Lying back, I surrendered to the rips and currents, my limbs hither-thither, seaweed tentacles squirming beneath me. I had no one now. All Hollie and Danny needed was each other: two snakes eating each other to death in the dirt, locked in an endless embrace. The night sky rocked above me and I let the waves enfold me, filling my mouth, my nose, my eyes. A huge wave picked me up and carried me up to its crest, then dragged me headlong under the water. I let the undercurrents take me as I tumbled and rolled and floundered, my knees grazing on the rough sand below. If this was the end, I was happy enough to be taken.
With an indifferent heave, the sea spat me out and I was dumped hard and spluttering on the shore. I lay breathless, the wet grains catching on my face, coating my arms. A dog came up and sniffed at my crotch. I sat up and shooed it away, then tramped back up the dunes to my car, the sea in my ears, the tang of salt on my tongue.
When I got home, the love-birds were snuggled on the plasticated couch, watching The Sound of Music. Randy’s head was wrapped turban-style in bandages and his right eye was a nasty shade of eggplant. Mum shot me a ‘where do you think you’ve been’ look, but didn’t say anything. I sat on the poof and watched the rest of it with them, my brain jam-packed with the vision of Hollie in the cave, all white with muddy streaks.
20
I woke to Mum in the Chamber singing the song where Julie Andrews tells Christopher Plummer she must have done something good despite her wicked childhood and her miserable youth. I got up and went to work. After all the craziness, it was a relief to be back flicking doilies in the air-con. We had hardly any customers, just a few oldies from the gerry home across the road. BrisVegas was like a ghost town, like the whole burban lot of them had racked off to the beach to escape the psycho heat. Forty-three max today, it’d said on the radio.
Trish was on my shift but we hadn’t spoken since the night of the phone call. The first couple of hours, we avoided each other: she hung out back smoking joints; I stayed behind the counter, serving the odd customer. Hollie kept ringing my mobile but I put it on silent. I’d had sixteen missed calls from her already that morning. I felt bad not answering, but I didn’t know what to say to her. I knew I had to speak to her, to tell her what I’d seen, but I felt vague and trembly and I’d lost my appetite. I told myself I would call her later, after my shift, once I’d got things straight in my head. I went back to the old flick and peel, staring up at the box. The first day of the third Test had been on all morning but there was a break for the midday news. The news-girl came on, her fake-tanned face filling the screen like a giant orange:
‘Police are still searching for a twenty-three-year-old white male who, dressed to look like an indigenous aborigine, attacked a man with a spear last Sunday morning at Arena nightclub in Fortitude Valley.’
A prison mug shot of Danny, looking thin and gaunt.
‘As the hunt continues in bushland near his home in the western suburbs, police are still refusing to comment on possible motives for the attack. But a spokesperson for the aboriginal community has expressed outrage, calling it a calculated act of race crime against their people.’
‘That loon with the spear still on the rampage?’ Trish was standing beside me, sucking the devil out of a joint. I nodded, hoping that Danny was safe in the cave and not roaming about the place.
‘You know where he is, don’t you?’
‘No.’ In my paranoia, I imagined her as Scott’s secret informer.
Out of nowhere, Uncle Slob appeared. He stood glowering behind Trish who spliffed on oblivious.
‘Is he in the bush?’
‘Behind you,’ I whispered.
Trish turned around. Slob shot forwards, snatching the joint out of her hand.
‘Out the back, now!’ he ordered, giving her a sharp shove, adding to me, ‘Keep an eye on things out here.’
But I couldn’t help spying on them through the crack between the swing doors. Trish stood in the corner of the dingy back office while Slob paced up and down. I wondered if she would snitch on me for being in on the skimming. After what she’d done with Scott, I didn’t put it past her.
‘I should have known you’d go bad,’ Slob snarled, showering Trish’s face with spit, ‘just like your scumbag father.’
Trish’s dad had run off with another woman when Slob’s sister was pregnant with Trish. Although she’d never met her dad, Slob was forever saying how he’d grill his balls if he set eyes on him again.
