I sprawled out on the plush red sofa, gazing at the antique harlequin money box in the display cabinet. Samantha and Guy had shown me to our lodgings the night before, sadly without Warwick, and my erratic sleep patterns put me in a zombielike state.
This apartment was almost a match for our rental back in Port Macquarie. A fusion of subdued primary colors coated the walls in the living space, making way for bolder pigments in the bedrooms. Vintage and modern ornaments sparked curiosity amid the classic furniture. A glass devil dancing on one leg, a bronze cubist sculpture, and cheeky Norman Lindsey prints celebrating old-world Eros were near perfect matches for collectables we had at home.
In renovation terms, it was “grandmother meets gay boy.” Its welcoming décor could include a cultured old woman working on a crossword, with her grandson seated next to her checking out male models in Cosmopolitan. The crisp aroma of Beef Wellington, which either might have prepared, would fill the room.
Seeing this carbon copy of our home gave me a fresh perspective on our tastes. I couldn’t wait to hear Warwick’s view. Without him there, I felt something was missing. Fearful thoughts that our friendship would dissolve echoed in my head. When I needed a companion to deal with this strange adventure, my spirit would be void of his comfort. I wanted to hear his reassuring voice in all its theatrical tones. I missed seeing his glossy, curly black hair and noticing how tight those little ringlets were. I wanted to admire his light brown skin and his alluring dark brown eyes enhanced by the furnishings.
I kept telling myself that I had no right to be jealous. After all, if the shoe was on the other foot, I’d have whisked Pedro’s clothes off him so fast he’d be in danger of a nosebleed. Even the harlequin figurine glared at pathetic me. I closed my eyes and focused on the events of the past day. We couldn’t have landed ourselves in a campier setting if we tried. A saucy blonde, a gay angel, and a set to rival any Hollywood epic. Then, within minutes, a trip to a club with a sultry drag king. Throw in the Ziegfeld Follies and this truly would be heaven!
I cast my mind back to the beginning of this adventure. The details seemed sketchy for a moment, even though they had happened just a few days ago. It was like trying to remember the details of a dream from the night before. The longer you are awake, the more the dream fades.
I recalled three days ago, Warwick handed me a cup of peppermint tea he had prepared with loving care. “You know, Mr. Incompetent is getting you down at the moment. You need to stop waiting for your fortunes to change. Allan, you need freedom!”
There was silence. His luscious maroon lips had a point. I let his words sink in. Here was an opportunity to not only break the monotony but to chill out with my friend. Perhaps taste those luscious lips. It was time to be selfish.
In a world where work opportunities were limited, I was putting up with an insecure baby boomer. He was the type of boss who came from the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” school. No promotions meant no hassles. Loyalty was a foreign concept, unless aimed at the endless string of nubile under-twenty-ones he’d hire for jobs that didn’t exist.
“What do I tell Mr. Incompetent? I can’t just march in there and say I’m having a holiday!”
I could see it. His assistant, Natalie, in that pink breast-hugging jumper of hers, sitting on his desk, legs crossed, and notepad poised. She’d carefully trace the tip of her tongue around the shape of her mouth. I’d make my demands, standing over him, while his downstairs stirrings would make him too self-conscious to stand up. Natalie would have no trouble in helping me set this up, if only I had the guts to play out my rebellious fantasies.
“Allan, you could be a coward and just not show up for work. After all, your uncle has been complaining that you’ve never visited him since he moved away.” Warwick paused to let his words sink in. Then came his demand. “Come on, let’s leave today!”
I tended to plan every aspect of my life, not always achieving the results I expected. So what if I didn’t arrive at work? I looked up at Warwick who was verbally going over what to pack. My internal argument was about to be resolved externally. We went to his bedroom where he unzipped his favorite navy sports bag and slid open his wardrobe. I contemplated the temperature down south. Deciding that clothes for all types of weather might be best, I followed his lead and charged to my own bedroom. My much-loved black suitcase was flung onto my bed as I took pride on my first radical deed since I had rigged my sister’s pregnancy kit to reveal a positive result.
