‘Bloody hell, Tony, do you have any other music?’ they hear someone shout. On the edge of the crowd, Tony bounces about and flings his arms in a pretty good imitation of Peter Garrett. Cassie laughs.
‘This is pretty cool.’ She butts her shoulder against Natalie.
‘I told you it would be.’ Natalie’s teeth shine in the firelight. ‘Wait here, I’ll scab us a drink.’
The flames curl and wave at Cassie, twisting like lovers, fighting like bulls, spreading apart and opening a door. A door ablaze, a burning house, ceiling collapsing.
Natalie’s hand flashes in front of her face. ‘Hello, is there anybody in there?’
Cassie smiles wanly and takes the can of warm beer being offered to her.
‘Were you having one of your visions?’ Natalie asks.
Cassie nods.
‘Was it about me?’
‘No, not you.’
‘Who, who? Tell me.’
Cassie laughs. ‘It’s stupid. I thought I saw Peter Garret being blamed for burning down houses.’
‘Rock star turned arsonist. That is weird. Did you bring your cards?’
‘No,’ Cassie says. ‘I knew it would be too dark to read.’
In truth, she has one card, flat in her inside jacket pocket. The card she’d drawn for herself before she’d slipped out of her bedroom window. The Knight of Pentacles: rescuer, solid, dependable. She touches the outline of the card and looks into the darkness for Paulo.
She takes a swig of beer, the frothy yeast foreign tasting. ‘Blah, I don’t like beer.’ She takes another mouthful.
‘And yet, you drink it anyway! That’s dedication to the party.’ Natalie lifts her beer above her head and yells, ‘Yeah, let’s party!’
Nobody takes any notice of her.
After two beers, Cassie’s head tingles delightfully. She leaves the fire for the river’s edge. The river moves slowly, like an old man, its surface flat and dark, a sheet of cold air spread like a blanket over it. She stands on the earthen bank, eaten by the river’s gentle hunger, shelter for tiny fish and mosquitoes. She throws a stone into the water, almost expecting it to bounce on the surface as though it is glass, but the water breaks apart and its rippling mouth swallows the stone.
‘Don’t think I’ll be swimming tonight.’ Natalie arrives beside her. Cassie thinks Athena would have something more interesting to say if she were standing on the embankment with them. Natalie hasn’t asked after Ida, though she should remember she was due home. Cassie wants to say something, to share her fear of Ida’s brokenness, her guilt, but she is not sure Natalie would care.
‘Come on,’ Natalie says, gripping her arm, ‘I found Baz and them down the river a bit.’
‘Is Paulo with them?’
‘I don’t know, maybe, probably. Who cares?’
They weave up the bank a few metres through a stand of straggly trees and back down to a group of flat rocks separated from the water by sludgy mud and reeds. Smoke weaves from a small fire, around which huddle a handful of people.
‘Hey this is a private party,’ the girl Diana shouts out at them.
‘What, you scared of the competition?’ Tony speaks out of the darkness. ‘Come on over, girls,’ he says, his voice saccharine.
Bazza moves aside and Cassie squeezes in on the flat rock next to him. Natalie sits in front of his crossed legs and leans back on his chest. He shuffles back and turns as though something interesting is happening behind him. The rock is like a block of ice. Looking around Cassie sees the faces of older kids from school, kids she would not dare look at, let alone talk to. Cassie hunches her shoulders and crosses her arms over her chest.
Tony hands a bottle of spirits to Natalie. ‘So,’ he says, ‘I heard my dag of a brother dropped you, hooked up with that other friend of yours, the hot one, walks like she has a pole up her arse. Lisa?’
Cassie’s mouth drops open.
‘No great loss.’ Natalie lifts the bottle to her lips and drinks and shudders at the taste. ‘He couldn’t get it up half the time anyway.’
It’s a great joke; they laugh and slap their thighs. It all seems a bit much. Natalie hands the bottle to Cassie. ‘He’s not together with Lisa,’ she whispers. ‘Lisa says they’re just friends.’ Her voice quivers on the word friends.
‘Lisa wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,’ Cassie says.