‘Ever since you started here, profits have been going down and yet we’ve never been busier. I couldn’t work it out.’ He took out a hanky and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
Trish had her hands on her hips, looking bored and tapping her right foot to some imaginary techno beat. Slob pumped his meaty arms.
‘And then, when the scotch kept going missing, I knew it was you.’ He struck at his chest with a fist. ‘The wife thought I was troppo. But I knew any daughter of that lousy prick had to turn out rotten.’ He paused to let the full force of his insult sink in. ‘So, what’ve you done with it, Trisha?’ His face was so red I thought he was going to have a coronary. ‘Where’s all the cash? It must be about two grand by now, hey?’ He grabbed her chin in his pudgy fingers and shook it. Trish jerked back from him. I didn’t know Trish had nicked that much, I’d only scored a couple of hundred.
Trish smiled. ‘I’ve spent it.’
Slob raised his fist, like he was going to punch her in the face, but forced it down, his arm rigid with unspent fury. ‘You’ve got till tomorrow morning to pay it back, all of it, or else I’m calling the cops.’ His chest was heaving. ‘After tomorrow, I never want to see you lousy piece of shit again. Now get out of here!’
Trish sashayed out of the office, winking at me as she went past. I raced back behind the counter, relieved she hadn’t dumped me in it. Slob blustered out, red-faced and swearing.
‘Get the fuck outta my sight!’ he roared at Trish, oblivious to the blue-rinse biddies drinking tea in the corner.
Trish calmly took off her apron and chucked it in the bin. ‘You coming, Rosebud?’ she shouted to me as she stepped out into the hazy, mid-afternoon sunshine.
‘Yeah, alright,’ I said, thinking fuck it. I was sick of Slob’s perving and waiting on beardies and making bloody cappuccinos. Besides, working at Temptations would be misery without her.
That night Trish and I went feral. We went to the R.E. and drank Johnnie blue label in the beer garden while chatting up rugger-buggers in RMs and plaited belts. Their total lack of brains and style didn’t stop Trish dragging one of them behind the loos for a quick root in the bushes. She was in top form, we both were, high on booze and freedom. Late in the afternoon we stumbled over the road to Flight Centre to book Trish’s ticket to India. As soon as I was in there, surrounded by all the glossy mags and that whiff of travel bugginess, it came to me as clear as fucking crystal.
‘I’m going, too,’ I said, realizing how long I’d dreamed of escape.
Trish cheered. ‘Yeah, baby, let’s go rank together!’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’m going to London. Like I said I would.’ The first flight available was on New Year’s Day. I paid my deposit and we left. Outside, Trish did some cartwheels on the pavement. I felt like stripping off and running down the road naked. It was the best feeling ever. At last, I was free. No more Temptations! No more BrisVegas! No more Scott Greenwood!
Back at Trish’s bedsit, we snorted lines and ate some tabs. We turned the hardcore up full blast and danced until the sweat was pouring off us. To cool down, we took a shower. Trish dyed my hair Kermit-green and we shaved each other’s pubes right off. We did more lines until we were rolling around on the floor laughing. We couldn’t stop. I actually pissed myself. Afterwards, we chucked Bad Boy Bubby in the video and watched Bubby glad-wrap his pet cat over and over again on continuous replay. Then, we went speeding on the Western freeway and I stuck my head out of the window and screamed, my green hair flapping like the wings of some exotic bird f
rom the Amazon. I turned to Trish, my face squashed back like in a centrifuge, and shouted, ‘I love you!’
‘I fucking love you, too!’ she yelled back.
We were still beaming as we drove to the Toowong public pool and climbed the fence for a late-night skinny-dip. It felt like we were there for yonks, ducking and diving in the silky, black water. Afterwards, we lay flat and panting on the grass, gazing up at the stars. The night was sweet and muggy. I turned to Trish, my head propped up on my wrist, too ripped to care I was starkers.
‘I know you rooted Scott,’ I said.
Trish ran her fingers through her spiky, green hair. She looked child-like, almost innocent. Perhaps it was because she had no pubes.
‘But I don’t think we did,’ she said, eyes wide, her eyelashes clumped into cute, little points.
