Tigerland

by Sean Kennedy

  “Yeah, because you’ll always have it. You and that idiot—”

  Dec punched him so fast that it didn’t even register with me that it had happened until I saw Heyward lying on the ground. Dec didn’t even seem to care that he had done it. He just stood there waiting for Heyward to pick himself back up, which he did while wiping the blood from his mouth.

  “Are you finished?” Dec asked. “I told you not to bring him into it.”

  “You better hope that doesn’t bruise, Dec.” Heyward grinned. “It’ll be a great story to add while going on my book tour.”

  “If you’re going to do that then I better make it worth my while,” Dec said, taking a step toward him.

  Heyward flinched but stood his ground.

  I was about to make my presence known—I had wanted Dec to take action, but not this type—when Dec made a disgusted snort, either at what he had done, or Heyward, or maybe even at both of them and what they had been reduced to, and started walking away.

  Heyward saw this as his opportunity and sprang for him. Declan must have sensed it, as he spun around and landed a blow in Heyward’s stomach before he could do anything. Heyward sank to his knees, holding his gut.

  “That’s it, Greg,” Dec said. “For fuck’s sake, just stop it.”

  With that, leaving Heyward speechless in the dirt, he walked off to where our friends were sitting.

  I was about to follow him when Jasper Brunswick appeared to help Heyward to his feet. I ducked back, starting to feel like I was in some anachronistically contemporary production of a Shakespeare comedy. Queen Mab was definitely in the air tonight, bringing both wish fulfilment and plague—and the two were inextricably linked.

  “What happened?” Jasper asked.

  “You didn’t see?” Heyward demanded.

  “Not the actual act, no. I just came around to see you on the ground.”

  “Then what fucking use are you? Nobody was here to see Declan Tyler hit me!”

  “He hit you?”

  I felt like yelling “twice!” because Heyward neglected to say so.

  Heyward stumbled to his feet, still holding his gut. “Yes, he fucking did.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Jasper didn’t reply.

  “Fuck,” Heyward groaned.

  Jasper tenderly put an arm around him. “Are you okay?”

  Heyward shoved him away. “Look, Jasper, just because I let you suck my cock every now and again it doesn’t mean we’re boyfriends.” He said the last word so mockingly that it skewered me, so I couldn’t even imagine how much it must have hurt Jasper. He looked so crushed that I realised I finally had the reason why Jasper was doing what he did—he was doing it for love. And I hated the way it was making me reassess Jasper Brunswick. From the look on his face he truly seemed to be in love with Heyward, because it would have to be love if you were so hurt.

  Fuck, I was feeling sorry for bloody Jasper Brunswick. But it was because I could see a link, surprisingly enough, between him and Dec. Dec had put up with over a year of emotional… well, abuse was the only word for it. It had damaged his self-esteem and his sense of self-worth, and now Heyward was working his special brand of dark magic upon Jasper. I could debate with myself endlessly about how Heyward’s actions probably stemmed from his own self-hatred (even though he would never admit it), but in the end you could only excuse him so much, especially when he was damaging other people at the same time.

  “Okay, Greg,” Jasper finally said, and dropped his arm. I have to give him credit, he walked away dignity personified.

  I don’t know why I found myself following Jasper instead of going back to Dec. I skirted around the trees until Heyward was behind me and tracked Jasper back in the crowds of the festival.

  “Jasper!” I yelled.

  He turned, and when he saw it was me he kept on walking. There had been a fleeting look of hope on his face. He was wanting it to be Heyward and knew it wouldn’t be, but he still wanted it just the same.

  “Jasper Brunswick!”

  For some reason, the use of his full name (although not his real name, the decidedly plain and simple John Brown) made him stop.

  “What do you want? I’m not in the mood for your shit right now.”

  “My shit?” I was indignant, and that slipped out even though the last thing I thought I was intending was to be antagonistic. “You’re not in the mood for my shit, after everything you’ve put me through the past month?”

