‘No, sorry about that.’ I wave a hand. ‘I was just remembering when I first met you. I couldn’t have ever seen us going on a date. But I’d love to. Really.’
‘Great.’
I grab a pen off the barman and write my home phone number and e-mail address on a coaster. ‘There you go.’ I hand the piece of cardboard over to him.
‘Yeah. Yeah—thanks for that, mate.’ Shane slaps me on the back as he takes the coaster from me and I cough. But then I turn and see Sharon and a few other people from the bus standing a bit closer than before. They could probably hear us if they tried hard enough.
I stand up and push my bar stool in. ‘Um, thanks for the drink,’ I whisper. ‘And the champagne, of course.’
‘No problemo.’ He winks as the Beer-drinking Society start to envelop him, chatting away.
I feel his eyes follow me all the way across the room.
When I come in the door, Jas turns the TV off.
I go over, lift the champagne out of the bucket and stare at it thoughtfully.
‘So…?’ Jas says.
‘Hmmm? Oh, sorry. The champagne—it was a mistake. We can keep it, though. Want to open it up?’
‘You sure? That’s a pretty big mistake for room service. My guess is it’s probably from somebody.’
‘Beats me,’ I lie.
‘OK. Fine. I’ll just get changed.’ He’s wearing one of the hotel bathrobes.
I put the bottle back in the bucket and go to lie down on my bed. ‘I’ve had it.’
‘Yeah?’
I turn my head. ‘Remember, I got up hours earlier than you did.’
Jas grabs some jeans and a T-shirt and heads for the bathroom. ‘Just be a minute.’
But when he emerges again I’m already dozing off. ‘You still want the champagne?’ he asks.
‘Mmmm. Just going to have a little nap,’ I say, pulling up the covers.
I sleep straight through the night.
My going to bed at six p.m. means, once again, that I’m up way too early. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. When I’ve run through the few things I have to do, I sit on the end of Jas’s bed and start jumping. Softly at first. Then a bit harder. Then harder again.
He rolls over and groans. ‘If you don’t get off my bed right now, I’ll have to kill you.’
I bounce a tad harder.
‘Isn’t there anything on TV?’
‘The news and cartoons. But I don’t even understand the cartoons. They talk too fast.’
‘What’s there not to understand about a cartoon?’
I stop bouncing then, and get up. But I’m back in less than ten seconds. I wave the room service menu in Jas’s face. ‘What do you want for breakfast?’
‘Too early for breakfast.’ Roll. Another groan.
‘No, it’s not. It’s already been on for an hour.’
‘That means it’s only seven o’clock. Damn. I’m awake now.’ Jas pushes himself up and yawns. ‘You’re a pain in the butt, Charlotte.’
‘Don’t call me that, Jasper.’ I point at him with the menu.
‘What’re we doing today?’
‘You know something?’ I go over and sit on my own bed again. I have a quick bounce. ‘Your bed’s definitely softer.’
‘Great. We’ll swap tonight. Don’t care. How can you have this much energy in the morning? You on something, or what?’
I stop bouncing. ‘I thought I was getting sick the last couple of days. But I’m not—when I woke up this morning I felt great. So now I’m chirpy, all right? I’m high on life.’
‘You been watching the Christian channel? Fine. I’m happy for you. Happy that you’re not sick. Now, what are we doing today?’
‘I thought we should probably have a quick whip around the festival one more time—you know, take some pictures, buy some souvenirs. Then we can skip this afternoon and tomorrow and have a scout around Munich instead. Some real culture. How about that?’
‘Sounds great. One condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You stay up late tonight. No bed experiments tomorrow morning.’
I wave a hand. ‘No problem there. We’re going out tonight with the group, remember? The night out on the town? I think we’re going to some funky karaoke place.’
‘Funky karaoke?’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Aren’t they mutually exclusive words?’
‘Just because you don’t need the backing tape and the little white ball…’
Jas grins. ‘I guess I am kinda good.’
I throw a pillow at him.