‘It’s cool, you know,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to lie about it. I don’t give a shit any more.’
‘Nah, it’s not that. I can’t remember if we did or not. It’s all muddled up. Did he say we did?’
‘He denied it, but I could tell he was lying.’
‘Then, maybe we did. Fuck knows. My head’s a pile of mush.’
‘I know you, babe, and I bet you did.’
‘Probably.’ She pulled up a handful of grass and stuffed it in her mouth. ‘Sorry, Rosebud.’
I watched as the stars tumbled out of the sky, pinging cold and bright as diamonds along my naked body. ‘You know what?’ He’s having a kid with this chick called Amber. Can you believe it? I thought he loved me.’
I had a bit of a cry. Trish hugged me. We clung to each other, our bodies warm and damp. I lay back on the grass and reached for Trish’s hand, wanting her to know I’d forgiven her. She rolled over and kissed me on the lips, then sprung up, whooping like a wild beast, and bomb-dived into the pool.
By the time we got back to Trish’s, the sun was coming up. The sky glowed bright pink and the morning chorus was kicking in. I can’t remember going to bed but when I woke up, it was mid-afternoon and Trish had gone. She’d left a note stuck to the fridge with chewy:
See ya, Rosebud,
Plane to catch. Thanks for a crazy fucking night.
Trish x
P.S. Can you drop the keys into the estate agent and tell them I’ve gone? There’s a box of my stuff in the lounge room – clothes and crap. Take what you want, chuck the rest. Don’t think I’ll be coming back to this shithole!
I spent the rest of the week at home, packing and planning my escape. I’d already decided not to tell Mum or Randy about going, just to disappear, leave them all wondering, scratching their sun-softened heads. The only person I had to tell was Hollie. I still hadn’t called her yet. The image of her and Danny rooting in the cave filled my head like a porno vid. So, now I knew what Hollie had wanted to tell me at the hospital. Most people would think a brother and sister doing it was sick but I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t angry. If anything I felt kind of sad for them, not having anyone but each other, and a bit sorry for myself, being so far outside their secret world.
Apart from packing, I kept a vigilant eye on the news. Each day the cops made out they were closing in on Danny. They showed footage of the brigade thrashing through the bush, swaggering under the weight of their holsters. It was a joke. Senior Constable Pitts would come on saying, ‘We’re pretty bloody certain he’s out ’ere somewhere and we won’t give up till we get ’im. Don’t you worry about that. He can’t just escape into thin air.’
Towards the end of the week, I got the guts to call Hollie. Time was running out and I needed to tell her I was leaving, and that I’d seen her in the cave with Danny. She answered on the first ring.
‘Rosie?’
‘Do you want to go for a chocollo in the air-con?’
Exactly ten minutes later, Hollie pulled up outside in the Lexus. I went running out in cut-offs. She was wearing the same white muslin dress, freshly washed, that she’d had on in the cave. She eyed my green hair but didn’t say anything. We drove to Shoppingtown in silence, in case of, as Hollie scribbled on a scrap of paper: ‘Bugs.’
With the sales on, it was a bitch finding a park but eventually we got one up near the food court. Arm in arm, we marched across the carpark, anticipating the cool blast of air-con and soothing musak. Once inside, we made straight for Wendy’s, great purveyor of chocollo. I bought us two extra-large cones and we sat down on plastic swivel stools, licking away and watching the shoppers scurry past us. It took me a few minutes to psych myself up.
‘Hollie,’ I said, touching her wrist. ‘I saw you. In the cave.’ I took a deep breath. ‘With Danny.’
She pretended not to hear.
‘Hollie, look at me.’
She brushed my hand away. There was a long silence. She refused to look at me. I got up from the stool and stood facing her. Her lips were set. She crushed the chocollo cone in her hands. I hugged her but she was wooden in my arms.
‘I don’t think anything bad,’ I whispered in her ear.
She pushed me back and spun around on the swivel, facing the blank wall. I sat beside her and put my arm around her.
‘Please. Don’t be like this. I understand. Really. Other people might think it’s weird but I don’t. You love each other.’
