The Byron Journals (14 page)

Andrew thought of the shoebox with the cash and cocaine. There had also been a memory card. ‘Give me the memory card—I want to check it.'

‘No. There are private photos on there.'

‘Well, you're going to have to check it for me.'

‘Jesus, babe! I've got bigger things to worry about.'

‘Jade—'

‘Shut-up! I'll check it later, okay?'

He raised his hands. ‘Okay.'

‘Tim's coming home any minute now. I want to make sure we've got our story straight.'

‘I thought you were doing maintenance work on the set-up,' Tim said half an hour later.

Andrew felt Jade watching him. ‘They must have waited for me to leave,' he said. ‘I was only gone for ten or fifteen minutes. When I got back, the door was kicked in.'

Tim walked into his room, reached beneath his bed and returned carrying a black metal baseball bat with Easton emblazoned on the side. He stopped in front of Andrew, too close. ‘We've got six pounds of dope here. Jade's got coke and cash. If they know we've got drugs, they'll come back.'

‘Why would they come back?' Jade said.

‘They tipped our room upside-down, so they must have been looking for something. But all they took was your camera, right?'

She nodded.

‘They must have heard Andy come home and rushed out the back door.'

‘It was probably kids doing it for a dare,' Jade blurted.

Tim pointed at the holes in the wall with his bat. ‘Big fists for kids.'

‘Yeah, well…'

There was a knock at the front door. They stood flat-footed, looking at each other.

Tim slapped the bat against his open palm. ‘Coming!'

Jade grabbed his shirt but he pulled free. When Tim opened the door, Andrew expected to see a leather-clad bikie. Instead, he saw a tall, blond, bearded man wearing a faded tie-dye T-shirt.

‘What's up?' Tim asked.

The guy looked at Tim's bat and took a step backwards. ‘Sorry to bother you, man…I just wanted to check that everything's cool? I know some people don't like the cops to get involved…for one reason or another…My partner said she saw a heavy-looking bikie take off on a chopper, then one of you guys looking pretty freaked-out.'

Tim glared at Andrew and Jade, then turned back to the hippy. ‘We're fine. Thanks.'

‘Sure?'

‘Yeah.' Tim closed the door, propped the chair against it and turned to Andrew, his eyes wild. ‘What's going on?'

‘Babe,' Jade moved between them. ‘Let me explain.'

‘The guy who broke in,' she said once they were seated at the table. ‘His name's Rafi.'

‘Why is Andy lying for you?'

‘Because I asked him to.'

‘What?' He turned to Andrew. ‘You just do whatever she tells you to?'

‘I asked him to lie because I was scared you'd react like this. ‘Rafi's the guy I get coke off…'

‘So, he's your dealer?' Tim replied. ‘That doesn't explain why he followed you home, smashed up our house and stole your camera.'

‘Rafiand I have hung out at a few parties—just as friends—and I think he's fallen in love with me. It's not my fault, babe.'

‘Have you fucked him?'

‘No, of course not...He started giving me presents. I shouldn't have accepted them but I did. I was too scared to tell him I didn't want them.'

‘I'll kill him.'

‘He's an ice-head bikie, Tim. About twice the size of you and completely psycho.'

Andrew turned to Jade. ‘Are there other people you know, other bikies, who could talk to him? Try to reason with him?'

‘Maybe,' she said.

‘Reason with him?' Tim raised his voice. ‘Smash him, more like it. Jade, you need to cut ties with the dude.'

She avoided his eyes. ‘I can't.'

‘Why not?'

‘I just can't.'

No one spoke and Andrew studied Jade. Then it hit him. ‘Shit, Jade. Please tell me he's not the one you're organising the deal with in Sydney?'

She looked away, closed her eyes and nodded.

‘Just admit it!' Tim shouted.

Jade ran up the hallway and out the front door, crying. Tim hesitated, then chased after her. Outside, Jade's car stuttered, screeched and turned over. The engine cut out just as suddenly and was replaced by a barrage of swearing.

It didn't take long for Andrew to find Jade's shoebox. There was a stack of four in the back corner of the wardrobe, and all but one contained shoes. As Andrew opened the box and sifted through the money, a lawnmower started up in the backyard next door.

