by Brown, Honey
Billy whispered, when he was gone, ‘A cop. They all are. They run these things.’
The police weren’t in uniform. They were dressed in tracksuit pants, white T-shirts and white sneakers. A sprinkler was turned on and the kids played under it. The moon was out early. Children’s bare arms and legs glistened in the light from the clubroom windows. When one of the policemen ran through the water, the children cheered and chased him. Billy pointed out two older kids who had separated from the group and were over near the goalposts. A girl and boy. It was possible to see them holding hands, just possible to see them kissing. Billy lifted the backpack and held it out for Adam to take.
‘They’re gonna start looking around for stragglers.’
It had grown dark enough to go.
Barbeque smells drifted from backyards. Some houses hadn’t closed their doors. Children were playing in the shadowy yards. Mums and dads sat on porch steps or watered their gardens. It had a cracker-night feel. It felt familiar to Adam for that reason. The moments leading up to the bonfire being lit, the noises in the street, people out, the smells, always on the other side of the fence, spilling over into Joe’s yard, only ever a sense of it, never in it, not like this.
Adam looked up at the stars. There were footsteps on the path behind them. Two girls were talking. As they caught up to the boys they stopped their conversation, giggled and overtook. The tallest girl glanced back. Her eyes and teeth gleamed.
‘Wanna know the trick to them?’ Billy said, when the girls were out of earshot.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t pretend you weren’t checking those two out.’
‘No.’
‘No? Really? Fair enough then. I won’t tell you. You don’t need to know.’
‘Okay,’ Adam conceded after a few more steps.
‘You gotta walk somewhere with them,’ Billy said. ‘That’s all you need to know. Girls love walking places. It doesn’t have to be somewhere fancy. Those two girls, all they’d be doing is heading off to the corner shop, but you’d never guess it going by the way they’re swinging their backsides. Yeah? They love going places. Take them somewhere, walk down the road with them, down the street, to the corner shop, walk around the block, anywhere. Do that and they’ll reckon you’re the most romantic guy they’ve ever laid eyes on.’
Adam thought about it. ‘Okay.’
Billy shouldered him. ‘Dag.’
‘Do you like girls, Billy?’
‘Hmm, let’s just say I don’t get nervous around them.’
‘How come you know the trick to them?’
‘When you don’t go to pieces it’s easy to see how they work.’
‘Does Scotty?’
‘Does Scotty what?’
‘Get nervous around them.’
‘Nah . . . he doesn’t get nervous or go to pieces . . . he goes to fucking water. There’s someone you don’t wanna go taking girl advice off. He’s hopeless. It’s painful, watching him with a chick. I’m not kidding you – you groan.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Well, for starters, he forgets how to speak, makes the lamest jokes, drops stuff, walks into stuff. I’ve seen him fall backwards over a kid’s bike, hit his head getting in and out of a car . . . seen him get tangled in an annexe door and almost hang himself on a clothesline.’
Adam could picture it. He smiled.
‘You think I’m kidding.’
‘Has Scotty had a girlfriend?’
‘Yep.’
‘Have you?’
‘No, kid.’ He sounded amused by the question. ‘But I’m not saying that people like us don’t have girlfriends. You’re gonna, no problem. It’s about jumping in there and not worrying about the knockbacks. Those girls, don’t worry, they were scoping you right back. The only thing you gotta be careful of is people telling you how they reckon you should feel, or taking a person’s fucked-up reaction as the way you should feel. When you’ve been through a bunch of shit like us, people think all sorts of stuff.’ Billy sliced his hand through the air. ‘But for me it’s like – what I do with someone and what was done to me, two different things completely. There’s the good game, and there’s the bad game, and, take it from me, the good game ain’t nothing like the bad one. Look at it like this – it’s like being punched in the face or touched on the cheek. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty clear on the difference there, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
*
On a high section of road Adam and Billy stopped and looked over the blanket of suburbs to the city lights in the distance. Billy lit a smoke. Adam sat down on a low brick fence and waited while Billy got his bearings.
‘How the fuck did we manage to get all the way out here?’
Adam got to his feet. He assumed they’d walk to the city. He thought they’d walk all night.
But they only went as far as a wide and busy street.
It had pubs and clubs. Low-slung rumbling cars cruised up and down the road. Music thumped inside the vehicles. Drivers waiting at the traffic lights revved their motors. Somewhere further off, a car’s tyres squealed.
At a drive-through bottle shop they went up to the counter. The man was sitting on a stool behind the cash register. He was watching cricket on a small TV. Billy bought some smokes and asked about the clothes pinned to a board above the fridges. A carton of beer had to be bought to get them. Billy turned his back on the man and slid another note from the bundle.
They walked out with a cardboard box of stubbies and a T-shirt and a jumper wrapped in plastic. Billy put the beer down by the kerb, left it there.
