ThornyDevils Read Online Free PDF Page B

that she loved Aussie men. The best in the world. She loved their earthiness and sense of humour. She would know. She had confessed to Peter one night that she’d slept with about twenty Aussie men, as part of her research when travelling around the country. Irmgard thought he was the best lover she had had thusfar in Australia. He had affectionately nicknamed her Boom-Boom in response.
    ‘When do you finish?’ Peter asked.
    ‘Nine. Do you think you can hang around until then? I want you at full strength.’
    ‘Of course. For you, I’ll be firing on all eight cylinders.’ He was beaming with excitement. Irmgard smiled and moved away to serve another customer. She had been staying at his place every night and he had been getting very little sleep. He was exhilarated but utterly exhausted and running on two cylinders. He could feel aching muscles where he thought muscles didn’t exist. Irmgard was a hungry German-Amazonian beast. Was there a pill for utter exhaustion? Ginseng wasn’t working. He might have taken Boom-Boom out on a date except that he had baulked at cleaning out the Shag.
    Besides, Boom-Boom made a pleasant change after two months of celibacy. He had finally broken off with his on-and-off girlfriend, Suzi Night, once again. She was the leather-clad, mercurial vocalist of Hangman’s Noose. She had a voice that could make you cry in one song and pierce your eardrums in another. The band had a regular spot on Wednesday and Saturday night at the Tote, but they were currently touring Australia as support act for a major Australian group. Suzi and Peter had met about a year ago, a few days after Michelle had left, but they had broken up three times during that period. Usually it was about the same issue. Suzi was going to be a big, big rock star and she didn’t have time for love. Hangman’s Noose was going to conquer the world. Peter, well, he couldn’t commit to buying a newspaper. This time it was final.
    Peter watched Irmgard move around the bar. What a body , he thought, and she’ll be in my bed tonight. That’s if she allows us to get past the couch or the bathroom. A warm gust of lust coursed through his body. He took a final drink and was about to call for Irmgard, when he felt a sharp thump in his back. Peter stiffened to counter the impending onslaught. Who had he upset this time? A familiar voice made him relax and turn in his chair.
    ‘Slugger. What do you want?’ Peter sighed and rolled his eyes. Slugger Douglas was standing behind him, shuffling and nervously jabbing short punches at an imaginary boxing bag. Slugger had never really left the boxing ring. In fact, twenty years earlier he had left alarge part of his frontal lobe on the ropes at Festival Hall when he had been knocked out cold by the American Jimmy Malone. Slugger hadn’t been expected to live. He lay in a coma for six months and Jimmy Malone was so distraught thinking that he’d killed Slugger, that he had become a pastor in his hometown of Chicago. When Slugger had awoken from his coma, Jimmy declared it a miracle. Miracle or not, it probably would have been better if Slugger hadn’t lived. In his heyday, Slugger had been rated the best Australian boxer never to win a world title.
    He now survived on a disability pension, lived in the public housing high-rise apartments nearby and hung out at the Tote, regaling any poor unsuspecting patron with tales of past boxing glories, interspersed with hallucinations about flying elephants and snakes. Slugger always liked to boast that he had been a fixer for the Painters and Dockers after his boxing career and he still knew what went on in the underworld. Maybe there was a measure of truth in his claims, but you would have had to sieve through all the delusions first.
    Poor old Slugger. FITH syndrome . That’s what Peter’s former nurse girlfriend before Michelle—Bridget—would have diagnosed him with. Fucked in the head. Punch drunk and a pain in the arse, especially when he