‘The last thing I need now is Jaslyn’s hippie bullshit!’ snapped Meredith. ‘We’ve got twenty minutes until showtime. The biggest agent in Australia is going to be watching us out there. We’ve got no Corinne, Annie’s half pissed, Briony’s still sticking those damned anti-nuclear leaflets on windscreens in Collins Street and I can smell Genevieve’s joint from here!’
Meredith reached for the garish-hued gown hanging on a coat hook. It was an appropriate enough garment for tonight, she reflected. If they screwed up their performance they might as well be singing at their own funeral.
‘Just go and get Annie. She should be dressed by now,’ Meredith instructed as she pulled the voluminous shroud over her head.
Nina flew out the door and wondered why it had been left to her to round everyone up . . . again. She located the stage door, shoved it open and fell into the laneway. She found Annie there doubled over with laughter in the middle of a group of blokes in scruffy tuxedos whom she recognised as members of the comedy tuba quartet, also on tonight’s bill.
‘Annie,’ Nina flapped her robes in urgent semaphore, ‘Meredith wants you to come now.’
‘Ah,’ said Annie, pointing at Nina’s improbable get-up. ‘Mother Superior’s calling me for vespers. I’ll catch you guys later. Have a good one!’
Annie paused at the doorway, turned, crossed herself with a grand comic flourish and sang loudly: ‘Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.’ She blessed those assembled with the tossed remains of her ice cubes.
With five minutes until curtain-up, the six of them were now squeezed into one dressing room. Meredith paused, mascara in hand, and checked her watch. She hurled the brush at her reflection. ‘We’ll just have to assume Corinne isn’t coming.’
‘No!’ gasped Briony, pausing with her fingers plunged up to the second knuckle in a jar of glitter hair gel. ‘She’s got all the solos and—’
‘I know that!’ Meredith interrupted. ‘We’ll have to share them around. I’ll take the first one. Nina, you can take—’
‘I couldn’t. I just couldn’t!’ wailed Nina. Her curling wand clattered onto the bench. ‘Ohmigod! I have to go again . . .’ Nina pushed her way through to the door and hurtled into the hallway.
‘We’ve got two options,’ said Meredith. ‘We either get out there and give it a go, or give up.’
‘Let’s just fucking do it,’ came Genevieve’s muffled reply from inside the bundle of fabric Annie was now forcibly dragging over her nodding skull.
Meredith poked at the spikes of hair which were threatening to slump into flat, soft petals. The second last thing she needed was directions from Genevieve. She reeked of marijuana and would be lucky to find her way to the stage, unless they all held hands like preschoolers and led her through the dark.
‘Ladies and gentlemen . . . Welcome to the Athenaeum Theatre for this night of stars . . .’ the PA system popped, crackled.
The activity in the dressing room stilled and became a religious tableau painted by Caravaggio. Each head turned to the speaker on the wall, as if the Voice of God was to be heard there. With the first round of applause from the capacity audience in the auditorium, the tiny dressing room erupted in a riot of elbows, knees and metres of noxious purple polyester. Nina returned and squashed in. They jostled for space to peer at their reflection by the stark light of the naked globes.
‘SHOOSH!’ commanded Meredith. She turned and raised her arms to her small congregation. ‘Look, we’re the last act in the first half. That gives us thirty minutes to get it together.’
‘She’s right,’ declared Briony, still red-faced from grappling with a thousand windscreen wipers and her canvas bag of fluorescent orange A4 flyers. ‘We’re wimmin! Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves!’ She sang the Eurythmics hit they all knew from FM radio.
Jaslyn shook out her dreadlocks and slapped two large hands on her thighs. ‘We can do this! Yes we can! I threw the I Ching this morning and it said—’
‘Let’s just find a place to rehearse,’ Meredith ordered, and charged out the door with her robes flapping behind her like the wings of an avenging angel.
The six of them stood outside on that cold April night and did their best to ‘get it together’, even as they kept an eye on the stage door, hoping that the apparition of Corinne would appear and lead them to salvation. It was not until the stage manager gestured for them