The Amber Trail (15 page)

RESIDENT DJ

FREE ENTRY

CLIFFTOP ROAD, ANJUNA

SEE YOU THERE!

Dig blinked and reread the sign.
He looked up and down the market, before his attention turned to a
woman who sat cross legged on the ground. She wore gold hooped
earrings, and supported a double chin over a patterned dress. Heavy
sacks were stacked on the road beside her, brimming with dark red,
knobbly sausages.

“
Excuse me,” Dig
said, pointing to the sign. “Is Anjuna far from here?”

The woman studied the sign, then
wobbled her head. “About an hour,” she said. “To drive.”

“
Okay.” Dig pursed
his lips and glanced back up the road. “Are there any taxis around
here? Or rickshaws?”

She frowned and shook her head.
“You going to Anjuna?”

“
Yes.”

“
Ah.” Her eyes lit
up, and she turned toward a dark concrete room in the building
behind her. “Rakesh!”

A pot-bellied man with a bald
head walked out of the darkness. The couple had a quick discussion
in Hindi, then the man turned to Dig.

“
Hello,” he said.
“Where you from?”

“
Australia.”

“
Ah! David Warner and
Mitchell Johnson. Good cricketers.”

“
They are,” said Dig,
smiling.

“
Where you
going?”

“
I’m trying to get to
Anjuna.”

The man nodded. “Okay then. Come
with me.” He gestured toward the back room.

“
Are you a taxi
driver?”

The man frowned. “No,” he said.
“I make chouricos.”

Dig looked at him blankly, and
the man pointed to the sacks of dried sausage stacked in front of
the woman. “Goan sausage.”

“
Is that like
chorizo?”

“
Yes, but better.”
The man grinned and waved his hand again. “Come on. I’ve a delivery
to make in Anjuna. You can come with me. No problem.”

Dig blinked. “Oh
right...thanks.”

The man entered the building.
Lengths of the knobbly red sausage hung from floor to ceiling in
rows. A doorway at the rear of the room led to an alleyway and a
rusted, three wheeled vehicle. The front cabin of the machine was
small and enclosed. A flat steel tray filled the rear of the
machine, making the vehicle look like a cross between a motorbike
and a tiny pick-up truck.

“
My auto rickshaw,”
the man said. “You can squeeze in the back.” Stacked tightly in the
rear tray were wide circular sacks, brimming with chouricos. Dig
raised his eyebrows.

“
Have you tried
chouricos before?”

“
No.”

“
Well come on then!”
The man snapped a handful of the sausage off the top of the nearest
pile and held it out. “Try!”

Dig took the chouricos; it was
soft and knobbly in his hand, like a string of oversized rosary
beads, and the colour of dried blood. “Is it cooked?”

“
Of course. By the
sun. We leave it outside for three months.”

“
You just leave it on
the ground? Raw?”

“
Well...yes. It’s raw
at first. But it’s dried out now.” The man gestured to the sausage
in Dig’s hand. “You see?”

Dig glanced from the chouricos to
the rickshaw, his lips thin. The man watched him with an expectant
smile.

Dig shrugged, then brought the
meat to his mouth and took a bite. It was chewy, and strong
flavours of pork, garlic and vinegar soon gave way to a burning
chilli fire. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. “Whoah,
it’s bloody hot.”

The man laughed.

“
Not bad
though.”

“
You see?”

Dig nodded. “Why’s it so knobbly
anyway?”

“
That’s just the
natural shape of the pig intestine.”

The chouricos caught in Dig’s
throat, and he coughed, fighting down a retch. He forced a smile,
and swallowed it down. It felt like he was trying to swallow a golf
ball.

“
Shall we
go?”

“
Yes,” Dig said,
nodding slowly. “Let’s go.”

He climbed onto the back tray and
squeezed between the sacks to sit with his back against the cab.
The pungent odour of the chouricos surrounded him. The rickshaw
vibrated into life and bounced down the lane into the open road.
His stomach flipped over and acid rose into the back of his throat,
but he tried to put it out of his mind.

