Green (24 page)

‘What? I can't believe it. Are you trying to screw up the plan? Objective number one: money. Objective number two: get me a girl. And somehow, just when that's starting to work nicely, you're like the big drug baron around here, and all you've got is a family-size jar of Staminade in your pants.'

‘Yeah, well, you put Bolivia into my head and now I'm stuck with it. Do you reckon there's any way I could actually make money out of this?'

‘Out of selling Staminade? Yeah. You could get a job in a supermarket. Don't even try it. If that goes up one nostril while we're still on this boat, you're a dead man. And I'm not going down with you.'

I'm annoyed with him again. Typical Frank. The moment he gets in anyone's good books, he rips out the pages.

I'm still annoyed when I claim a toilet break twenty minutes later. There are too many people talking about whatever it is Frank's got, and I'm sure the evening is now only going to end in trouble. I pour myself a stiff vodka and orange, and drink it on my way to the bow. The toilets at the stern are too close to the dance floor, and so busy it'll be a cesspool in there by now.

One of the lights is out near the bow, but it's not so dark that I can't find the door handle. I need some Frank-free time to think, so I go straight for a cubicle.

I've made the right choice of facility. It's clean and there's No one around, and Patrick Hernandez's ‘Born to be Alive' is a dull noise at a party somewhere far away. There's a blast of it when the door to the corridor opens, then the door closes again and there's only the sound of feet on the floor, the click click of heels.

The click click of heels?

A woman speaks. I'm in a cubicle in the forward female toilet.

Of course. There were no troughs, and it's way too clean. How did I not notice that?

They talk about guys, and not spewing. One of them goes into a cubicle but leaves the door open so they can keep talking. Has No one told her sound travels over the top?

‘Have you had one of those drinks with the marching powder?' one of them says. ‘They've got a bit of zing to 'em.'

‘Yeah, I had a couple, but they were a bit salty for me.'

‘That's the
garita
part, apparently. It's garita if you add salt. Brizgarita, margarita.'

‘Yeah, well, I reckon it tasted pretty much like tequila and Staminade.'

‘And what would you know about how tequila and Staminade tasted?'

‘Yeah, I s'pose.'

Someone else comes in and, for the next ten minutes, the traffic is heavy enough to trap me. Should I shout ‘Maintenance' and make a run for it?

More feet. Never a crowd but a steady stream in and out. More conversations. Most of the men on board aren't being ranked too highly, including the men on the bar.

‘That med student Frank's a bit of a wanker,' one voice says, and I think it might be Jacinta, the one with the eyes. I shouldn't keep thinking of her that way. ‘But I don't mind his friend.'

Suddenly, pay dirt. Go, Flirty Boy, go.

‘What, the one with the chin?' her friend says, and there's a pause. I think lipstick's being reapplied, something like that.

‘Yeah, Phil.'

Go, Chin Man, go. What's that about? I check my chin right away, and it feels no different to usual.

‘Oh, yeah,' the non-Jacinta one says. ‘I wouldn't say No.'

I wondered if she was the willowy one. Now I know she isn't. That's not the way life goes. The willowy ones? No is their best word, if they bother to talk at all.

‘Hey, I've met him,' Jacinta says. ‘I'm halfway there.'

‘Yeah? You reckon?'

‘Yeah. Okay then.' She laughs. ‘Five bucks says I pash him before you do.'

‘All right. Five bucks? All right. I'm up for that.'

Okay, I felt weird about the chin remark, but now I know I can get past it. There's a price on my head tonight.

‘Well,' the friend says. ‘Let's hunt him down.'

The door swings open, and shuts. They're gone.

Women come, women go. ‘Hunt him down.' I'm quarry. That's something that'd work so well for Frank's outlaw self. I feel more like a pheasant. I talk myself round. Flee, be hunted. Be caught, and give them the full five bucks worth. Use all your special powers, Flirty Boy.

A cubicle door swings shut. Otherwise it's silent in here. I make a run for it.

Back to the bar, I decide. Stay cool. Plus, I'm being paid to serve drinks. I have to remember that. Objective one.

