Stella Makes Good Read online

  When I told people my profession, they immediately gave me a sly—or in many cases, not-so-sly—once-over, then they’d say, ‘But you don’t look like a librarian.’ As if it was a compliment.

  ‘Really,’ I’d say. ‘And what are librarians supposed to look like?’

  Then they’d throw me a few stereotypes from the fifties, which was when my eyes glazed over. No, I didn’t wear thick, horn-rimmed glasses. No, I’d never worn my hair in a bun, nor was I mean or a spinster. I did wear cardigans, though.

  ‘Hey,’ said Jesse, walking back to our table, ‘Steve’s just rung. He’s been held up at work. I told the babysitter someone would be home by ten, so it looks like I’m done for the night.’

  ‘But this is our night. We’ve been planning this for ages. Can’t you ring the babysitter?’

  ‘Truthfully, Stella, it’s not worth it. Besides, I’m tired.’

  There was a squealing sound and we both looked over to where Carly was standing with Mike and his friends.

  ‘Sorry to dump her on you,’ Jesse said.

  ‘Yeah, don’t worry. I’ll see she gets home in one piece.’

  I watched Jesse push her way through the crowd towards the exit sign, then turned my attention back to Carly. She was sitting on the doctor guy’s lap now.

  Mike smiled at me, stood up, beer in hand, and came over. ‘This seat taken?’

  I stammered something unintelligible and smiled. Where was my brain?

  ‘It was clear you weren’t going to join me,’ he said, and sat down. ‘So, do you want to talk about the coffee date?’

  I blushed. ‘It wasn’t a date, and no, not really.’

  ‘Pity. I thought it had gone well, that was until you stopped responding to my text messages.’

  ‘I sent you messages.’

  ‘Thanks and Nice to see you again weren’t the kind of messages I had in mind.’

  ‘Look, I’m no good at this. I’m …’ I trailed off, embarrassed.

  ‘You’re what? Gorgeous? Interesting? Have a great smile?’

  ‘Stop. I’m too old for games, and besides, you’re only saying those things to get me into bed.’

  Shit. I couldn’t believe I’d just said that.

  Mike smiled. ‘I am not.’

  Great! Not only had I said something wildly inappropriate, but he didn’t even fancy me.

  ‘Not that the thought of kissing you hasn’t crossed my mind, but I’m not trying to race you off.’ He drained the last of his beer. ‘Not right now, anyway.’

  I grinned, pretty sure I’d turned a bright shade of beetroot.

  ‘Stella, Stella, the night is young. Toby’s taking me to a party.’

  I swung around. Carly was swaying about ten centimetres from my head. Quickly standing and steadying her so she wouldn’t fall, I said, ‘You don’t even know the guy. Let’s go home.’

  ‘Yes, I do. He’s Toby and he’s a doctor, and he feeds monkeys at the zoo in his spare time.’

  I glanced at Mike, who was conveniently preoccupied with reading a crumpled docket from inside his wallet.

  ‘Right,’ I said, turning back to Carly. ‘Toby sounds like fun and if you feel the same way about him tomorrow, you two can meet up. But,’ I whispered, ‘you have a husband and child waiting for you at home.’

  She slumped into a chair. ‘Piffle. You’re such a party pooper.’

  At that moment, Toby appeared. ‘No pressure, but we’re taking off,’ he said.

  ‘Hold your horses,’ squealed Carly, standing up again. She looked at Mike and me. ‘You coming?’

  I couldn’t let her go to the party by herself, so I followed her outside. Mike followed me.

  ‘There’s really no need,’ I said to him.

  ‘It’s cool. Besides, I’m sure you could use an extra hand.’

  He was right. I needed to stay with Carly, but I hadn’t driven tonight and I couldn’t fit into the car she was about to climb into, a black Lexus hybrid.

  Mike leaned over to Toby. ‘We’ll follow you.’

  Toby nodded and told him an address. Carly got in beside him, which completely foiled my plan because I’d been hoping to get her into Mike’s car and then ask him to drive us straight home. And then I’d planned on ditching Mike, too—I needed some distance from him.

  ‘Carly,’ I hissed. ‘You don’t know these people.’

