Heller's Revenge (31 page)

“Oh, forget it,” I said,
embarrassed by my ignorance. “I’ll Google it myself later.” I told
him about our dinner and my altercation with the drunken man.

He sighed. “Matilda, what is it
with you and men? Please thank Dr Eriksen for me for stepping
in.”

“What it is with me and men,
Heller, is that I have a pair of boobs, which I’m sure you’ve
noticed. And that’s apparently enough for me to be hassled by men
for the rest of my life. I could have managed him myself. I had my
capsicum spray with me and you know I’m not afraid to use it.” He’d
been forced to rebuke me once already for using it a little too
often and a little too indiscriminately. “Not to mention that I
made it pretty clear to the jerk when he approached me that I
wasn’t interested and he should leave me alone.”

“Did you say it politely?”

“Um . . . not particularly.”

He sighed again. “Matilda, you
are a constant worry for me.”

“It’s always good to have a
hobby, Heller.” He laughed. “I’ll talk to you in the morning. Good
night.” I placed my phone on the bedside table and opened my book
to where I had left off earlier.

Meili looked over with a
suppressed smile. He wouldn’t have been able to avoid listening
into my conversation, as we were only three metres apart.

“Norway, Sweden, Finland and
Denmark,” he told me. “Four countries.”

I grinned at him. “Thank you. I
forgot Denmark.”

He indicated the book I’d
borrowed from Heller’s large personal library. “I’ve read that
book. It’s good.”

He was dressed in cotton boxers
and a blue Greenpeace t-shirt, and had turned on the TV, quickly
flipping through the channels in that irritating way that men have.
He was propped up on his bed with the pillows behind his back, his
long legs extended in front of him, crossed at the ankle.

“I’m enjoying it so far.”

“There’s a sequel and it’s
equally exciting.” Flip, flip, flip through the channels. I wanted
to snatch the remote off him.

“Heller told me to thank you for
stepping in and keeping me out of trouble tonight.”

He laughed and shook his head.
“Poor Heller,” was all he said, before switching off the TV and
yawning. “I’m going to sleep, I hope you don’t mind.” He yawned
again. “The jetlag is catching up with me.” He climbed under the
covers.

“Of course not. Do you mind if I
read for a bit longer? Will my light bother you?”

“Not at all. I can sleep
anywhere in any circumstances. Night Tilly.”

“Night Meili.” And he rolled
over and promptly fell asleep, judging by his relaxed posture and
steady breathing.

I read for a while, and used the
bathroom, before turning off the light and getting into bed myself.
The evening hadn’t been as awkward or embarrassing as I had
dreaded, which was a relief. Perhaps the whole time with him
wouldn’t be as bad as I’d been expecting. I thought about Will for
a while before I drifted off to sleep.

Meili was already awake when I
woke up the next morning. He was wearing a white WWF singlet top,
the cute panda logo in black, and sports shorts, and was pulling on
his runners. He looked up from lacing his shoes to smile at me.
“I’m going for a jog. Do you want to join me?”

I sure did, so I scrambled out
of bed and was ready in record time. We jogged around the harbour
together, a nice change for me as I normally ran by myself on the
treadmill while I watched TV or listened to music on my iPod. The
beautiful scenery and the wonderful company made it the best
exercise session I’d had for an eon.

We jogged for an hour and I was
positive that he kept the pace reasonably slow and steady on
purpose for my benefit, which I appreciated. I wasn’t yet fit for
intensive workouts and by the end was feeling sharp twinges from my
pelvis that I bit down on my lip to hide. We returned to the hotel
room sweaty and red-faced. He let me have a shower first while he
did some crunches and push-ups. He took a quick shower after me and
we went down to the buffet restaurant to have breakfast.

“I have a lecture at one o’clock
today at the university,” he told me, munching on a piece of toast.
He was dressed in jeans and a green Doctors without Borders
t-shirt.

I sipped my coffee. “Okay. What
are you speaking about?”

“Me,” he smiled. “For some
reason, people want to hear about my life and my adventures.” He
shrugged modestly, as if he couldn’t understand the interest in
himself.

