Cool Bananas

by Margaret Clark

It was too hot to bask in the sun. The wind was whipping up the sand and a little girl nearby started crying as the sand stung her face and legs.

  I’m outa here, thought Flick. In this heat I’ll be dry by the time I walk across the road.

  As she glanced over to the hills behind, her heart gave a thump. Was that a cloud, or was it billowing smoke? She sniffed. The smell of bushfire was in the air, but it had been like that this morning. Surely if the fire was getting closer someone would come along with a loudhailer and warn everyone.

  She thought about Kiev’s roses as she crossed the road. It had been a lovely surprise and she’d press a couple of them as keepsakes. Her one and only bouquet from a famous person. She could tell her grandchildren about it, she thought drily, as she stopped to pull on her shorts and top.

  Then she had another thought. What would Tim give her? And would it be worth telling her grandchildren about?

  CHAPTER 7

  It was swelteringly hot, despite the air conditioner being on at full blast.

  No one wanted hot food. Everyone who came on the bus wanted to sit indoors and eat salads and drink ice coffees or cool drinks. The fridge kept being emptied almost as fast as they could fill it with more drinks from the coolroom, and the ice-creams had almost run out.

  At one stage Kay walked outside and stared at the clouds of smoke billowing across the sky. Flecks of ash were falling down like dehydrated hailstones. At least it wasn’t settling on the outdoor furniture because the wind whirled it away and out to sea.

  ‘It’s coming closer,’ she announced when she went back into the kitchen. ‘I heard on the news. It’s out of control.’

  Then the heavy artillery, bulldozers on low-loaders, started arriving, crawling past the store and winding up Grey River road, which was the main access to the fire tracks in the Otways. Similar vehicles would also be diverting through Lorne and going along the Mount Sabine road. The firebreaks were being widened in an effort to stop the fire consuming the villages and towns along the surf coast. Things were looking bad.

  ‘Well,’ said Liz, who’d spent her lunchbreak reading a book in the coolroom and coming out practically blue with cold, ‘I mightn’t have to go to the hot food van because it might have melted by then.’

  ‘It’s up to you. I know your stars indicated that you should go, but I don’t think I’d bother joining the queue.’

  ‘What queue?’

  So Flick told her what she’d overheard at the beach, omitting the feral dog bit. Liz didn’t need to hear that.

  ‘What a rat,’ said Liz angrily. ‘I think my stars were right and I needed to know what he’s really like by going to that van. But there’s more than that — he needs to be taught a lesson. Hmm. Maybe … What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Painting Kay’s sign.’

  ‘No, I mean before that.’

  ‘Dunno. You’re not going to actually turn up at the van after what I’ve just told you?’

  ‘Too right I am. He’s not going to slime his way out of this without an apology. And I think I’ll just invite Angela to come along too. She’s the best ball-breaker I know.’

  ‘Liz!’ Flick was shocked.

  ‘I do have feelings, you know,’ said Liz quietly. ‘And that Danny needs to be taught a lesson.’

  Later on, Flick saw Liz whispering in Angela’s ear. The other girl looked sharply at Liz and then pressed her lips tightly together as she nodded. Angela might be the sex princess of Coolini and didn’t think twice about using her feminine wiles on someone else’s boyfriend, but she liked Liz, and as far as she was concerned, no one was going to dump her friend for some beach babe in a pink bikini.

  Kay was a bit stroppy when she heard that Liz, Angela and Flick all wanted to take a quick break together at six.

  ‘We’ll be back in fifteen minutes,’ Flick promised earnestly.

  ‘But six is the busy time.’

  ‘I know, Kay, but there’s something we need to do urgently,’ added Liz.

  Angela didn’t say anything. She just ran her tongue round her lips and rubbed her hands together, as if anticipating some moment yet to come.

  ‘All right, but don’t be too long or I’ll never cope.’ Kay ran a distracted hand through her hair. It was typical of Angela to walk off in the middle of a peak work time, but not Liz or Flick. It had to be something really important.

  The girls walked briskly towards the beach. The sky was hazy with smoke and the sun looked eerie as it prepared to settle for the night in a psychedelic sea of burnt orange, pink and purple. The force of the wind had eased, but specks of ash continued to fall, forming a soft grey coverlet on the grass as they made their way to the van.