* * *
Although I was snoozing, some part of my brain zeroed in on the sound of a key jiggling around in a lock. My subconscious was spying on Warwick. Samantha or Guy must have caught up with him to give him a key. As the doorknob turned, I checked the room for a magazine or book, anything to obscure the fact that I’d just woken up. Nothing. It was time to stare at that harlequin again.
“What are you looking at?” asked Warwick. He strode cocksure into the lounge.
“An antique money box.”
He went to pick it up. As with the one back home, he needed both hands to raise it, as the nineteenth-century child who might have owned it could never lift its weight. Its painted metal surface had become lackluster over the years. The harlequin smirked as if keeping a wicked secret. Maybe he was having a torrid affair with the bearded lady? Perhaps he’d given her hair remover disguised as beauty cream? Whatever the reason, his spirited smile intrigued me.
“That’s almost like the one you bought in New Zealand,” Warwick said.
His gaze guardedly scanned the living area right before his head turned to follow its lead. He let out a nervous sigh while numbly pointing at various items in the room.
“What the…?” he mumbled.
“That’s what I said twelve hours ago,” I replied. “Come check out the antique in the dining room.”
Warwick wandered over to a gramophone. He had one just like it back home, which we affectionately christened Edgar. He commented in disbelief about it having the same 78-rpm record on the platter we often displayed—“Island in the Sun” by Harry Belafonte.
“What do you make of it?” he asked.
“Spooky,” I replied. “And that’s not the half of it. There’s a laptop with the same video-editing software I was thinking of buying, and a video camera similar to mine. There’s even more weird stuff in our bedrooms.” As I led him to my room, he noticed several other items that matched the décor in our rental back home. His modern surrealist pictures hanging in the hallway and the wood grain doors with brass doorknobs all raised disturbed remarks. Even the kitchen with its burnt-orange tiles and aged-ash cupboards were doing their best to stop us from feeling homesick.
I made my way to my wardrobe and presented exhibit A, a black shirt with a Chinese collar. It didn’t button up in the middle. The buttons were to the right of the shirt and worked their way up to a scarlet triangular flap. This meant nothing to Warwick, but I explained that it was like one I’d been given as a teenager. I had a fascination with 80s new-wave bands like the Models, Deckchairs Overboard, and Japan, so a neighbor had made it for me. Now and again it came out to parties.
My next exhibit was recognized instantly. A hand-me-down checkered western shirt from my brother. He didn’t fit into it anymore, so Warwick and I often took turns wearing it. A gray-and-white knitted beanie was next on display. A friend had knitted this for me as a gift for letting him stay over when he was in town. How it had made its way to our modest 1970s-replica style apartment in the Limelight Quarter stumped us both.
Warwick darted to his bedroom as I followed. His heavyset wooden bed was an accurate match, except for the color of the lacquer. Back home it was a deep mahogany; here it was maple. At least the Afterlife spies got some things wrong when they decked out this place. However, his classic black leather jacket was displayed prominently in front of all other garments, exactly as he’d left it days ago before our trip. As he thumbed through his much-loved attire, he uttered several unrelated vowels before sitting on his bed.
“I’ve had a whole evening to get used to it,” I said. I perched myself next to him. “But last night when Guy and Samantha showed me around, my head was spinning.”
“What else is there?”
“Most of your pots and pans. Almost all my music collection. But to cap it off, my digital photos are in an album in my bedroom.”
I left Warwick and fetched them before jumping back on his bed. As soon as I turned the cover, the images haunted me as much as they did the previous night. We peered at artistic monochrome shots of chess pieces taken for high school art class. There were family party photos featuring childhood versions of my now married brother. Some publicity shots from my high school play. An old lover. An old friend. An old friend who became a lover. A photo-booth strip of my sister and I making each other laugh.
By the time we found the images of Gary’s hospital-emergency-themed party near its back pages, Warwick recovered his composure. He placed his hand on my knee, but I was self-conscious at how clammy I was. Seeing these pictures again unnerved me. Had someone broken into my home and reviewed my life by printing my photos?