“Well Meili,
of course
people want to hear about you! You’re a fascinating man.” I may
have been flattering him, but I wasn’t lying.

“Tilly, you charmer!” he
joked.

“That’s me – Tilly Chalmers.
From a long line of natural charmers,” I joked back at him. He
laughed. “What do you want to do this morning?”

Although his girlfriend had been
murdered in cold blood and his life had frequently been threatened,
he wasn’t the type to hide in his room. He was so vital and alive
that he couldn’t help but keep living a vibrant life. The contrast
between this job and the one I’d had with Clarrie was chasmic.

“Let me think. I don’t have any
engagements except for the lecture at lunchtime. I have to go to
court tomorrow and probably the day after that as well. So let’s do
something fun this morning. Let’s go rollerblading.” I shot him an
uncertain look. His face fell with disappointment. “You don’t
rollerblade?”

I couldn’t bear to disappoint
him. “Not since I was a kid, Meili, and I wasn’t very good then
either. But I’m willing to give it a go again. If you promise to
help me.”

“My pleasure.”

I was used to doing a range of
activities with my clients, but this was the first time one of them
had wanted to rollerblade. They usually wanted to shop, but that
was probably because they were mostly women. We consulted the front
desk of the hotel and received directions, easily finding the
little combined bike/rollerblade booth in the botanical gardens. We
hired the necessary gear, strapped it on and set off. I was very
hesitant at first, clinging to Meili’s hand like a barnacle. I fell
over inelegantly and frequently when I ventured off alone, arms and
legs sprawled everywhere, laughing my head off. He was patient,
helping me up and getting me moving again each time.

“You’re a good sport, Tilly, but
you must be in a lot of pain by now,” he said eventually, concerned
after my tenth fall.

“Don’t you think I’m improving?”
I asked hopefully.

He hesitated, but decided to be
honest. “Not really.”
Ouch!

“Okay, I can see you’re dying to
move faster, so I’ll just sit here on this bench while you go and
have some real fun.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! Go.”

And somehow I made my way to the
park bench, where I gratefully eased my body down and rested my
bruised muscles, almost wishing I was back with Clarrie again. I
pulled off the blades, stretching out my feet in their socks, then
removed my protective gear and stacked it neatly on the bench next
to me. I watched with amusement while Meili showed off in front of
me, jumping, twisting and spinning on his blades with grace and
flair. I gave him an ironic slow clap and he bowed in thanks before
taking off, racing away down one of the brick paths full of
confidence, swerving around a group of power-walking mums,
gossiping while they pushed their all-terrain prams. He waved with
cheeky aplomb at the women as he passed, and almost as one, they
all turned to watch his retreating back. Or butt. I’m not sure
which. It was a rewarding choice either option.

I took the opportunity to call
Heller. I didn’t want a gang of men in black with guns to descend
on the tranquil park and scare the little kiddies and their mothers
just because I hadn’t checked in with my boss. I told him what I
was doing.

“I can’t believe I pay you to do
things like that, Matilda,” he commented dryly.

“Heller, we all know it’s
nowhere near as much as Meili is paying
you
for me to do
things like this, and he doesn’t seem to mind,” I retorted
rudely.

“Point taken, my sweet.”

We hung up and I enjoyed lazing
in the sun for a while, glancing around idly at the beautiful
scenery. I smiled at the naughty antics of seven little children
running wild, screaming with red cordial fuelled joy, three
frazzled mothers chasing them endlessly, catching one only to lose
control of another. Suddenly I was glad that I couldn’t have
kids.

A small disturbance in a large
clump of Murraya bushes directly across the path from me caught my
eye.
Probably a bird
, I thought. I kept watching. The bushes
moved again and I caught a flash of something. I frowned slightly
because it looked like an arm, not an animal. Why would someone be
standing in the middle of the bushes?