Down from the bottle shop was a motel with a neon sign in the shape of Ned Kelly. With each blink of the fluorescent tubes the gun he was holding lifted higher. Inside the motel foyer was a statue of Ned in all his armour. The woman at the counter looked up from the book she was reading. Her hair was in a ponytail. She switched her stony look back and forth between Adam and Billy. Leisurely she straightened in the chair, walked to a drawer and pulled it out. Billy glanced at Adam. He winked. She closed the drawer, dropped a set of keys on the desk.
‘Twenty-five dollars.’
‘For a double?’
‘Yes.’
‘Got something better?’
‘A suite?’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s got its own bathroom, and a —’
‘We’ll have that.’
‘It’s sixty bucks.’
‘That’s okay.’
She went to the drawer and came back with a different key. ‘Breakfast is included with the suite.’ She pointed across the foyer to a glass door and a darkened room beyond it. ‘It’s served till nine a.m. Check out is ten.’
‘Do you have room service?’
‘Kitchen’s closed. But there’s a pizza shop across the road. They deliver.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘You’re on the second floor, down the end . . . On The Run Pizza,’ she said as Billy paid. ‘Dial one to ring out.’
The stairs were carpeted. The room numbers were painted on small metal plaques in the shape of Ned Kelly’s helmet. Billy unlocked the door and held it open with his back. Adam went down the short passageway. The room was large. It had a boarded-up fireplace and a double bed, a couch and a coffee table. The dresser was dark wood with small silver handles. Heavy red drapes. A section of the neon Ned Kelly sign was right in front of their window, blinking and flashing. You had to look through the fluorescent tubes to see down to the street. Billy came over and closed the drapes. He turned on the lamps. Inside the dresser were a TV and a fridge, an electric kettle, cups, tea, coffee and sugar. The bathroom was through a narrow door off the passageway. It had a claw-foot bath and the cleanest toilet Adam had ever seen. Dazzling white.
‘This is really nice.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Can I have a bath?’
Billy got it running and arranged the shower curtain so that it hung outside the ba
th. He left. Adam locked the door.
The bath filled. The soap was pink and wrapped in rose-printed paper. Adam undressed. Steam fogged the mirror. He stepped in when the bath was half full, held the edge and lowered to a crouch. He’d only ever dipped his feet or hands in water. Joe had never let him swim in the pool. Immersing his body into water felt nothing like showering in it. Adam eased down lower. He kept a tight hold of the sides of the bath, moved his toes underwater. The bath continued to fill. Holding on with one hand he reached and put his fingers under the tap flow. When the water was as high as his chest he turned off the taps. Bath water stung his sunburn. After a short while he let go of the sides. For a few long moments Adam sat there. Tears wet his cheeks.
He soaped his body, eased his arms and shoulders under. Carefully he turned onto his tummy. In the other room Billy was talking. Adam stopped moving about to listen.
‘You sound pissed off. I thought you’d want to say goodbye . . .’
There was no response. No other voices. Billy was on the phone.
Adam climbed out of the bath. The skin on his fingers and toes had wrinkled. He dried himself. He pressed his sweet-smelling palms to his nose. He dressed again in his old clothes, opened up the door. Billy was sitting on the bed, the phone to his ear. He put his finger to his lips to stop Adam speaking. Adam went to the window and cracked the drapes. He looked through Ned’s leg, down at the street, to the cars passing, the shopfronts and people.
‘On the Run Pizza,’ Billy said. ‘It’s on Dryden Road.’ He checked his watch. ‘Okay.’ He got up off the bed. ‘All right. Yeah. Bye.’
Billy hung up, went into the bathroom and shut the door. Bath water gurgled down the plughole. The shower curtain rustled, the shower started running.
Adam tried to work out how to turn the TV on. It didn’t have an obvious on/off switch. Adam tried the buttons. Nothing worked. Billy came out with a towel wrapped around his waist. The arm bandage was wet. He unwound it and took a fresh bandage from the backpack, re-dressed the wound. He tore at the soft plastic wrapped around the bottle-shop jumper. He tossed the plastic wrapped T-shirt towards Adam.
‘Yours. Hey, didn’t you wash your hair?’
‘I didn’t want to put my head under.’
‘You gotta wash your hair.’
‘Why?’
Billy went back into the bathroom, spoke from there. ‘Because it looks like shit.’
After a moment he came back out. ‘How’s this?’ He stepped into the open and stood with his arms apart. He was in his old shorts, the new black jumper on. He’d towel-dried his hair. His cheeks were gaunt and his eyes were still bloodshot. There were nicks and cuts on his legs and forearms, bruises and burns on his hands, grazes on his face.
‘You look okay.’
‘Bullshitting already, what’d I tell you?’
Adam put on the new T-shirt. It was black like Billy’s jumper, the same word was written in dark green across the chest.
‘You gonna wash your hair?’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Come on. Let’s do it quick.’
Adam knelt at the side of the bath. Billy passed him a face washer and made Adam hold it against his forehead, over his eyes. He leaned Adam forward over the tub. Billy used the kettle from the dresser. He kept the bath tap running, refilled the kettle, shampooed and rinsed Adam’s hair.
Shampoo ran down the sides of Adam’s face. It got in his ears and wet his neck.