After only a couple more jugs, I hear someone call out, ‘There you are,' and it's Jacinta. ‘The second I start looking for you, you're nowhere to be found.'

‘Oh, I've been around.'

‘Well, it must be time for a break.'

‘Um. I just sort of had one, but maybe . . .'

‘You should check on Belle. Come with me and we'll check on Belle. Come on.'

I turn to Frank and he shouts, ‘Go. Just go. It's totally covered. Check on Belle.'

Jacinta takes my hand and pulls me along the corridor. ‘Belle's fine,' she says. ‘I just checked her.' She takes me past the storeroom and around the corner and she shepherds me back into a fire-hose recess.

‘It's quieter here,' she says.

‘Yeah.'

‘Have you bumped into any of my friends lately?'

‘Don't think so.'

‘I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever find you.' She's smiling. I hope it's not just the five bucks she's smiling about. What the hell, I win either way. ‘I kept bumping into your friend, though. In the end I had to give him my phone number to give to you, just to make it clear to him that I wasn't interested. In him. I hope that's okay. I hope you don't mind that I'm not interested in your friend.'

‘No, he can be a bit of a wanker sometimes.'

‘Well, I wouldn't know about that . . . You though, I'm sure that's a different story.' She reaches her hand up to my face, runs it along my chin. ‘There's something decisive about you, and I don't mind that. Not one bit.'

I've never been on surer ground than this. She's even telling me to be decisive. I play it the way Frank might, without a single word. I make a move. I put my hands on her hips, I tilt my head a little and I make the move. My open mouth meets hers and I taste the zing of Staminade. Her hand moves around to the back of my head and she spreads her fingers in my hair. Her tongue writhes around in my mouth, and last September was a cruel long time ago.

I spin it out as much as I can and I give it everything, but finally our heads separate. She gives a lopsided smile, takes a breath, and moves in for more. The five dollars is indisputably hers, and there's no sign this is ending.

She runs her fingernails up and down my back outside my shirt, then inside my shirt. She pulls my shirt out at the front and starts swirling her hands around on my abdomen. She pulls herself closer to me and moves us deeper into the fire-hose recess. My back's against the wall and her pelvis is pushing against mine, pushing and pushing. I move my hands down low on her back, then lower, down to her buttocks and I'm pushing back against her.

She pulls her mouth away, then bites my neck all the way up to my ear. Her breathing's different now. Her mouth is cool when it meets mine again. She pulls herself up on the fire hose, higher than me, and I feel her thighs move around me. Oh god, it's been ages.

We're both breathing heavily and she moves one hand down my front, slides it down to my belt and over it, rubbing the front of my pants, rubbing and rubbing. I'm gasping for breath now, gasping for breath with my head back against the steel wall of the fire-hose recess. She's rubbing faster and faster, my hands are clenched round her thighs. Suddenly, I can't breathe any more. It's all . . .

In one breath out, I let it go.

One breath, and it turns into more of a moan but it's far too late to stop things now.

I grab the front of my pants and she staggers back, away from me. I plunge the other hand down inside to catch what I can and limit the damage. I move the first hand in there to join it, cupping the two of them there, as though it might be any use.

‘Shit, sorry,' she says, and she tries not to laugh.

‘Toilet paper,' I tell her. ‘You have to get me toilet paper now. Lots of it.'

‘Okay. Don't run away.'

‘Just get me the toilet paper.'

She goes, leaving me to stay as still as I can and watch the lights of New Farm and contemplate the ruins of the evening. Here I am on the
Paradise
, hiding in a fire-hose recess, cupping my own semen in my hands, hoping there's not too much of it on my clothes and sending a girl off for toilet paper.

And that's when the food and beverage manager appears, with a torch.

The beam hits me in the eyes, and he says, ‘Oh, g'day. We're not far out from docking, so I was just giving the place a once over. You on a break?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Listen, you've been a big help tonight, what with the sick chick and all. Thanks a lot, mate.'

‘No problem.' He reaches out to shake my hand. I pretend I don't notice. ‘I'd better be . . . better be . . .'