Natalie shrugs. ‘Drink it,’ she urges. ‘It’s vodka or something, I think.’
‘Lisa Moore, I think I know the one,’ one of the guys says. ‘I’d like to put a pole up her arse.’
‘You’re sick.’ Diana punches his shoulder and he sticks his tongue out at her and makes licking motions.
Another bottle makes its way to Cassie and Natalie.
‘What did you kids bring to share? You can’t just turn up and drink all our grog,’ one of the girls says.
‘Yeah, it’ll cost you something,’ another guy leers.
Natalie passes the bottle to Cassie. ‘We brought the gypsy entertainment,’ she says.
The boys yahoo and yell. ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ Tony says, his overly big teeth glinting in the moonlight.
‘Yeah, yeah, you all got dirty minds. I mean Cassie. She reads palms and things.’
‘Like, who cares?’ Tony flicks his cigarette into the water.
‘Do mine.’ Diana sits up straight and holds out her palm to Cassie.
‘It’s too dark,’ Cassie says.
‘I got a torch,’ says the girl next to Natalie, who has wild hair, shaved in squares on one side and long on the other. Samantha Bell. They reckon she’d pulled a knife on a guy who tried to feel her up. Out of her long pants with big pockets at the knees, she takes a small torch and puts it into Diana’s palm.
Natalie nudges Cassie. ‘Go on.’
Cassie holds the older girl’s arctic hand.
‘Oh, you’ve got warm hands,’ Diana says.
Cassie traces the heart line with her finger. She feels like she is in an exam. Regurgitating what she has read. She could be reading the future; she could be remembering what she’d read in books and magazines and saying rubbish. The more she tries the less anything comes to her. The last palm she’s read with any success was weeks ago.
‘You will have a long life,’ she says. ‘You will marry twice and have four children. You will have an accident in your thirties that will change your life. You won’t make a lot of money, but you will be comfortable.’
She drops the hand like a piece of stinking meat.
‘That was boring,’ Diana says. ‘Aren’t I going to be famous or something?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Cassie says.
Silence prevails in the group as they pass the bottle to her. She takes the bottle and enjoys the burn. Everyone settles into small conversations and ignores her.
Cassie pulls her knees up to her chest and watches the small party. Natalie flits from guy to guy, sitting between their legs, leaning on their shoulders, following the spirit bottles around the circle. Couples grope and pash, and some disappear deeper into the trees, the girls giggling and the guys with their hands on their backs prodding them. Some of the party make their way back up to the bigger party, the bigger fire. Every time the bottle passes through Cassie’s hands she feels reality slip into a blur as her senses blunt. The fire, which had blazed with dry grass and sticks, settles into thick lumps of logs simmering like live volcanoes.
Eventually there are five of them. Natalie curled beneath Tony’s arm, Bazza and Samantha deep in conversation, and Cassie, the spare wheel. The circle has closed, drawn closer to the fire, the heat on their faces, the cold on their backs.
‘We’re out of grog,’ Bazza says, tossing the last empty into the river.
‘Never mind.’ Tony reaches into his inside pocket. ‘I’ve been saving the best for last.’ Fr
om his pocket comes an old-fashioned tobacco tin.
‘Cool,’ says Samantha.
Tony holds out a tight green nugget. Samantha takes the nugget, rolls it between her fingers and holds it to her nose. ‘Smells good,’ she says. ‘Sticky.’
Tony grins like a gremlin. Natalie looks like a five-year-old who’s been offered a slab of chocolate for breakfast.
Tony strips two Tally-Ho papers from their packet. His tongue glistens as he licks the papers and joins them together. With deft fingers he crumbles nuggets onto the papers.
‘Don’t put spin in it,’ Samantha says.
‘No way,’ Tony mumbles. He curls the papers into a perfect cylinder and licks the edge again.
Then he lights it.
Cassie studies Tony. He doesn’t inhale quickly and exhale immediately as he did with his cigarettes. He sucks long and hard, holds the smoke in his lungs, a look of nonchalance on his face, and then blows it in a steady stream towards the stars.
Natalie lifts herself onto her knees and holds out expectant fingers.
