By Catherine McNamara

I did not think Rowan and I would get along. Initially, we had been vying for the same soprano position in the troupe, but then the girl who’d been selected was awarded a promising role in a Sydney production. An opening widened to present ourselves to each other. We both had robust bodies and were the same height. For this reason, it later became easier to be entwined onstage, pacing together, or our voices thrust one upon the other in a duet. 

My pale hue complemented Rowan’s tawny color. She had a Māori father. After a trail of nuclear families who’d fallen for her blazing cuteness–––undone by her foghorn voice and her delight in disorder, trickery, ploys, she had been singled out of a foster home by two ardent mothers. The lesbians had sorted her. She adored her Mums, and I loved her abundance of mothers.

I had a secret dream of moving into a shack with her when we returned from touring Europe, on the south island at the end of a long sound with cascading, cawing mountains. You know when the very body of the person before you is an idyll? It is when you see through bones and organs where cellular life is bursting, you feel the neat pearl of their living existence, and they are an absolute organism you know will one day be depleted and die. 

Rowan did not feel the same. But admired my sentiments. On the stage, this translated into magnificent, amorous tension. Our rendition of The Cat Duet was the spine of the troupe’s performance, and commanding extended, redeeming applause. In the dressing room we unpeeled wet satin from each other’s backs, and I saw the web of pores on her matte skin, each cradling the black hairs she thought were odious. She knew I inhaled her. She would suggest beers.

I made a list of three things that made Rowan unique. 

The strict ascent of her morning vocalise, performed in girlish briefs 

The waxy inner tissue of her upper arms, which you’d had thinned by disreputable plastic surgeon

Her infatuation with anything in the key of F

~

In Rome, we shoplifted. At the markets, we stole patterned scarves from a stall while a man served another woman. We were spotted. The man gave chase, and while Rowan disappeared between the stands, I was pinned against a wall in a laneway between buildings. A second man materialized and hurtled against me. Hands went into my knickers and bra, breath invaded my throat; while one man bit my neck and bared breast, a finger shoved into my pants. Rowan came screaming around the corner and slapped one of them on the head. They backed away shouting Ladra! Ladra! and a few people paused to watch my white-faced shuddering.

We threw the stolen scarves into a fountain and marched to the top of one of the Palatine hills, Rowan’s arm linked through mine, my dress fixed with a safety pin she found in her pocket. We rested at the top, hearts pounding, brows moist. We had no performance that night, so we roamed the city center without returning to the hotel. Instead, we went straight to the photography gallery exhibit a baritone from Brisbane had organized. The guy made us yawn, and I was still trembling. We decided to walk all night, watch the shutters clank down and see men in aprons sweep, women handing over ice cream cones, street workers in alleys and drunken tourists with their phones in fountains, and almighty ancient emperors gesticulating upon pillars, in squares, atop facades. 

We glided along bouncing into each other’s hips, a current of ecstasy. We drank raw primitivo and returned to the marketplace which was still lit up and roiling with people. Rowan tugged me back to the stand where there was a single man now, staring out between his overlapping scarves. She got in from behind and felled him at the knees. He flailed on the cobbles surrounded by plastic bags. She kicked him in the groin with a fit, driving motion that made her buttocks shake in her dress. He did not resist, stared into my eyes with memory. I remembered Rowan was a bashed-up foster kid, daughter of lesbians then we ran.