  He stood silently, waiting for me to continue.

  “Just answer me one thing, Jasper.” I thought I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear him say it. “Why are you involved in this?”

  The answer came fast; no pause for effect or to think it over.

  “Because I hate you.”

  Ouch. That wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but it was honest and had come straight out of him.

  “Can I go now?”

  “I don’t think it’s the only reason,” I pushed.

  “Yeah, I know. I hate you for lots for reasons.”

  “Why?” It was a stupid question to ask.

  “You’ve never been a likeable person, Simon.”

  I seemed to be on the defensive now. “I’m likeable to a lot of people. The people who matter.”

  “See, perfect example! You have a superiority complex. You think you’re better than everyone else.”

  This guy had supposedly been chosen as a co-author by Heyward because he was meant to be an expert on me? He knew nothing about me. “No, I just think I’m better than the two of you fuckers.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “Yeah, and add this to it: Fuck you, you fucking fucker.”

  I knew one trait he could honestly ascribe to me in the book or on the book tour: childish. But I didn’t care at that moment.

  “You’ve been like this ever since I met you at the Triple F. You’re unbearable. But you still became manager.”

  “It’s not like your career went nowhere.”

  “Yeah, but I had to fight it every step of the way.”

  I almost laughed in his face, but didn’t. “Oh, boo hoo! You think I didn’t? Everybody does! And besides, the feeling was mutual—you were fucking unbearable too.”

  We were attracting some attention now, and I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him over to the shoulder of the bridge crossing over the Yarra. He stared down into the water for a moment, and I saw that sadness in him again. Strange how it made the anger drain out of me. I always had a thing for the underdog, and even though I didn’t think he was ever the underdog when we both worked together, he certainly was in whatever twisted relationship he had with Heyward.

  “I’m just going to get on my soapbox for a moment,” I warned him.

  Jasper groaned. “You never fucking get off it. It’s permanently attached to your feet.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t entirely clueless about me. Nevertheless, I continued. “Did you ever think of the bigger picture here? Dec did so much good for the community when he came out, and you and Heyward are just fucking it all up, turning it into some tabloid bullshit that has everybody laughing at the both of them!”

  Jasper looked at me. “And did you think that maybe this was some kind of equaliser? We have a gay couple in the mainstream press that is obsessed over just as much by the public as any straight celebrity couple for once.”

  “Wow, is that really how you justify it?” I asked. “You’re barely one step above some Today Tonight reporter going through people’s rubbish on television or hawking some weight loss spray!”

  Jasper shrugged. “I do what I have to do. And who knows, maybe I would have done that, if I could have gotten access to your building’s rubbish chutes.”

  That made me laugh, despite everything. “That’s too cartoonish, even for you, Jasper.”

  He smiled, and I think it was the first truly honest one he ever gave to me personally. “Giving me the benefit of the doubt? Th
at must have really hurt.”

  That smile disarmed me, and now I tried to get through to him for the first time in my life. “Why are you letting him do that crap to you?”

  He immediately stiffened and looked back down at the water. “Why the fuck should you care? We’ve never been friends.”

  “Maybe we could have been, once upon a time, if you hadn’t been such a fucking prat.”

  “Yeah, well fucking prats in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

  Touché.

  “I saw what happened back there,” I admitted. “I’ve always thought he was an arsehole, but I thought he was just being an arsehole towards us.”

  “He’s not a happy guy.” Jasper sounded slightly desperate, making excuses for the guy he thought he loved. And maybe he did, even though it was one-sided and he was being used. Heyward probably even knew that, and in the end it only made it easier for him to manipulate Jasper.

  “And he spreads that unhappiness like the plague. It’s not good for anybody to be around that kind of shit until he sorts himself out.”

  “He needs support.”

  “I agree. But he’s fucking you over in the meantime, and you don’t have to be his punching bag.”

  “It’s my choice.”