THE TRIP WAS BUMPY AND LONG
, but
eventually the engine dropped down to a puttering rumble as the
machine came to a halt. They were parked in a thin dirt road with
tightly packed restaurants crowded on both sides.

“
Anjuna,” Rakesh
shouted.

Dig pushed through the sacks to
the street and stretched his back. “Thanks for the lift.
”
He reached for his wallet.

“
No! That’s fine. In
fact, here...” Rakesh grabbed another handful of sausage from the
vehicle. “Take some more chouricos for lunch.”

Dig paused, then took it from
him. “Um, thanks.”

“
No problem.” Rakesh
returned to the driver’s seat. “Have a good trip.” The engine
revved into life and the rickshaw accelerated away down the street.
Dig looked down at the sausage in his hand, frowned, and pocketed
it.

At his feet, a rooster pecked
through a pile of food scraps. Two deeply tanned girls with blonde,
braided hair walked past him in long skirts and singlet tops. A guy
with a crewcut and a covering of tattoos from neck to waist weaved
a moped down the street. Somewhere behind him, the pulse of dance
music resonated.

Dig walked toward the sound. The
road climbed up, and as it approached the top of a rise, a large
dirt carpark appeared, filled with motorbikes. Beside it stood a
wide, double-storey building, covered in vines and blinking fairy
lights. The thump of bass resonated over an underlying rumble of
conversation. An illuminated sign hung from the roof, announcing:
The Banyan Brewhouse. Sundown Party Tonight!

The building sat on top of a high
cliff, with coastal views in both directions. An onshore breeze
whipped up over the cliff edge and cooled Dig’s arms; seagulls with
dirty brown wings circled above his head.

He entered through a rear beer
garden, weaving his way through groups of westerners with deep tans
and unkempt hair, talking and smoking at the tables that lined the
cliff edge.

The beer garden led into a wide
room of natural timber columns and exposed ceilings. Curtains of
glass beads dropped over a floor of tightly compacted dirt. Here,
westerners crowded shoulder-to-shoulder in a dense haze, smoking
and drinking. The music pounded around the room, and as he passed
two speakers that were taller than him, he felt the thump of the
bass resonate in his chest cavity.

He moved further inside, and the
room morphed into a dark, heaving dancefloor. Rows of fluorescent
blue lights hung from the ceiling—the type that made your teeth
glow bright. The crowd was dancing, punching the air and turning
erratic circles over the floor. Up in the corner of the room, a
sweaty-faced DJ stood in a booth, nodding his head and working the
decks in front of him.

Dig pushed his way through the
crowd. He sidestepped a tall, bearded guy staring at the ceiling
with his hands linked behind his head. A girl with dark makeup and
dropped eyelids turned circles beside him, pointing at the crowd
like she was conducting an orchestra. Dig sidled past her into the
path of a solid guy in a tight green T-shirt with
Banyan
Bitter
emblazoned across it. He held a beer bottle diagonally
at his chest and stared listlessly at the ground. Liquid dribbled
from the neck of the bottle and tracked down his shirt.
  

Dig spotted a bar at the back of
the room. He pushed through the pack, and when he reached it he
leaned back against the
counter
.

A guy sat on a seat beside him,
reading a paper. A necklace of shells hung around his neck,
partially concealed by his shoulder length, sun bleached hair. Dig
took an intake of breath as he realised he was the same guy he had
seen earlier at the docks.

The guy’s eyebrows knitted and he
turned to look at Dig with bloodshot eyes.

Dig pursed his lips; he realised
he had been staring. “Hey,” he shouted, and nodded.

The guy nodded back to him, then
returned to his paper.

Dig blinked and rubbed at the
back of his neck. “Pretty busy in here huh?”

