Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space by Linda Jaivin Page B

belonged.’
    ‘And we can find him whenever?’ A note of hope sounded in Baby’s voice. She wanted another go with Jake. On her
own.
    ‘Whenever. And let’s give him another little memorative of the visit.’ Baby saw what Doll was proposing and nodded her assent.
    When Doll finished, the two of them raised Jake from the table and dressed his still zonked-out form. Babysouvenired a pubic hair and they retained one sock for Revor, but got the rest of his gear back on him more or less as it had come off. He was heavy to move, but it didn’t worry them. Their energy levels were nuclear. They ate uranium for breakfast. Heavy metal chicks.
    Baby spotted a small piece of paper on the floor. It had slipped out of Jake’s back pocket. It was a business card on which was printed an impression of black lace over a skull. ‘PHANTASMA. The one-stop Goth shop. For all your spectral needs.’ The address was on King Street, Newtown. ‘I reckon that’s as good a place to drop him off as any,’ she reasoned.
    Doll picked up the Abduct-o-matic, coded in Phantasma’s address and pressed REVERSE. Jake dissolved into a cloud of glittering particles, hovered for a moment and pissed off.
    ‘Miss you already,’ sighed Baby.

M iss you more, thought Jake. Now why did he think that? Jake was unsure how the words had popped into his mind. Then again, he was unsure about a lot of things. Like how he came to be standing on King Street in his Sydney suburb of Newtown at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, staring at the ‘CLOSED’ sign on the door to his flatmates’ shop, and tingling from head to toe. His head hurt. He was missing one sock.
    Newtown, with its dominant population of crusties, punks, rockers, ravers, piercing artists, tattoo artists, installation artists, wannabe artists, bullshit artists and piss artists, wasn’t exactly a morning kind of place. It never felt particularly perky at this hour. In fact, just like Jake at this precise moment, Newtown felt like it had kitty litter for a brain. Newtown wanted to crawl onto its old stained mattress on the floor and pull its unwashed covers over its face. Newtown craved a Berocca and a darker pair ofsunnies. Newtown needed to spend less time in pubs, less money on drugs and to pay more attention to the pamphlets given out in its health food stores, vegetarian restaurants and natural healing centres. Newtown needed to get a haircut and get a real job. Newtown swore it was going to get its shit together next week. The week after that at the
absolute latest.
Definitely. If not, the week after that. For sure. Looking up at the same brilliant blue spring sky that prompted the denizens of beachside suburbs like Bondi to grab their surfboards and the residents of Darlinghurst to swarm the cafes, Newtown covered its eyes with the back of its hand and said
get fucked.
    Jake rubbed his dry and aching eyes with his fists. Little orange men in green leprechaun suits were jumping up and down on his optic nerves and rafting the throbbing veins in his temples. Other strange smurfs claw-toed his guts while sucking on the lining of his stomach with tiny, toothy mouths. His arse itched too, from way inside. What
had
he been doing all night? A vision of Revor floated up into his consciousness and he felt a sudden urge to dial a pavement pizza. The moment passed. Thank God. Jake had barked at a few lawns in his time—yorp yorp!—but it wasn’t really what he thought of as a Good Look. Not in the middle of King Street anyway. When it was time to make those long-distance calls on the big white telephone, he preferred to do it in the privacy of his own home. Home. He wanted to be there five minutes ago. Yorp yorp? What the fuck was that supposed to be, hey?
    The Last Nuclear Family in Newtown walked past, making a polite circle around where Jake stood dazed and confused, a generational cliche. Dad and son veered to the right, mum and daughter to the left. Reuniting ahead,