  ‘Sure I do,’ she slurred. ‘They’re from some hospital.’

  She closed the door and Toby pulled away from the kerb. Bloody hell! This wasn’t the scenario I’d imagined.

  Within minutes, I was in the passenger seat of Mike’s car and we were following Toby up the Pacific Highway towards Turramurra. At least we were heading in the right direction for home.

  ike and I made small talk as he concentrated on keeping up with the zippy Lexus. I glanced at his dashboard clock: 10.39. Where I really wanted to be right now was tucked up in bed, not chasing Carly to God knows where.

  As I listened to Mike, my thoughts kept drifting back to what he’d said earlier about wanting to kiss me. Did he actually say he wanted to kiss me or just that the thought had crossed his mind? Maybe my fantasies were getting in the way of reality. Either way, surely kissing couldn’t be a bad thing? Or maybe it could. I was confused.

  ‘Tell me,’ Mike said, ‘what do you do when not trying to keep up with your party-loving friend?’

  ‘Besides trying to keep up with my kids and my job at the library?’

  He glanced across. ‘I still can’t picture you as a librarian. You’re too …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was going to say sexy but thought you might slap me.’

  ‘Good call.’

  ‘Okay, alluring … feisty? Can I get away with feisty?’ he asked as we pulled up behind Carly and her new mates.

  We were parked in an ordinary-looking suburban street barely a kilometre from my mother-in-law’s retirement village and possibly three kilometres from my home. No loud music filtered from any of the houses, which all looked the same—low-set, blond-brick homes with well-kept, green front gardens. There was nothing unusual in sight; nothing to suggest a party was going off inside one of them.

  I looked over at Carly, who was leaning against Toby’s car. She wasn’t making a hell of a lot of sense, but at least she was standing.

  ‘Now what?’ I asked her.

  She looked at me, then at Toby, then at Toby’s friend, Pete, who had been in the car with them. Pete winked and started off along the pavement towards a white gate attached to a white picket fence. ‘This is it,’ he said.

  ‘Doesn’t look like much of a party,’ Mike said next to me.

  I nodded. ‘Feels like we’re popping in to visit grandma.’

  Pete led us down a side pathway. Halfway along, he stopped at an ordinary red wooden door. This is it, I thought. This is where we find out there’s been a severe case of mistaken identity; we’ve arrived at the wrong address in the wrong suburb and we’re actually crashing an elderly couple’s home. They’ve probably been asleep for hours.

  I expected Pete to knock, only to be confronted by angry pensioners. What I didn’t expect was for him to extract a key from his jeans pocket.

  ‘Voila,’ he said, unlocking the door and pushing it open. He stepped inside, urging us to follow.

  Common sense told me to step away and head back up to the road, but before I could grab Carly, she’d stumbled inside. I followed. It was dark and I strained to make out anything. There were lights but they were dim, giving off a soft red glow. As my eyes adjusted, I could see we were in a big room—a living room? There were several oversized lounges, and lamps of various shapes and sizes draped in fine chiffon scarves; there even seemed to be a smoke machine …

  ‘Pete!’ The voice belonged to a woman. At first it was too dark to see her properly, but then … what the fuck? She was practically naked apart from a sheer black baby-doll top and fluffy black high heels. She had huge breasts and was wearing a thong. Playboy Bunny
was the first thought that came to mind.

  I looked around the room, noticing couples and threesomes on the lounges. What the hell had we walked into?

  ‘You’ve brought new playmates,’ the Bunny said, hugging Pete.

  Mike nudged me.

  ‘This is a bit different,’ I said, leaning against a wall for support. We’d stumbled into Hugh Hefner’s suburban counterpart.

  Pete wasted no time. In an instant, he was naked and had joined several others on a nearby couch.

  To be fair, Toby seemed as shocked as we were. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he said. ‘I had no idea Pete was into this … whatever this is.’

  Carly put her head on my shoulder. ‘This isn’t quite what I had in mind when I said I wanted a fuck buddy.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I told her.

  ‘I’ve been to an orgy once or twice,’ she went on, ‘but I was nineteen. It was pretty overwhelming so I had a few lines of coke. But this … wow!’