Billy pulled up the towel he’d draped over Adam’s shoulders. He rubbed Adam’s hair dry.
‘I have to go and meet someone. I won’t be long. I’m only gonna be across the road.’ He gave Adam’s hair one last scruff and fluff, tossed the towel on the chair. ‘Stay in the room. Don’t do nothing dumb.’
‘Why do you have to go?’
Billy went to the bathroom mirror and leaned close. He prodded the cuts and bruises, pushed his tongue behind the grazes on his cheeks. ‘Just gotta,’ he said while poking.
He turned around and leaned against the sink, gave a strange, unsure smile.
‘Do me a favour? When you hear me coming back, just duck in here for a bit, until you know I’m alone. If I’m with someone, stay in here, real quiet? You know? Yeah?’
Billy waited out the front of the pizza shop. Adam watched from the motel window. A red car pulled up and a young man got out. He was in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He was tall with light-brown hair. He stood on the footpath. They greeted one another, standing back. Billy folded his arms and hunched his shoulders, looked down and kicked the toe of his sneaker on the footpath. For a while they both looked away in opposite directions. Neither of them seemed to speak. Something must have been said, or a look must have passed between them, an unspoken thing, because the man locked his car and they walked together across the road. Billy let the man get in front and he glanced up to the hotel window, like he knew Adam would be watching.
Adam took the backpack with him into the bathroom. Locked the door. He sat down on the chair beside the bath, put the bag between his feet and leaned forward on his knees. In the backroom there had been so few things to lose – a bed, a light, blankets. Outside the backroom the things to lose were so much bigger. No longer simply objects and items, but undefinable things, immense things. It was as though Adam only now had a life to lose. At stake were freedom, friendship, hope. He couldn’t lose those things. He couldn’t go back to a bed, a light, blankets. Wouldn’t. Searching through the bag, Adam couldn’t find the gun. Billy had taken it. His friend understood the fear. He knew the panic. No act too great to stay safe. Adam sat back, took a breath, listened to the hotel door unlock, listened to them come in. Dirty bath water had left a line around the enamel. Strands of hair were coiled in the plughole. No window. Only his bottle opener.
The man was first to talk. He had a drawn out, deliberate way of speaking.
‘Is this place for real?’
‘When did you get the car?’
‘Dad got it for me, for my birthday. Not sure I would have picked red. What’s wrong with your arm?’
‘Nothing. I pulled a muscle.’
It sounded like Billy moved across the room. When he spoke his voice was muffled. ‘How’s that go with work?’
‘I don’t smile too wide. I know what you’re thinking.’ The man used a higher voice, ‘But your teeth were straight before.’
‘Is that what everyone says?’
‘Without fail.’
‘They weren’t straight, though,’ Billy said. ‘Your bite was off.’
The man chuckled.
They were silent for a while. Floorboards beneath the carpet creaked. A bedspring squeaked. Something soft dropped on the floor.
Adam heard the man say, ‘Pulled muscles bleed now, do they.’
It was hard to make out Billy’s response. Whatever he said was brief.
‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’ the man said.
Billy murmured something, pitching his side of the conversation below what Adam could hear.
‘You disappeared,’ the man said, ‘you didn’t call.’ It sounded like he got up off the bed. ‘And now you’re still not going to explain. Just say what you want.’
Billy muttered a response.
‘It’s ridiculous. I’m here right now. Tell me now. Have you hurt someone? Is that why you have to leave? Who have you been fighting?’
Adam strained to hear. He missed most of what Billy said, only caught: ‘ . . . might get back in.’
The man sniffed loudly. It sounded like he moved towards the window. ‘Do you know how many people have asked me where you are and how they can reach you? All year. What you walked away from is mind-blowing. Did you just not care?’
‘All I’m asking,’ Billy said, barely audible, ‘is for a few names and numbers.’
‘Why Queensland? Why not here?’
‘I want a change.’ Billy’s voice had lifted. He lowered it again. Adam barely heard, ‘I’ll get my own plac
e. You could come up.’
‘Why are you whispering?’ The man’s sudden change in awareness was tangible. His voice became clipped. ‘What’s through there?’ His movements got louder. Floorboards creaked sharp and deep. The bathroom door handle rattled. The door shunted against the lock. ‘Why is this locked?’
‘I think it’s the door between rooms.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘If you want the bathroom it’s out in the hallway.’
‘Are you for real?’
‘Jason.’
‘Give me a fucking break.’
Had Adam not changed his top and washed his hair he would have felt uncomfortable. Jason’s hair was soft and shiny. His shirt was ironed. He sat with his legs crossed. The jeans hugged his legs all the way down to his ankles. Although tall, he didn’t look old enough to be driving a car. He did have an Adam’s apple. His nose was long and his jaw was angular. Parts of him were grown-up. His fingernails were short and clean. He wiped his mouth, pulling back his lips, and Adam saw a thin band of silver across his teeth.
Billy was bare-chested, picking his jumper up off the floor. He seemed undecided about whether or not to put it back on. It was warm in the room. He was sweating. A patch of blood was showing on the new bandage. He left the jumper off.