Dessi's Romance (6 page)

‘Chicken…
chicken,’ his mates yell, encouraging him to take that step further.

The guy dangling
from the balustrade holds out one hand and hangs perilously with the other.

My breath
catches. One wrong move and every bone in that guy’s body will be smashed.

To my intense
relief, accompanied by cheers and whistles, he grabs onto the balustrade with
both hands, pulls himself up and over and is back on the balcony and safety.

‘I’m out of
here,’ I yell at the others, though I know that one day I’ll have to put this
onto canvas. ‘Got more to do than wait for the cops.’

‘Me too,’ Sacha
says quickly. ‘Where to now?’

As we head for
the main door Jon waves a desultory hand, calls ‘See you at the pub…’ and goes
back to sucking his stubby. What a jerk! I feel such a pang of guilt, I can
hardly wave back. How could I have talked Dessi into going out with him and
then getting into his car when she was so reluctant? How could I have been that
insensitive?

We find a
restaurant down a side street and order two large plates of fish and chips.
‘I’m dying for a beer,’ says Sacha. ‘What does everyone else want?’

I’ve already
decided not to get drunk. ‘Coke for me.’

Kaz goes
bug-eyed. ‘Hey, Simpers, get with it.’

I shrug, think,
what the hell! and order a stubby.

‘Everyone’s
going to the beach party tonight,’ Sacha announces.

‘No booze at the
beach party,’ Kaz chimes in. ‘I feel like getting smashed.’

‘No, I want to
go to Main beach,’ Jodie squeals. Still not quite eighteen, she will have to
fake an entry stamp elsewhere.

‘That will be
fun,’ says Kaz and looks cross.

They argue a while.

I yawn. Those
two always bicker. So different from me and Dessi. If only Dessi was here…

Sacha settles
the dispute. ‘I vote we go to the pub. Who’s coming?’

Jodie looks
upset, but I jump to my feet. ‘Pub? Great idea.’

We head for the beer garden.
Outside, all our wrists are stamped. Jodie manages to convince the security guy
that she’s forgotten her ID. He pretends to believe her.

Inside, a group
of guys, all sun-bleached hair and suntans, saunter towards them. ‘Mind if we
park here?’ says a dreadlocks, looking straight at Kaz.

‘It’s a free
country,’ she drawls, though I can tell from the way she sits up that she finds
him interesting.

The guys space
themselves between us. When Sacha turns up holding a jug of beer, he’s
obviously put out. ‘Hey dude,’ says dreadlocks and holds out his glass. Sacha
hesitates and dreadlocks says, ‘Next jug’s on us, okay?’

Within minutes,
we’re chatting away like we’ve known each other forever. ‘Here on a working
holiday,’ the guys admit.

Jodie looks
serious. ‘Doesn’t that make you Toolies?’

‘We’re in
training for the Government Sponsored Surfing Team.’ They fall about laughing.
‘You up here for Schoolies?’

‘We were
Schoolies last year,’ the guy called Jeff says. ‘Had such a great time we
decided to stay on.’ He turns to me. ‘Want another beer?’

I consider where
this might lead. ‘Okay.’

He goes to the
bar and returns with a stubby. He has thick brown hair, clear blue eyes, nicely
tanned skin and I can smell salt on his skin. Just as I’m starting to find him
acceptable, beautiful, dark, exotic Abdul comes into my mind. My mood shifts.
What’s he doing right now? Why didn’t he take me to the airport? Maybe his
business deal took longer than expected? Maybe he lost my number? Still.

‘Another beer,
Emma?’

‘Sure’ I say,
defiant to Abdul’s image. ‘Keep them coming.’

I decide to
phone my father tomorrow. This night promises to be a long one.

The band appears
and the sound expands. Now the space is so crowded there’s barely room to
stand. But shoulder to shoulder we’re into the bass beat, the music rising to a
crescendo.