Loser? Artistic wannabe? What would they have thought?
Warwick looked up and smiled. I wanted to savor his maroon lips. Their sheen was highlighted against the claret-colored wall. I wanted to reach behind his head and slide my fingers through his thick curly hair, before leisurely moving his lips to mine.
“I’m astounded!” he said.
I paused my daydream to compute what he’d uttered.
“Reassuringly ‘feels like home’ astounded, or unnervingly ‘what the frig’ astounded?”
“More like ‘stunned, I need answers but not jumping to conclusions’ astounded.”
“Warwick, at this stage, we have no choice but to jump to conclusions. Where are we?”
“In the Limelight Quarter,” he replied, blank-faced.
“Very funny. You know what I mean.”
My friend wandered to the window. I watched him, unrealistically believing he could give me all the answers. He viewed the flourishing garden outside before turning to me.
“They all seem secretive,” he said. “The only answer I seem to get from people is the Limelight Quarter. I don’t feel we’re in danger, though.”
“What choice do we have? After bonding with Guy last night, I feel pretty safe, too.”
“I guess it makes sense to find comfort in an angel. He’s the only one who has to be a true local.”
“Comfort, yes; answers, no.”
“Allan, I thought you’d find him sort of a geek. He’s a bit, Gomer Pyle. When we first got here, you were admiring Samantha’s outfit and gawking at Guy’s.”
There was not much I could keep secret from Warwick.
“Okay, I did at first, but you left me so I had to get to know him. In some ways, he reminded me of what I was like when you first met me. A bit of a lost soul. Our chat helped take my mind off this bizarre place.”
“Yes, Allan, I went home with Pedro to take my mind off this bizarre place.”
That repeated phrase reverberated in my head. I stared at Warwick. He stared back. The thought of my demise was hard enough to face, but this version of the Afterlife with no link back to concepts favored in religious texts made it harder to accept. There was not an omnipotent being in sight. We had one angel surrounded by a cast from different eras of earthbound time, going about their business with no qualms. And still, no one wanted to elaborate.
“Heaven or hell?” my friend asked.
“Perhaps limbo, or maybe we’re just having a weird dream?”
“Of course, Allan, at exactly the same time.” Warwick winked at me.
“Yeah maybe. Your wet dream with Pedro and my, my…”
“Your buddy-genre dream with an angel.”
He made me smile. As he looked out at the garden again, a more believable explanation came to me.
“Warwick, maybe I’m just in a coma, and somewhere near my hospital bed, you’re talking to me, trying to wake me up.”
“Allan, if I am talking to you from your hospital bed, how will I know you can hear me?”
“Look, Warwick, I’m wiggling my toes.”
My friend turned to see me lift my legs and shake both feet.
“Allan, what if you’re covered by a blanket, and I can’t notice your toes?”
“Don’t be silly. You’d notice my toes wiggling under the covers.”
“Maybe there’s a serving tray or a hospital chart on the sheets?”
I thrashed my legs more violently, just in case there was some truth in my theory.
“Allan, you’re not in a coma.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because from my point of view, I might be the one in a coma.”
My legs stopped kicking.
“Warwick, either way we should keep conversing, so no one ends up pulling the plug from our life support.”
A chill ran up my spine. I looked past my friend to glimpse the garden outside. It flourished with an assortment of trees and bushes, all leafy and in full bloom. Dark purple flowers blossomed in several makeshift pots, welcoming visitors who wandered along the brick pathway leading to the building. I pictured a lion and a lamb taking in the scent of the buds before regarding each other with kindness and lying on the grass. As serene as this thought was, it did little to pacify me. Warwick came back to the bed and sat beside me.
“There’s going to be a lot to get used to from now on,” he said.
I nodded. “If that’s the case, Warwick, I have something else for us to get used to.” I raced to my bedroom, grabbed a makeshift bound manuscript, and returned. “This is Pedro’s script. There’s a copy for you in my room as well.”
“What’s it about?”
