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  With no alternatives, I unenthusiastically peeled the apple of its wrinkled skin and ate it, flopped on the cracked brown vinyl lounge. Late afternoon TV entertained me until Dixie came home. She announced her arrival with a loud stream of obscenities before she’d even opened the door. From previous experience, I gathered she couldn’t find her keys in her chaotic, oversized handbag, so I struggled to my feet and opened the door for her.

  She took in my costume without a word, barely even glancing at me, bursting through the door in the middle of what turned out to be a very long-winded and vitriolic rant about her boss. She raged about his idiocy, his vile personality and his complete lack of respect for her as both a human being and an artiste. Dixie’s been my best friend since we started high school together and was petite, cute and curvy with a Malaysian mother, Australian father, gorgeous black eyes and a terrifyingly large libido. She had short spiky hair that she regularly coloured and this week she was bright green, her hair standing on end like electrified Astroturf. She was also one of the most self-centred people I’d ever known. The entire universe revolved around Dixie and her needs and wants and the rest of us could go jump. But despite this, I was a loyal kind of person and didn’t give up on her, even when she was at her worst. We did have a lot of fun together.

  Her outrageously large handbag came in handy sometimes, as I was about to rediscover when she pulled out from its fathomless depths some burgers and fries. I gave a silent cheer. She had managed to smuggle home some food from her part-time job as a burger-flipper at a nearby fast food chain restaurant. She wasn’t always successful in her attempts as her well-cursed boss was rather suspicious of her and kept an eagle eye out when he wasn’t distracted by a disaster. Fortunately for us though, disasters were frequent at that restaurant, especially in the kitchen. Some were probably even deliberately caused by Dixie herself. So she found many occasions on which to supplement our impoverished lives with greasy, heart-attack inducing food. Yum!

  I grabbed one of the burgers, greedy with hunger, only to have it snatched out of my hands.

  “That one’s mine! I made it myself and it’s got loads of extra extras. I call it the Dixie Special. You can have the other one,” Dixie ordered, and I had to settle for its poorer, less-endowed cousin. Why she just couldn’t make two Dixie Specials so we could both have one was beyond me, but that was Dixie for you – rarely a thought for anybody else. I felt my customary pang of guilt at eating stolen goods as I bit into the burger and shovelled the fries into my mouth, but hunger does a good job of realigning your moral code.

  After we’d demolished the food, Dixie sat back and finally noticed that there was something different about me.

  “What the fuck are you wearing?” she asked, eyes wide with incredulity as she realised she’d just dined with a giant slice of watermelon.

  “I’m kind of stuck in it,” I admitted sheepishly. “I need some help to take it off. I had to catch the bus home wearing it.”

  She laughed for a solid five minutes at that confession, tears pouring down her reddened face, gasping for oxygen. I thumped her on the back and waited with patient resignation for her to finish. Finally she subsided, only the occasional watery snort of laughter disrupting the quiet.

  “You’re such a moron, Tilly,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “Yeah, yeah. Skip the personality analysis, will you, and help me? It’s so hot in here,” I snapped with annoyance, standing up and turning around so she could unzip me. “You might need some pliers. The little thingy’s broken off.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she said, unzipping me easily. Realisation that I’d been duped swamped me in an instant.

  “No! That bastard! He tricked me,” I groaned, slapping my forehead in disbelief at my own stupidity. “I trusted him and he lied to me. I’ve just completely humiliated myself in public for no reason.”

  Dixie started giggling again. “Tilly, you’re a mega-moron. You shouldn’t be so trusting. Especially of men.”

  I frantically began peeling the costume from my body, only to have it tear apart in my hands. Shit! There went any chance of receiving my money from that job, because I suspected that Barnaby was the type of person who would calculate the cost of replacing the costume to the exact cent that I was owed in backpay. I collapsed on the lounge with my head in my hands, my singlet top and gym shorts plastered to me with sweat. I had just worked my butt off for two weeks for nothing.