The guy looked Dig up and down
before speaking. “It was a lot worse a few hours ago. You just
arrived?”

“
Yeah. Can you
tell?”

The guy smirked and
shrugged.

Dig pointed to the beer taps.
“Banyan Bitter huh? I see this advertised a lot. Any
good?”

“
Why don’t you give
it a try.”

Dig pointed to the empty space on
the bar in front of the guy. “You aren’t drinking?”

“
Just finished work.”
He closed his paper. “But I could be swayed.” He waved his arm at a
girl who stood at the opposite end of the bar, and she walked over
to them. She had wide green eyes, high cheekbones, and flowing
brown and blonde streaked hair that hung to her waist in a tangled
collection, intertwined with braids and beads. Her small green
singlet top supported an ample cleavage.

“
Two green labels
please,” the guy said.

She squatted down to retrieve two
bottled beers from a fridge, and Dig fought the urge to glance at
her cleavage for the second time. She lifted the beers to the bar
and whipped off the tops with a flick of the wrist. A surge of
bubbles rose from the opening and tracked down the neck of the
frosted glass. The green label read
Banyan
Bitter
.

“
Cheers.” They
clinked their bottles together and drank
.
Dig was thirsty, and he gulped down two long mouthfuls. It tasted
good, yet also very familiar; he looked at the bottle, trying to
pinpoint the nagging feeling of déjà vu.

“
You alright?” the
guy said.  

Then clarity hit him. The beer
tasted the same as the signature drink from the Buckley Brewery,
the
Buckley’s Chance
. This was logical of course, as they
were fermented from the same crop of hops.

Dig glanced up, his concentration
broken. “Yeah fine. Just tastes like a beer I know back home.” He
held out his hand. “My name’s Dig anyway.”

The guy looked at Dig’s hand,
then reached out to shake it. “Most people call me
Chook.”

Dig pointed to a seat beside him.
“Mind if I sit?” The guy shook his head, and Dig sat down. “So you
work here? At the bar?”

“
Sort of.”

“
Seems like a cool
place to work.”

The guy frowned. “If you like
incoherent drunks, then sure.” He took another sip of his beer.
 “You Australian then?”

“
Yeah. You?”
 

“
Irish.”

“
Nice.” The girl
behind the bar served a couple more people, reaching down below the
counter for more bottles of the green labelled beer. She wore a
flowing skirt and no shoes.

After a moment, Dig turned his
attention away from her. Chook met his gaze with raised
eyebrows.

“
Sorry,” Dig said. “I
got a bit distracted there.”

The girl returned to their side
of the bar.

“
Dig,” Chook said.
“This is my sister, Jules.”

“
Hi,” Jules said,
smiling.

Dig blinked rapidly. “Good to
meet you.”

Chook smirked, then turned back
to his sister. “How’s the day going?”

“
The usual shit.” She
tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “One guy fell asleep on the
toilet; a spaced-out chick decided to try to pierce her own nipple
up in the DJ booth; and a mumbling freak who looks like
Frankenstein keeps trying to touch me.” She wiped the top of the
bar with a furry green tea towel. “You know, just a normal
morning.”

Chook nodded.

A group of guys approached the
bar and Jules headed over to serve them. Dig turned to Chook.
 “Hey,” he whispered. “About what I said.”

“
Ha, don’t worry
about it. Just wanted to see you squirm.”

Dig took another sip on his beer.
“Sounds like you guys have been in Goa a while?”

Chook shrugged. “Six months for
me. She's been here about a year.”

“
You plan to stay a
while then?”

“
Not really. I’m only
here because my sister’s here.” He took a mouthful. “I’m trying to
get her to head home with me.”

“
She won’t
go?”

He shook his head. “She’s caught
up in this whole...scene...you know, getting into too many drugs
and hanging with some dodgy people.”

“
So how’d you guys
get jobs here then?”

Chook took another mouthful. “My
sis is screwing the arsehole that runs this place.”