Oh when the saints come marching in
Oh when the saints come marching in
Oh, we’ll all be in that number
When we all come marching in.
Oh when I show my tat to you
Oh when I show my skin to you
You flash your thighs without a smile
Then you show your tats to me.
Oh when we saints, we all come together
Oh when we saints we trust each other
‘Cause there ain’t no other, no bloody other
When the saints come marching in (give me some skin)
Oh yeah, when we all come marching in (give me some skin).
Balga awoke at eight to stare at the wall a few feet from his face. It was just about time to go to work. He lay there. The bungalow felt nice and snug smelling of the perfume Jeannie had been wearing last night. At last he got up and got ready for work by putting on his drab business suit. He hurried off without taking into account that St. Kilda was much closer to the centre of the city than Hawthorn and arrived early. Balga took this to be a good omen. Life in the boarding house, he found out was quiet enough during the week and even Saturday (when he expected Jeannie, but she didn’t put in an appearance) was also quiet. Bored he went to hunt up Tommy and found him busy with the accounts of the hotel. He left him to his work and. actually went to see that film, From Here to Eternity which he didn’t like much. After that, well, he put on his dark clothes and went on the prowl. He passed a parked Ford car, drifted by, turned and came back. He tried the door handle. It turned and he was in. Only seconds to reach under the dashboard, tug lose the ignition wires and join them. With a whoop, he pulled away from the kerb and went flying down the street. He turned into Fitzroy Street and burnt to the end not caring that he was way over whatever the speed limit was. Not a cop in sight. He was prepared to race any cop car that might come after him. Not one did and deciding it was foolish, he slowed down and turned at the end of the street onto the esplanade road and kept on going. Every now and then he put down his foot to feel the power of the engine. It was towards midnight when he reached an outer suburb called Dandenong and did a u-turn and without regard for any other vehicle, slipped into high gear and kept his foot flat to the floor and made St. Kilda in minutes. He left the vehicle parked in front of the big face of an entertainment park and exhilarated with his evening went to check out the coffee lounge where Eddy hung out.
A car slowed and he stopped to stare insolently at the bloke behind the wheel then strolled off down the street to the clothes shop where he examined what he thought of as his coat. It looked bulky but maybe he could get it re-cut by a tailor so that it became a drape coat. He smiled at this and retraced his steps and turned into the coffee lounge for a coffee. He was biting into a sandwich when Rita came in by herself. He expected Fast Eddy to follow, but she was alone. She sat at a table. He finished his sandwich and got two fresh coffees and went to her.
‘Have a coffee, kid,’ he said, sitting down across from her. He examined her boldly taking in her Rita Hayworth styled curly red hair reaching almost to her shoulders, the slash of her red broad mouth, the two prominent bumps of her chest. She was regarding him coldly from cold blue eyes so he winked at her Bogart style.
‘Hey, hey,’ Balga exclaimed, ‘you remember me, the West Ozzie bloke from a few nights ago. I was just looking at a grouse coat in the window of that store a few doors down and came past, saw you and decided to say “hello”, where’s Eddy?’
‘He’ll be here in a quarter of an hour,’ she replied staring past his right shoulder.
‘Hey that’s just enough time for us to get together,’ he said with a grin.
‘Huh,’ she exclaimed taken aback.
‘Well, don’t you remember what Eddy said when we were talking altogether last time?’
‘No, what did he say that would make me do you?’
‘Think and then come through,’ he grinned. ‘If I had known you would be here I would have kept my car, but I had to give it back.’
‘If you had a car, it was a hot one,’ she flung at him. ‘Anyway how close were you to Eddy in Perth?’
‘As close as this,’ Balga pushed up the sleeve of his black shirt to show the tattoo of the saint Eddy had pricked there. ‘He did that so that we would remember our times together. We are like this.’ And he held up two fingers, then stuck his thumb through them and closed his fist. ‘He said to give it to me for a three,’ he lied.
‘It’s always a fiver, but are you sure he didn’t say for free seeing you were as close as this,’ she flicked up her skirt to show a thigh on which through the stocking he could see the tattoo of a saint.
‘You know Eddy,’ Balga groaned, ‘his favours have got to be paid for.’
‘Yeah, you’re so right so give me a fiver right now,’ she demanded flicking her eyes at him and then away as she thrust out her hand. ‘Come on give me the dough!’
Balga produced his last fiver which was meant to see him through to payday. Well, what the heck, if he needed a couple of quid he could borrow them from Tommy or someone at work.
She took it then hung back to say: ‘We have to wait for Eddy. You know he doesn’t like me going off with guys by myself.’
‘I’m his mate and if I wasn’t on the up and up wouldn’t I want it on credit?’
‘Maybe, yeah, sure, blokes are like that.’
‘So are we making that short walk to the head of the alley?’
‘Sure, why not, nothing doing here anyway, and who knows when he’ll be coming.’
Balga grinned as Rita swayed her ample hips in front of him to the spot where he had done Jane just a few nights ago.. She adopted the same pose with her skirt hitched up so that she could spread her legs with one slightly behind the other. As she got into this position she actually giggled as she informed him that the tar was all pocked from their high heels. She added: ‘If you can count, you can figure out the quickies that we’ve given here by adding up the marks and dividing the number by two.’
‘Dividing it by two,’ Balga queried.
‘Well, we’ve got two legs haven’t we? Now hurry up or it’ll be a tenner which you most surely haven’t got.’
‘Right,’ Balga grunted, thrusting against her. He wanted to get the deed done before Eddy arrived on the scene to spoil his fun. She guided him in and he went at it for a full minute thinking of the car and how he had gunned it from Dandenong to St. Kilda. ‘Ah the saints are right the way in,’ he whispered, sinking and withdrawing from her soft flesh, feeling her bra hard against his chest making him think of Jeannie as he began to spurt.
‘Grouse,’ he said again thinking of how he had handled that car. It had been so long since he had been behind a wheel and he sighed.
‘Finished,’ she stated without any interest, dropped her skirt and walking in front of him went back and into the coffee lounge.
Balga watched as she entered the door and was about to follow when he decided against it and walked off grinning at how he had had both of Eddy’s molls without his say so. ‘Serves him right,’ Balga said to himself, ‘he deserves it from not giving it to me as a welcome gift. Hot dog, buddy, buddy, hot dog, a hot dog just down the line —’