RAW BLUE

by Kirsty Eagar

  In a panic, I take the next wave coming through. I don’t look to see if anyone’s on it. I’m thinking I’ll ride it in and hang out in the whitewash until Shane’s passed, then go home. Leave. Give up.

  ‘Oi, oi, oi!’

  I look over to see a guy charging across from deep inside like a train. I pull off and he goes into a hard turn, spraying my face. This becomes some sort of nightmare because then a massive set rolls through and I’m right in the impact zone. I hesitate for a second then start paddling forward, really ripping the hell out of my shoulders to get clear. And then Ryan takes off, deep inside on a right, his backhand. I see him coming and I’m right in his path and my head’s all screwed up because I panic and start paddling left, trying to beat him to the shoulder, which is something you never, never do. He sees me now and his eyes widen in confusion, a split second of indecision. Should he try to bottom turn around me, or cut across the wave face above me? He goes to bottom turn, late, off-balance, and that’s when I realise he’s going to hit me. I abandon my board, sliding over the side, arms up to protect my head.

  I hear the thunk of fibreglass hitting fibreglass, his body slams into me and the lip crashes down on the two of us. Then everything’s a churning mess as we’re dragged under by the suck. Grey-white turbulence swirls like a hallucination, my chest is tight and I fight the panic to breathe. I’m kicking, wriggling, clawing for the surface, and I keep bumping up against him, hitting him with my arms and legs. The drag doesn’t let up and I’m really losing it, going crazy claustrophobic, thinking he’s going to drown me.

  I break through the surface and suck back air and he’s there beside me saying, ‘Easy, easy, easy …’

  I gasp, still struggling, trying to find a foothold, pushing him away from me.

  Sharper now. ‘Take it easy, mate. Just hang on a second.’

  I go under again, thrash my way up, gulp water, start to cough.

  ‘Jesus, settle down,’ he barks.

  He finally gets a foothold, leaning back from the pull of the sweep running down the beach, and I’m wrapped around the back of him like a piece of seaweed.

  ‘Bloody leg ropes are tangled.’

  Our boards are knocking against each other, tomb-stoning in the sweep. He pulls his board towards him, which drags mine with it. I’ve managed to stand by this time, reaching down to undo my leg rope which must be wrapped around his legs somehow.

  ‘You all right?’ he asks.

  ‘I was trying to get out of your road.’ I start coughing and water streams out of my nose.

  He undoes the mess our boards are in and pushes mine across to me. ‘Well, yours is screwed.’

  I see what he means. The front third of my board is snapped, the fibreglass hanging by threads, the stringer broken clean through.

  ‘Wonder what shape mine is in,’ he mutters, pulling his own board through the water towards him. He runs his hand up the side of the board, his face grim. ‘What a shit. New board, too.’

  I see his shattered left rail. For a moment I forget everything else because this is bad enough. I’ve wrecked someone else’s board, paddling in front of them like a bloody idiot. The whole crew is probably watching, just shaking their heads. Stupid, stupid girl.

  ‘Oh shit, I’m so sorry.’

  The reform sucks up behind us and thumps down on me so I lose my footing and go under again. When I surface he’s climbed on his board and is catching the next line of white water. He rides on his stomach to shore.

  I follow him, feeling worse than awful. I want to be swallowed up by the sea, to disappear.

  He’s on the beach, checking his board.

  I hurry across the sand towards him, carrying my broken board. ‘Look, I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, you keep saying that.’ He’s picking at the crack in his fibreglass. He turns the board over and halfway down I see the big crease running across the width of it.

  I dump my board on the sand. ‘I’ll pay for it to be fixed. I didn’t mean –’

  ‘What did she do, mate?’ Shane’s standing behind us, his board tucked under his arm. His eyes are too bright and they’re fixed on the ding. ‘New board and all. Aw, that sucks, mate. That’s the pits.’

  Oh God, let me rewind time. Take me backwards so I can never have come here.

  He steps too close to me with those wide mad eyes and smiles. ‘You’ve fucked it.’ He says ‘fucked’ so hard that spittle sprays my face.

  ‘Piss off, Shane. This has got nothing to do with you,’ Ryan mutters.

