The taxi pulled up two blocks away from her house, and Sandra could clearly hear doof music reverberating through the streets. It was impossible to tell exactly where it was coming from as it was so loud you could see the gutter on the edge of the footpath shaking. The concrete crumbled, the trees cringed with fear and every person that lived in the neighbourhood wished that they didn’t.
To play it safe, they’d hidden the phone they’d backed up under a slit in the carpet underneath her flatmate’s bed. Both had been through it thoroughly, and found nothing they’d consider of value. The only immediate thing that could possibly be of interest would be phone records, but without access to databases to source all of these numbers or ringing each one ask asking who they were, this data was pretty useless to them. But it seemed innocuous anyway – there had to be something they were missing. So to be safe, they hid the phone before going to meet Stephen. So although they’d lost the original phone, they still had two copies of… whatever it was – one on the phone, and one on the computer.
Now that they’d lost the original, they had to get the copy back. They’d walked a couple of blocks, and waved down the first taxi they saw. The plan was to stop two blocks away, and to find a way in, and… well, that was it actually. They weren’t sure exactly what the plan was, they couldn’t really tell until they knew if anyone was watching the house, how they were watching the house and where they were watching the house from. But they assumed someone would be.
Sandra had called her mum from the cab, just to be on the safe side. She’d answered in her usual pleasant manner, but the second she knew it was Sandra, she told her how she’d tried to call many times, how she’d had a visit earlier that day from a very nice policeman who was terribly concerned about her whereabouts. She said he seemed quite cordial, and left her a card to contact him in case she heard anything. Said she’d recognise the name.
“Sgt Daniel Pohler”
Sandra knew alright. They knew where her mother was. She told her mum everything was fine, and that she was just helping them with some routine enquiries. But just to be on the safe side, lock all the doors, grab the rifle and hide in the cellar.
“Oh, righto” she said. And Sandra knew she would too. Bless her. She’d probably take a good book too.
The second the cab drove off they ran to the nearest fence and crouched down, looking in no particular direction. Sandra could feel the fence posts vibrate in time to the heavy base. The bush behind the fence was shaking.
“So”, Liz said. “What now?”
“Right. Right. I don’t know.”
The music thumped. Sandra gestured, and they squat-ran along the road to the street end, and peaked around the corner. They saw the usual suburban street. Parked cars. A couple of stoners. They quickly ducked behind the fence again, then realising that whoever these baddies were (Liz had decided in the taxi that, given they didn’t know who or what they were, they would referred to as ‘baddies’ until otherwise resolved), whoever these baddies were they probably weren’t stoners going to a doof party. Besides, Sandra thought she actually recognised them.
She signalled to Liz, and they made their way up the next street – all clear. They ran across, Liz tripped, tried to turn it into a commando roll, failed and ended up running on all fours the rest of the way whilst trying to regain her balance. She caught up to Sandra who missed the whole thing, trying to peer down the street. She saw a few more stoners.
“Liz.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got a feeling about this party.”
“What’s that?”
“Jade and Kyle weren’t due back for another two weeks, right?”
“I dunno. They’re your flatmates.”
“I think they came home early.”
They crept up the street to the corner, and peered over a fence. Sure enough, there was her house, music thumping loudly, crowd halfway out the front. There were no ‘suspicious’ cars or unmarked vans nearby, but Crazy Greek Lady, who had to be stone deaf, was sitting on her veranda still like a sentinel. Sandra was about to lead Liz forward when sure enough in the middle of the crowd – two huge guys squished into suits, and a younger man emerged from the house. She ducked as they left the party, and pretended to walk around the corner.
The house was being watched. More people were arriving.
“Should we steal the clothes off some of these guys?” she asked. “We could mug them, you know, take their poncho and disguise ourselves.”
Sandra looked at her like she was mad, brilliant, and an idiot all at once.
“We have an envelope with five thousand dollars. I’m not mugging anyone.”
It turned out that she know one of them through association, and knowing that everyone had a price gave him a fifty for his coat and hessian top, and the same for his mate. Sandra could smell the BO as she slipped the clothes on, but ignoring it she let her hair out, pulled it over her face and turned the collar up. Liz had a miner’s hat and a leather jacket, and did similarly. She felt like Janis Joplin, and looked like an idiot. They hid in the group, and they walked down the middle of the street to the party.
The music was so loud they could hear the speakers physically thump. My speakers, Sandra thought. She hated share house living, but had been cursed whenever she shared and these guys worked some magic IT job that allowed them to slog it out for three months, quit, and travel for six, so it was worth it for at least half of the year.
Her window was shaking, and through it she could see many, many people dancing in her room. Someone had put something red over her light and it was flashing on, off, on, off. She momentarily wondered how they’d done that until they got inside the hallway, and saw the stoned eyes popping out of the face that was flicking the switch on, off, on, off. If he got electrocuted, he probably wouldn’t notice. He may have been already. No one would ever know.
The problem with these parties was that the crowd was so bizarrely diverse she could never peg exactly who they were and what they were. She’d met some intensely sexy and intelligent men at some of these parties, and also some of the biggest, dumbest arseholes known to humanity. There were spit roasts, vegans, Dylan fans, doof worshippers, punks, hippies, hipsters, bogans, sports fanatics, philosophy students, theatre makers, geologists, ecologists, hydrologists, geeks, nerds, beer lovers, pill poppers, wine tasters, smack shooters, all in the one room playing a game of naked twister. At least, that was the metaphor she liked to use when telling the story of these parties. They were never quite that interesting, in truth they were more irritating than interesting because she didn’t know how to deal with such a wide variety of deliberate identities in the one place at the one time.