She raised her head and stared at me. ‘We’re freaks,’ she spat.
‘No, you’re not. I don’t think that.’
‘Yes, you do. Deep down, you think it.’
‘You’re wrong.’ I brushed away a stray hair which had got caught in her lip gloss. ‘You… you both looked… ’ my heart was beating wild, ‘beautiful.’
Her eyes glistened. Her cheeks coloured. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ I slipped my fingers into hers. She lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed it. The Wendy’s man was staring at us over the counter.
‘Hey, you girlies, if you’ve finished, move along.’
‘C’mon, Hollie,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
We walked back slowly, hand in hand, to the car, talking it all through and telling each other everything.
21
Mum and Randy were going ballroom dancing at the Hilton for New Year’s Eve. They stood in the doorway: Mum in a daring strapless number she’d bought in the sales; Randy in black tie. When they asked what I was doing I told them I was staying in with a vid and a delivery pizza. Randy gave me a sympathetic nod but Mum smiled.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘It’s about time you took it easy.’
As soon as they were gone, I leapt off the couch and started getting ready. Hollie had invited me to the cave for a New Year’s Eve party, just the three of us – Hollie and me and Danny. It was my last night in BrisVegas and I had this feeling, like something major was going to happen. Everything I’d thought about Hollie and Danny had changed and I didn’t quite know how I was going to act around them. I wasn’t sure what to expect, what part I had to play. I wondered if Hollie had even told Danny that I’d seen them in the cave. I was nervous, but excited, too, as if I was about to do something illicit or forbidden. Like the first night I went clubbing and met Scott.
I dyed my hair black from Kermit-green and set it in hot rollers. I painted my fingernails and toenails purple, and slid my silver serpent armband up my arm. I rubbed coconut oil over my body until my skin shone, honey-coloured. As I dressed, a moth brushed its wings against my sticky skin. I pulled on a pair of Bonds, no bra. Then, a skirt, falling in soft, filmy folds, and my white-lace camisole, its edges curled and scalloped against my stomach. As night fell, I unravelled the rollers and shook out my hair. It cascaded in loops and bangs down my chest. The contrast turned my face pale and my scar seemed to glow in the dusky light. It shone back at me, a jagged crescent-moon. I painted my lips blood-red and my eyelashes thick with heavy mascara, liquid liner around the eyes. I looked like a goth-freak but it was all for Hollie. I grabbed some of Trish’s hardcore CDs, put on my strappies and headed outside. The night-sky held its breath, a vast swathe of
indigo arched over me, heavy, as they say in Shakespeare, with portent. I had that scoopy hollowness in my gut. It wasn’t dread or excitement, but a teetering, falling feeling, like a premonition, as if the gods had already decided our fates that night. I got on my bike and sped away to Hollie and Danny.
So much for intensifying the search. That evening, there were no cop cars outside Hollie’s house. The lazy buggers had probably racked off home to New Year’s piss-ups, like the ones going on up and down Hollie’s street. Bevan music blared out into the night. Meaty smells filled the air. I rode up to the top of the hill and dumped my bike in the ditch. Hollie’s house loomed black and hushed as a mausoleum, except for the Christmas tree, still lit up in the casement, and for a moment I thought I saw Mr Bailey standing next to it in the window. I turned and started up the track. There was no moon at all. I couldn’t see my toes. As I ran through the bush to the cave, I felt jittery, like on a first date, but buzzy with anticipation, too.
Hollie was setting out the food. Orange fish-spawn glowed fluorescent in the soft light. There were silver trays piled with fleshy oysters and Moreton Bay bugs, their clawed legs splayed at obscene angles. A giant poached salmon lay bloated, and its huge, dead eye seemed to follow me as I entered inside. There was an ice-bucket with three bottles of pink champagne and three large satin cushions for us to sit on. Purple candles flickered out from rocky crannies, filling the cave with an overblown, musky scent. Opera was playing low. It was the same Wagner stuff Danny’d had in the Lexus, the night he drove me home from Scott’s. As I crawled in, my shadow loomed against the back wall. Startled, Hollie spun around. She was alone.
The Dark Part of Me Page 21