  Shane’s eyes don’t blink.

  ‘Shane. Get lost, mate.’

  Shane looks from me to Ryan and then back to me again with a maniac’s grin, then walks off.

  ‘Whoo-eee. Ha ha ha. She’s worked ya over, Rhino!’ he shouts without turning around.

  Ryan squats down, staring at his board, his pale freckled forearms resting on his knees. He’s wearing a T-shirt instead of a rashie and it clings to the solidness of his shoulders. It’s strange to me that I can have knocked up against his body like that when I don’t even know him.

  For some reason I think of a Sunday afternoon when I stayed out in the surf after sunset, the headland becoming a dark silhouette against a purple sky, the water turning grey. The floodlights at the tidal baths looked like showers spilling gold onto the sand and I was humbled with wonder at so much beauty. But it was all a trick. Because now I’m going to be cast out, exiled.

  I’m just waiting for him to tell me to go.

  Ryan looks up at me, sucking air through the small gap in his front two teeth. With his freckles, his lank wet hair, the way his ears stick out a bit, you can see the boy he once was, except for his eyes which are grey and tell you nothing.

  ‘So.’ He pauses. ‘So, eh?’

  And that’s when I bend down and pick my board up, hands all shaky-shaky, and hurry off.

  ‘Hey!’ His voice is surprised.

  I start to run, slip-sliding steps that don’t seem to move me forward in the soft sand. My legs are burning by the time I reach the top of the dune. The bitumen in the car park hurts my feet. I can’t stop sniffing. When I bend over to get the car key out of my leg rope, water gushes out of my nose and I don’t worry about wiping it off, letting it stream over my chin – in too much of a hurry to get the hell away.

  I open the Laser’s boot and throw my board in any old how. His board might have been creased but mine’s snapped clean in two.

  I hate him. I hate all of them. I hate this place.

  I grab my towel out of the back of the car and give my face a vicious wiping over, then blow my nose on it.

  Too late I spot him at the bottom of the dune, walking into the car park, seeing me there and heading my way. I didn’t expect him to follow me. I put the towel down and wait for him to reach me, dead-faced.

  ‘You all right?’

  I shrug and I can’t keep looking at his grey eyes because I feel like they can see all the way into me and I don’t like it.

  ‘Don’t worry about Shane. He’s full of it. He’s an arsehole to women and an arsehole to men. That’s just him.’

  ‘I’ll give you money to get your board fixed,’ I say, my voice thin and glassy.

  ‘Nah, don’t worry about it. Shit happens, mate. That’s what surfing is half the time – shit happening. I know a shaper who owes me a few favours. He’ll fix it for free. He can do your board while he’s going.’

  I shake my head, feeling like I’m at high altitude, can’t get enough air.

  ‘It’s no biggie, mate.’ He leans in and pulls my board out of the back of the car, the snapped topped section dragging as he does it. He unfastens the leg rope and drops it in my wet tub. ‘Keep that so you can use it in the meantime. I’ll drop this off when I take mine.’

  He turns my board over and runs his fingers down its belly. ‘Custom-made, eh?’

  For Carly 6’ 1". 18¼. 2¼ is written in pencil along the stringer near the tail. When I ordered it I asked the shaper to
write For C, not Carly, because I was worried that if I ever went to sell it guys wouldn’t buy a girl’s board. He must have forgotten.

  Ryan looks up at me. ‘It won’t be the same – once they’re broken they never handle the same way again – but you’ll still get some use out of it. You got a pen?’ He waits but I don’t move. ‘A pen, mate,’ he says again.

  I try the front door handle but it’s locked.

  Ryan pulls the boot down, takes the key out and hands it to me. There’s an old biro in the pocket in the driver’s-side door. I pass it to him. He sees my hand is shaking.

  ‘What’s your phone number?’ he asks. ‘This guy – Mark, his name is – he shapes for Hard Cut in Dee Why. He’ll ring you when he’s done.’

  He scratches my mobile number onto the back of his hand. A bit of me on him. Then he hands me the pen back and looks at me for a second. ‘You okay?’

  This is unbearable. I will him to leave. ‘Yep.’