It turns out
that dreadlocks is ‘Bodie’ and the band’s lead singer. ‘Schoolies week…
Schoolies week…’ he shrieks and we surge forward to sing with him: ‘Don’t tell
us what we can do… Don’t tell us what we can do…’ Lasers flash in time to the
beat, and as the crowd moves in unison, it’s all excitement… us versus the rest
of the world and there’s that awesome togetherness… so much so that right now I
really love Sacha, love Jodie and Kaz, love the guys I’ve just met, love all
the others crowding around me as the bass guitarist hammers out: ‘
Don’t tell
us what we can do… Don’t tell us what we can do…’

We dance and
drink and dance some more enclosed in our world of private rapture, and my
Chagall floating woman, his bride who is forever young, rises above the
revellers as I leap into the sky, dancing and singing until finally, finally
the band packs up and the bouncers chuck everyone out.

No problem. From
there we go to another venue. ‘Twenty- six clubs… all open until five,’ Jeff
informs me.

We choose Club
Forty-five for no better reason except that it happens to be close. Even though
Jodie is so nervous, she could be picked up in an eye-blink, no one asks for
her ID. Inside a talented DJ ensures that the music keeps pumping at top
volume, there’s
almost
enough oxygen to keep breathing and most importantly, the alcohol keeps
flowing. ‘Very accommodating,’ says Kaz allowing her thirteenth drink to
trickle down her throat.

The tiny dance
floor is packed to capacity, sweaty people packed together like anchovies and
that wonderful feeling of togetherness continues.

‘
Schoolies
time… Schoolies time…
’
we yell and the all-consuming tightness of
Us versus the rest of the world
continues. Feeling part of
it, yet viewing the room as sound and light and movement, is over-the-top
excitement. Here, there’s no querulous mother, no assignments, no exams, no
supermarket-from-hell, no worries about getting into the right course, no guy
treating me like shit. Here, all that’s missing is Dessi dancing beside me.

Come three a.m.
closing, we hang around watching a fight where a boy collects a broken bottle
right in the face. After the boy falls onto his back, blood gushing everywhere,
someone thinks to call for help. When sirens sound too close for comfort, we
take off through more of the concrete jungle that makes up the centre of
Surfers.

A clump of trees
tempts us to climb.

Kaz takes up the
dare. She scales one to dangle perilously by an arm and yell, ‘
Schoolies
Week, Schoolies Week…’

We echo ‘
Schoolies
Week…’
our
cries going beyond the city lights into a darkened sky.

If Kaz falls,
she could be hurt quite badly. But everyone’s too drunk to worry, and after she
descends in one piece, the partying continues on the lovely wide strip known as
Main Beach. Here the yellow sand is patterned with the outline of bare feet
soon to be washed away by the tide. Though this stretch is now fenced and
patrolled, we pretend the security guards are invisible. Kaz pashes on with
Bodie and the group cheer as the couple strip off. Darkly silhouetted against
an indigo and silver sky, they plunge into the sea.

Jeff turns out
to be okay, and we kiss and cuddle until dawn. But it’s nothing serious and I
won’t let him go far. He must be sure he’s onto a sure thing because he’s
openly upset, then seriously angry when we return to the flat, Kaz brings Bodie
in with her but I wave Jeff off and refuse to commit to another meeting.

Too tired to
strip, I flop onto my bed and sleep like the dead.

I wake early and I’m in the shower
shampooing my hair; no easy task when one leg has to be wrapped in garbage bags
and carefully taped so no water gets through, when Hannah knocks on the door.
‘Dessi, phone.’

I drop the bottle. ‘Shit!’
I have to hang onto a rail to pick it up. ‘Who is it?’

‘Abdul… Abdul Malouf.’

‘Oh!’ Anticipation and
dread run through me.

‘You coming out?’ Hannah
calls impatiently. Lately she doesn’t bother to hide her stress. ‘I need the
phone.’

I try to ignore my racing
pulse. ‘Tell him I’ll ring… I’ll ring back later.’

‘Phone him soon as you
can,’ Hannah calls.

‘Okay.’ My hands tremble.
‘Get his number, will you?’