  ‘Nearly six,’ said Liz, looking at her watch. ‘About the time I’m supposed to turn up and meet with Danny.’

  ‘Wonder if Little Miss Pink’s there yet?’ said Flick.

  ‘Little Miss Pink fell down the sink. How many miles did she fall?’ chanted Liz.

  ‘Which one is he?’ asked Angela, as they stopped on the grassy verge and stood staring at the van.

  ‘That blond guy leaning against the side.’

  ‘And there’s Little Miss Pink in the flesh so to speak,’ said Flick, pointing to the girl she’d seen at the beach who was now strutting towards the van wearing a pink bikini top and matching shorts. Three of her friends were with her and they were replicas, blonde, lithesome and lightly tanned.

  ‘Omigod. She’s a B and O.’ Angela snorted. ‘I should’ve guessed!’

  She didn’t have any time for the Barbie look-alikes who paraded round on the beach. She called them the Blonde and Oranges because they usually had fake tans that came out of bottles, and their hair colour did too. These girls seemed to have unlimited money for designer clothes and beachwear which they loved to parade in front of everyone else. They wouldn’t have dreamed of scragging round in the general store working to earn some money, but they didn’t need to anyway because their parents were usually well-off and gave them stacks of it to spend on summer outfits before they hit Coolini Beach.

  The B and Os generally squealed and giggled a lot when they decided to go for a swim and half the time they only got wet up to their knees before running out shrieking that the water was too cold. This was because they didn’t want to get their hair or costumes wet.

  The B and Os spent most of their time lolling about on the beach gossiping, reading fashion magazines and flirting with every male between the ages of sixteen and sixty. They drank only Diet Coke and went through about ten litres of it per day, not to mention lashings of 30 plus sunscreen so they didn’t get over-tanned and dried-out looking or burnt beyond orange — and of course the Big C, which was sensible, but they were more worried about their wrinkles than their health.

  Angela narrowed her eyes and surveyed them up and down as if they were a row of icy poles on sticks.

  ‘Has Bay Watch come to Coolini Beach?’ she said. ‘Talk about beach babes off an assembly line.’

  ‘They’re all gorgeous. I didn’t have a hope,’ groaned Liz faintly.

  ‘Nah, they’re plastic through and through, just like Barbie dolls,’ whispered Flick comfortingly to Liz, as the girls surged round Danny.

  ‘Okay,’ said Angela. ‘Time we moved in. They might be the Beach Babes but we’re the Coolini Chicks, and this is our patch. And we don’t need slimeballs like Danny around here either, though that lot suit each other. They need to learn some Coolini rules: you don’t move in on someone else’s date.’

  ‘This from someone who knows,’ muttered Flick to Liz, because Angela moved in on anyone who was male and breathing.

  ‘Omigod,’ said Liz, as they walked towards the group, ‘those girls are even more gorgeous close up. Remember, I’m not really being bitchy with them, though. They can’t help being how they are. My fight’s with that two-timing creep.’

  Flick bit her tongue and didn’t say a word, seeing as Liz seemed to have forgotten that she herself had been about to cheat o
n Josh by going out with Danny.

  ‘Go to it, kid. We’re with you,’ said Angela in her ear.

  Squaring her shoulders, Liz marched up to the van with Flick and Angela on either side.

  ‘Hi, Danny,’ she said sweetly. ‘I hope you remembered that I’m supposed to meet you here at six? I thought we had a date.’

  Danny gulped when he saw Angela and Flick with Liz. He didn’t like the look in Angela’s eye. Liz was a scrawny little impressionable kid, but Angela could verbally rip his balls off with one sarcastic remark. He already knew her reputation for being sexy, and also her high standard for being satisfied. She didn’t mind spreading the word if men were useless in bed, and he’d heard a heap of guys swear they’d never even been out with her when she’d belittled their capabilities. She was known to be shrewd and tough. You didn’t mess with Angela.

  Little Miss Pink looked daggers at Liz.

  ‘Danny. And you?’ She gave a tinkling little laugh. ‘As if!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Angela, taking a step forward, ‘you’ve been baking your beach-babe brains in the sun for too long. Danny asked Liz to meet him at the van at six to go on a date, as I understand it, so what are you and the plastic cards doing here?’