Right now though, she knew exactly how to deal with them – avoid. No eye contact, keep moving. And she did. Liz followed behind as they went down the hall. They could see a goth girl who misunderstood ‘goth’ and thought it meant ‘burlesque’ standing guard outside the housemate’s room. This mean it was either a drug room or an orgy room, two common declarations made by Kyle and Jade at their parties. Drug room they could deal with.
“Orgy room” the guard mouthed. She then mouthed and mimed something. Sandra took it to mean clothes off or no entry, Liz thought it was something to do with a moose. They weren’t prepared to do either, so they stood there unsure until Liz saw the ‘baddies’ returning through the front. She panicked, grabbed Sandra and pointed. Sandra panicked, tried to remain calm, then when they saw her she panicked again. The crowd had picked up dramatically, and men’s sheer bulk worked against them as they tried so squeeze their way down the hallway. Sandra and Liz, veterans of many a music festival, glided through the mob like termites in a swarm.
The kitchen was playing host to a political debate, and they collided with several on their way through. Liz grabbed chairs to pull down on the floor behind them, but only one was vacant and it couldn’t fall through the seventeen people crammed into the room anyway. The room that lead to the tiny backyard was a laundry with the bathroom off one side, and it was about as narrow as the hallway. Sandra was about to cram down it when she stood on someone underneath, gained a foot in height and saw more goons in the back yard.
She swore, and stopped Liz on her way through. She mouthed and gestured, and Liz understood. They looked around, unsure of what to do, when they realised they were jammed against the kitchen sink, above which sat the only window in the room. Sandra jammed it open, climbed onto the sink, freezing her hand in a basin full of ice and beer at the same time, and head first slid through the narrow window. Liz managed the feat with a little less grace, actually landing on her head and not her arms as she had also appropriated a couple of beers in the process, beer which she deemed more valuable than her head.
Sandra stood quickly, and shut the window. She saw no one untoward in the room. And used to the bizarre behaviour at these parties, no one noiced anything.
Liz passed her a beer. It seemed terribly inappropriate, but she did desperately need a drink. They were crouched in the narrow garden/ivy patch between the house and the side fence, and had a beer each. Neither spoke. Even if they had something to discuss, they couldn’t converse anyway. Sandra finished her drink fast, and went to toss the bottle when she realised – the next window along belonged to Kyle and Jade’s room.
They squat-snuck alongside, until she came to the window. She steeled herself for ‘The Orgy Room.’ She quickly popped her head up like a meerkat, cupped her hands of her eyes to see inside, then ducked back down again. Surprised by what she saw, she immediately popped up again to confirm. She dropped back next to Liz, who desperately wanted to know. Sandra gestured she look, and she did. She dropped back, and mouthed the word “No.”
They both popped up together. There was no orgy. There was a huge bong tipped on its side, and there were seven people in there – fully clothed and passed out on the bed. The whole orgy thing was just an excuse to smoke bongs away from everyone else. Posers. The whole ‘alternative lifestyle’ they made themselves out to live their life by fell away. They were just a bunch of pot heads. Sandra found she disliked them even more.
She opened the window. The music was so loud the window could have sounded like charging elephants and no one would have heard. Liz gave her a boost up, and she rolled into the room, knocking over a lamp and a pile of something in the corner, which fell onto someone’s head. They didn’t budge. Concerned, she checked their pulse – they were alive. And quite content it seemed.
She stepped over two people to the edge of the bed, knelt on the floow and stuck her hand underneath to feel around for the slit in the carpet. She saw movement on the bed in the dark, and Kyle’s face rolled directly in front of hers. His eyes were wide open. But his brain was clearly not. He stared right through her. She breathed out in relief as her hand found its target, and she pulled the phone out. Relieved, she stood up, and saw Liz in the window. She went to mouth “I GOT IT” but found herself shouting it instead – just as the music stopped.
“I GOT IT.”
It was, in the silence, exceptionally loud.
There were mumbles in the room. Kyle looked up at her, his trance broken. She looked at him, and at the others slowly stirring.
“Yay orgy”, she said, quietly, then went to leap out the window and crawled out instead.
“Over the fence?” Liz asked, as the stood outside the windw.
“Over the fence”, Sandra replied, and they grabbed handfuls of ivy at the top and tried to pull themselves over. It was initially very clumsy until she turned her head and saw through the window the door of the orgy room swing open to reveal the crisp silhouette of a goon.
Suddenly they possessed the skill of cat burglars, and with a swift combination of hands and feet found their way over the fence. Any unnecessary cries of “stop them, they’re getting away” from the baddies were drowned by the reigniting of the doof. Over the fence, Liz and Sandra ran down the gap between the fence and their neighbour’s house to their backyard, and then again climbed over their side fence to the next neighbours, ran across their backyard and over the next fence to the road.
They collapsed on the roadside, leaning against the fence, exhausted. Anymore fences and they couldn’t have made it. They were really bloody hard to climb over. Suddenly they were illuminated by headlights and a car pulled up on the street. The side window was down and they saw Richard Pohler’s driver.
“Get in”, he said, and they realised it was his car. They dragged themselves to their feet, and climbed into the back. Tires screeched as the car took off. They could hear police sirens approaching in the distance, and this time when she looked through the back window Sandra saw two people run into view, now left behind.
This time, the getaway had been closer. She’d prefer it if there were no more getaways.
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