The stark fluorescent lights in the King’s Cross 7-11 strip the colour off the faces inside. The doorbell sounds continuously with a sharp metallic ‘ding’ as people stream in and out. Two o’clock on a Sunday morning. Outside it’s lurid and vile. In this early pre-dawn time, Darlinghurst Road is a mad bustle of mad people drinking, drugging, kissing, dancing, eating, stumbling, walking, shouting, singing, crying, loving, hating. Rich, poor, young, old, gays, straights, bisexuals, homeless, mansion-dwellers, some begging for money, others throwing their money, many looking for love, a few selling their bodies for cash—a bubble, a microcosm all of its own.
Sahara waits in line, jangling her handful of coins, desperate for a nicotine fix. At the counter she grips her box of Marlboro Lights like a junkie. She pushes her way out of the packed store and crosses the street, straight for Hugo’s. She’s just finished her shift and she’s desperate to let loose in the crowd. The bouncer waves her through past the long queue that winds down the street, she smiles smugly. Working hard in a bar has few benefits, but this is certainly one of them.
She joins her friends; they’ve been out drinking for hours. She hugs each one, their unified excitement reaching fever pitch.
Let’s get wasted! she yells over the music and they shriek and jostle together at the bar.
Again, she slips straight to the front of waiting patrons and is served instantly. Shot glasses are lined up along the bar and filled with tequila. The barman hands her a plate of lemon wedges and a salt shaker.
So what are we celebrating tonight, ladies? He eyes Sahara’s friend Rachel.
We are celebrating because our work just got selected for a show in a gallery, Sahara says, passing the lemons down the line of her friends. The music is grinding into a raunchy beat; she feels the thrill of it in the air.
They shoot the free tequila, it burns down their throats and the citrus stings their lips. Sahara leans over the bar and kisses the barman’s cheek. She looks him square in the eyes, I wouldn’t wash that kiss off if I were you. I’m going to be a famous artist one day.
We’re going to be famous! her friends shout, clutching each other drunkenly. They pull Sahara into their midst, into the unstable grip of hands and hysterical laughter.
Sahara pulls them towards the dance floor, bashing her way through groups of people, stepping on feet and forging her path. Nothing can stop this high, this feeling, this exaltation oozing out her pores and tingling on her tongue. She clears a space with her wildly flailing arms, pushes back her hair and grabs her shirt.
Remember this night, ladies, this is the start of the future, she says, before closing her eyes and giving in to the music.
They’re sitting on the kerb, foil-wrapped kebabs in hands. Sahara takes a bite of her pita bread stuffed with falafel, hummus and lettuce. As she chews she erupts into a raucous giggling fit and food sprays out of her mouth into the gutter.
Man, this is good, she says, suddenly ravenous. It’s so greasy but I swear it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.
The others moan in agreement, their stomachs welcoming something solid to soak up the alcohol. The street is still busy, people spewing out of nightclubs and pooling on the pavements looking for taxis.
I’m so glad I met you guys, Sahara says, brushing stray lettuce from her pants. She stands, giddy, and waves to them. She is beaming, walking backwards away from her friends, taking in their forms and faces. I love you with all my heart! she shouts as she reaches the other side of the road and begins the short walk home.
She turns the key in the lock. She pulls her sneakers off at the door; they’re stiff and sour with stale alcohol from her shift. She turns on the television. Adverts flash across the screen, but she’s grateful for the background noise and a distraction from the electric madness of her own thoughts. Now that she’s alone, a caffeine jack-hammer is pumping through her. She can’t quite place the fast beat in her head; it isn’t any particular song, but a blurring of all the songs that have blasted her eardrums since her shift began twenty hours ago; she’s worked hard and partied harder. She’s wired on brain-scattering energy drinks, booze and strobe lights. She spreads her old grey socks over the arm of the sofa. The bare globe overhead illuminates the bleak squalor around her. The carpet is splattered with crushed chips, an ashtray overflows on the floor and an army of empty takeaway coffee cups stands to attention on the windowsill.
She lifts the bay window and pokes her head out over the alley below. The moon is covered by cloud but a faint silver glow escapes and shines all the way down in a ribbon of light to her building; she feels like it’s shining only for her. She picks up a canvas and props it against the windowsill. It’s half-done, legs and ears and the swish of a tail. She squeezes the remnants of a silver tube onto the lid of an ice-cream tub and dips a brush into the thick paint. She knows she has to paint quickly while the light is on her; she wants to capture it, to transmute and transfer it into the image coming to life before her. She wants its blessing—in her body and in her art.
