by Mike Stoner
You fucking BITCH.
‘Whisky and Coke.’ The wallop with which my chest hits the bar as I fall against it knocks the words out. I reach between my legs, fumble behind me and pull a stool up while the barman does as he’s told. He places the drink on the bar and I throw a note next to it. Spinning around on my stool I scan the room like a broken CCTV camera. The image is shaky and nothing is in focus but the camera manages to go from left to right without falling off its mount.
Is that Charles? Come on, turn around. Black suit, black hair. Nope. Not Charles. Your club, but you wouldn’t be seen dead here of a night. Not your thing, eh Charlie boy?
I move from the stool and collapse onto a chair by the dance floor, being oh so careful with my glass as I put it on the table. There are only a few people shimmering around the place at various tables and in darkened corners and only one person swirling in their psychedelic secret garden on the dance floor. She is bule. Light-brown hair flops over her face and she moves like some hippy chick from Woodstock. Her dancing seems familiar.
‘Still not coming for me then, ickle Laura?’ I ask the room, not caring if anyone sees me talking. They can’t hear me above this hammering wall of sound that’s wrapped around me. ‘Eh, I said not coming then?’
Silence in the thunder. Is that an oxymoron? Who knows? Who cares?
Closing my eyes I sip on my whisky and amuse myself with the slight dizzying of my mind. There is a hand on my neck and a warm breath of unheard words next to my ear.
‘Ah, you couldn’t resist, could you?’
I open my eyes to see Laura. But it isn’t her. This face is familiar but too close for me to see all its features and complete the jigsaw. I put my hand just below her neck and push back. The face falls together under the mess of brown hair.
‘Ha. Julie.’
‘Ha. Newbie.’ She pulls a chair up next to mine and leans in close again, mouth millimetres from enveloping my ear. She smells of sweat and coconut.
‘Didn’t recognise you swirling around out there.’
‘What you doing here, hero man?’
‘Getting fuck-faced mostly.’ I wave my glass at her.
‘Feeling down? What is it with you? What’s your story? Tell me for once.’
‘Nah. It’d make your brain explode.’
‘I think that’s already happening.’ She laughs and shakes her head around to prove it. ‘Go on.’
‘Nope.’ I’m not sure why I don’t want to tell her. Scared? Not sure what will happen once the weight of it falls from my mouth again? Just too drunk to get my tongue around it? Anyway, ‘Nope, nope, nope.’
‘Well how about some medicine then? It’s got to be about nine. And it’s Saturday night. And I, too, wish to get fuck-faced.’
‘Why? What’s your story then? Marty been too much?’
She touches her nose with her index finger, then points it at me.
‘Spot on. Marty’s a fucking pillow on my face, suffocating me. I wish he’d give me a fucking break. Know what I mean?’
‘Oh. Is that my fault? Leaving you two alone together at Toba?’
‘Nah. Would have happened eventually. You obviously weren’t going to shag me, so he was the next choice.’ She punches my arm and sniggers. ‘Not really. Like I said, you’re too fucking skinny, man. Too delicate.’
‘Let’s get medicine.’
‘Well, alrighty then.’ She puts her hand up and calls over a waiter. Five minutes later he’s handing us little blue pills from under his apron.
‘These look different,’ Julie says as she turns one over in her hand.
The waiter leans down to talk to her. Green laser lights descend in lines through foggy dry ice to the floor. She nods and gets close enough to eat my ear.
‘Says they’re the same obat to the usual, but changed the colour. Do the same shit.’
‘Whatever,’ I say and throw the pill to the back of my throat.
‘Let’s dance these bastards up.’ Julie pulls me by the arm to a stormy ship’s deck of a dance floor where we sway from side to side and a strange seasickness starts to work its way up my legs.
I try to stamp it away. Banging feet on the floor. One of them clicks like wood on wood. Ha, a wooden leg. I am Long John Silver. She is my first mate. I salute her. We dance a shanty. The ship pitches on a swell. I stumble across the deck and hold on to the rails. The ship rights herself. The lights are flashing all around. We’re in a storm, me hearties. I hang on to my first mate and shout in her ear over the clap of thunder, ‘No frigging in the rigging.’ She looks at me, eyes wide, and then laughs a hearty sailor’s laugh.
