by Sean Kennedy
“Why didn’t you tell me that my sworn enemy was collaborating with your ex on his upcoming tawdry autobiography?”
With his hands in his pockets, Declan moved to sit opposite me. “I didn’t have the heart to tell you.” He paused for a moment. “Or the balls, actually. We were planning our day of hooky, and it seemed nice to forget about it all. But while you were in the shower I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and before I knew it I was reading Greg’s press release.”
Ugh, Greg sounded so intimate coming out of his mouth.
“You should have told me.”
“Can you blame me for wanting to pretend for just one day I didn’t read it?”
No, I couldn’t blame him. I wished I could forget it again as well. “Jasper fucking Brunswick.”
“I know.”
“He’s like one of those serial killers in a dumbarse horror flick. Every time you think you’ve gotten rid of him, he comes back for yet another fucking sequel.”
“Uh-huh.” Dec was used to my stupid analogies.
“I wish my life was a horror movie. Then I could stick a knife in him.”
Declan winced. “Okay, you’re going a bit too far now. I don’t want to have to testify against you in a murder trial.”
“You would turn me in?” I was aghast.
“Well, you just murdered Jasper Brunswick!”
“You’re my partner!” I told him. “You’re meant to support me. If I murder someone, you have to be there to help me hide the body!”
Declan was trying valiantly not to smile, but failed. “Okay, I promise. If you kill Jasper, I will help you bury the body and give you an alibi.”
“Just so long as we’re clear about it.”
“But, Simon—”
“Yeah?”
“Just promise me you won’t kill Jasper Brunswick.”
“I promise.” I said. And figured out a loophole: if I killed both Jasper and Heyward, I wouldn’t be lying because I only promised not to kill Jasper by himself.
Maybe I should have been a lawyer.
“I don’t like the look on your face,” Dec said. “What are you thinking?”
Strangely enough, thoughts of vengeful murder had left me. Instead I saw, once again, the curve of the Great Ocean Road beckoning to me, whispering that I had to escape. I saw Dec and I watching the waves roll in against the cliffs in a foamy spray, their wild beauty giving us some momentary semblance of peace.
“Remember that time I said I needed a break, and you ran off and disappeared and didn’t speak to me for almost a month?” I asked.
“Frig, you’re cheery this morning,” Dec said drily. “Yes, I do. And if I ever forget, I’m sure you’ll remind me.”
“Come on, you’re usually so good it’s the only thing I can use against you. Me, on the other hand, well, I have a book the length of War and Peace listing all my transgressions.”
“True enough. Just letting you know, though, there’s an expiry date on that particular incident and it’s coming up soon.”
“Yeah, we’ll talk about that later,” I said.
Dec sighed. “Okay, so break, I abandoned you, blah blah blah.”
I gave him the greasiest look I could muster, and he bit his lip in an effort not to laugh.
“All I meant at that time was that I needed a break away, not from you,” I said. “And I think we need that now. Let’s just hit the road, you and me, like Harold and Maude—”
“She dies at the end!”
“Fine,” I said, trying to think of another example. “Like Thelma and… oh, bugger it. Anyway, we’ll hit the road, away from everyone and everything and just spend time together.”
Declan’s eyes were lighting up. “Babe, this may be one of your better ideas.”
“See!”
“But if we’re going to do this, we do it properly. No laptops, no mobiles. We won’t even buy the paper. And we’ll mean it this time. Not like this morning. We’re totally shutting the world out.”
“It sounds fucking fantastic.” I gave him a big smack on the lips, and he returned it with full force.
“Okay. Pack your bags, Maude.”
“So I’m the one who dies?” I protested.
“Oh, no.” Dec laughed. “If we have to, we go out together.”
“Good. But, uh, I would prefer it if we come back alive and well.”
“We’ll try our best.”
Chapter 10
I WOKE with a start, forgetting where I was for a moment until I looked over and saw Dec behind the wheel, singing softly along with the stereo and tapping his fingers to the beat. I yawned and sat up properly, having sprawled a little bit beneath my seatbelt, which was now digging into my neck.
“Sorry. How long was I out for?”
“You were snoring for the past fifty kilometres,” Dec told me.
“I don’t snore.”
“You do.”
“Well, so do you.”
“You told me I snored only when I’m drunk.”
“I was lying.”
Dec shrugged and began to sing again. I smiled and closed my eyes, listening to him and feeling relieved he was lighthearted enough to do so.
The next thing I knew, we were another twenty kilometres down the road. Sheepishly, I resolved to stay awake. For one thing, I was missing a hell of a view, with the wide spread of the ocean on my left and my beautiful Dec on the right.
Who wasn’t so pretty when he was complaining. “I thought the point of this trip was to spend time together?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I will stay awake from here on out. You know what I’m like on long journeys when I’m not driving.”
“Maybe we should stop and get something to eat.”
I wished we could just keep driving forever.