On purpose, we sneakily leave the hotel half an hour after the rest of the group’s already gone. We take our time wandering towards the Oktoberfest grounds, ditching room service and stopping for breakfast and a coffee on the way. When we get there, we decide that, along with the photos and souvenirs, we’ll brave the Hofbräu tent, despite Shane’s warnings—though as Australian citizens we should technically be OK. I buy a beer stein for Mark, a calendar for Kath and a couple of T-shirts for the twins. Unfortunately they don’t have the ‘My auntie went to Oktoberfest and all we got were these stupid matching T-shirts because we’re twins’ variety. That done, we head on over to see some hard-core Oktoberfest-style partying.
People are spilling in and out of the Hofbräu tent at a seriously high rate as we make our way through the entrance. It’s much busier inside than the other tents seem at this hour. The smell, however, is the same—sweat, beer, sausages.
The first thing I notice is that the Hofbräu tent is an every beer-drinker to himself kind of event. It’s not like the other tents, where you have to be seated to get a beer. Here you can drink wherever you want. It’s complete chaos, but when I think about it a bit harder I realise it’s probably the only way. A riot squad would have a hard time getting this crowd to sit down and form some kind of order. It’d be like asking people nicely to be seated and quiet while they’re fighting for air in a soccer stadium crush. The second thing I notice is that everyone’s suddenly speaking English. Most of them with an Australian or New Zealand accent. I look up at Jas.
‘OK?’ he says.
I nod. So far. But then I see the expression on Jas’s face and look back down again. He’s staring at something in the distance in utter disbelief. I follow his gaze through the crowd and see it immediately.
It’s Damien. President Damien.
President Damien who is now absolutely starkers, standing in the middle of a ring of red, white and blue people. The members of the Beer-drinking Society. Mainly red, white and blue because they’re covered in Australian flags. Flags draped around their shoulders. Fake tattoo flags on their arms. Painted flag faces. I remember Shane’s words then—today is ‘flag day’. Damien himself is downing stein after stein of beer, not even stopping for a breath.
‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi!’ the ring start yelling in unison.
He downs another stein.
I’m wondering how many litres of beer a stomach can physically hold before lunchtime when Shane appears as if from nowhere. He tackles Damien, grabs his flag off the ground, wraps it around him and drags the guy off in one swift movement. Quite balletic, really. Everyone watches them go. Shane is heading for the men’s, Damien’s head under one arm, flag trailing. As they pass by, Jas yells at Shane, ‘Need a hand, mate?’
Shane shakes his head. ‘No, thanks. All in the job description.’ Damien struggles then, and Shane tightens his grasp. ‘Come on, fella. If you struggle it’ll just make it harder for both of us.’ They keep going.
I keep right on standing in the same spot, watching Damien, naked as the day he was born now that the flag’s fallen off again. Expression: disbelief.
‘Don’t look.’ Jas reaches over to cover my eyes with one hand. ‘A sight like that could put you off your beer for ever.’
When he lets his hand fall, I glance up. ‘You’d think he’d know better than to do that in autumn,’ I say.
Jas cranes his head
and guesses what I’m hinting at. ‘Shrinkage. Never a good look for a little Aussie battler, is it?’
‘No, not really. Especially when it seems he wasn’t exactly gifted to start with.’
The show over, we both look around us. Beside us, in front of us, behind us, people are sinking litres of beer at an alarming pace.
‘You want to stay?’ Jas asks.
I shake my head. ‘No, but I’ve got to go to the bathroom first. It’s all too much excitement for me.’
Jas nods. ‘I’ll wait here.’
I start off in the direction of the ladies’, figuring out fairly fast that where Oktoberfest is concerned being vertically challenged is a pain. All I can see is the people directly around me. Finally I reach the hallway that leads to the bathrooms and sigh a sigh of relief. Still, even the hallway is crowded, and I have to pick my way through the people lining each of the walls to get to the bathroom.
‘Hey.’ I whip around halfway down the hall as I feel a distinct pinch on my behind. ‘Ow! Hey!’ There’s another one. And another. I turn, first to my right, then to my left. ‘Ow! Stop that! Ow!’ The guys on either side of me lean in closer. ‘Ow!’ I slap one. ‘Cut that out!’ Slap. Slap.