  The blondes all backed away. Then Little Miss Pink got over the shock of someone actually fronting her, the daughter of the mayor of the burg where she came from, and put her hands on her hips.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said in a posh drawl.

  ‘Excuse my arse.’ Angela advanced on Danny.

  ‘Did you or did you not have a date with my friend Liz tonight?’

  ‘Er —’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Oh, is she the dog, no wait a minute, the feral dog you were dumping, Danny?’ cooed Little Miss Pink.

  That was it! Angela leapt forward like a wildcat and yanked Little Miss Pink’s hair so hard that she nearly scalped her.

  ‘Ouch! You bitch!’ Little Miss Pink learned karate in her spare time between violin lessons and jazz ballet. She immediately went into her classic fighting position.

  ‘Omigod,’ moaned Liz. ‘Omigod. Stop them, someone.’

  Little Miss Pink might have learned the classic moves, but Angela had been brought up in a tough family of brothers and had hit the streets when she was fourteen. She’d been in more bitch fights than you could count on your fingers and toes, especially in the juvenile detention centres she’d been put in for certain misdemeanours. And she hated rich bitches like this one.

  Blam. Her knee came up and caught Little Miss Pink in the belly. She went down like a sack of spuds.

  ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘Omigod,’ groaned Liz. ‘This is awful.’

  ‘Angela,’ Flick began. ‘I think —’

  ‘It’s all right, Flick.’ Angela clicked her fingers like she’d done when she was Queen Bee in the reform school. ‘Back off. They’re mine. And so’s he.’ She looked contemptuously at Danny. His two mates who’d been standing there smirking now looked nervous.

  The three blondes gave little squeals and went running off across the road to the beach, leaving their friend doubled-up on the grass.

  ‘Everything all right here?’ asked a large beefy man, suddenly coming round the corner of the van. ‘Is she okay?’ He pointed to Little Miss Pink.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Angela archly, giving him one of her one-hundred watt smiles. ‘She’s just got a terrible stomach cramp that came on suddenly, and I think it’s from something she’s eaten out of this hot food van. Fancy them selling contaminated food. They should be shut down.’

  ‘What?’ The man glared at Danny and his mates.

  ‘It’s not true. She,’ Danny pointed at Angela, ‘slogged her one in the guts.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ Angela was all sweetness and light. ‘I did not slog her in the guts, as you so crudely put it. I didn’t lay a finger on her.’ She smiled at the man again.

  ‘I’d shut up shop if I were you,’ the man said to Danny. ‘I’m a friend of the local health inspector. Selling contaminated food’s illegal. I’m going to phone him right now and get him to go over this van with a fine tooth comb.’ He turned to Angela. ‘My car’s parked just behind the van. I’ll take you and your friends to the hospital if you like. She might need her stomach pumped.’

  At that moment Little Miss Pink spewed all over herself and the grass.

  ‘Um, I think she’ll be okay now,’ said Angela. ‘We’ll phone her dad. He’s a doctor and he’ll know what to do.’ She dug in her pocket and produced a mobile phone. ‘But thank you very much for your kindness.’

  Flick and Liz gaped at Angela. What an actress. She could be on TV any day.

  ‘All right, then, if you’re sure that’s what you want to do. And if I hear that you lot are still selling food tonight — well, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. Close that van now!’

  He strode off.

  ‘So ha-dee-ha-ha, who’s the feral dog now?’ said Angela scornfully, looking down at Little Miss Pink who was now a smelly mess. ‘And you!’ She turned to Danny. ‘You heard the man. You lot are out of business until cleared by the health inspector, so I’d shut up shop like the man said, and now!’

  ‘We’re gunna get you!’ Danny narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists.

  ‘What, you’re gunna beat up a bunch of defenceless girls? Shame on you.’ Angela said it loudly, so that a group of holiday-makers who were passing by stopped to see what was going on.

  ‘Are you girls all right?’ a woman asked, as Little Miss Pink got to her feet and went tottering off.

  ‘It’s okay. Heatstroke,’ said Angela smoothly. ‘We’re cool bananas.’

  Everyone knew Flick and Liz, those two nice quiet girls from the store and of course Angela, who was always so charming and friendly. The men scowled at Danny and his mates.