It takes ten minutes to dry
my hair. When I get to the phone, the buzz goes on and on. Did Hannah get it
wrong? Finally, someone answers. ‘Abdul.’ His tone is sour.

‘Hi. Uh… It’s me. Dessi.
You… ah ... called…’

‘Dessi.’ His voice
brightens. ‘How are you?’

‘Me? Okay, I guess.’ In the
long pause I can hear Graham hammering in the front room. ‘You … ah… phoned?’

‘Yes, so I did.’ Another
silence. ‘Emma get off okay?’

‘Sure. Yesterday morning.’
And though I’m really furious about the way he’s treated her and deep down I
know why he’s calling, I ask, ‘Haven’t you two spoken?’

‘Not for a couple of days.’

‘How come? Weren’t you
supposed to drive her to the airport?’

‘Um...ah...’ he sounds
embarrassed, ‘Look, it’s better I didn’t.’

‘Then why not let her
know?’

‘I figured it best if she
didn’t hear from me. Don’t want her to get the wrong idea.’

‘So…’ I keep my voice cold.
‘What’s the right one?’

In the long pause, I hear
Graham’s tuneless whistle.

‘Come off it, Dessi,’ he
says at last. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Do I?’

‘Course you do.’

‘Okay.’ Impatient. ‘What do
you expect me to do about it?’

‘Nothing. I just want to
straighten things out between us.’

‘Between us?’

He sighs impatiently.
‘Well, I really rang to see if you feel like going out.’

I gulp. This is it!
Something tells me this decision will influence the rest of my life. But I’m
not yet ready to make it, ‘Don’t go out much these days.’

‘Why not?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘You can get
in and out of a car, can’t you?’

‘Suppose so. But then I’d
have to get dressed.’

‘So?’

‘It’s a hassle. Anyway,
it’s not just that.’

‘What else?’

How come he can avoid the
obvious? ‘I’d hate Emma to think I was poaching.’

‘Poaching.’ I picture his
grin. ‘Like fishing or shooting wild ducks without a licence?’

My lips twitch. ‘Not quite.’

‘Emma did ask me to call
you while she’s away.’

‘Suppose so... But it still
doesn’t feel right. Emma and me…we’re mates. Actually more like sisters. Our
mothers are … like family.’

‘I didn’t think Anglos
bothered with family.’

‘Guess we’re the exception.
This way we have loads of people to fight with.’

‘You sound like my dad.
You’ve no idea how many people he isn’t talking to.’

We laugh. A little tension
disappears. I cast around for a safe topic. ‘How’s Uni?’

He laughs. ‘Fine. We don’t
go back till March.’

Embarrassed, I manage,
‘Guess this accident’s left me brain dead.’

‘Sure. You’ve had a rough
time.’

That’s not the half of it.
But not wanting to get into any discussion, I shift the phone to my other ear.
He quickly changes the topic. ‘What courses have you applied for?’

‘Melbourne Arts, Law.
Monash Arts, Law. Latrobe Humanities. Swinburne Arts.’

‘That’s only four.’

‘The rest don’t count.’ I
break into a sweat. What if I don’t get in? But my grades were good in English,
History and Psychology, though Legal Studies and Geography could have been
better. Still, I’m hoping my total score will still get me into Melbourne or
Monash.

I push my fears away.
‘Weren’t you doing extra study?’        

‘Yes. Heard of fractals?
They’re a theory in geometry which claims things look almost identical at
different scales. It’s an integral part of Chaos Theory. I mean, take the
events of one day, and that pattern will emerge in one year. Your whole life is
the shape of that one day...’

‘Terrific.’ I can’t avoid
the envious tone. ‘All I’ve managed this morning is a shower and shampoo.’

‘Oh!’ His voice trails off.
‘Mandelbrot, the guy who invented Fractal Theory, would say today’s not
typical.’

‘I suppose it’s one way of
looking at things.’

‘It’s the only way.’ His
tone is emphatic. ‘Look, how about a drive? Do you good to get out.’

My heart hiccups. ‘I get
nervous in cars.’