“A team of gangsters trying to outwit each other. One of them wants to become a partner in a lucrative moonshine business. You’re playing the head gangster’s moll.”
Warwick looked as if our landlord had just burst in for a surprise inspection.
“Well, okay. I always pictured myself as RuPaul. So what else do we need to get used to?”
“I read through the first few pages last night before going to bed.” I thumbed through the script to show him the page I was up to. “This morning, while I was getting dressed in front of the mirror, I recited those lines.”
“You mean with the script in your hands?”
“No. I read this once last night. Today, I remembered the lines as clearly as if I was reading them off the page.”
“If only you could’ve done that with our theater society back home.” Warwick was right. I usually paraphrased and was grateful if the director didn’t mind. “What’s Pedro like as a wordsmith?”
“His play is corny as all hell, but hopefully it’s meant to be. What’s Pedro like as a lover?”
“Maybe a two-star rating out of five. His equipment reminds me of a turtle retreating into its shell.”
“You could always coax it back out with a lettuce leaf,” I replied. I knew this would be territory Warwick wouldn’t be keen to revisit. “So was he devoid of passion?”
“Oh, he’s passionate, but not in the bedroom. Foreplay is A-plus, but coming up with the goods, C-minus.”
“A bit like his script. What do you make of Samantha? Simply sex kitten, or is there more to her?”
“Well, she’s definitely in charge around here. At least she is with the people we’ve met. I think there’s a side of her we’ve yet to discover. What about Guy? Self-doubting angel or mystery man?”
“There’s definitely something mysterious about him. I’ve found out a lot. He’s more open when he has a few drinks, and somehow more attractive as well. Or maybe he just gets more attractive when I’ve had a few. There was a revelation in our discussion at the bar.”
“Do tell.”
“He can’t fly.”
“That explains his lack of confidence.”
“Yes, he tries to mask that, but it results in him looking uptight.”
We smiled, soon becoming absorbed in our own private thoughts. The way friends do when they know each other well enough to just be still. I mused over the Roman gladiator I’d been admiring the day before. How interesting it would be to chat with him about his life.
Warwick placed his hand on mine. I felt coy and prayed I wasn’t blushing. I reached over with my other hand and placed it on top. He wriggled his hand, sliding it away. My heart sank, surprising me. Had I overstepped the mark? He picked up his script and flicked through the pages.
“Who do you play?” he asked.
“I play Mr. Money, the gangster who’s trying to muscle in on Pedro’s empire. He plays the lead, Mr. Death.” For a moment, I considered whether to ask my next question, but it fell out of my mouth of its own accord. “Do you think you’ll revisit Pedro, in the biblical sense?”
“Only if I’m desperate. Who knows, maybe you can find a way to light his fire?”
This idea didn’t entice me to the extent it had the day before. For the rest of the afternoon, we retired to the lounge and learned our lines. One reading pretty much did the trick, but between scenes, my private thoughts became fixated on my overdue romance. Maybe his interlude with Pedro was my wake-up call? Memories of the last few days on earth were flooding back. My mood had been similar just before our visit to Uncle Bryant. Like some lost puppy dog on a busy road, too scared to make a move in any direction, hoping someone would come and claim me.
I usually wasn’t keen to visit family when I wanted a proper break, but Warwick felt I had to reconnect with my mob before we spent time alone. If truth be known, he could have suggested anything by that stage, and I would have blindly followed to avoid routine. A flight on a space shuttle? Sure! I’ll sell my siblings for the tickets.
Uncle Bryant was one of the more blessed members of our family, having won a large amount of money with a lottery ticket given to him for his birthday just three years prior. After the win, he chose an upmarket relocation. Why a bachelor of his vintage needed a penthouse was beyond our family’s understanding, except maybe to fuel his addiction to clutter.
The smell of musty books permeated the living area. There were piles of them on makeshift bookshelves, of which about half of them my uncle admitted he hadn’t read. He always claimed he had some obscure job to do around the apartment that prevented him from sitting still and reading. But it never stopped him trawling through secondhand bookshops.