Sometime later, canvas discarded, she collapses on the sofa and smokes until her eyeballs are scratchy and dry. She falls in and out of sleep, disappearing into dreams as the streets of Darlinghurst wake up outside her window.
Sahara is still dressed in her black work pants and top from the night before and there’s no time to change. She spits on her finger and dabs the cigarette ash off her pants, grabs her smokes, bottle opener, tampons, a handful of change and a lighter, shoving them into her bag. Her head is heavy, an uneasy nausea lingers in her stomach. She picks sleep out of her eyes. Another day.
The unforgiving late autumn air slaps her face and bites at her bare hands.
I’ve been waiting out here forever. Give me a ciggie.
Sorry Jess. I forgot to set an alarm, Sahara says, lighting up for both of them.
They walk off, moaning about the cold. The street is calmer now, emptier than a few hours earlier. Light tickles the bare shoulders of waywards warming themselves over an air vent and dances on the eyelashes of homeless men unfolding from doorways as they stare blinking into the new day. People are busy with the effort of erasing the night before: street sweepers, owners hosing away urine puddles from the front of their shops, coffee cups in lots of hands.
A sweet mix of sugar and butter wafts out into the street from the bakery, drawing Sahara and Jess inside, and they warm their hands on the glass pie cabinet.
Sahara empties her coins onto the counter. Twelve bucks sixty- five, she says, brekkie’s on me today, Jess. She orders two vanilla slices, two cokes and a chocolate croissant.
They walk fast, devouring the food as Hugo’s comes into view. One of the new boys is hosing down the front courtyard with an industrial hose, sweeping hotdog buns, blood, butts and broken glass into the gutter. Jess and Sahara slosh through the pooling water and run inside, down the stairs to the tiny staff room on the basement level of the building. Sahara blocks her nose at the noxious cloud of cleaning products as she passes through.
At the wall of lockers she swears and slams her fist into a metal door. Not again! Fury bubbles over as she paces the small locker room. I keep everything in here, cash, jewellery. Bastards! Three times this month my stuff’s been nicked. I’m so over this place.
She washes her face in the basin. In the mirror, an unrecognisable Sahara, drained of colour and health. The whites of her eyes are dusty yellow, peering out from puffy, hanging lids. She pokes her tongue into the fat, weeping ulcer that’s growing painfully inside her bottom lip. She pats her greasy hair. Ten a.m. and the music comes on upstairs. Her hands are shaking but she dutifully ties her apron around her waist.
Come on babe, let’s go, Jess says.
Sahara’s feet drag all the way to the gaming room, finally crossing the threshold into the worst part of the club. She’s in for the long haul, a fourteen-hour shift surrounded by pokie machines and problem gamblers—desperate, like her, for a magic moment that will turn their lives around. She hunches in the black chair at the money desk as the coloured screens flip over to the tune of tinkling fairground music.
***
Sahara’s hands move fast, automatically, smearing the two-metre-high canvas with yellow paint. She feels every ridge under her fingers, every tiny line and string of bound fabric. There’s a peace in the room now that they’ve drifted apart and taken their focus away from each other. The five young artists are held and nurtured by this peace, this stillness that allows them to bring something forth.
Who wants tea? Sahara asks, heading for the basic kitchenette in the corner of the room.
She counts the nodding heads, then fills the kettle with water. She scrounges around in the bare cupboards for an assortment of coloured glass jars, the cleanest she can find, the ones not encrusted with paint or reeking of turps. There’s a box of jasmine tea that someone has brought, she puts a bag in each jar. The room is sparse, bare concrete floors and walls of peeling white paint yet the process of creating fills it up with so much. So much of what? Sahara searches for the right word as she gazes over to her friends. She decides it’s a mix of lots of things, of happiness, of contentment in movement, of the bareness of feet on concrete and ideas crystallising on the ends of brushes. The loft is massive, with high ceilings and windows that cut into the walls, too high for them to see out of but they welcome the light, almost soak it in like a sponge does water.
They’d decided together that their painting studio, gifted by the art school, would remain blank, filled with nothing but their creations. In one corner, there’s a scatter of cushions and an old brown rug. That’s all, apart from an avocado pip sprouting in a jam jar in the bathroom. She loves the plant, with its heart-shaped leaf that grows bigger each week, but mostly she loves the white worm-like roots that continue to spread out of the cracking seed.
There’s some fruit in my handbag, Rachel says, pointing to the table in the middle of the room.
Sahara rinses red grapes gently under the tap and puts them in a chipped ceramic bowl. She hands a cup of tea to everyone and passes the grapes around. They’ve all come up for air, pulled their consciousness from the edge of creation and come back into the room. They’re gathered in a spot where light from the window-panes illuminates the floor.
