A scattering of strip-club schoolgirls, dourly resplendent in their off-duty uniform of jeans and close-cut tops cluttered the entrance to the pier. They chatted and cursed, skinny hips cocked to the side and hands cupping lipstick-smeared cigarettes. Awkward mouths puffing out pitiful little gobs of smoke quickly torn up by the wind.
The ‘pier’ was really no such thing, simply a strip of land between the channels of two dry floodwater canals on the outskirts of the city - a platform twisting and jinking for a quarter-mile between two faux-cliffs, each falling away for three or four metres on either side. The concrete canals were spray-painted seasides: stylized seagulls wheeling above angular-azure, snow-capped waves; great jagged rocks jutted from the foam, hoary masses of emerald seaweed bearding their bases. High-breasted mermaids clustered upon them with manga eyes and silver whale-tails, their scales flakey and perfect torsos peeling. But that night they quivvered, almost real, in the flickering arc-light cast by the erratic neon tubes strung between the stalls and lean-to’s.
It started with the stoning of the women’s refuge a few streets over from the pier. A slowlane story I’d been sent to cover which blew up rapidly into a leader item, and my first stammering appearence on live camera. When I’d first got there late evening there’d been little to see but broken glass and bored policemen. I’d interviewed the woman whose boyfriend had apparantly done the rockthrowing a few hours prior, expecting the usual grubby humdrum mix of drunken abuse and sober forgiveness, and instead met with something almost supernatuaral. The name she’d given me was Marionette X. And she worked down at the Pier as a fortune-teller.
She was a mess to be frank, despite the angularity of her cheekbones and the coarse sexuality of wide over made-up eyes and heavy, almost joined eyebrows. Her nose was red-raw from rubbing and her eyes were bloodfilled and weeping, the left swollen almost shut. A hasty tangle of bandaging swathed her palms, already nicotine stained in the crevice between her left middle and index fingers. She rolled up another cigarette painfully as she talked, her broken lips scabbed and puffy.
“I just wanted the fucker to leave us alone.” She spat almost as soon as I’d switched on the tape.
“Us…?” I’d prompted. She gave me a wary look.
“Yes - Us, and - no, none of your business.”