  ‘Coke?’ I said. ‘You’re kidding me!’

  ‘Look around you, Stella. These people aren’t just drinking Red Bull and vodka.’

  I looked more closely at the trays of drinks that were being passed around. They did seem to hold small dishes that probably contained other substances. I glanced at Mike and Toby. I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other but they looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I could go for it,’ Carly continued. ‘Anonymous sex.’

  ‘Carly!’

  ‘What? I could be persuaded. Look at Pete—he’s just dropped his dacks and gotten into it.’

  I glanced at Pete, who was receiving a massage and a bit more.

  ‘Yeah, I’d need the coke, though, or maybe an eckie,’ Carly mused. ‘And it’d have to be with someone attractive. I couldn’t do it with anyone who had bad breath or belly fluff.’

  ‘This is turning you on, isn’t it,’ Toby said, leaning into her.

  She grinned. ‘Of course not. I’m shocked. Don’t know where to look.’

  Pete and a woman holding a pulsating strobe-lit phallic-shaped vibrator started doing some things to another woman that were possibly illegal. She seemed to be enjoying herself, though, given her shrieks.

  When a naked man with a gold fringed tassel attached to his flaccid penis bounced up to us with a tray of drinks, I was too shocked to refuse.

  ‘We like to make the newbies feel welcome,’ he said, looking each of us up and down.

  ‘I’m Trevor, by the way. After your drink, you’ll feel more comfortable. When you’re ready, I’ll introduce you around.’ He smiled and bounded off down the corridor.

  Drink spiking? I caught Mike’s eye and he shrugged. Suddenly I wasn’t thirsty any more. I definitely didn’t want to lose control, not here. I put my untasted drink down on a nearby table. Mike did the same. Carly and Toby looked at us, peered at their drinks and downed them in one go.

  ‘I needed that,’ said Carly with a giggle. ‘Wait till the school mums hear about this. It’ll really rock their world.’

  Understatement.

  What was a party like this doing in Warrawee, I wondered. Wasn’t it better suited to Newtown or Paddington? As I looked around at the entwined bodies, it occurred to me that maybe these people lived in the area. I thought about some of the people I knew. I couldn’t see Mrs Farns (Year Eight support) or Mr Daniels (Computer Studies) getting into this kind of thing. The school’s headmaster, on the other hand, was a dark horse—actually, a dark, quiet and all-too-ready-to-dress-up horse. And maybe there were a few divorcees in the neighbourhood who’d get a kick out of this? Then again, maybe swingers, or whatever these people called themselves, did this kind of thing as far away from their own neighbourhoods as possible.

  As for divorcees, what was I thinking? I was soon to be a divorcee. Was this what I expected people to think of me: that I’d turn to orgies to get my kicks as soon as Terry was out the door?

  I nudged Mike. ‘Ever been to one of these before?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not sure it’s my scene.’

  I eyed a dominatrix who was teetering on twelve-centimetre stilettos. She gave a man dressed as a slave a few lashes of her whip, then picked up some kind of paddle and started spanking him with it.

  ‘Electric paddle—won’t leave marks,’ said Trevor, the tasselled-penis man, back beside us. ‘Most people like to be hurt, but no one wants to have to explain the welt marks when they get home.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, noticing a sign hanging on the wall nearby: Welcome to Master Mitch’s and Mistress Sheri’s Haven. Go hard or go home.

  I was thinking about the hundreds of homes I drove past every day, the mums at tuckshop, the fathers at cricket. What did they get up to after hours? How would you know? Everyone was so busy with their own lives, tending to their gardens and weekly agendas. How did anyone have time to go these parties, let alone source costumes and accessories? Maybe it was all done online or by mail order.

  I glanced at one couple who seemed heavily into the domination and submission routine. He looked absurd, crawling around like a baby, sucking a dummy, wearing a nappy, a thick spiked dog collar around his neck. A few more people joined them—grown men in nappies on their hands and knees, sucking on dummies, being dragged along by their red-lipsticked, black-corseted mistresses.

  I nudged Carly. ‘You don’t see that every day on the North Shore, do you?’

