Cairo by Chris Womersley

Author:Chris Womersley [Womersley, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Published: 2014-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

TWO OR THREE DAYS LATER, JAMES RANG AND DEMANDED TO know what I was doing. He was in a flap. I had no plans, had scarcely seen a soul since Sally’s last visit.

‘You should come and see a movie with me,’ he said.

‘What, now?’

‘This afternoon. Why not?’

Being unemployed, James often saw movies during the day. In addition to sporadic handouts from his parents, he was on an unspecified government pension for those unfit to work. This was, he intimated, only until he got back on his feet. The nature of his disability was unclear, as was what ‘back on his feet’ could entail for a man like James; it was impossible to imagine him doing anything more worldly than drinking cask wine in the afternoon or lolling on his mattress, reading I, Claudius. I, on the other hand — possibly owing to some vestigial Protestant suspicion of leisure — had always felt uneasy about going to the cinema during the day, and made excuses about having chores to do before my shift at the restaurant that night.

But James would have none of it. ‘Meet me at the Valhalla at two o’clock, will you.’

The choice of venue sealed it. The Valhalla was an independent cinema in Richmond that played cult horror movies and various other films with what might be termed ‘niche appeal’. Although I hadn’t yet been introduced to its charms, I had heard that one could purchase Quaaludes from the box office on Sunday nights when a Chinese girl named Muriel was working, and Edward had talked rapturously of seeing Koyaanisqatsi there after gobbling a handful of magic mushrooms. Every student house in Melbourne’s inner city had its poster of upcoming attractions taped up somewhere, usually on the back of the toilet door. At more than one party I had scanned the lurid advertisements for all-night Alain Delon marathons, weekend Sexploitation festivals, and the Friday-night screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Free entry for those dressed as Frank N. Furter).

By the time I arrived at the Valhalla, James had already purchased our tickets. It was raining and the foyer smelled like wet dogs. Scarily cool people stood about smoking. We saw Blue Velvet, a film about a young man who gets involved with a gang of nasty psychopaths. In it, Dennis Hopper plays a character called Frank Booth, who — under the influence of a drug he inhales through a mask — beats up a nightclub singer played by the beautiful, doomed Isabella Rossellini; the violence interspersed with garish suburban landscapes. It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I adored its blend of the horrific and the surreal.

Afterwards James and I wandered up Victoria Street, known as Little Saigon on account of the Vietnamese migrants who had settled in the area during the 1970s. The streets were crowded with people and with stalls selling exotic fruit and vegetables. The air was fragrant with the smells of wet produce. James propelled me through an innocuous doorway and up some red-carpeted stairs to a crowded Vietnamese restaurant called Thy Thy.

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