Read Online Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space by Linda Jaivin - Free Book Online Page B

upon a large flat stone. He bent down and turned it over. A beautiful sylph lay there, smiling and fluttering her wings.
I’m the girl from Mars,
she’d said.
If you don’t believe me, just ask Jake.
    I believe you,
George had replied.
    Well then,
she’d challenged,
gonna go my way?
George had woken up bolt upright in bed.
    Just ask Jake.
George waved Jake over.
    Jake wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. All things considered, however, having one required less effort than avoiding one. He ambled over to where George was unloading pulley-like gadgets from his pickup truck. ‘Whatcha got there, George?’ he asked.
    ‘Tummy toners,’ replied George.
    ‘Fair dinkum,’ nodded Jake. He thought that would probably do it for neighbourliness. He yawned. ‘Sorry,’ he apologised, covering his mouth. ‘Had a bit of a big one last night.’
    When Jake raised his hand, George’s sharp eyes zoomed straight in on his wrist. ‘New tattoo?’ He tried to control the tremor in his voice.
    ‘Uh, sort of,’ Jake mumbled.
    ‘Is there a story behind it?’
    ‘Not really,’ Jake replied. ‘Well, maybe. I dunno. Can’t really talk about now. I’m
shagged.
Catch you later.’
    George shrugged, hiding his disappointment.
    Jake dragged himself over to the ramshackle terrace next door where he lived. He pushed open the squeaky gate, and stepped over the overflowing carton of bottles and tinnies that, one day, they were going to put out for recycling. Heading for the door, he just avoided putting his foot down into a fresh cigar of dog poo. Jake felt for the leather thong that held his keys. It wasn’t there. Shit! This was too weird. He did a quick stocktake. Lost: a sock, his keys, a night. Gained: a tattoo and one whopper of a hangover. Surely, a night to remember. Now if
only
he could remember it.
    He banged on the door. No answer. His flatmates would all be asleep. He could hear Iggy Zardust, his bull terrier, come running to the door, claws clicking on the unpolished floorboards in the hall. Iggy was doing his Unbelievably Happy to Have Master Home routine, scratching at the door, wriggling and wagging his tail and whining with an enthusiasm that wasn’t entirely feigned, but which did not go a long way towards letting Jake into the house. Jake sighed and shuffled round the block to the back, clambered over the fence and excavated the sparekey from its hiding place underneath a deformed garden gnome.
    Inside at last, he scratched Iggy behind his pink floppy ears, and breathed in the familiar smell of the sharehouse—a comforting musk of stale beer, unwashed dog, overflowing ashtrays, sleeping bodies, dirty dishes, and the legendary Missing Banana. Aromatherapy. It felt good to be home.
    Jake crept up to his room. It looked like an explosion in a laundromat. Soiled and clean clothes coupled promiscuously in piles on the floor, or lazed on the precarious, three-legged chair he’d salvaged from the Tempe tip. The only thing in the room that wasn’t covered with undies, t-shirts, old suit jackets, retro shirts, socks and jeans was the clothes rack by the wall where half a dozen hangers dangled in a state of long-term unemployment. Jake shovelled a path to the mattress with his feet. He fell heavily on his bed, distressing whole colonies of dust mites, frightening a pair of mating cockroaches, annoying a flea who’d been in a bad mood since misplacing Iggy two days earlier, and generally disturbing the room’s delicate ecological balance. Jake completed the outrage by kicking off his boots. The ensuing odour sent all the life forms racing out the door.
    Jake’s head was spinning like vinyl on a turntable. A ‘45 on ‘78. Alvin and the Chipmunks on speed.
    Ever since finding himself on King Street all he’d wanted was to sleep. The second his head hit the pillow he’d be out like a light. But the light wasn’t turning off. Hallucinatory fragments replayed themselves in his brain. Yet, as sobriety slowly percolated