Tony raises the joint in the air, out of her reach. ‘You done this before?’
‘Of course,’ she says, ‘all the time.’ She glances at Cassie, a tiny grin on her face.
Cassie knows she is lying. Natalie knows Cassie knows she is lying. They have talked about this opportunity several times.
Natalie sucks on the joint and coughs the smoke out of her mouth. ‘It’s strong,’ she says between splutters.
She passes the joint to Cassie. Cassie holds it between her fingers. Smoke curls from its end, sweet and earthy. She draws the smoke into her. It travels like sandpaper down her throat. She fights the desire to cough it out and holds her breath as though under water, blows the smoke out in a steady stream. She grins to herself. She didn’t cough.
She offers the joint to Bazza. He takes it from her, drags deeply and passes it onto Samantha.
The joint circles the group, like a merry-go-round, around and around to each of them, the wooden saddled horses forming from the curls of smoke and wishing away towards the moon. The moon Cassie notices. The moon, glorious white ball, watches the world, mourning the people indoors who never see her light. The moon, a beacon, a beam, a circle of light, watching over them, ancient, the moonlight glazing the tree leaves, the skin, in luminous tones.
‘Look at the moon,’ she says.
‘She speaks,’ says Tony, twisting his head towards the light. ‘The moon,’ he says.
‘The moon,’ says Samantha, looking up, ‘it’s …’
‘The moon,’ says Cassie. ‘It’s been there forever.’
‘Forever,’ says Samantha.
Tony laughs. ‘The fuckin’ moon.’ He nudges Natalie. ‘You still in there?’
Natalie smirks, titters, giggles, and then spits laughter into the circle. The circle picks up the laughter like the measles. Feverish, the laughter bounces around, over the fire, into the eyes of Tony, and out again, across to Samantha, and over to Bazza, whose laugh is deep like a cannon blasting laughter back to Natalie, and Cassie laughs and her throat hurts and she wonders why she laughs other than the world is wonderful, and why not laugh?
The trees roar with infectious laughter too, then settle into the dim chatter of an audience waiting for the show to commence.
A crashing noise, like a wild boar ripping through the undergrowth, breaks out behind them. Natalie screams and flings herself at Tony.
‘What the fuck?’ Tony shouts. ‘Who’s over there?’
The noise stops as suddenly as it began, and then a shape stumbles from the blackness. A tall lean stooping shape, and Cassie’s heart skips.
‘It’s just that wanker Paulo,’ Tony says. ‘Fuck off, you wog.’
Paulo wobbles towards them, trips and falls to his knees. ‘Fuck, that rock’s hard. Who put that fuckin’ rock there?’ He slurs his words and sways and pulls himself to his feet.
The laughter teeters and shakes dangerously.
‘I didn’t know youse were down here.’ Paulo flops beside Cassie. ‘I’ve been looking for youse everywhere.’ He spreads his arms wide, taking in the river, the river bank, the moon, and the sky.
‘Cassie,’ Paulo looks towards her, his dark hair like a handful of night sky, glossy with moonlight. ‘I been looking for you, Cassie,’ he says quietly and pulls her close so their hips touch, joined like Siamese twins. His breath flows over her neck like a cashmere scarf, every thread of it tickling her.
Tony rolls another joint. Natalie lolls over him, watching his fingers’ every move.
At his turn, Paulo pulls away from Cassie and sucks on the joint. Its red tip flares and lights his face. He passes it to her with a grin, his breath a concoction of sweet bourbon and light ash.
Cassie takes her turn then passes it to Bazza, holding the joint between two fingers. His fingers brush hers as he takes the smoke from her, the intimacy between them solid and friendly.
The moon winks. The trees embrace the steep riverbank. Some of their roots, eroded by the gushing river, stand bare and naked. The roots curl around the dirt. Part of the earth, how they travel in the darkness, spread, drawing life from the mystery of silt and mud. She feels those roots beneath her, rumbling, tickling the rocks beneath her feet. Curious roots. Curious for the taste of her. Curious about the taste of all of them.
Paulo’s fingers stroke her spine. Like spiders. His spider hands curl around the joint. His hungry lips purse on its end.