I stood up and walked across the
path in my socks towards the bush. The small movements suddenly
became a frenzied crashing as I approached and whoever it was beat
a hasty retreat in the opposite direction. I sped up then, shoving
my way through the bushes, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever it
was. The bushes were well grown and dense, difficult to push
through, and my progress was slow. I struggled through to the end
of the thicket and glanced left and right, trying to spot the
voyeur. There were people around, couples strolling, families
playing, a couple of joggers, but nobody who looked as though they
had just been doing something dodgy.

Frustrated, I returned to the
bench to find Meili sitting on it, legs sprawled, sweating and
puffing.

“Hey!” he said. “I thought you’d
ditched me for a better offer.” I smiled and sat next to him. “What
have you been doing, Tilly? Your arms are all scratched.”

I told him about the lurker and
my unsuccessful search. He didn’t seem concerned.

“Don’t you think that’s
strange?” I insisted. “Why would someone be standing in a clump of
bushes right in front of where I was sitting? Do you think it has
something to do with you?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Don’t
worry about it, Tilly. We’d better return this gear to the kiosk
and hunt down some lunch before we head off to the university.”

He stood up and performed a
tricky manoeuvre on the blades that was nothing but sheer posing,
earning him several admiring glances from passing women. I refused
to pay any attention to such blatant bragging and busied myself
taking off my socks and gathering my blades and safety gear. I
looked up from the bench to find him smiling down at me. Then he
executed an even fancier move, turning around with a flourish to
face me, palms up, eyebrows raised, smirk on his face. A real
ta-da
moment.

I rolled my eyes at him.
“Finished showing off yet, or do you need some more time?”

“No, I think I’m done now. This
audience is too hard to please,” he pouted and held out his hand to
help me up. I took it and he pulled me up gently, taking my blades
from me. “You don’t want to skate back?”

“My butt hurts too much from
falling over, so I guess not,” I rued and we headed back to the
booth, me limping along carefully, barefooted. We exchanged the
blades for our own footwear and I bought us sandwiches and Diet
Cokes at a small cafe. We spent so much time chatting that when I
looked at my watch I saw that we were really cutting it fine to get
to the lecture on time. We hurried back to the hotel room and took
turns to jump into the shower and change. Meili grabbed his notes
and memory stick and we legged it quickly the few blocks to the
inner-city university campus.

After losing ourselves for ten
minutes in the maze of buildings, we finally made our way to the
lecture theatre. The organiser of the free public lecture,
Professor Maria Kavinsky, head of the university’s ecology
department, greeted us anxiously. Meili had told me about her on
the walk over.

“Meili!” she cried in equal
amounts of relief and delight. They shared an affectionate hug and
he apologised for being late, laughingly admitting that he’d been
rollerblading all morning. She rolled her eyes. “Typical!”

Her eyes turned to me, curious
but not at all unfriendly. He introduced me as his friend, but
didn’t explain further. She looked me up and down and made her own
judgement about what role I was filling in his life. I think she
made the wrong judgement entirely, but there was no time to correct
her, as we had come disturbingly close to the starting time of the
lecture. Maria commandeered Meili, instructed me to find a seat in
the lecture theatre, and they both beetled away.

I managed to find possibly the
last remaining seat in the theatre. It was awkwardly situated in
the middle of a row, right at the back. I had to push past a lot of
people to reach it, saying sorry all the way along as I trod on
toes and crushed against people’s knees. Once seated, I glanced
around. The theatre was tiered, the seats arranged in a semi-circle
around a centre stage area that contained a couple of white boards,
a projector screen and a lectern. It wasn’t a small room and could
easily hold a couple of hundred people. It was jam-packed. Even
after me, as late as I was, loads of extra people trooped in,
having to make do with standing at the back or perching on the
stairs.

Maria came out about five
minutes past the starting time to a polite round of applause. She
wasn’t the one the audience had come to see. She spoke eloquently
for a short time about Meili, his life and achievements and then
introduced him to the stage. The applause was thunderous, and he
came out modestly, waving vaguely to the crowd, completely
endearing. He was dressed casually in jeans and a light blue
button-up shirt, but he had left his hair loose, possibly a
strategic decision because I could see every female around me
eyeballing him lustily.