We had left only an hour after we had decided to commit to this crazy plan. I had run downstairs and banged on Abe’s door, hoping he was home. I was surprised, although not really at the same time, when it was Lisa who answered me, yawning with her mouth behind her free hand. She immediately wanted to know how we were going, as it turned out she had heard about Heyward’s book on the morning TV shows, but I brushed it off. I told her our plans, and made her promise to look after Maggie while we were gone. She looked a bit concerned at the fact that we seemed to be running away from our problems, but gave me a kiss and told me to drive safe. On the way back up to the top floor, I realised that she had basically admitted to planning to stay at Abe’s for the next few days. Curiouser and curiouser.
We sent texts to Fran and Roger and both sets of parents, chickening out of calling them in case we were talked out of running away, and then we were off, the city disappearing behind us in the rearview mirror. With each kilometre the odometer increased, our moods grew lighter. We were entering a world without Heyward, Jasper Brunswick, and the media at large. And it was glorious.
But I had a little secret of my own that I was keeping from Dec. While I was texting Roger, an SMS came through from Jasper Brunswick.
We need 2 talk. I know u prbly
don’t want 2, but it’s important.
Not only was I enraged he had the gall to contact me, but I was appalled at his spelling, reliance on “text speak,” and lack of punctuation. And he was meant to be a writer!
So I was pretty happy to turn off my mobile for the unforeseeable future. It meant that I could forget about it, or at least try to, and if there was one thing I excelled at it was procrastination.
With its burning little secret, my mobile was tucked away in the glove box—we had decided to bring them just in case of car trouble, but swore to leave them off until we made a mutual decision to turn them back on. Neither of us particularly wanted to be stuck out on lonely roads relying upon the kindness of strangers.
We didn’t have a plan. We stopped off at various locales along the way, most notably the Twelve Apostles, a spectacular rock formation not far from the shore—a set of worn-away cliffs that rose out of the water l
ike teeth. One of them had crumbled into the ocean a few years ago, and it felt like it could happen to them all as time went on. Not exactly a comforting thought—nothing is immortal. We didn’t stay there too long, as the area was swarming with tourists, and crowds were the last things we wanted to be around.
We drove on to the outskirts of Port Campbell and pulled into the car park of the Comfort Lodge in the late afternoon. The look of it alone suggested that the comfort supplied was in name only.
“Aren’t you glad now that I brought our own bedding?” I asked Dec.
“I think you’re being a bit paranoid.”
“I told you about that study that was done—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Seven different types of semen on the doonas and semen and blood up the walls.”
“You sound weird saying semen.”
“You’re the one who started that particular conversation.”
“I’m just telling you what they found.”
“Yeah, in America.”
“You think it’s any different here?”
“Okay, okay. Thank you so much, Simon, for thinking ahead so we’re not lying below other people’s semen tonight.”
“That’s all you had to say.” I cocked my arms in triumph.
“That would be more impressive if you had muscles.” Declan opened his door and stepped out onto the gravel.
“Bastard,” I muttered and followed him into the office. No foyers in this neck of the woods.
At the sound of the bell ringing above the door, a small middleaged woman wearing a Sydney Swans baseball cap emerged from the back room.
“Good evening,” she said and visibly started when she saw Dec and recognised him.
“Hi,” Declan said, turning on the charm as usual. “We want a room for the night.”
She looked at the two of us. “One room?”
This was bullshit. If she knew who Dec was, then she probably knew who the hell I was. “Yep,” I jumped in. “With one bed, thanks.”
She pursed her lips, and I thought she was going to try and refuse us, but she reached into a cabinet behind her and produced a key. “Room 12. That’s eighty-nine dollars for the night.”
Only eighty-nine dollars? Fuck knows what kind of hovel we were letting ourselves stay in.
Dec handed over his credit card. “Thanks.”
I took the key. “Meet you there.”
I stumbled back out into the cold and headed across the car park. The rooms were more like a series of connected units, and they all seemed in the same shabby condition. This was the kind of motel you only planned to stay in for one night, and gritted your teeth while doing so.
The lock took some major twisting and turning before it finally opened, and I stepped into the room to find two twin beds staring me in the face. For a moment I just stood there, wondering whether it was an honest mistake or a completely unsubtle judgement of Dec and I as a couple.
Dec found me still standing in that same position. “What’s the matter?” He then moved past me and took in the room. “Fuck no.”
“It might just be a mistake.”
“Well, I’m going to get them to move us.”
“No, don’t.” I grabbed him by the arm. “You know normally I would be rampaging down there, but I’m tired, and if it is going to lead to an argument, the last thing I want is for us to end up in a news story about a bed in a country motel.”
“Simon—”
“Please, Dec.”
He kicked the door shut. “Fine. I guess we can pretend we’re like parents in a 1950’s sitcom.”
“Fuck that.” I moved to the nearest bed and began to push it over. Dec joined me, and voila, the twin beds became a double. I stripped it of its clothes and replaced them with the ones I had brought from home while Dec switched on the heater and boiled the kettle.
I lay on one side of the new bed and yawned. “I am so tired.”
“For someone so concerned about the state of the doonas, you’re lying on ours with your shoes on,” Dec observed.
I looked down at my feet. “Oh. So I am.” I kicked them off, and they flew across the small room.