I love this place, Sahara says. I’d live here if I could.
I know, right? What more do you need? Rachel says.
Sahara holds up her hands, they are bright egg-yolk yellow.
Exactly how the grapes taste, Rachel says, screwing up her face at the pungent burst of oil paint in her mouth.
Sahara laughs and lies back on the concrete. Life is good, she says.
What colour are you doing on this one? asks a young guy who’s been painting next to her all morning.
Sahara tries to remember his name, but can’t. This one will be really deep maroon, like earth red. The colour of sap that bleeds out of trees. Like an amber red. And she’s female. Her eyes fix on the twirling incense smoke, rising towards the window.
How do you come up with the names?
They just come to me, like everything else, she answers.
I had this thought the other day, right, Rachel says. What if all the faces I’m painting, what if they’re actually real? Like what if they’re people who have lived or people who are living right now? What if I’m channelling real people when I paint?
Sahara flexes her feet. And what if all the stories written by writers are actually real lives, from history or parallel dimensions, coming to life? And the same with film.
And your unicorns, they could be real.
Oh, I know those are real, Sahara says. No doubt about it. Now pull me up, I’m going back to my corner.
They’re done for the day, sitting around the old wooden table, spent of the urge to create, with the warped, sliding tones of The Doors filling the space their painting took up. Sahara swigs from a whisky bottle and plonks it down. She turns her attention to the bag of tobacco on the table, pinching some of the curled rust-coloured strands and lining them in a row on a paper. Who has filters?
No one answers and she keeps rolling her cigarette, humming away.
I have these, the only male among them says.
Sahara licks the paper and rolls the cigarette tightly, again racking her brain for his name.
What are they? Rachel asks, picking a piece of something hard, woody and brown from his hand.
Mushrooms. Really good ones.
Sahara chuckles. Haven’t seen those since leaving Byron. Where did you get them?
They’re from my friend’s farm. I thought I’d offer them to the group if you guys are keen.
Rachel shakes her head. I’ve heard you can lose your mind on that stuff, she says, taking the whisky bottle.
But isn’t that the point? he says.
I also heard that stuff opens you up to other realms, but also entities, like bad spirits, Rachel says.
He smiles sweetly at her. That’s all just a construction of the human mind, the fear. It’s not real if you don’t believe it.
Dude, what is your name? I’m sorry, I keep forgetting it. Sahara lights her cigarette.
Jaimie, Rachel says, you only see him in class every other day. You are so bad with names!
I know, sorry, Jaimie. So, she drags on the cigarette, you’re a mushrooms man, hey?
These things changed me, they opened my eyes. I wouldn’t be who I am without them. That wouldn’t be here, for a start. He points to his canvas on the easel by the window. A painting of lovers: a woman straddling a man. The bodies are all layers of the human form, skin, muscle, veins and bright lights all at once, lost in each other, but something greater than them, too.
Your work reminds me of something I’d rather forget, Sahara says. It confronts me, stirs up old feelings. I’ve had that union and it’s there staring at me. She takes a breath. It’s that cosmic, stratospheric lovemaking that wipes you clean.
Rachel goes up to the painting. Why would you want to forget something like this? I’ve never had anything close to it in my life.
Because I don’t have it now. I don’t know, maybe I’ve lost it forever. Sahara clears her throat.
When I started experimenting with mushrooms, and other things, it just blew my mind. It was like seeing the truth of how things are for the first time. I’d see all this stuff when I was tripping, like the energy, you know, the connection. It’s radical. Jaimie waves Sahara’s smoke away from him. You must’ve had mushrooms then, if you grew up in Byron Bay.
Sahara shakes her head. No, it scared me too much. I didn’t have the guts. You paint like Alex Grey. He’s a visionary artist, he gets it. And Jim Morrison gets it.
Jaimie takes a book from his satchel. This is his poetry—‘Novices, we watch the moves of silkworms who excite their bodies in moist leaves and weave nests of hair and skin. This is a model of our liquid resting world dissolving bone and melting marrow, opening pores as wide as windows.’
So you really think we should just go around all the time doped off our heads? That’s where the hippies went wrong, Jaimie. They were too stoned to make anything happen. They got lost. Rachel turns her back on his painting. And Jim Morrison died, don’t forget that.
Jaimie slaps a hand against the table. And so will all of us. Death’s not this big bad thing you think it is, you know. It’s just a window, that’s all.
Sahara watches Rachel. She can see the agitation in her friend’s mouth, the way her lips are jammed together.
Jaimie, she says, I feel like people are always talking to you and you’re just silent. I think this is the first time I’ve actually heard you say more than two words.