When he next looked up, ten seconds later, Tim was standing in the doorway with the baseball bat hanging from his left hand. Before Andrew could explain, Tim grabbed him and shoved him against the wall, the baseball bat pressed against his neck.

‘What's going on, Andy?'

Andrew tried to push the bat away and struggled to get the words out. ‘Memory…card…' he gasped.

‘For what?'

‘Jade's…camera.'

‘Bullshit,' he shouted and pressed harder.

Andrew choked for breath. ‘Jade took…photos…of me…with the plants.'

‘Photos of the plants?' He released the pressure on Andrew's neck and lowered the bat. ‘What are you talking about?'

Andrew clasped his throat and coughed. ‘I didn't want to tell you…I knew…you'd think I was stupid for letting…Jade photograph me with them.' He leaned forward and placed his hands on his knees while he caught his breath. ‘If the photos are on Jade's camera… Rafiwill know we've got plants.'

‘Man! How could you be so dumb! Why would you let her photograph the plants?'

Andrew looked at the floor. ‘I don't know…I'm sorry, all right? I was stoned…I wasn't thinking…But it's not my fault…I'm not the one who took the photos.'

‘Yeah, you're the dip-shit who posed in them—which is possibly even stupider.' Tim snatched the shoebox off the bed and sifted through the money and bags of coke.

When he found the memory card, he held it up between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Where can we check it?'

A dozen photo icons came up on the computer screen in the camera shop and Tim tapped on the first, a picture of Andrew grinning stupidly between a thicket of marijuana branches.

‘Idiot,' he muttered and hit delete.

He looked around to make sure no shop staff or customers were looking and deleted all the photos of Andrew, one after another, only stopping when he came upon the next series of photos. They were dark, grainy shots of Jade naked, dancing on a stage, giving a guy a lap dance and snorting coke in a dressing room.

Andrew took a step back and watched Tim work his way through the photos, his chest heaving and the back of his neck flushed red.

‘Do you fuck them?' Tim screamed, his voice hoarse.

Jade threw a saucepan across the room. It missed Tim but knocked another hole in the wall. ‘I'm a dancer, not a whore.'

‘What about if they give you an extra twenty?'

She threw another saucepan and this one hit the top of the couch with a thump, bounced off the coffee table and clanged onto the floorboards.

‘Stop it!' Heidi turned to face Tim. ‘You're being an arsehole!'

‘Stay out of this!' he boomed back. ‘This has nothing to do with you.'

‘Yes, it does.' Heidi replied, moving towards him. ‘What gives you the right to judge her?'

‘Umm…I'm her boyfriend.'

‘Yeah, and you're a drug dealer.'

‘I grow pot.' He threw his hands up in the air. ‘It's like growing coffee! You can't even compare the two.'

Andrew stepped forward, his hands raised. ‘Why doesn't everyone just calm down.'

‘Shut up, Andy!' Tim and Heidi said almost in unison.

Andrew nodded and stepped back.

‘Heidi?' Jade's voice was weepy, but dangerous. ‘I want to talk to Tim alone.'

Heidi glared at Tim, turned to Jade and nodded. She snatched Andrew's hand and dragged him down the hallway and out the front door.

It was an overcast night, warm and humid, and the smell of the ocean was musty on the breeze. Heidi's grip on his hand loosened as Tim and Jade's argument faded behind them.

‘Why didn't Jade just tell him she was stripping from the start?' Andrew asked.

She stopped walking. ‘What would you say if I told you I was stripping?'

He couldn't help smiling. ‘I'd think it was hot.'

She glared. ‘What? You'd be okay with me getting naked and rubbing myself against any guy with a fifty dollar note?'

They continued walking in silence.

‘Exactly,' she said. ‘Anyway, it's none of our business how Jade chooses to make a living. It's her life and her body. I just feel sorry for her having to put up with all you sleazy fucking men.'

Andrew stopped himself from retaliating. ‘What if Tim doesn't want her to come on the trip anymore?'

‘Well, he can't help being an arsehole. But he loves her and they've still got a few days to sort it out—they'll be okay.' She freed her hand from his. ‘You haven't forgotten about tomorrow, have you?'

‘What?'

‘My doctor's appointment?'

‘No,' he said. ‘I mean yeah, sure...Right…But what's it about? Are you sick?'