  Dixie screwed up her face and recoiled in disgust as I sat down. “Oh yuck, you stink! You need a shower.” She pulled me to my feet and gave me an ungentle push towards the bathroom. “Go have a shower and then I’ll buy you a drink. Sounds like you could do with one after the day you’ve had.”

  She was right, twice over. I was rank with BO and I certainly could do with a drink after making such a fool of myself. I scrabbled around in our bedroom for some clean clothes and headed to the bathroom. It was its usual mess, dirty clothes and damp towels covering the floor. Dixie’s makeup took up most of the tiny vanity bench-top and her toiletries hogged the mirrored medicine cabinet. That was okay with me, because I didn’t have much of either anyway, so didn’t need much space. And neither of us cared whether the students minded or not. I wasn’t sure if they even bathed much at all.

  The shower cubicle had never been cleaned once the entire two years that I had lived in the place, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to start a precedent. Its disgusting state did mean that I took the fastest showers I’d ever had in my life though, and that day was no exception. I quickly lathered, shampooed and rinsed, finishing as soon as possible. I ran a comb through my longish, wavy dark chestnut hair and slapped on some deodorant and moisturiser, noticing that my container was nearly empty. I cursed Dixie out loud. She was a frequent and unrepentant borrower, user and keeper of my clothes, makeup, shoes, boyfriends – anything she could get her hands on.

  I dressed in a short denim skirt and stretchy black v-neck t-shirt and pulled on some flat sandals, carelessly applied some makeup and dried my hair while Dixie showered and changed. I emptied my purse on my bed and counted my available money. Twenty dollars was all I had in the world, which had to cover food, rent and utilities, not to mention bus fares and some new moisturiser. If I didn’t find another gig soon, I would either have to move back home or sign up for a low-level temping job in an office. With those depressing options crowding my mind, we walked down to our local pub. It was busy that evening and almost chilly inside, its air-conditioning turned up full blast to compensate for day’s high temperature. Evidently, everybody had decided that night to go out to dinner to escape the heat, because the pub was packed.

  “You buy the first drinks while I find us a table,” commanded Dixie, haring off before I could protest. I gazed after her in annoyance, distinctly remembering her offering to buy me a drink. I muttered to myself as I ordered, handing over half of my precious twenty dollars to purchase two glasses of the nasty house white wine that I watched the barman blatantly pour from a catering-sized cask. Dixie had managed to find us a small table up against a wall and I dodged over-excited children and doddering pensioners, carrying the drinks safely to the table.

  We chatted casually for a while, filling each other in on our day. I unwisely made the mistake of complaining to her about my seemingly endless and depressing single status. She immediately sprang into action to find me someone.

  “What about him?” she asked, nodding her head towards a good-looking, fair-haired man in dark blue jeans and a red polo shirt waiting at the counter to order dinner. He was nibbling on his bottom lip, indecision stamping his face as he dithered between the chicken schnitzel special and the roast of the day.

  “Nah, he’s not tall enough,” I dismissed. “You know I hate towering over a man.”

  She sighed impatiently and looked around. “Well, what about that guy over there? He’s tall and cute.”

  “He sure is,” I agreed. “But I think that very pregnant woman standing next to
him is his wife.”

  She shrugged as if to say so what? Her eyes roamed the crowd again. “Ooh, what about him? He’s tall, cute and with no knocked-up chick nearby.”

  “True, but I think he’s gay,” I pointed out. “Look at his t-shirt. It says: I want to flout that I’m out. Sounds sort of gay to me. Plus, he’s got his hand on that other man’s butt.”

  “I suppose,” she conceded unhappily. “Okay, okay. I’m not giving up. I love a challenge. Hmm.” She scanned the room again, then smiled triumphantly. “What about him?”

  “He is tall and cute, but he’s way too young for me.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because he’s wearing a school uniform! It’s probably not even legal for us to be looking at him.”

  “Don’t be silly – he’s over the age of consent.”

  “Barely.”

  She continued to stare at the teenager who must have been dining with his parents directly from a school function, an appreciatively calculating smile teasing her lips. “He’s very cute, though. I could teach him a thing or two that he won’t learn in school.”