  It was like talking to a brick wall. “He made Dec’s life a misery, I’m just saying.”

  “Funny,” Jasper said coldly. “That’s not what it says in his book.”

  Maybe I was wasting my time. “Yeah, it says he was the best boyfriend ever. How’s that working out for you, Jasper?”

  There was a stubborn glint in his eye, but he was breaking just a little.

  “Don’t let him make you miserable too. It took Dec a long time to get over it.”

  Jasper turned to get away from me. I didn’t know whether to follow him or just let him go, and had thrown all caution to the wind to chase him once more when he collided with a waiter who was rushing over the bridge between the pavilions set on both sides. Jasper bumped into him with such force that the guy fell against the railing, and Jasper against him. The momentum carried them over, and I was close enough to grab Jasper’s arm to try and pull him back.

  But then I was falling too, and for such a small distance it felt like forever.

  The three of us plunged into the murky, disgusting waters of the Yarra.

  Chapter 15

  THE doctor who saw to me was pretty cute, and although I felt rather humiliated as I dripped brackish water onto the clean linoleum surface of the waiting room floor, I found myself thinking that Dec would look pretty hot in scrubs and whether there was a way I could spirit a pair home.

  “I’m fine,” I told the cute doctor apologetically. “They really didn’t need to bring me here.”

  “Well, one of the others broke his arm, so they thought it was safer to bring you all in.” He lifted his little pen torch to shine in my eyes.

  The broken arm belonged to Jasper. I dreaded to think what the newspapers would print the next morning, and what rumours would be spreading all over the net.

  I had ingested quite a bit of the Yarra when I fell in. Our point of entry wasn’t really that fast flowing nor that deep. The biggest danger had been that we all fell together, and that was why Jasper had been injured, as both the waiter and I had twisted around in midair and landed on top of him.

  The Yarra in autumn is not a pleasant thing to take a dip in, although I guess it could have been worse if it had been winter. The shock of the cold water had been the cause of me involuntarily opening my mouth and taking it in. We had churned around in the river rather hopelessly, trying to get our bearings, and had eventually ended up helping each other onto the riverbank a little way past the bridge. As we stumbled out of the water, a cacophony of camera flashes greeted us like the combatants of Desert Storm arriving on the shores of Iraq. Someone had taken my arm to pull me up, and when I wiped the muck out of my eye I saw it was Declan. He looked concerned, and was flanked by the rest of my friends.

  “Hell, Simon,” Abe said. “You like to cause a scene.”

  This was one scene I hadn’t wanted to cause; it had found me. I was trying to do a good thing, for fuck’s sake. Dec was probably worrying about what the press would make of it all, and I couldn’t blame him. After us trying so hard to stay away from the media and not be the cause of any attention, I had practically swung in on a trapeze screaming “Look at me! Look at me!”

  “Are you okay?” Dec asked.

  I nodded, but it was hard to look at him. Even though this hadn’t been done deliberately, I felt ashamed and embarrassed.

  I was spared the ride in the ambulance, as Fran, who for obvious reasons wasn’t drinking and was the skipper that night, drove us to the hospital to get me checked out.

  Questions were asked, and I gave the answers but felt like I was keeping something back, even though I wasn’t. Was I scared that Dec may have thought I was holding something back so I wouldn’t incriminate myself? I couldn’t even guess, as he was keeping pretty silent.

  Even now he was waiting outside the curtain for me, rather than being by my side as the doctor continued his examination.

  “You seem pretty okay,” he said, straightening up, giving me a cute smile and pocketing his cute pen torch again. “But I’m going to write you a prescription for some antibiotics that I want you to fill before you leave for home. That river’s pretty mucky, and we generally don’t recommend anybody swim in it.”

  “I know,” I said. “I tasted it.”

  “And how did it taste?”

  “Like death. Slurried death.”

  He laughed. “The antibiotics won’t cure that, so use some mouth fresh. But at least the tablets will probably stop you from turning into a mutant.”