The Italians. I remember Shane’s words.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I warn one of the guys on my left as I see his arm dart forward. ‘I mean it! Ow! I said I mean it!’ Staring me right in the eye, he pinches a nasty little pinch that I just know will bruise. The others jeer and wave at his amazing sexual prowess. I go to turn again so I can leg it out of here, the way I came, but before I can…someone picks me up from behind.
‘Right. That’s it!’ I yell, and the Italians cheer and wave madly. I can’t see who the guy is, but I reach back and slap him on the neck. Then, with all my might, I kick him in his right shin with my heel.
‘Hey!’ he says with perfect Australian English.
‘Jas?’
‘Yes, Jas. Stop kicking me!’
‘Sorry,’ I say, bouncing up and down as Jas whisks me awkwardly through the Hofbräu crowd. As we run past, the crowd claps and wolf whistles. It isn’t until we’re outside the tent that he puts me back down again.
I wait for the ground to settle beneath my feet, my body feeling as if it’s just been through a washing machine. On the long cycle. After a while, my mouth starts moving up and down, but I’m unable to say anything so I give myself a minute and try again. ‘What are you…?’ I start laughing when my voice comes back to me. I can’t complete my sentence. I laugh harder and harder until I stop breathing, croak like a frog, and slowly collapse down to take a seat beside the tent.
Jas watches me as I crumple. ‘What’s so funny?’
Now I really laugh. I only manage to stop long enough to say the word ‘bodyguard’.
‘What?’
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. I’m crying now, gulping for air, big, fat tears running down my face. ‘Just like Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard. That scene in the nightclub.’ I wipe my face with one hand. It’s a struggle to get the few words out and I’m not sure if Jas understands. I’m talking about the scene from the movie The Bodyguard. Where Kevin Costner, playing the bodyguard, picks up Whitney Houston, playing a world-famous singer, when she gets into a spot of trouble with her fans in a nightclub. He ends up carrying her to safety and being the hero of the day. ‘Where’s my limo, hey?’ I say, and crack up all over again. I try to get up, fail, and sit back down. ‘It’s a good thing I don’t have a sister, that’s all I can say.’
Jas shakes his head. ‘You should be grateful!’ he tells me, but then starts laughing himself.
I hoot at this, and finally manage to crawl up into a standing position again. ‘The day I can’t stop some Italian who’s shorter than me pinching my butt, I’ll tell you about it,’ I say.
‘Fine.’
‘Fine!’ I repeat back at him. I laugh again and link an arm around Jas’s. ‘Come on, you big dag. I’ll go later.’
‘Come on where?’
Good point, I think. I tug on Jas’s elbow then, and grin. ‘Let’s do something completely stupid.’
‘I thought we just did, according to you.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Sour puss.’
‘Something stupid it is, then. Like what?’
‘I don’t know! Come on. Let’s live a little. Do something for once.’
‘OK. OK! You pick.’
I stop tugging for a second and glance around me. ‘Um…’ Still looking, I find my ‘something’ then, and my eyes widen accordingly. ‘All right! Wait here.’ I drop Jas’s arm and run over to the nearby stall.
I come back with two big gingerbread hearts on some ribbon. ‘Bend down,’ I order, and Jas bends down. I put one of them—the one with the blue ribbon—around his neck. He pulls it out with one hand so he can inspect it as he stands upright again.
‘Yeah. Blue ribbon. That’s masculine. No one’ll beat me up for having an iced gingerbread heart around my neck now. What does it say?’ He squints as he tries to read the writing upside down and in German.
‘It says “Kiss me”.’
Jas makes a face. ‘Now I really will get beaten up. Probably twice over. All the men because I look like a dickhead, and then all the homophobes’ll line up for a second go.’
I don’t say anything, but busy myself adjusting my own gingerbread heart.
‘Thanks. Nice to know you care,’ he adds.
‘What? Oh, no one’s going to beat you up,’ I say, with a wave of one hand. ‘Right. Next stupid thing. Let’s go.’