‘Aye aye, Cap’n.’’
What’s that coming through the wind and rain and lightning? A dark and dusky girl. She is a beauty. Must be from a nearby island. She talks to my first mate and first mate nods. First mate hands me over. Dusky beauty leads me to a seat below decks. Out of the storm.
‘What you do, Crazy?’
Ah, native girl knows the lingo. And a familiar voice. A soft hand strokes my cheek. Familiar touch too.
‘Aha, Princess Eka. What are ye doing on my ship?’
‘So now you crazy pirate. I think you take very strong obat. I get you water.’
‘Water? There be nothing here but water.’ I laugh as I look to the sea and don’t find it.
A bottle is put in my hands.
‘Drink.’
I drink. I drink it all. Feel it flowing down and down inside, cooling. It feels like a long time since something so pure passed my lips. I blink at the lightning in the night sky. It flashes a few more times until it turns back into spinning wheels of bulbs and strobes and lasers.
‘I’m fucked.’
‘Yes, you are. And you look very bad. You should go home.’
‘I like fucked.’ Suddenly my stomach burns. I cradle it with both arms. Sweat drips off my head onto my trouser legs.
‘I think you sick.’
‘Just fucked…’ I get up and stagger to the toilets. Where are the toilets? Everything is suddenly banging at my back door to be let out. But toilets? I don’t know where they are. Can’t see the signs for the lights. I stagger and bounce from table to wall to table. Another hand is on my arm, strong and guiding. It is a man. From where? Where do I know him from? ‘Where do I know you from?’
He doesn’t answer but suddenly I am pushed into a small room and there, oh yes, there is a toilet. A sit-on one. God bless progress. Trousers just make it to thighs and bum to seat and the trapdoor bursts open to a raucous cheer and clapping and a sigh.
When it’s all over, I walk back to Eka, who is talking with Julie. Sweat stings in my eyes.
I sit and the room moves around me.
‘How you doing?’ Julie asks, wide eyes unblinking at me.
‘Want more fucked.’
‘No,’ says Eka.
‘Yes,’ says I.
‘I’m up for it,’ says Julie and raises an arm at the waiter.
Eka tuts and crosses her arms under her breasts.
‘You have beautiful breasts.’
She tuts again and wiggles her arms under them.
‘You sick. You need bed.’
‘No. A sick man needs medicine and here comes mine now.’
The waiter slides another blue pill out from his apron and Julie and I tilt our heads back. I want to be on my boat again or to be some other strange place. Sick or not. I want out of reality.
Kiss Eka on the head. Here’s the hand waving, hip gyrating again. Julie’s hair thrown around. Things are coursing through me, a thick viscous fluid through my veins. Under my skin. Burning under the surface. I shake my head, my body, not sure if I want to make it more or less. I don’t care. My face is liquid, flowing off my skull, leaving bone bare. Laser lights reflect off my bone. Dancing crazy skeleton. I feel my face and bone so cold. Rub it. Feels weird. Weird cold wet bone.
—OK. Enough.
Ah, at last the bitch.
Her voice inside my head, above th
e thundering music.
I spin around to see her, but here is Eka. Hands on my hands, pulling them away from my face. Her lips move and head shakes.
‘What?’ I ask. Trying to pull my hands free to touch my face again.
—Enough. Come away from here. You need sleep, Ice-Cream Boy.
Eka’s mouth says the words, but it’s not Eka.
‘How? What?’
I lean in close to her, stare deep in to her eyes.
‘Eh, Crazy. Come. You wet everywhere. Come.’
I blink and it’s Laura staring into my eyes.
‘Come. I give massage to help sleep.’ Eka’s voice. Laura’s lips.
‘Fuck going on?’ I grab Laura by the top of her arms. ‘Fuck you doing?’
‘Ado. Ado. Hurt me. Stop.’ Laura’s face is creased. I let go. Eka again.
—You tripping, boy. Laura behind me.
I spin to see Julie there smiling wide-eyed.
—Go on. Go off with your little girlie.
—Laura, just be you, damn it. Don’t fuck with me.
—You’re fucking with you.
Behind me again, I spin and only Laura is there, lights dancing over her white linen top, her jeans, her black eyelashes, her beautiful nose and pale skin and darker than black eyebrows and she is there and she says,
—I love you, idiot. Don’t kill yourself. It sucks here in my world. Stop tripping and wandering and messing about and start living.