  ‘All right then.’ He gathers my broken board up and tucks it under his arm. ‘I’ll see ya later.’ He nods and walks off.

  On the way home I try to cry because I think it’ll make me feel better, but I can’t. When I pull up in the lane waiting to turn right at the Garden Street traffic lights, I wind my window up and try screaming instead.

  ‘Faaaaaaarrrrk! Aaaargh! Faaaaaarrrrrkiiiing faaaaaarrrrk! Aaaaaaarrrrrgh!’

  A Toyota Landcruiser pulls up in the lane beside me, a woman pushes a pram past the Laser’s bonnet, crossing the intersection on the walk signal, and I scream so loudly my throat feels ripped and raw, safe in the privacy of my own vehicle.

  12

  Closer

  Kylie and Georgina are out the back having a smoke when I arrive at work fifteen minutes early. They’re sitting on upended milk crates near the rubbish skip, in amongst the stink.

  ‘Hi, sweetie!’ Kylie chirps.

  She shifts as though the milk crate is uncomfortable, taking a drag from her cigarette, and I notice how her hand is like a little claw. Seeing her is like seeing a bad omen. I wish I could make her drink milk, watch her drink it and grow stronger.

  ‘How are you, sweetie?’ Georgina says.

  I don’t know why, but I squat down beside them, suddenly dying to talk to somebody, anybody, just to plug into the world of people somehow. ‘Really bad, hey. I went for a surf today and I hit this guy’s –’

  ‘Carly’s going to take me surfing,’ Georgina says, putting her hand on Kylie’s thigh.

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to use my new board. You know the one I told you about? With the frangipanis?’ Georgina looks at me. ‘When can we go?’

  ‘Well, I don’t have a board at the moment. That’s what I was going to say. I wrecked this guy’s board and my board. It was so bad. I felt awful.’

  They watch me like a pair of owls as if waiting for the rest of the story. Kylie sucks back on her cigarette again and her cheeks hollow.

  Georgina pokes Kylie in the side. ‘Are you going to come and try it?’

  ‘What, surfing?’ Kylie frowns. ‘I don’t know. I don’t even like swimming.’

  I stare at Georgina. Can she really imagine Kylie wearing a swimsuit? Does she really think that Kylie’s in any state to paddle around and knock herself up against fibreglass?

  ‘What time do you start?’ Georgina asks me. Her blue eyes are sparkly and she’s all cute and perky with her short black hair, but she’s not warm at all.

  I glance at my watch. ‘Half past.’

  Still I stay put and silence falls over the three of us. I guess they’re waiting for me to leave, not used to me being social. But I want them to listen to me. I want them to tell me it’ll be all right. There’s this big hole in me and tonight it seems to be gaping terribly.

  Georgina stubs her cigarette out and sighs loudly. ‘Well …’ She stands up and stretches.

  ‘We’re going for a coffee,’ Kylie says scratchily, her voice going up and down. ‘We’re going to check out that new place at the Wharf.’

  I don’t know where she means but I nod as though I do.

  ‘We’ll say goodbye before we go. Georgina wants to get changed.’

  ‘Okay, cool, see you then.’ I make my voice sound chirpy and bright, but on me that sort of voice is as false as a mask. ‘Have fun.’

  I step around Georgina and go in through the back door.

  Emilio’s in the office, working out the roster.

  ‘Carly. How are you?’ he asks without expression.

  ‘Okay.’

  I stand there stupidly, time passes, and eventually Emilio looks up at me, his face impatient.

  I open my mouth, realise that Emilio won’t want to hear about how bad I feel, and I tell him about Danny instead, how he wants a job, the only catch being that he needs to work the same shift as me so I can give him a lift home.

  ‘Has he had any experience?’ Emilio’s voice is brusque.

  ‘No. He’s only fifteen.’

  Emilio’s eyebrows twitch slightly. I can see his brain computing the fact that fifteen year olds are cheap.

  ‘I thought you might need someone extra on the busy nights, you know, just for school holidays. Maybe Fridays and Saturdays. Bussing.’

  Emilio says he’ll think about it.

