet. We were just approaching Freya, who still had her head bowed, her face buried in her cuffed hands, when a strange, distant beeping suddenly sounded.

The crowd began shifting and murmuring. Women rifled in their handbags and men patted their trouser pockets. The beeping seemed to grow louder and more insistent. We paused and looked about, frowning and shaking our heads.

It was only when Pommy Pete muttered, ‘Oh, no…’ that we’d realised what had happened. The ringing was coming from Spanky’s new Blackberry, from inside the bloody coffin. 

Even in death, the poor bugger couldn’t rest in peace. In fact, he seemed to be wanted, and needed, and loved more than ever. The beeping kept up as we carried him out the door, down the steps, and slid him into the back of the hearse. As he was driven down the road, towards the Eastern Suburbs Crematorium, we could still hear the phone ringing, like a faint doorbell.