we both could lose a bit of chunk round the middle, but check out the guns on us!’ She flexed her arm muscles. ‘Frank loves my guns — they’re particularly good since bale carting. We did six hundred little squares for the new racing stables. Said they’d double their order next summer, until they got their own paddocks set up.’
At the mention of Frank loving Gabs’s body again, Bec’s face fell. Did Charlie even notice her looks any more?
Gabs picked up the plummet in her mate’s mood. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she said, moving to give her a rough sort of hug. Bec felt tears well in her eyes. She wanted to see Charlie as a good husband. When she thought about it, he did put up with a lot. But then again, she put up with more! Was it normal to feel this way?
‘Hey,’ Bec said, extracting herself too soon from the hug, ‘people will think we do a lezzo double act with you groping me like that. Now let’s get inside and get this so-called Tupperware party over.’
She marched to the gate in her strappy eBay shoes, nearly doing her ankle in the process. Gnomes grinned at her from nests of white pebbles as she walked along a brown-painted concrete path, flanked with solar lights and identical plastic versions of Jamie Durie designer flax. The spiked dark-leafed plants were spaced as evenly and as exactly as soldiers on parade. Gabs and Bec came to stand on a porch enclosed with corrugated green Laserlite, adorned with hanging baskets overflowing with dangling plants of bulbous juice-filled leaves and infrequent drooping purple flowers.
Before Gabs even knocked, Doreen reefed the door open. She was wearing a very short nun’s costume, her legs like cottage cheese in her black fishnets and her feet like pig’s trotters shoved into black patent leather pumps. So big was her bosom, it looked as though she had an inflatable raft stuffed down the front of her nun’s habit. The fringe of her eighties-style bob had extra product in it and looked much like echidna spines as it protruded out from her black-and-white habit.
‘Hi, Sister Doreen! Say your prayers, baby! The goddesses are here!’ Gabs said.
‘Hello, strumpets,’ Doreen said. ‘How are you?’
‘Great, Dors. You look hot!’
‘Yeah, fifty going on fifteen,’ Doreen said.
‘I like your new garden. Those fake plants are pretty cool,’ Gabs said.
‘Least the fucken possums and wallabies won’t eat ’em,’ Doreen said proudly. ‘And they’ll only melt in a bushfire. Come in, come in. We’re about to start.’
‘Where’s Dennis?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Hiding in the shed,’ Doreen said over her shoulder. ‘He’s set the telly up in there with a couch. He’s got a box of beer and a DVD of cricket highlights so he’s happy. A bit terrified, but happy.’
They entered the kitchen, where they found Amanda Arnott, wife of the local publican, at the bench, carving a carrot into the shape of a penis. ‘Hello, slutties!’ she sang. ‘Just exhibiting my extensive creative talents!’ There was a glint of the knife and her large diamond rings shining beneath the kitchen lights as she waved a carrot at them. ‘Might try these as an extra to the side salads at the pub!’
‘There’ll be more orders for chips and salad than veg. Especially if you serve it up in that outfit,’ Rebecca said, nodding at Amanda’s skimpy French-maid costume.
They heard a collective shrill of laughter rise up from the gathering of women in the room next door.
‘Go through, but take a Cock-sucking Cowboy with you!’ Doreen said, handing them each a shot glass full of cream liqueur. Then she went back to putting bright red sausages onto a platter that had every kind of phallic-shaped food imaginable, including battered savs, gherkins and crabsticks.
‘Care for a cocktail before you go?’ Doreen asked, offering up a bowl of ‘little boys’ and larger saveloys, her grinning teeth framed by patchy bright red lipstick. ‘You’ve got a choice of big ones, or little ones. The little ones I call “disappointments”,’ she said as she picked up a small cocktail sausage and bit hard through it with her crooked teeth.
‘Oh. My. God,’ Rebecca breathed as she took up a little boy and dipped it in tomato sauce. ‘Tupperware indeed. I can see tonight is going to get messy. Very, very messy!’
When Rebecca and Gabs entered Doreen’s lounge room, it was like walking into a teenager’s bedroom overflowing with excited hormonal girls. The giggling, chatting women from the surrounding districts were all dressed like hookers, trannies or tarts with feather boas, lace or sequins. Many of them weighed on the large side, to the point where some might even warrant a spot on The Biggest Loser.
Together they huddled around Doreen’s dining table as if it was half-time at the footy. Doreen’s demure lace cloth was covered with glistening folds of black velour, on which sat an array of naughty novelties, romantic remedies and (more disturbingly for Rebecca, who had been expecting lettuce containers and drink bottles) items such as vibrators, ‘bullets’ and egg-shaped ‘marital aids’. There were clear-faced boxes containing fetish and fantasy costumes. Rebecca noticed that Speedo, the Groggans’ budgie, whose cage sat beside the dining table, was discreetly covered with a sheet as if the items on the table would upset his avian sensibilities.
‘No Tupperware in sight,’ said Bec. ‘Don’t reckon I’ll be fixing my lunch-box deficit here.’
‘Nah,’ Gabs said, ‘but you might fix your box deficit problem.’
‘Hah! You dirty girl!’
‘You have to admit some of those things do look like kitchen appliances. You could mix a cake with that one,’ she said, pointing to a giant red vibrator.
Bec grinned at Gabs as the women turned to greet them warmly.
Candice Brown from the Bendoorin general store, two hours’ drive away, stepped out of the huddle to give Rebecca a quick hug.
‘Good to see you, Beccy. It’s been ages,’ she said. ‘You should come in and get your groceries personally, instead of getting them delivered on the school bus! I miss seeing your lovely smile.’
Nicknamed by the locals ‘Candy Shop’, Candice Brown was anything but the brown her married name suggested. She was as bright and colourful as a licorice allsort in both looks and personality. She had vividly dyed curly crimson hair that tonight was pinned up so that ringlets fell prettily about her friendly round face. At the store, she could always be easily found in the rows of groceries, wearing her vibrant pinks, reds and yellows teamed with black leggings. Tonight she’d opted for an electric blue taffeta number and six-inch heels, topped off with a hot pink boa and a plastic six-shooter held in place by a frilly garter belt on her bare thigh.
‘You look great!’ Bec said. ‘Like a Western gal who hangs out in the rooms above saloons.’
‘Brian almost wouldn’t let me out the door.’ She laughed. ‘Dirty old coot! He loves his Westerns.’
‘Here’s to whiskey and wild women!’ Gabs said, passing another Cowboy shooter to Bec and Candice. ‘You look good enough to eat, Candy