‘That wasn’t it?’ Jas protests meekly, but I’ve already grabbed his arm again and am pushing through the crowds. ‘This is so corny.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’ll be making me go into the House of Horrors next.’
‘Where?’ I whip around. ‘Where’s the House of Horrors?’ I love those things. But then I spot something even better. ‘Ooohhh. No, I’m not. I’m not going to make you go into the House of Horrors, but I am going to make you go in there.’
I pay for us to go into the sideshow and we’re both ushered into a little amphitheatre and seated. Even though it’s dim inside, it doesn’t take Jas long to work out just what kind of sideshow I’ve dragged him into. It’s a circus. But not any kind of circus. There certainly aren’t any lions or elephants here. The main ring is more like a tiny stage, and everything on it—a soccer field, a country village—is made on a miniature scale. And I’ve read and heard about these things, but I never thought they were real…
It’s a flea circus.
An actual, real, live flea circus.
Speaking of fleas, I notice then that we’re only sitting a metre or so away from the ring itself. I start to frown then. I’ve heard something else as well—don’t fleas jump? Like, really, really long distances? Kilometres in flea lengths, even? Or am I just being stupid—maybe the fleas aren’t even real? You know—like at flea markets? I look over at Jas.
‘Freakshow,’ he whispers.
‘That’s quite a comment, coming from you, Mr Z,’ I reply.
Jas and I wait for the other few seats to fill up and they do—far more quickly than you’d expect. The ringmaster—fleamaster?—a woman, comes over after a bit and talks to us to fill in the time.
‘So, how does this all work?’ I ask her. A good generic, I’m-not-an-idiot sort of question.
‘It is a family secret,’ she says, waggling her finger at me.
I check it for fleas. Nothing. The fleamaster, thank God, is clean.
‘You must be pretty busy,’ I continue. ‘Don’t fleas live only a couple days, or weeks, or something?’
The fleamaster shakes her head at that. ‘This is one of the biggest misconceptions about fleas.’
I try not to laugh when she says that. People have misconceptions about fleas? I thought it was simple. They live on animals, they bite, they suck blood. Where do the misconceptions fit in? I start to wonder if there are things about fleas I just haven’t heard about. Maybe ther
e are fleas who’ve gone on to have long and illustrious careers singing opera? In banking? Diplomacy?
She continues. ‘It takes six months or so before they are ready to be trained, then around three months to train them. For three months after that they perform in the circus.’
‘Then what? You put them out to pasture on the back of a nice hairy dog as part of their retirement plan?’ I joke.
She turns and stares me down. ‘No. Then they die.’
Right. OK.
With the amphitheatre full now, the fleamaster leaves to begin the show.
And what a show it is. By the end I am a flea-believer, because I see it all. Fleas playing soccer. Fleas riding a train. Fleas pulling in a chariot race. They must be the happiest little fleas on earth, those fleas.
‘Well,’ I say when Jas and I are back outside again. ‘I, for one, will never flea-bomb the house again. Think of the work they could be doing for me! Cleaning, ironing, doing the dishes. I’ve been mad, killing them off all these years.’
Jas laughs. ‘Could’ve saved a packet giving up our cars and being pulled around in little chariots.’
‘We’ve been fools,’ I groan. ‘Fools.’
We turn at exactly the same time.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ we say in unison.
And I couldn’t agree with either of us more.
Chapter Sixteen
In the same way Jas had run me out of the Hofbräu tent, we run again now. Wildly, arms flailing, not caring who sees. We keep right on running—out of the festival grounds, past one street, and another, and another—until we’re completely breathless. It’s only when we can run no further that we stop and lean up against a brick wall. I giggle, and a middle-aged lady wearing fur gives me a look.
‘Well, hello,’ Jas says, smiling at her sassily. She huffs and walks off.
We collapse into laughter once more.
‘Man, I’ve had it,’ Jas groans.
I’m still breathing so hard I can’t reply. Instead, I slide down the wall and sit on the footpath. When I recover a little, I open up my backpack that’s been resting in front of me and search around. There it is. I pull out the guidebook.
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