His lips, his lips touching hers. His tongue, parting her lips, moving forcefully in her mouth. Her tongue fighting his, devouring him. She wraps her arm around his neck and tangles her hands in his black hair, grips it as if he will leave her. She wants to be so close to him that she is him. Her teeth graze against his. Slam. A hand hard in her sternum. Winded. What was that? She pulls away, takes the joint from his hand and lifts it to her lips, breathless, thick cotton wool in her throat.
She passes the joint to Bazza.
Their fingers brush again.
His skin burns and flares. A lit match.
Her fingertips boil and blister.
She squeezes her eyes closed.
The root beneath her shifts and searches, they eat dead things. Bazza wipes his face, smearing blood across his forehead. The tree looms over them, healthy because the dead wither in the ground: little fishes, possums, drowned children. The blood on his forehead dries like a tattoo. Dirt encrusts Bazza’s nostrils, the rims of his ears, stuck to the layer of sweat that covers his skin.
Not dirt. It wasn’t dirt.
‘Are you all right?’ Natalie’s voice is distant.
‘She’s greening out.’ Tony in the distance too.
Not green. No green here. Sand. Sand everywhere.
The cool smooth gun barrel. The weight of it. Bazza’s finger etched to fit the trigger. A perfect match.
Bazza’s hand. His real hand. The one at this party, by this fire, this very night, spreads over her back.
‘Are you okay?’ he says into her ear.
Shit, the hot ones are always the worst.
She opens her eyes.
Dark shadows underline his face.
She wants to tell him he had to go. That people would rely on him. A lightning headache sears through her head. She winces and rubs her temples. Some would die. Some would die. People died in wars. Men joined armies and died. Bazza would live. He would come home. Blood an invisible tattoo on his forehead.
Bazza sits back and crosses his arms over his chest.
She wants to tell him.
Her tongue is glued to the top of her mouth.
Paulo taps her thigh, offering the almost finished joint.
Cassie shakes her head. Paulo leans past her and gives the joint to Bazza.
Paulo blankets her. Engulfs her back with his chest, winds his long
arms around her body. ‘I love you,’ he says into her ear. The words are hollow. Actual hollow words. She sees them float in front of her, each letter spelled out. ‘I’—hollow. She can see the fire simmering through its skeleton. ‘L’—like an empty soft drink can. ‘O’—a flat tyre, air deflated. ‘V’—empty. ‘E’—floating into the sky. Bobbing with air. ‘You’—a meaningless word. Attached to no one.
The invisible hand thumps her sternum again.
Paulo. A twisted smile, a twisted tale. The curves of her body are the arc of a story for him. The size of her breasts the handful of air demonstrated to his mates. Her fluids a smell on his finger to be shared.
She moves her shoulders, tries to shake him off.
The fire glows with thick lava; a face grimaces at her from the burning log. Eyes, slits of red, wide burning mouth. Embers eat at the mouth; it’s bigger. It laughs at her. Laughs.
Spider fingers on her spine, in her lap, molesting her breasts. She pushes against him, moves his hands away from her.
The mouth opens wider, burns into a bigger gaping hole. Tony laughs. Tony, his knuckles thick with car grease. His nails black. His wife complaining his hands are never clean. His legs pinned beneath a red Holden. His face white. An hour. Two hours. Three hours. Four hours. His son throwing his schoolbag in the office. His son coming into the workshop. Saving his life.
Spider fingers on the inside of her thigh. Moving up. Higher. Fiddling with her jeans button. She sobs and shakes her head. Black smoke curls from the fire mouth. The eyes widen. Natalie will surprise everyone.
Natalie. Natalie with hair past her shoulders, the colour of autumn. Heels that demand attention with their sound on the stairs. Natalie’s calves, defined and strong, muscles moving with each step. Natalie in a tight skirt and matching blazer. Natalie, sitting at a glass desk, behind her, windows framing a glittering city. Natalie commands the attention of all her staff. They are scared of her. She holds their future in her hands.
Paulo groans, his mouth over her neck. His fingers tug at her zip. She pulls away. He squeezes closer.
Cassandra Page 15