I don’t really see the point. He puts the dried mushrooms on the table and spreads them out like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Like now for example, we’re all arguing about hallucinogenic substances with our minds, but none of us has the answer. So why bother at all? Let’s go to South America and dance with the shamans, let’s go and see what they know, then we can have this conversation again.
Rachel comes back to the table. Jim Morrison thought he was a shaman.
And maybe he was, Sahara says. Not all sages wear white flowing gowns, you know. Some wear leather pants.
Rachel rolls her eyes. Oh how poetic of you. Now tell me, is it the leather pants ones or the ones in the flowing gowns that you want to shag senseless?
Jaimie turns up the stereo.
I’m keen, Sahara says. I want to know what it’s like.
She’s splayed out on the floor, concrete turned to marshmallow beneath her. She’s an eagle, soaring through a blue sky, feathers lilting in the play of air currents. She sits up, feeling every cell in her body, every sparking electrical current. Now she’s the wind, the fluid rush of air circling the room. And the wind is inside her, blowing feathers through her veins. Rach, my love, her voice falls like honey from her mouth, she sees the words cascade and form a river that stretches across the floor to Rachel. She watches the river turn into vines that grow rapidly, climbing up her legs, then arms and into her ear.
Rachel doesn’t hear her, she’s on the table, swaying.
Jaimie appears in Sahara’s vision. Let’s work on each other’s paintings, just for fun.
Sahara receives his words like the same honey that escaped her lips. It pours onto her face and runs sweetly down her neck. She touches her skin and feels the wet sticky gift from the bees. I have to take my clothes off, Jaimie, she says, feeling the tightness of her jeans like a fist squeezing a throat.
She jumps up and peels the denim from her body, mint green light shooting from each one of her fingertips. She strips to her underwear. Rachel flings her woollen dress to the floor.
I’m painting yours, Jaimie, Sahara says. I want to be in your painting. She goes to his canvas. The lights in the bodies start to swirl faster and faster until they are bright and alive, each one a spinning vortex asking her to come inside. She steps back and sees Rachel at her canvas. Rachel Angel, do good work, that might be the last unicorn I ever paint.
The bodies in front of her are writhing now, fully immersed in the throes of ecstatic passion. She watches the man thrusting inside the transparent form of his partner. She hears their tight moans and sighs of pleasure and runs her hands lightly over the still-drying paint. A hand comes out from the canvas and reaches for Sahara’s heart. Then as quickly as it began, the painting drops its life. Her body is now cold and she gathers up her clothes.
Hours have passed in a dream, a daze. She can’t find her mind, but she can see the yellow shining from her friends, the same yellow she painted with in the morning. It feels like a lifetime ago. You are both so beautiful, you know that? You are radiant beams of light.
Jaimie and Rachel put their arms around her and hold her in the empty room.
They walk arm in arm to the front of the line outside Shady Pines Saloon and are let into the bar. It’s past midnight and the kaleidoscopic warping of their reality has mellowed. Sahara orders vodka and freshly squeezed apple juice, the sweet taste of it quenches the thirst inside her.
This may not have been the best place to come to, she says. I forgot this place is wall-to-wall with dead animals.
She sees the faces of them, each one lit-up. An owl hanging from the ceiling, a white bull’s head stuck near the toilets sign, a monkey, a stuffed cat, a moose head, frogs, lizards, birds, a dog, a bear: a taxidermist’s haven. Suddenly she feels uncomfortable, trying to balance the haze of the living people with the bodies of the dead animals all around. Umm guys, she says.
Rachel and Jaimie are oblivious. They’re kissing, tongues exploring each other’s mouths.
Someone grabs Sahara’s shoulder and she turns. There’s a man in front of her, impeccably dressed and cocky.
I’m way more interesting than them, he says. Let me buy you a drink.
She searches his eyes. What’s your name?
I’m Sean, he says, offering his hand.
She shakes it and inspects him discerningly. Magenta Wildflower.
Of course you are. So what are you drinking?
Sean, she says, lovely to meet you, but I really want to be on my own right now. She pats him on the shoulder and gets up to leave.
Give me your number, I’ll take you out.
You don’t even know me, Sahara says, blowing him a kiss.
Outside, the boundaries of her skin expand and the crowded feeling of the bar leaves her. She rubs her chest and lower back, there’s a firmness to her flesh again, a realness that has been missing for hours.
The streets are glistening from rain and she sees a faint glow around the tall trunks of plane trees as she passes them. She feels like she’s in The Land Before Time movie, in those characters and landscapes that enchanted her as a child, where each leaf is a ground-star full of promise. She picks a green leaf off the wet pavement and holds it in her palm. It looks different from every other leaf she’s seen; the veins are a fluorescent network of light, a complex grid, a network of information travelling from one side to the other.
