Free Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space by Linda Jaivin Page B

excited them. Doom and gloom were their favourite topics. They were Goths. They were also lesbian lovers and business partners. They ran Phantasma, the one-stop Goth shop and hairdressers where they sold everything from white face-powder to futons tailored specially for caskets. They also specialised in purple, scarlet and black hair-dyeing. The petite Skye wore layers of scarlet and black lace; the voluptuous Saturna was a pur-purate creature with a particular fondness for velvet, even in summer. They covered their skin with slabs of ghoulishly white foundation makeup, shaved off their original eyebrows so that they could paint on more dramatic ones and tinted their lips the colour of aubergines. They livedin the basement of the house, in a room that was way too dark for anyone else even before they’d painted the walls matte black.
    ‘You girls were home? Didn’t you hear me calling for dunny documents?’ Jake affected outrage. Real outrage took too much effort and commitment. Without waiting for their answer, he yawned again, opened the fridge and stuck his head inside.
    ‘
We
always replace the toilet roll when we’ve used it up,’ Saturna remarked to his back, exchanging a conspiratorial glance with Skye. ‘Thought you boys could learn a lesson.’
    ‘
Boys?
’ Tristram objected, offended. ‘What did I do? Unfair as.’
    Jake perfomed a quick inventory of the inside of the fridge: a small bowl of week-old lentil soup, some dubious tomatoes, a six-pack of VB, half a jar of Thai curry paste and a saucepan with some rice crusts stuck to the sides. Well, that accounted for the boys’ half, anyway. Saturna and Skye’s side featured a few pieces of reasonably fresh fruit and some vegetables, a bowl of chilli, a thick slab of tofu in a bowl of water, a loaf of bread, a jar of coffee beans and half a carton of free-range eggs. Jake pulled out a beer. ‘Protein breakfast,’ he remarked, patting his unreasonably flat stomach. ‘Where’s Torq?’ he asked. ‘We’re supposed to have a jam this afternoon.’
    ‘He took a walk down King Street,’ replied Tristram. ‘He had some idea about feather boas he wanted to follow up. Said he wouldn’t be long.’
    Iggy, having finally swallowed the cockroach, slurped loudly and contentedly at the water in his bowl. Saturna and Skye exchanged glances. Iggy was such a
boy.
Despite his unaesthetic pink skin and his atrocious and seeminglyinalterable smell, the girls were actually quite fond of Iggy. They weren’t about to let Jake know this, however. They only played with him when Jake was out. Iggy was quite cool about this. He seemed to understand the game rules, and kept clear of the girls until Jake and the twins had left the house, at which point he would dash into their room, roll onto his back and let them tickle his tummy as he wriggled and groaned and stretched his neck and batted the air with his legs. He licked their ears, instinctively careful not to wreck their elaborate makeup.
    The phone rang. Tristram picked it up. ‘Sam & Tony’s Pickled Pizzas,’ he said, earning a bored sneer from the girls. ‘Jake? Uh, who’s calling? Larissa?’ Tristram looked questioningly at Jake. Jake was shaking his head emphatically. ‘Uh, Larissa, he’s not here right now. How about I get him to call you? Yeah. Yeah. I will. No, I won’t forget.’ Tristram rolled his eyes at the others. ‘No worries. See ya. Bye.’ Tristram hung up and tossed Jake a look of exasperation. ‘I hate that shit, man,’ he griped. ‘From now on, you root ‘em, you take their phone calls.’
    Jake shrugged. ‘You seen George’s new tummy toners?’ he said, changing the subject.
    Skye sipped at her coffee. ‘Have you ever heard him talk about why he collects all that shit?’
    ‘Nup,’.said Jake. ‘What’s the story?’
    ‘He thinks that, just before the final apocalypse, flying saucers are going to appear in the sky and aliens will whisk off those of us who, as he puts it, are