  ‘Oh, heavens, we should be back at the store,’ said Angela in a girlishly shocked voice. ‘We told Kay we’d only be fifteen minutes. It’s amazing how quickly time flies when you’re having fun. Come on, girls.’

  Flick and Liz galvanised themselves into action and shot across the road after Angela.

  ‘Omigod,’ said Liz. ‘Omigod. Did you hear what Danny said? He’s gunna get us.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sure. Him and what army?’ Angela looked scornful.

  ‘You shouldn’t tell lies like that,’ Liz persisted. ‘You said you didn’t lay a finger on that girl.’

  ‘So? I didn’t. I kneed her.’ Angela grinned. ‘You could almost hear the hot air coming outa that little prim bitch. It felt real good!’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re my friend and not my enemy,’ said Liz. ‘And I hope that’s the end of it.’

  But behind her, Flick pressed her lips together. She’d seen the parting look on Danny’s face. And it wasn’t good.

  Danny was forgotten that night as Liz and Flick painted the sign for Kay’s store. They were set up on the verandah with sheets of newspaper to protect it from paint splashes, which was a bit of a nuisance when the wind kept trying to blow it away, but they didn’t have any proper drop-sheets.

  ‘Did Kay tell you she’s got fifteen entrants for the Coolini Beach Shake?’ said Liz, carefully painting eyes on her chubby grey koala that gave it a slightly stoned expression.

  ‘It sounds like a dance contest, not a drink contest.’ Flick giggled. ‘Wouldn’t it be a scream if all these people turned up to dance? Kay would have a fit.’

  ‘No, they had to submit the name and a recipe so that Kay knows what’s going in the drinks. No alcohol or weird substances. And she’s now decided to provide the ice-cream, milk, anything that’s frozen or chilled, fruits and syrups and the shaker-maker for obvious health reasons, and she’s got the mail bus to bring a carton of those really small throwaway cardboard cups for testing.’

  Flick frowned as she dabbed at a mountain top. She was doing the backgrounds and Liz, being the gifted artist, was doing the surfers and koalas.

  ‘I don’t think
we need the contest now that the guys have been told to shut the van,’ she said. ‘Although you really don’t think they’re actually going to do it long-term, do you? Once the Martini brothers find out, they’ll raise hell. And let’s face it, the health inspector won’t find contaminated food, and it’ll be business as usual.’

  ‘I don’t know. And I didn’t know that Angela was in reform school.’ Liz sat back on her heels and looked critically at her work. ‘I mean, I knew she could fight, because she was in that bitch fight at the beach party with Jessica, remember?’

  Flick nodded. Jessica had come to Coolini Beach in search of Josh. She’d been all over him like a heat rash at the beach party making a big play for him and Liz had been heart-broken. Then Angela and Jessica had got into a bitch fight, not over Josh but over guys in general, including Nathan. But Flick and Liz hadn’t actually seen the fight because they’d been rescuing Kay after she’d ben robbed by Billy Weezy, the area’s bad guy and thug. They’d heard all about it, however.

  ‘I tell you, I wouldn’t want to have Angela for an enemy.’

  ‘No. Though if she makes a play for Tim I’d let her have it. Big verbals.’

  ‘So does this mean you’re over Kiev?’

  Flick sighed. ‘I don’t honestly know,’ she admitted. ‘If he came strolling in the door right now I don’t know how I’d react. Sorry, Liz, but I’m being truthful.’

  ‘Well, I know how I’d react if Danny came through the door right now. I’d spew.’

  ‘Sorry, Liz.’

  ‘Don’t be. Lucky I found out what he was like before I made a fool of myself, eh.

  ‘I reckon if we get up early tomorrow morning I can put on the writing,’ said Liz happily. ‘The paint will be well and truly dry by then in this heat.’

  They’d heard on the news that the fire was still burning steadily and still heading towards the coast, but the wind had eased slightly so it wasn’t moving as fast. A southerly change was predicted sometime in the night, so just in case it brought rain, they decided to move their works of art off the verandah. Liz had painted the words Coolini Beach General Store and Kayah Cafe OPEN in thick black paint on clear adhesive plastic sheets cut to size, and she planned to stick them on each side over the entire boards, so that the koala peeped in on one side and the surfers rode in from the other with the bold letters just touching them.