  “Dixie, stop it. You’re scaring the poor kid.” The teen glanced over at us nervously, his protective mother hustling him back to their table to join the family, throwing us a disgusted look as she did.

  “What a bitch! I was only looking,” sulked Dixie.

  I laughed. “It’s the way you were looking at him that was bothering her.”

  Dixie turned her attention back to me. “I give up. Your problem is that you’re too fussy,” she said, taking a sip of wine. “You have to stop being so picky. Just shag the next man who asks and your problem’s solved. That guy we met at the nightclub the other night was okay. You should have shagged him. I would have.”

  “He was married! And he tried to grope my boobs when we danced together.”

  “You do have great boobs, so you can’t really blame a man for trying to have a feel,” she said, sipping her wine again, halfway through her glass already.

  “Yes, I can! And besides, you know I’ve sworn off one-night stands. I’m sick of them, especially after the last one. I always feel so cheap and dirty afterwards.” My mind took me back to that horrible feeling I’d had a few months ago waking up in an unfamiliar house, head pounding with a killer hangover. I’d rolled over to find myself naked in bed with a snoring stranger who’d sure seemed a lot better looking the previous evening when I’d been wearing my vodka goggles. I’d dressed quietly and sneaked out of his place in my bare feet so as not to wake him, praying that I hadn’t given him my phone number. It was on that journey home on the bus that I’d vowed to myself not to do that ever again.

  “You’ll never get laid with that attitude,” Dixie warned, not having any compunction herself about one-nighters, married men, or apparently, teenagers.

  “I don’t want to just get laid,” I grumbled. “I want . . . I dunno. I want something more than that.” She shot me a scathing look, rolling her eyes with deep scorn. We were worlds apart in our attitudes to sex.

  I sighed in self-pity. Not only was I unsuccessful romantically, I was also pretty much a flop at scoring jobs in the two years since Dixie and I had both decided to chase our dream to become actors. Well, to be honest, it was more Dixie’s dream than mine. I followed her because I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do with my life and it had sounded fun. But it wasn’t. I’d only managed to notch up a bare handful of acting jobs since I started. One had been a non-speaking role as an extra in a locally-made turkey of a movie that I’d done primarily for the free catering. I’d also managed to land an unfortunately long-running commercial for a high-fibre breakfast cereal. My overjoyed and un-constipated enthusiasm for bran had mortified me every time the ad showed on TV, but gave my family and friends endless fodder for teasing.

  About six months ago, in what I mistakenly believed was going to be my big break, I’d scored a brief stint on the soapie Summer Days. I’d played the conniving and slutty half-sister of the town’s doctor, but she was killed off after a few weeks in a gigantic fireball after sleeping with half the town and breaking up a popular character’s marriage. I was still getting hate mail about that.

  My other big role was as the Third Hottie in a low-budget and low-talent slasher film called The Harvester’s Crop. My character was hacked to death in the first ten minutes with a scythe by a madman known as The Harvester. It still rankled that I’d missed out on the First Hottie and Second Hottie roles. As far as I know the movie didn’t make a single cent, bypassing all normal avenues of distribution and ending up on some obscure horror website. I’d always had my suspicions that it was never meant to be released at all, and was made solely for the private entertainment of the three pimply, but well-off young directors. That made me especially glad that I’d refused to wear a bikini during the shoot. I mean, seriously, who wears a bikini and high-heels running around the fields at night when a psychopathic murderer was trying to kill you with a primitive farming implement? The other two Hotties didn’t object to wearing their bikinis though and that’s probably why my character was bumped off first. But you see, I do have some artistic integrity.