He wants me to notice, and he shines the torch lower. The light flares from my white sleeves and wrists. His hand casts a bunny-rabbit kind of shadow on the front of my pants. The huge bulging two-handed front of my pants.

‘What the fuck . . .?'

‘No. No, it's not like it looks. It's . . . an accident. Medical . . .'

‘Listen, mate, I know what I'm looking at, and it's not bloody medical and we don't do it on this ship.' There's a pause, a very ugly pause and it's not filled by any good excuse of mine. ‘Here's what we're going to do,' he says, in a tone that includes no room at all for negotiation. ‘You've been helpful tonight with the sick chick, you've been pretty good on the bar. This is the kind of bullshit that could get you into a lot of trouble. And I mean a lot of trouble.'

What do I say to him? I really, really hate trouble. I'm so not ‘Phil, he's trouble'.

‘So here's what we're going to do. You're going to get your pants into a fit state for bar work, you're going to get your arse back out there, and my guess is you're not going to expect to be paid at the end of the evening.'

‘That's fine,' I tell him, in a whiny voice I could do without. ‘More than fair. If that's as far as this goes I'd have to call that more than fair. If we could not tell Frank, though . . .'

‘Frank? Who's Frank? Is he one of the other bar guys? They've all worked bloody hard tonight, and they're no trouble at all.'

‘Yeah, sorry. He's just a guy who got here at the same time as me, really.' Still whiny, dammit. ‘Well, we might have done a couple of shifts together at Lennons, but . . .'

‘Okay, got some,' Jacinta's voice calls out, as if she's gone to borrow sugar from a neighbour. She stops, caught by the torchlight, and she stands there, half a roll of toilet paper hanging from her hands and glowing in the beam. ‘Hi.'

She laughs nervously, rolls the paper up as though she's tidying it. The food and beverage manager looks at her, looks at me, shakes his head.

‘Shit, bloody fraternising as well. I thought you were just working off a bit of steam. Pal, you are trouble. Capital fucking T, right? I don't know what this is all about, and I don't want to. You're not coming back here, not even as a paying customer. Life ban, right? Life ban. There's a list at the gangplank, we've got your name, and it's on it for all time.'

‘Sure.'

There's something sticky on the back of my knuckles, and that's the wrong side. Not that there's a right side, but . . .

‘I don't want to see your face again tonight. Not for the rest of this trip. Not ever. Understood?'

‘Understood.'

‘Good,' he says. ‘Good. Bloody students. You give 'em a bloody job . . .' And he strides off.

‘Sorry,' Jacinta says. ‘Bad timing?' She laughs. ‘Sorry, I meant me coming round the corner, not the other . . . timing problem.'

She offers me the toilet paper, then realises the situation's complicated by my inability to move my hands. She turns her head away, and starts pushing the paper between my wrists and down into my pants. Suddenly the whole region that, minutes ago, was so good for rubbing has become distasteful. She laughs again.

‘I just wasn't expecting the hand,' I tell her. ‘At that point of . . .'

‘I thought you'd like it.'

‘Well, obviously I didn't hate it. It was just a surprise. Not a bad surprise, just a surprise.'

‘For both of us.'

‘Please.'

‘Sorry, Speedy.'

I groan, she keeps laughing. She stands guard while I clean up, as best I can. My hands were quicker getting in there than I thought, but I still couldn't call it tidy. I rub and rub, but there's a limit to how much good it'll do.

The DJ's voice announces the last song. Survivor, ‘Eye of the Tiger'.

I roll the toilet paper into a ball, and toss it out into the river.

‘I'd better go and meet my friends,' she says.

‘Yeah.'

‘Sorry about the job.'

‘It's not a big deal. And thanks for the help with the, um, paper.'

I give her a few seconds to get ahead of me, then I walk round to the bar.

Frank's waiting and, from his face alone, I know he wants a progress report, a hint of some success at the very least. He gives me a thumbs up and it's clear he's expecting confirmation.

‘Like you wouldn't believe,' I tell him, and he claps his arm around my shoulders again.

‘I knew it. I knew we'd turn you around.'

He's so pleased for me, he practically dances. Which jiggles me up and down, and I hate the way movement feels in my pants.