I hug her. Hold her close. Her cool skin on my hot. So cool. But she feels wrong. Her breasts too large against me, hair too thick. I pull away and Eka is there.
‘Come,’ she says and new water flows down my face. Salt water everywhere. I taste the sea again. I’m all at sea.
‘Susu. Sweet milk. Drink. Susu.’
Warm glass against my lips and sweetness almost washes the bitterness away. I keep my eyes closed. So much easier with them closed.
—Come on, drink the milk. Poor sick numbnuts.
I wish I could block my ears. My hot ears. Or is it her voice in my head? My thumping, full head. They can’t both be here, Old Me and her. Are they best friends now? So hot. Is this what dying feels like?
—It hurts more than this. A fast, sweet pain that cuts through like blades.
‘Come, Crazy. You not die. Just fever. Sleep.’
Softness of skin on cheek. Soft-skinned pillows. A hand stroking my hair.
—Sleep, baby. Sleep.
‘Sleep.’
—Sleep.
ROLLING,
BREAKING, ROLLING
‘W hat day is it?’
‘Monday.’
‘What? Shit.’ I sit up and my head is whacked by an invisible baseball bat. ‘Shit.’ I lay back down to avoid more hits. ‘I need to get a bus.’
Eka pushes a bottle of water against my lips.
‘No. You do not.’
‘I do. I have to meet a dukun. In Aceh.’
Eka stands up. She is naked. Her hair falls down across her breasts, perfectly placed by gravity and nature to cover her nipples. She is beautiful.
‘Dukun? To get rid of her?’ She waves a hand around the room. What room I don’t know. ‘She was here a lot. You talk to her too much. Maybe he get rid of her. She should go. She not good for you.’
‘Yes she is.’ I think again. ‘No she’s not. I don’t know. Where am I?’
‘Hotel. Do not worry. You were very sick. I look after you. Not her. She make you bad. I care you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You still sick. You should stay.’
‘I promised Charles I would go. It was the deal.’
‘And I think you need special medicine from special doctor. Perhaps he is right. So you go to dukun. Go wash now and get ready. I help.’ She yanks the soggy sheet off my naked body. ‘You too thin,’ she says, looking down at me. ‘You should eat meat.’
I should probably just eat.
This feels familiar. A familiarity that I don’t like, a sign of Western comforts. The bus is modern, not like most I’ve seen here. Even the windows are tinted. It idles next to us.
‘Take care, Crazy. Dukun sometimes good dukun, sometimes bad, sometimes lie.’ She is stunning. Jeans tight around her legs like a second skin and a batik shirt the colour of light coffee, highlighting her natural beauty and skin tone.
You could have been somebody. You should have been somebody.
I force a smile for her.
‘Here are pills for head.’ She taps me in the centre of mine, where there is still a gentle throb. Although gentle is a stupid word to describe a headache.
‘Thank you.’ I hold her hand and she pulls it away.
‘Not on street.’ She runs her hand through her hair and I remember how it feels. ‘People don’t like see affection.’
‘Thanks for being a good nurse.’
‘Not nurse. Doctor. Now go.’ She blows me a kiss. ‘Go. Be careful. Fix your ghost.’
I board the bus and air conditioning hits me, drying the still-fevered sweat as it seeps from my pores. The seats are all fully reclining with a blanket folded on each. Unexpected luxury. I sit in my seat and look for Eka from the window, but she is gone.
Lying back, sweat prickles up on my forehead, beating the conditioning. I pull the blanket up over my head, close my eyes, and spin slightly. And then I’m gone.
The restless night passes in half-consciousness, flashes and slits of light cutting through the darkness. I peer from the window in one of the flashes. A checkpoint. A man peers back at me, machine gun over a shoulder. Aceh? The border? Probably. The bus is waved on. Eyes close and darkness floods in. A flash of light again and I see flames burning, reflecting in water. Oil rigs? Burning ships? Dragons? My mouth feels like blotting paper, but I have no energy to reach for my water. Blanket back over my head. My eyelids fall closed. Images flash through my mind, all forgotten as soon as they pass.
Then blackness and nothing. Peace and complete sleep. Like death should be.