‘I don't want to think about it,' she sighed. ‘Let's deal with it tomorrow.'

He wanted to know more. But he held back his questions and contained his anxiety. He placed his arm around her and drew her close.

sixteen

‘Warts,' she said. ‘Fucking warts, okay?'

The sugar cane bristled in the fields on either side of the highway.

‘Where?' Andrew replied, when all he wanted to say was ‘gross'.

‘I don't know. It showed up on my pap smear. HPV.' She pushed the gearstick of Jade's Mazda into fifth. ‘They're on my cervix. If I don't get them lasered off I can get cervical cancer and become infertile.'

‘HPV?'

‘Human papillomavirus.'

He grimaced. ‘Do I have it?'

She stared at the road ahead. ‘I don't know.'

Andrew remembered the wart on his elbow he'd had frozen off as a child. He unclicked his seatbelt, pulled down his shorts and began examining himself. ‘I can't see anything unusual. What am I looking for?'

‘Jesus, Andy! How the fuck should I know?'

She turned up the radio as loud as it would go and accelerated. Andrew pulled up his shorts and clicked in his seatbelt as she hit one hundred and forty and slipped between a road train and a four-wheel drive. He turned the volume down but she turned it straight back up.

‘Why the Gold Coast?' he shouted. ‘Why can't we go to a doctor in Byron?'

‘I need to separate this from my life in Byron!'

‘That's ridiculous!'

She sparked a joint and smoked without offering it to him. The music blared, song after song, and the speakers fuzzed with static when the reception dropped out. Andrew's gaze settled on the dark ridge of clouds hanging low in the sky and he prayed it would split open. Anything to break the tension.

Half an hour north, the Gold Coast appeared in the distance, its towering high-rises stacked along the edge of the land. She turned down the volume when they pulled to a stop at a red light and the cars banked up behind them.

‘Fucking traffic lights,' she said, scowling.

‘What?' Andrew almost laughed. ‘Now you hate traffic lights?'

‘Think about it,' she muttered, without looking at him.

He was about to tell her to calm down, but caught himself. Her mum's accident. But what was the big deal?

Surely Heidi saw traffic lights all the time in Byron. The realisation sank in slowly: Byron didn't have any traffic lights. Yet another way that Byron allowed her to forget her past.

Andrew followed Heidi up a narrow set of stairs and waited while she spoke to the receptionist at the front desk. Generally, Andrew liked clinics—they were clean places where problems were fixed quickly and efficiently by skilled specialists. No mess. No fuss. He liked the smell of disinfectant, the hushed conversations—even the neutral tones of the carpet and walls. A nurse directed Andrew to sit down and led Heidi through a side door. He glanced around at the plastic racks on the walls filled with pamphlets about Sexually Transmitted Infections. AIDS, Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, Herpes, Hepatitis B and C, Warts. The dodgy side of sex. He picked up the pamphlet on warts and flicked through it. Warts. It was such an ugly word. A teenage girl watched him from across the room, and he found himself blushing as he replaced the pamphlet. He wondered what she was in for. Pregnancy? Gonorrhoea? Something worse? He noticed she was wearing a T-shirt with Munch's painting,
The Scream,
on it. He smirked at the melodrama of it and the girl's mother caught his eye, her lips pursed.

He frowned and looked away, took a seat and stared at the out-of-date
National Geographic
and
Time
magazines on the table.

Five minutes later, the nurse called him into a small room and closed the door. Heidi wouldn't meet his eye. He sat down and waited while the nurse studied the notes on her clipboard.

‘In a minute, we're going to take Heidi for the laser treatment.' She looked up at him and smiled, her head tilted to one side. ‘Is there anything you'd like to know before she goes in?'

Andrew glanced at Heidi, then at the nurse. He shifted in his seat. ‘How contagious are they? Am I likely to have them too?'

‘You'll need to get a check-up. You can speak to our receptionist and see if there is a doctor available.'

‘How long should we wait…?' he began.

The nurse looked at Heidi, then cleared her throat. ‘Before having sexual intercourse again?'

He nodded.

‘Four to six weeks,' she replied. ‘You'll both need to make sure Heidi's properly healed. Is there anything else you want to know?' She paused. ‘Heidi will be having a general anaesthetic for the surgery and she'll need extra care and attention during her recovery period.'