  I sagged into depression thinking that I was almost down to my last dollar and if I didn’t find some acting work soon, I wouldn’t be able to pay my share of the rent. I really didn’t want to ask my parents for money yet again. I pictured Dad’s stern face, his eyebrows slightly drawn together, mouth pursed, as he gave me what I had dubbed ‘The Lecture’. I could recite it by heart: how I should be more responsible in my life and get a steady job like my two older brothers; how when he and Mum were twenty-five they were already married with a toddler, a baby and a mortgage; how I should settle down with a good man. Have to find one first, Dad, I always said back to him at that point, looking up at him with my big eyes, my most pitiable expression on my face. That made him pause for an instant and pat my cheek with affectionate consolation before resuming his spiel. And even though each time he coughed up some cash in the end, I was becoming tired of hearing The Lecture. I didn’t need any reminding about exactly what was wrong with my life. I was the one living it, after all.

  My mobile suddenly chirped. Dixie and I exchanged hopeful glances as I answered, hearing the grating, coarse voice of our shared third-rate agent, Kristo.

  “No good, Tilly,” he rasped down the phone line. He inhaled from a cigarette, paused briefly, then exhaled with a disagreeable deafening roar of air in my ear. I could almost smell the nicotine through the phone. “Sorry, love.”

  “Yeah, no problem, Kristo,” I said, dejected but unsurprised.

  I’d tested earlier in the week for a role on Learn or Earn, a shockingly bad show set in a fictional university town that relied heavily on the tense standoff between the university folk and the townsfolk for its story-lines. The character was the psychotic, alcoholic secret love-child of the university’s vice-chancellor. She gets it on with the married town mayor then tries to kill him, sparking – yep, you guessed it! – a tense standoff between the university folk and the townsfolk. Just like every other frigging week. It was utter shite and the director had stared at my boobs the whole audition. But at least it would have kept the landlord off my back. Not that the creepy jerk hadn’t offered several times to climb onto my back in lieu of me paying my share of the rent.

  “They gave the part to that blonde bird with the big tits. They said she had the attributes they were looking for,” Kristo told me.

  I replied tartly, “Is that what they call them now?”

  “What? Very talented girl, that one though. Very promising. I’ve offered to look after her career. Already found another job for her when she’s done with Learn or Earn.”

  That made me see red. “Well, bully for her! But what about me? What have you lined up for me next?”

  There was an awkward silence down the line. He cleared his throat noisily. “I’ve been thinking about you lately, Tilly.”

  Uh-oh. “T
hinking what exactly?”

  “Thinking that you might be better off with another agent. That I might not be the best fit for your . . . ah . . . talent.”

  I stared at the phone, mouth open in shock, before slamming it back to my ear. “You’re dumping me as a client?”

  “Now don’t go putting it like that. Let’s just say that I’m freeing you from your contractual obligation with me to allow you to explore other options.”

  “What about Dixie? Are you going to dump her too?”

  Another silence. “Dixie’s more serious about being an actor. And at least she turns up to the auditions I organise for her.”

  “Kristo! You’ve sent me to three porn movie auditions this year! I’ve told you a million times that I refuse to do stuff like that. I want to keep my clothes on!”

  His voice hardened. “Like I said, Dixie turns up for her auditions, no complaints.” I glanced over at my friend with fresh eyes. “And besides, I haven’t made a cent from you for months. I don’t do this for fun, you know.” He thawed a little. “Look, love, take a word of advice and find another job. Acting’s not for you.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, but I was so angry that I hung up on him. The arsehole! I’d put up with a lot from him in the last couple of years. He’d tried it on with me a few times in his shabby downtown office, but I’d played dumb, staring at him with my eyes wide, a slightly puzzled expression on my face as if I didn’t quite understand his double entendres and dirty suggestions. He gave up on me after a while, writing me off as someone with great boobs but sadly lacking in the brains department. And he thought I couldn’t act!

  Well, that was your last chance, I warned myself. If I wanted to pay the rent this month and avoid the landlord’s lechery, I had to find a real job. I leaned over to the next table where someone had abandoned the local news rag. I skimmed the employment ads, dismissing them offhandedly. Boring. Boring. Boring . . . no wait. I read the ad more carefully. Nah, boring. Boring. Really boring. Weird. Boring. Then I noticed the little ad wedged at the bottom of the second page. It was inconspicuous, not designed to catch your attention, restrained and uninformative. I wondered briefly if noticing it was the first recruitment test, given the nature of the business.