Look to His Like

Chapter Seven

Author's Note: 'The Dreaming' is the term used to describe the period of Aboriginal inhabitation of Australia before European settlement.

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Half an hour later, I was reclining in my armchair, luxuriating to the strains of Handel, the humour of the encounter with Staal having induced a light-hearted daze. As I idly contemplated getting up and making something to eat, there came a delicate knock on my door, and a cheerful "Yoo, hoo, dahhling!" announced the identity of my visitors. I rose to welcome Eric and Damien into my abode.

They sat side by side on my couch in identical postures - knees pressed together, hands clasped tightly in laps, avidly curious expressions on their faces as they stared at me. There, the resemblance ended. Eric, who is a dancer in a cross-dressing show troupe called Les Chicks, has a carefully manufactured femininity about him - his mustard coloured hair is always scraped back from his gaunt, whisker less face, and bound in a hairnet, his eyebrows plucked into perfect arches, his tall, sleek body devoid of hair. That night, he wore a midriff-baring top of pink netting and tight black leather trousers. His white feet were bare, his toes better manicured than mine.

Scotland-born Damien on the other hand, is as masculine as they come. He runs his own sports store on George Street, and looks for all like The Fonz, even down to the faded blue jeans, white t-shirt, and leather jacket when it's cold. But he dances like Ricky Martin. I confess I have a serious weakness for men who can dance well. When Damien and Eric took me to a dance club one night, shortly after my arrival in Sydney, and Damien hit the dance floor, I swear I started drooling. I decided then and there to convert him to heterosexuality - purely selfish, ulterior motives, of course. I was to learn a bitter lesson about that ambition, but to Damien's credit, he never wavered from being totally friendly and sympathetic towards me, and oozed constant fraternal solidarity, despite my embarrassment.

I have never been certain of their respective last names: for the thirteen years that I have known them, they've always just been EricnDamien. A single unit. A united front against the world. A family. In my few unguarded, miserly moments, I was as jealous as hell.

"Dahhling!" said Eric, eyes popping. "What happened? Do tell!" Damien looked encouraging.

I sighed and regaled them with the whole story of the last three days, leaving out everything about Adam Drake - after all, despite what my girly hormones were trying to tell me, he was completely irrelevant to my quest for a husband. When I finished, Eric had one elegant hand pressed in amazement to his mouth, and Damien was wearing an Elvis smirk. They looked at each other, for a second sharing their amusement in silent rapport, then turned to face me, both now totally serious.

"You're going about this whole thing all wrong, sweetie," said Damien, completing his repertoire by sounding like Sean Connery. By his side, Eric murmured in a flustered way "Oh, my, my, yes indeedy!"

"Got any better ideas about how to find the perfect husband?" I said dryly. "If so, spill, because I don't have time to waste."

EricnDamien looked at me as if amazed that someone could be so ignorant. "Dahhling," said Eric, "it's easy! You look for someone who wants what you want."

"A promotion?"

Eric trilled with laughter. "No, no, no!"

"Window-dressing," Damien said with a meaningful nod.

That made sense, I supposed. At least if someone required the front of marriage as I did, rather than hopes of love or sex, any awkwardness involving either would be avoided.

"O - kay," I said slowly. "And how do I go about finding someone who needs window-dressing?"

The two men looked at each other, nodded once, and faced me. "Harry Jarup," they chorused with as much awe as they would use when uttering "Oscar Wilde" or "Rupert Everett".

"And who," I said nervously, "is Harry Jarup?"

Eric pressed a fingertip to the side of his nose. "You will find out," he said, nodding. "Clear your schedule for tomorrow, dahhling!"