  “Wait, you mean I could turn into one of the X-Men? Forget about the drugs.”

  If doctors were allowed to roll their eyes at their patients, I’m sure he would have. “Be back in a minute.”

  As he exited the curtain, he approached Dec and straightened the yarmulke upon his head self-consciously. “I’m so sorry to be asking this, but I’m originally from Hobart and am a huge Devils supporter. Can I have your autograph?”

  And I thought that boyish charm had been turned on for me.

  Dec obliged, and they indulged in some small talk about statistics and how the current players for the Devils were going. I was bored of it pretty quickly, and closed my eyes until I felt Dec by my side and the touch of his hand upon mine.

  “Do you think you flirted enough with that guy?”

  “I wasn’t being flirty!” I cried. “I was friendly.”

  “I don’t want to turn into an X-Man,” Dec mimicked me. “Please.”

  “He was pretty cute,” I admitted. “But I can’t compare to the great Declan Tyler. I’m surprised he didn’t ask you to sign his chest.”

  Dec snorted. “How are you feeling?”

  “You heard the doctor. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Yeah, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

  “I’m fine. Mortified, but fine.”

  “Why mortified?”

  I gave him my best are you kidding me look.

  He laughed. “Point taken. You’re starting to smell like a wet dog.”

  “I’m going to have to burn these clothes.”

  “Seriously, why mortified?”

  “You do know if Heyward has anything to do with it it’ll end up in the papers?”

  Dec shrugged. “So what?”

  I couldn’t believe he was being so lackadaisical. “So what? After everything you’ve done to avoid being splashed across the media?”

  “Why should I care about anything other than you being okay?”

  “I fell into the Yarra, Dec, not under a tram.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He leaned into me. “I’d kiss you if you didn’t stink.”

  His lips hovered over mine, and it was an awful tease.

  “Fuck it, I’ll kiss you anyway.”<
br />
  And he did. I kept my arms pinned by my side and my body leaning away so I didn’t get him wet, but his hands ran down my back, warm through the damp fabric of my shirt, pulling me back in closer to him.

  “Now I stink too.”

  “You fucking romantic bastard,” I whispered.

  He laughed, his breath like fire against my cheek. “Where the hell is he with that prescription?”

  “Here I am,” said a voice behind Dec, and I could see Dec flush as he drew away from me.

  “You’re looking better already,” the doctor said, handing me the script. “But don’t forget to take these. Two, four times a day, until they’re all done. Just to be on the safe side.”

  I thanked him, and Dec and I went to find the others, my shoes squelching with mud and river water as I took each step.

  “I saw you punch Heyward,” I blurted out. “Twice.”

  Way to ruin a romantic moment, Simon. Man, I was such a dipshit.

  “Not one of my better moments,” Dec sighed. “I was looking for you and came across him, and it all escalated from there.”

  We had stopped walking by now, and sat on a sofa that was one of a pair in the hall.

  “But what made you lose it, now, after all the other shit he’s done?”

  “It’s a long answer.”

  “The others can wait five more minutes. For all they know I’ve been transferred to the Emily Dickinson tuberculosis wing.”

  “I was so pissed off when he did that little routine on stage. He gets a kick out of putting you down because… well, he may not know it or want to admit it to himself, but I think he wishes he could be like you.”

  “Me?” I was incredulous, to say the least.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Because he sees you as something he never was. That thing that I wanted that he couldn’t give me.”

  “An annoying loudmouth? I think he pretty much had that covered.”

  Dec jabbed me in the side with his elbow, then reached for my hand, oblivious to the people passing us in both directions. “I didn’t know what a real relationship was like back then. Finding out he was cheating on me was the one and only thing that got me out of all the crap I had been putting up with, because I thought he loved me deep down no matter what he said or did. But knowing he was fucking around, I couldn’t lie to myself about it anymore.”