Anywhere else, this décor would look appropriate in an attic. Old board games and train sets I’d swear had never been played with. Archival documents stacked on top of an early color telly that stood proudly on its own wooden legs. A 1960s portable record player sat with its lid open, playing the LP of an AM-radio-inspired soft-rock band.
I didn’t want to look too closely at the cornices in case there were insects trapped in spider webs, begging to be devoured just to escape the sight of this dust trap.
There were also five cats, Misty, Fred, Lipton, Sam, and Pike, and one goldfish he forgot to name. My uncle often had to replace his goldfish if he overlooked feeding the cats, but fortunately his cats were now too old to climb onto the shelf where this new fish looked out at the world.
The other notable newcomer in Uncle Bryant’s apartment was an elderly woman elegantly poised on the tan upholstered sofa. She was introduced as Pamela, the retired poet. Pamela lived in a small flat downstairs and often visited for company. In front of her was half a cup of tea and the remains of a slice of homemade carrot cake.
“How long are you planning on staying?” asked my uncle. He always claimed guests are like fish. They go off after three days.
“Not long,” Warwick replied. “Allan has this odd desire to visit Adelaide.”
“Why? It’s a country town with its own miniature Melbourne in the CBD. You moved to Port Macquarie! Aren’t you sick of small towns?”
Pamela came to my rescue. “But there’s a sense of the creative in Adelaide.” Uncle Bryant lifted his head and passively looked to the ceiling. “Oh sweetheart, I know that look. Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean that you’ll ration our hanky-panky.”
“True. I wouldn’t survive. I’m more of an Errol Flynn than a—”
“Please, let’s not go there,” I said. “Now my other choice is Hobart. We’ve never been there.” Luckily neither had our hosts, so no debate was entered into. “We were wondering if we could leave the car here, fly over, and come back later.”
“Absolutely. I have a spare car space. Pamela insists on driving me everywhere.”
“Bryant, tell them where your car is.”
My uncle hesitated, then informed us that he sold his trusty old Ford Falcon.
“And tell them why you sold it.” This time no reply, so Pamela filled us in. “He can’t see.”
“I can see!”
“Just not very well.”
“I can see what I need to see!”
Pamela then mouthed the words “license renewal,” shaking her head. The problem was, my uncle was old-school. He came from a generation that would rather die than wear glasses.
This affectionate banter entertained us for the rest of the evening. Between cups of tea and slices of carrot cake, we heard all about Bryant and Pamela’s love in bloom. They first met in the elevator, comparing groceries and chitchatting about prices. Pamela had bought three T-bone steaks on special, but my uncle still felt she was ripped off. He recommended his little Greek butcher just down the road a few blocks, next to the funeral home. The retired poet shrieked in horror at the cost of Bryant’s leg of lamb and swore with hand on heart that her Polish butcher was cheaper. And so began a romance. Taking turns to cook meals, it was my uncle’s honeyed carrots that initiated the courtship. One taste and she was under his spell.
We listened to their story, glancing at each other with wry smiles as each absurd twist of their culinary courtship unfolded. Maybe there was a lesson to be learned from them? Maybe food was our missing sensual ingredient? I made a mental note to rush to the supermarket once we arrived in Hobart.
Conversation continued through dinner, ironically take-away. In that time, Pamela graced us with a few recitals including “Ode to Honey Dipped Carrot,” “T-Bone Teaser,” and “The Love Butcher.” The latter was ripe for a theater restaurant, with dubious references to rump steak and marinated heart. It was soon after this rendition that she dropped the “clanger.”
To me, it felt like the sky had fallen. It tumbled so effortlessly from her tongue, it simulated polite conversation. There was no consumption of alcohol to blame for this error in judgment.
With a straightforward glance, summing us both up, she inquired, “So, are you two shagging?”
I turned to my uncle, expecting him to set his lover straight. Warwick emulated my plea. Bryant and Pamela beamed like drunken newlyweds before he asked, “Well, are you? If you’re not, it’s about time you did!”