Her phone rings, she fumbles in her bag for it. Hello?
Sahara, it’s me. I’m sorry to call so late. I didn’t know what to do when I heard, but you’ve been on my mind ever since and I just had to pick up the phone and call you. The words echo loudly into the quiet inner city street.
Since you heard what, what do you mean? It’s really late. I’ve had a big day, can we talk in the morning?
The female voice rises in volume. No, I have to talk to you now. I’m so sorry, Sahara. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I can’t believe he’s dead.
The leaf drops from Sahara’s hand. Who’s dead? What are you talking about?
Rip, he’s gone. I thought you’d know by now. Oh shit, I can’t believe no one’s told you. He committed suicide, Sahara. Someone from home called and told me.
Something like ice moves through Sahara. It takes hold of her heart and renders her silent while the caller says her name frantically into the night.
She digs her fingers into the carpet; they claw backwards as she falls over her knees. He’s dead. He’s dead. Her body convulses, her mouth opens and closes, but she can’t get anything out except gasps of shallow, jagged breath. She jams her hand onto the heater until it burns fiercely into her skin. A guttural, tortured scream escapes her.
There’s no sound in the room now. Sahara stares ahead vacantly. Her face is a raw mess of mascara and too much crying.
You didn’t have to come over, she says to Jess.
Of course I did. Did you really think that I’d just sit at home while you’re dealing with something like this? Jess rubs a hand over her back, rhythmic circles to soothe her. You haven’t slept and you need to eat something.
Sahara grimaces, the excruciating curse of reality clenches at her organs. She doesn’t look at Jess, just straight ahead as she has done for hours. He’s gone, she says.
I’m so sorry, babe, Jess says. I don’t know what to do.
Nothing. There’s nothing… Sahara’s words trail off. She hugs her knees to her chest and lifts her feet off the ground. She hangs there, balancing, rocking slightly.
How’s your hand?
Who cares? He’s dead, Jess. My hand’s nothing.
Jess takes Sahara’s left hand into her own and holds the fingers. She lifts up the bandaid and gasps. Sahara’s palm is burned red; the middle of it has puffed up into a fluid-filled blister that’s lifted off the top layers of skin so the lines of her hand are now floating a centimetre above her flesh.
This is really bad, we need to get it checked out.
I’m not going anywhere, Sahara pulls her sore hand back. Her eyes are bleary, her vision unclear. She’s cried steadily for hours, fallen into sleep, woken again and now, she’s empty. Just leave me, Jess.
There’s no way I’m leaving you like this, I’ve told you already. Either you come and stay with me or I’m setting up camp right here.
Sahara has nothing to offer.
Okay, Jess says. I’ll pack your things and you’re coming to stay with me for a while. She looks around at the strewn mess: clothes, sheets, blankets, shoes, a bookshelf upturned. She pilfers through the carnage.
Rip has this scar on his face. The first time I reached over and touched it I was about eight and I had this strange feeling like I wanted touch it every day of my life. It felt soft you know, like something other than skin. Satin or something. Sahara shuts her eyes and sees vividly the semi-circle of smoky keloid tissue, hairless under her fingertips. The scar: half an S, a hook, an iridescent new moon. She’d peered closely at the pink ridges of Rip’s scar that first time, like it was her very own mystery to decipher. He had this scar.
Jess folds a pair of jeans and adds it to the other clothes she’s collected on the bed. Why don’t you go home to Byron Bay?
I can’t go back there, Sahara says.
You can. You should be around people who love you and who know Rip too.
Sahara shakes her head, tears well up in her eyes again. She bites into her upper arm, leaving teeth marks.
You should be getting on the first plane home. Or call someone at least. Call his friends, Sahara, Jess urges.
I can’t. You don’t understand. They were mad enough with me when I left him, imagine this. They’ll blame me, they’ll think it’s all my fault and maybe they’re right. Everyone who loves him will be looking for a reason and I can’t face their judgement. Not right now.
Okay, so call your mother, she can give you the details and you won’t have to get involved in anyone else’s drama.
Sahara pulls her jumper around her. It’s the same. His mother died when we were young and Rip is like a son to her. She’s probably already fuming that I haven’t called home since I left. It’s been nearly a year, Jess. I haven’t spoken to anyone from home, not even her. She’ll heap it on me like the rest of them and I’m only one person. I can’t stand up to that. It’ll do me in.
Jess kisses the top of Sahara’s head. I can call her or his friends. Whoever—just think about it, okay?