‘Eh, man. Wake up. Banda is here.’ Blackness is wrenched from behind my eyes with the blanket. I try to yank it back but someone is stronger.
‘No more sleep. End stop. Terminus, man.’ The driver is nearly straddling me. He throws the blanket over the seat behind him.
‘Alright. Alright.’ I blink away the night and day slashes its way in. My face feels stiff so I rub it and dry salt sticks to my palms. Christ, I must have been sweating rivers, but now I feel almost normal.
‘Off bus. Come on, man. Off bus.’
I pick up my bag and stagger down the aisle on legs deprived of blood and movement for too long. My fitful sleep has lasted the whole journey, about ten hours, maybe. I remember the oilfields and border but the rest is just the nothing of deep, deep sleep. My body is almost creaking with dried sweat.
I step down from the bus into a bustling, noisy and parched-dry square. People are walking in all directions around parked and moving buses. The square is alive with colour and the smell of ripe and overripe fruit. The near-invisible film of exhaust taints the air. The heat is stifling and the sun is falling on my head like hot hailstones.
It must be the start of the day. People still have energy. I’m centre of attention again. Taxi drivers surround me on the dusty road.
‘Come, come. I take you to Pulau Weh. I take you to boat for Pulau Weh,’ says one of three drivers jostling for my business. They are all in grubby trousers which hang above their ankles and sandaled, dusty feet. Two wear wool hats and one a baseball cap. How can they still be standing in this heat?
‘No. No taxi. Go. Leave me alone. Go.’
‘No, come, mister. Taxi now.’
‘No. I want coffee.’
‘Come.’ One of them is tugging at my shirt. ‘My taxi here.’
‘NO.’ I yank my arm away
That shuts them up.
‘I don’t want taxi, I want coffee. Kopi susu. Mengerti?’
‘Ah. Kopi,’ says one of them, the baseball cap. ‘Mengerti. U
nderstand good.’
‘Dari kopi susu?’ I ask in a quiet voice, rubbing my dry eyes.
‘Disini.’ The scrawny hand of Baseball Cap points to a building just in front of us with a wonky table and two feeble-looking chairs outside.
‘Thank you.’ I sit at the table. The taxi driver stands next to me while the two with winter hats wander off kicking up dust.
‘No taxi. I don’t need now.’
‘OK. No problem. Tidak apa-apa. I wait you kopi.’
‘No. Look. I don’t want taxi. OK? No Pulau Weh. No ferry. Lampuuk, OK. I will take bus. Now go.’
The owner of the one-tabled coffee shop moves a dusty old Coca-Cola umbrella so that the sun doesn’t kill me.
‘I wait. Take you where you want.’ He adjusts his sweat- lined cap.
‘OK,’ I sigh. ‘Please sit.’ If you can’t beat them and all that. ‘Have a kopi.’ I point at the other spare chair. The café is full with its two customers and I give up. A crowd has started loitering near us, so I decide it’s best just to be calm, drink kopi, and take his taxi. I’m risking being late for Teddy anyway, although I have no idea what the time is, and my fuzzy brain isn’t even sure of the day of the week. I’d ask Laura, but she must be off in a sulk somewhere. I’m starting to think she is jealous of Eka. No contest, Laura. You’re a part of me that Eka could never be. You’re like an amputated limb; you’re gone but you still itch like mad.
No. Even that won’t raise a conversation.
Lampuuk Beach is at the end of a path which passes through sand dunes and occasional palm trees. I walk past a never-completed hotel of grey concrete walls with gaping holes where doors and windows should have been. It never made it past the first floor. A childish stick drawing of a naked woman with fuzzy genitals and big breasts is daubed on one of the walls. Next to it is written, ‘Fuck me. I am British whore.’
There is a whumping sound every few seconds that grows louder with each step. I follow the path around a grass-mottled dune and stop. The noise comes from massive waves which rise and curl and crash into the shoreline. The beach runs off to the left and gently curves round to a point about half a mile away. I can see fishing boats bobbing on the shoreline in calmer waters at the farthest point. To my right is a high rock outcrop that must divide this beach and the one where I’m due to meet Teddy. The outcrop is steep and high and full of caves and jagged holes. High waves break in white frothy curls around its base.