  What kind of people subjected themselves to this treatment, I wondered. How could they enjoy it? Was the butcher from my local supermarket crawling around in a nappy? Or perhaps the guy who owned the pizzeria? The local bank manager?

  ‘Anything goes,’ I overheard Trevor say to Mike. ‘As long as it’s consensual. We’re all adults. But remember your safe words.’

  Safe words?

  I listened as Trevor explained. ‘Red means stop, yellow means this is getting intense and green means keep it up, buddy.’ He slapped Mike on the back and disappeared into the throng.

  ‘You wanna get out of here?’ Mike asked.

  I was about to say ‘yes’ when Carly whacked me on the arm.

  ‘What is it?’ I said when she hit me a second time.

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing.

  I was staring at a dominatrix who looked slightly familiar—Tami from the newsagency?—when I noticed one of the nappy men look up. At first I thought I was mistaken. Shit! I wasn’t. It was Steve. Jesse’s husband.

  Everything around me seemed to stop suddenly. Steve? Was I hallucinating? How long had this been going on? Was it legal? Did Jesse know?

  I had to make a split-second decision. Stay still and hopefully remain invisible? Or make a run for the door? If we moved too quickly, we’d be spotted for sure, but if we stayed where we were, the group, including Steve, would walk—crawl—straight into us.

  ‘The door,’ I whispered to Carly.

  She turned to follow me, but tripped on a rug and fell into my back. She cried out. I turned and pulled at her arm to keep her moving, but it was too late. Steve had seen us.

  I could tell he was trying to place us, to figure out where he knew us from. Seconds later, it clicked. It probably didn’t help that Carly was staring at him open-mouthed.

  Steve was one cool customer. Only for the briefest of seconds did he looked horrified. Then he winked. Did he really think we were players?

  ‘Let’s keep this to ourselves, ladies,’ he said, standing up. ‘We wouldn’t want anyone else finding out about your nocturnal activities, would we?’

  ‘Our nocturnal activities?’ Carly hit back. ‘What about yours?’

  It was hard to take Steve seriously considering he was wearing a studded dog collar and a nappy. Thank God for the nappy, I thought. I had no desire to see my friend’s husband’s penis.

  His mistress tugged on his collar and he dropped to his hands and knees and she dragged him away. Poor Jesse. Imagine being married to that.

  Toby, Mike, Carly and I made a hasty exit out onto the street.r />
  ‘What do we tell Jesse?’ Carly asked, sounding exhausted.

  I had no idea. How could we bring it up? Invite her for coffee and say, ‘By the way, do you know your husband frequents sadomasochistic sex parties?’ Or maybe, ‘When your kids were babies, did you notice Steve getting unusually excited by the sight of their dummies and nappies?’ I thought not. And would Jesse believe us anyway? I could hardly believe it and I’d seen it for myself.

  ‘We let it be,’ I told Carly.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re saying that.’

  I couldn’t believe I was saying it either, but would Jesse thank us for telling her?

  ‘Let’s sit on it a few days before we do anything,’ I added.

  esse drove like a maniac the two kilometres to her house and then felt guilty. She’d had two glasses of wine. Imagine if she got pulled up for drink driving and lost her licence. She’d never live it down.

  She drove into the garage, then took three deep breaths before getting out of the car and walking inside the house. As she neared the family room, she could hear Anna, the babysitter, talking on her mobile. She stopped outside, exhaled deeply, clenched her hands tightly and entered the room.

  Anna looked up and smiled. ‘Gotta go,’ she said into her mobile, before putting it in her handbag and standing up. ‘Good night?’

  Jesse nodded. ‘Sorry about the mix-up. I thought Steve would be home by now.’

  Anna shrugged. ‘No drama.’

  Jesse walked her to the front door, paid her sixty dollars and said goodnight. Then she started her nightly routine. First, she checked on her nine-year-old twins, Ollie and Emily. She kissed them both lightly on their foreheads and whispered, ‘I love you.’ In the darkness, she picked up discarded clothes and toys scattered on the floor, then went about checking that all the doors and windows were securely locked.

  Satisfied her home was in order, Jesse texted Steve and got ready for bed. But she couldn’t settle, annoyed that once again Steve had ruined her night out. She flipped the light switch on and off three times before climbing into bed.