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Harry Jarup had an office in a decrepit building in the south of the city, although calling it an office is being generous - it was a narrow, long cavity beneath a flight of stairs that pounded in a frightening way whenever someone ascended or descended them, sporting a single desk strewn with bulging files, rickety plastic chairs, and a single filing cabinet. Sunshine struggled in a sickly orange glow through a dusty window, high in the peeling wall. A dead pot plant sat on the desk, next to a fish bowl filled with greenish water and two bloated goldfish corpses. A handwritten cardboard sign was stuck with sticky tape on the outside of the warped door and read "Harry Jarup. Relationships Consultant". When we had arrived, we were welcomed by a skinny, spiky-haired young man dressed entirely in black who, from his multiple piercings, looked like he had fallen into a tackle box. He showed us inside before returning to his post outside the door, mumbling, "Harry'll be along in a sec." He had also handed me a single piece of paper that felt dusty to the touch, and a broken pencil. It appeared I had to complete a questionnaire.

I sat on one of the chairs, next to Eric whose knobbly knees jumped up and down with nervous excitement. While I filled in the questionnaire, Damien flicked through a pile of CDs on the desk, extracted a disc, and placed it in a pink CD player. Soon the unmistakable crystal tones of Tom Jones filled the room. Damien lifted his arms and began to dance with seductive swivels of his hips, humming merrily along with "It's Not Unusual". The pencil fell from my limp fingers and my jaw inched slowly southwards. Man, talk about wanton hips of doom.

Just then, the door behind us croaked open. Damien stopped dancing and punched the CD to silence, standing to attention. Eric sprang to his feet. As the two faced the new arrival, child-like eager-to-please smiles formed on their faces. I turned in my seat.

A massive shape filled the doorway. His ebony skin, large flat nose, and mobile mouth indicated his Aboriginal heritage. He wore what looked like a long, ankle-length shirt, covered in a brilliantly hued floral Hawaiian design, and flat brown sandals. A smile like a brilliant crescent moon split his face as he lumbered into the room, and held out his arms.

EricnDamien burst forward. As I stood and watched in bemusement, the three embraced, rocking back and forth and making "Ahhh" sounds. When EricnDamien finally disengaged themselves, wiping joyous tears from their eyes, Harry Jarup - for it could only be he - turned melting black eyes on me.

"You're Jo Butler," he said in a voice somewhere between a breathless wheeze and a sigh. "Welcome, my dear. Any friend of my boys is a friend of mine." Then I was engulfed in a tight hug.

For some reason, tears of happiness sprang to my eyes and I wanted to stay forever clasped in those warm, meaty arms, cushioned against that soft body, my face being tickled by sweet-smelling dreadlocks; I swear, I even wanted to rock back and forth and utter my own sounds of contentment. However, too soon Harry unwound his arms, patted my cheek, and rolled behind his desk. With a grunt and a pained creaking of a stool, he sat down. I blinked moisture from my eyes, and returned to my own seat.

"My boys tell me you need to be married," Harry breathed on a whine. When I nodded, feeling embarrassed, he smiled fondly. "I can help you, my dear. It is my job to find partners for people in similar predicaments to your own - people who require the cover of marriage so they can pursue a certain lifestyle in peace and without prejudice ...have you completed the questionnaire stating your requirements?"

I handed him the single piece of paper. He bent over it, studying it for a long moment, while nervous tension moistened my palms and tripped my heartbeat. I cast a glance at EricnDamien. They were gazing fixedly at Harry, expressions of worship on their faces.

At last, Harry looked up with a nod.

"This will be easy," he said. "I have many men on my books who would suit."

"You do?" I said eagerly. "When can I meet them?"

"I can arrange for your first meeting tomorrow," said Harry.

I clasped my hands together in rapture. "Oh, that's wonderful! Thank you! And how can I pay you? You must tell me."

He waved away my gratitude with a beaming smile. "Your happiness is my payment, my dear."

EricnDamien looked at me and nodded proudly to emphasise the kindness and charity. I shook my head.

"No, I must return the favour somehow - I insist, Mr. Jarup. You are doing me a great service."

Harry tilted his head to the side, regarding me thoughtfully.

"I understand," he wheezed, "that you're a lawyer?"

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It turned out Harry was an elder of a tribe called Jabujawarra, which since the dawn of The Dreaming, it seemed, had called home a remote, freakishly lush oasis in the middle of the Simpson Desert. There, the tribe eked out an independent living, had its own dialect and followed ancient customs. A developer had happened upon it in recent years, and plans were afoot to make the area into a tourist attraction. Harry wondered if his tribe could make a claim that the land was its own, thereby preventing the White Man taking it over and usurping his extended family.

