Read Eight Pieces on Prostitution for Free Online

strange.
    Freda was unfolding the chair. ‘Come on. Don’t you want to try it out?’ The chair was striped green and yellow. Its seat was scooped and deep. John regarded it with some anxiety. ‘What if I can’t get out again?’
    Freda laughed and told him he’d be fine; and he was. For a moment the sight of John’s white head against the stripes seemed absolutely right and fitting, and at the same time cheerful, throwing the rest of the room into shadow.
    â€˜I tell you what,’ he said proudly, ‘help me finish off this bottle and that’s one less we’ll have to keep cold.’
    We all helped him. The doorbell rang again.
    â€˜Now we’ll have to wait for Lil,’ Freda said. ‘As soon as you’ve done him Lilly, we’ll light the cake.’
    â€˜Hurry up,’ Freda said to John after I came back. ‘Hurry up and blow the candles out.’
    And John did, obligingly he hurried, and we helped him, laughing over the ruins, and after all it didn’t taste too bad.
    â€˜Those Hungarians make good cakes,’ Freda said.
    The icing stuck to our fingers, and the body had fallen out of the cream totally, but we didn’t care. I apologised to everyone and they told me not to worry.
    Freda, who was drunk by then, suggested that we should sing a song. John sang Waltzing Matilda. He sang it from beginning to end and we all joined in the chorus. He said he remembered the swaggies on his parents’ property, and the way he sang made the landscape come to life with jumbucks and ghosts calling from billabongs.
    â€˜Does anyone know any party games?’ said Freda. ‘I know, let’s play killer.’ She took us all in with a bright look. ‘One person is the killer and she – or he -’ with a deferential nod in John’s direction – ‘has to kill people by winking at them. But you’re not supposed to see her do it. Say you’re the killer Lilly, and I see you winking at Maria. I can accuse you and you have to say yes. But if you wink at Maria and no one sees you, then Maria has to say, “I’m dead.” Have you got it?’
    John and Maria said they did, but I demurred. ‘I’ve never been able to wink properly.’
    I had a go. John laughed. Freda said, ‘Do you want to play or don’t you? Look, I’ll break off a bit of match and we can pick whose going to be first.’
    John gave me a subtle wink. ‘Not yet,’ Freda said.
    John was the first killer, but this time he winked loudly and unsubtly and everybody saw him.
    When it was my turn, John was looking straight at me so I winked. It wasn’t a bad wink either, but almost a minute passed before John said, ‘I’m dead.’
    We played a few more rounds, laughing at Maria’s slit-eyed look, the way she winked sideways, as though, if she did it this way, nobody would notice. Freda was best, which, all things considered, wasn’t so surprising.
    Empty bottles stacked up on the table. The fishing rod stood against one wall. I picked it up and balanced it between my hands, feeling the life of the fish through the supple length of it, stretched cruelly and turned inside out. I put it back clumsily and felt ashamed.
    â€˜You know, I’d like to see your farm some time,’ Freda said.
    John nodded slowly, but said nothing.
    The echo of Freda’s voice hung in the thick air, gathering a desire that the others seemed scarcely aware of. I looked at Freda and it seemed we shared, at that moment, a longing which had little to do with a farmhouse in Kangaroo Valley, but which had got fixed to this place neither of us had seen and threatened to overwhelm us with self-pity. It was the silliness of wishing for something that had nothing to do with us, but which brought home how much was in that category. There I was in danger of bursting into tears, and Freda with me, because I’d never sat on John’s