Dec stared at them. Anally retentive.
“Go on,” I mocked him. “Live a little.”
He rolled his eyes and kicked off his own sneakers so that they flew in opposite directions. He hesitated for a moment, and I knew he wanted to pick them up and place them neatly by the door, but he took me by surprise with a flying leap to land beside me on the bed.
“It’s a whole new world,” I said.
“You’re not going to sing again, are you?”
“Nope,” I said, resting my hand upon his stomach. “I’m going to do this.” I kissed him, my hand pulling at his belt loop. He responded eagerly, his arms wrapping around me. I rolled over to pin him down so he would be my helpless captive, and found myself sliding down between the two beds, my hand clutching frantically at Dec’s waist even though I knew logically there wasn’t that far to fall.
It was like I had fallen in an open grave composed of white sheet rather than dirt, and Declan was peering in over the top at me. I expected him to be sympathetic, but he was actually tearing up from laughter.
“Oh, yes, very droll,” I said. “Help me up!”
Dec tried to speak, but could only wheeze.
I reached up, grabbed him by the hood of his jacket, and pulled him on top of me. The collision of our bodies made us both wince, but soon we were just staring at each other, and Dec wiped hair out of my eye.
“This is cosy,” he said.
“I didn’t know these sheets were so stretchy.”
“They should put it on the packaging. It’s a major selling point. But do you know something?”
“What?” I asked, my hands aching to get busy on him again.
“They’re the only thing protecting us from the carpet, which you said—”
“Is even worse than the doonas!” I cried. “Get off me!”
It took some finesse, and some slight injuries such as being poked in the ribs by elbows, but we eventually freed ourselves of our sheeted grave and stood surveying the wreckage of the bedroom.
“It would have been so much simpler if they’d given us the bed we asked for,” Dec said.
“Easy fixed.” I wheeled the two nightstands together and wedged them in against the wall on one side and the beds on the other. Now there would be no separation, and I even jumped up on the bed to test it.
Dec whistled with appreciation at my handiwork.
“Come here, you.” I grabbed him by the zipper on his jacket and pulled him onto me.
The beds held together just fine.
IN THE morning the woman asked with a small smile whether the room was to our satisfaction. Before Dec could say anything, I gave her the exact same smile that Dec had said was creepy the day before.
“It was fantastic! There was a mix up with the bed, but when we pushed them together we managed quite well, if you know what I mean!” I gave her a wink on that last bit, at which her eyes widened and her face coloured.
Dec handed her back the key and signed the final receipt. “Thanks for a lovely stay.”
He pushed me out the door ahead of him. “I can’t take you anywhere!”
“Oh, it was a bit of fun.”
Dec laughed. “You were the one who didn’t want to cause a scene last night, and now you’ve given her the ammunition to say that Declan Tyler and his boyfriend were having horrible horrible gay sex in Room 12.”
“Horrible horrible gay sex?” I smirked as I got into the car behind the wheel, deciding I was driving for the day. “That’s not what you said last night.”
He jumped in beside me. “Just get us out of here before she gets her pitchfork and arouses the other villagers.”
“Arouses the villagers? No chance,” I said in rather mean spirits.
Declan gave me a disapproving look.
“Okay, okay! I’m sure she is very arouse-worth
y to the villagers. We’re going, we’re going!”
And so Room 12 was left behind us to bask in its newfound infamy.
AS WE passed newsagencies in small towns, we resolved not to look at the boards advertising the day’s headlines. At each new town I made us stop and try the bakery—country towns have the best bakeries, or maybe I just have the most traditional taste buds. But I was content to try every lamington and vanilla slice I could find, and then report back with my findings as to who made the best. Dec could usually be convinced to partake in the lamingtons but not the “snot blocks.”
In Allansford he was forced to try the local meat pie by the owners of the town’s bakery, which one said was “the best pie to have at the footy.” An avid Essendon fan, she begged Dec to sign all her memorabilia and pose for photos, which he did, sheepishly. I was even shoved into one, but after the cold shoulder we had received in that motel at Port Campbell, I was actually more than happy to be accepted as just any other partner of a celebrity than the dreaded homosexualist.
Luckily, nobody ever told us of any developments in the Greg Heyward saga. If they were happening, we remained ignorant. We were more than happy to remain that way until we had to return to Melbourne.
There was a stretch of beach just before we reached Warrnambool that looked so beautiful it immediately called out to us. The coast had so many spectacular views this was just one of many, a gem amongst others crying out for attention. Perhaps because it wasn’t as famous as the other attractions there was nobody there, and that made it even more attractive to us.
“It’s almost like it’s our beach,” I said, trying to get as close to the shore as possible without getting my feet wet.
“Well, today it is,” Dec said, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my chest. I felt like we were vampires stepping out into the sunlight and not bursting into flame, such is the life of a gay couple who have to decide when and where public displays of affection can be safe. “Feel like a walk?”
Not normally, no. But I felt just good enough to be suckered into it. Dec led the way as he always did—I liked to blame it on his long, lean legs rather than the fact he was in much better shape than me.