When I left Harry's office, Damien carried a box overflowing with documents and other paraphernalia pertaining to the situation, and I was trembling with that special excitement which only comes with an intellectual challenge. Not wanting to get carried away in typical lawyer fashion about legal technicalities, let me just say that the establishment of native title law in Australia is a fairly new development - in fact, the landmark case, known simply and reverently amongst the legal profession as "Mabo", was handed down by the High Court just before I started university, and essentially stated that Australia's indigenous people could have legitimate claim to parcels of Australia's land. Of course, the ignorant amongst the population immediately thought their half-acre blocks in the suburbs were going to be snatched from under their feet - but native title law is more complicated than that, and in actual fact, very few claims that native title existed had been upheld. To Harry, I vowed to go over the material he had given me that night - although I did caution him that, as keen as I was to look into the matter, I was obliged to persuade Gilden Hawke to take on the file if I was to help in any meaningful way, even if it was to be free-of-charge. Harry nodded, satisfied.

In the meantime, as I was in this part of the city, I was compelled to follow a more instinctive urge.

"Would you take the box home with you?" I asked Damien. "I'll pick it up later. I - er - want to visit a friend."

"Sure, sweetie." He bent forward and kissed my cheek. I exchanged cheek smooches with Eric also, and watched as the two strolled away down the street. When they jumped into a taxi, I jaywalked across the busy road and stopped outside The Kensington Hotel, excitement and nervousness turning my legs to jelly.

This tall, dirty redbrick building in dire need of care and renovation was where Adam Drake told me he was staying. I knew I had said I could not see him again, but the problem with really great sex is that after a while the memory of it grows a life of its own and makes you do crazy things - that's my excuse, anyway. I drew a deep breath, and pushed open the squeaky glass door to the reception.

A young girl sat behind the long, scratched counter, cleaning behind her long, crimson nails with the end of a paper clip. Her dirty-blonde hair was piled on the top of her head and held in place in one of those artfully tousled styles by a big butterfly clip. Her piquant face was heavily made up with pancake foundation, crimson lipstick, heavy kohl eyeliner and glittery blue eye shadow, and the upper part of her skinny frame was clad in a skimpy white tank top. She wore earphones and jerked her head to some music she only could hear. She looked up as I entered, her vapid expression not altering a smidgeon. I guessed she was about sixteen.

As I approached, she reluctantly pulled her headphones away from her ears. Even from my distance, I clearly heard thumping and rap chants bursting forth. "We got no vacancies," she said in a broad, far-west Sydney accent, and made to replace the headphones.

"I'm not looking for a room," I said. The name tag on her undeveloped chest read "Lorraine", and I noticed she wore a pink miniskirt which barely covered her pudenda, her pale, pimply legs crossed in that compact way which indicated the girl had no thighs to speak of. "I'm here to visit a guest."

"Oh, yer?" said Lorraine, turning her attention back to her nails. "Who you afta?"

I hesitated only a fraction of a second before swallowing my pride - yes, I was man chasing, but given the occurrences of the past few days, I figured I had no right to self-respect on the subject. "Adam Drake," I said firmly.

Did I imagine a spark of interest in Lorraine's pale eyes as her head snapped up? "Oh, he ain't here no more," she said, not needing to check the computer beside her. "Checked out yesterday. He's a spunk, ay? Fair dinkum."

"Er - quite," I said, almost reeling with disappointment. "Did he leave a forwarding address?"

"Yer," said Lorraine with a taunting grin displaying crooked teeth. "But I ain't gonna give it to ya, 'less you are a cop or somepin'. 'Ginst the rules you know. I c'n forward on a letter though if ya want," she added primly.

I hesitated, tempted to leave a message of some sort. It was Lorraine's knowing smirk that had me belatedly drawing on a mantle of dignity in the face of humiliation. "No, it's not important," I said, coolly, turning heel. However, back outside, I raked my fingers through my hair in frustration, unable to ignore the fire between my thighs, which it seemed only one man could extinguish.