  I notice the seven food orders banked up on the docket printer when I’m standing near the pass tying on my apron. I get a fright when I see them – there could be people out the front with long grey beards. The first one’s been there fifteen minutes, which means it came through before the end of Kylie’s shift. For a moment I stand rock still with my arms straight by my sides. This place is relentless; it just keeps rolling on right over the top of you, like a flat tyre, punctured but still turning, food scraps mashed in its tread.

  Once, Kylie would never have left the kitchen before I arrived to take over. And she always used to finish any orders that came in towards the end of her shift, it was a point of pride with her. It means you get a head start on the prep without having to worry about that stuff. No, I want to do it. Now Kylie leaves things like everybody else does. I don’t mind from the work perspective, Kylie’s worked hard enough for long enough. But from a health perspective it worries me. I’m taking it as a sign that Kylie’s slipping away. She’s coming undone.

  I slam things around getting the food orders underway. There are buckets and buckets of unwashed stuff waiting to be put through the washer, piled up precariously on the bench and on the floor.

  I get to an order for Thai green chicken curry and a Caesar salad and I find that there’s no Thai curry left in the cool room. For a minute I panic and consider making it up from scratch, but that’s insane thinking. I re-check the docket and see that the order came through twenty minutes ago and there’s no order number (when people order we give them a number to display on their table). I’ve got a cold panic in my stomach. I walk out the front and find Marty out there. He’s finishing a coffee order, staring over the heads of the waiting customers while his hands cup the stainless steel jug under the steamer. Keeping my voice low, I ask him who ordered the Thai.

  ‘Carly Carl,’ he says, too loudly. ‘How’re ya goin’? Nah, that’s them over there, eh.’

  He nods at a well-groomed couple who look like they haven’t talked to each other in years. They will give me a hard time, I know it. I hate telling people that they can’t have what they ordered. I hate it.

  I’m right. The woman clucks in annoyance and peers at me over the top of her glasses. I hear my voice stumbling when I ask her if she’d like to choose something in place of the curry, complimentary of course. I tell her I’ll organise the refund immediately.

  Emilio comes back out the front and works the register, taking orders. I ask him to refund the curry and he says, ‘Why isn’t there any made up?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Because that sort of prep can be done a couple of days in advance, can’t it? Surely?’

  It’s going
to be a long night.

  When I get back in the kitchen the printer runs out of docket paper and emits a high-pitched noise, just in case we hadn’t noticed. I don’t know how to change the roll so I ask Emilio to do it. But he’s snowed under with customers, so we initiate plan B: he writes orders by hand and sticks them up at the pass, looking really pissed off.

  An order comes through for eggs hollandaise. I check the date on the bottle of hollandaise sauce on the shelf. It’s been there since Tuesday, two days ago, the last time I made a batch. There isn’t much of it left and I would have thought Stu or Kylie might have made a batch sometime today, but apparently not. I bet it’s crammed full of bacteria, overflowing with 8s. I’m going to have to use it because more orders are coming through. We’re getting slammed. There are around twenty customers lined up out the front and there’s only Marty, Emilio and I to deal with them.

  Emilio appears at the window, passing through a muffin on a plate. ‘Can you heat this up for me?’

  I take the plate. ‘Where’s Roger?’

  ‘I’ve cut his hours. He’s doing a shorter shift. He won’t be in until six.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Michael wants me to prune some of the labour costs.’

  I tempt myself with the idea of just walking out, taking off my apron and cap, collecting my bag and walking into the back alley where the air stinks of garbage but is a hell of a lot cooler; helping Michael prune labour costs that way.

  ‘Bye, sweetie.’ Kylie and Georgina swan through the kitchen. Kylie’s still in her work clothes, but Georgina’s wearing skinny jeans and a bright yellow singlet. She takes in the chaos of plates and cups around the washer with a disdainful look on her face as though it’s a messy fact completely unrelated to her world.

  By the time I deliver the now complimentary order of pasta and a Caesar salad to the couple, they’ve been waiting for forty-five minutes. The woman tells me that it’s not good enough and they won’t be coming here again. She has a quaver in her voice. I tell her that I’m very sorry. She looks me up and down as though I’m an inefficient moron, which I suppose I am.