The Naked Drinking Club (33 page)

‘Come on.’ She got up, took the hairband out of her hair and walked into the bedroom at the back of the van. I followed. We both took our things off and left them on the floor and got into the bed. I was exhausted beyond all other times of exhaustion and was dying to lie down. We lay on our sides facing each other. We lay for the longest time. The rain eased off a little, just enough to hear our breathing.

‘You need to sleep all this off, don’t you?’ she whispered.

‘Is this the end of something, or the beginning?’ I asked, not caring what I said any more.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she circled the bruising on my cheekbone. I felt attractive behind my swollen eye, with my boxer cut.

I could have asked her a million things, I was dying to. I wanted to know about Greg, and what kept her with him, why she was here with me, why she had come to Australia, how and where she grew up, what she liked about me, and what she was going to do next. I tried to say something more but she wouldn’t let me speak. She covered my mouth with her mouth, and kept it there for what felt like ages. My heart pounded, and she slowly took her lips off mine, and held the side of my face in her hand. I ached for her and tried to fight the tiredness, but my eyes were closing. I didn’t want the night to end, but I was starting to see shapes in the room that I knew didn’t exist, through needing sleep so badly.

‘OK, now sleep, ssleep,’ she hissed slowly, like a hypnotist.

‘What if when I wake up you’re not here?’ I said, already drifting in and out of consciousness.

‘Ssh,’ she said, ‘ssh.’ Then she moved her hand down to cover mine, and I went home for the very first time.

CHAPTER
THIRTY

I HAD BEEN
scared to fall into sleep with Anaya next to me, scared of what the day would bring, and scared that she would not even be there. But at some point I did.

I had strange dreams about small rodents that grew into birds, attaching themselves to the sleeves of a jumper I was wearing. I was trying to shake off the creatures that bit at my arm and held me back, while being chased by an angry mob with guns. I’d been shot a couple of times, with large rubber bullets that the birds had produced like eggs. As I ran, the eggs dropped from the rodents-cum-birds and filled the path behind me, supplying the mob pursuing me with more ammunition. I ran into a house where my grandparents used to live. I could hear them talking, but the house was empty. Anaya arrived in an ice-cream van, which I jumped into, trying to get away from my chasers, except the van was slow, and Anaya didn’t seem to notice. There was no blood from my wounds, only pain. Just as the mob caught the van, I woke up.

I was lying on my side, clutching my ribs in agony. What I had thought was the thumping of rubber bullets hitting the ice-cream van turned out to be rain again, heavy rain on the roof. I didn’t move, I didn’t want to feel any emptiness in the bed, any lightness on the mattress from a space where she had lain. I moved my foot, feeling behind me at the bottom of the bed, worrying that there would be no Anaya’s feet. I turned round. She was gone.

An intense depression set in immediately, and I was also disorientated to the point of panic. My hand throbbed and my head was splitting. There was a sharp pain running from the
top
of my head, through my eye and down into my cheekbone. There was blood on the pillow from my mouth. I didn’t feel anywhere near as attractive as the night before, instead I felt puffy and bloated, with slits for eyes.

I hated the fact that I’d woken up, but I was way too anxious to sleep any more. I was more sober than I had been, but the drink was still hanging around me, and my mouth tasted foul.

I studied the contours of the other pillow, running my hand over the indentation her head had left. I moved over to her side and lay on the spot where she had slept. There was sand in the bed, and some of her hair just below the pillow – her hair was a lighter brown than mine. I moved on to my stomach, smelling the bed for traces of her.

I realised I had lost my watch, so had no idea of what time it was. I staggered through to the living room of the van and sat at the table, picking up the hairband that Anaya had left there, placing it on my wrist. I pulled back the curtain to find Anaya’s car had gone, as had the Kingswood from next door, and all the curtains were open in their caravan. They had left me.

I thought about what I would do next. I picked up the radio, moving the dial back and forth until I hit something newsy. After an item there was a jingle, then a voice saying it was nine o’clock. I had no money, no watch, no portfolio, no car, no clothes other than the ones lying on the floor in the bedroom, no phone numbers, and no friends. I knew I was in Port Macquarie, and regretted not paying attention at any time to maps and geography. I was surprised that Jim of all people would leave me out here, but when I traced back the events of the last forty-eight hours I couldn’t blame him.

I would wait in the van until I was thrown off the site – by that time I would be in less pain; then I would go to the hospital and find out what was happening with Scotty. Maybe the others were there. If not, then I’d hitch to Brisbane and track down Hank White, easily traceable through his country and western radio show. If the worst came to the worst, I would do several Tampax machines and take a bus, or phone Joyce Cane, and tell her she was right. I had found the tattoo she had predicted and it had left me in a tricky situation, and I could see no alternative
but
to beg for her help. So I had my back-up plans, but first I’d lie down until the pain subsided slightly.

A car pulled up outside between the two vans. I lay out horizontal on the sofa seats round the dining table, rubbing Anaya’s hairband between my fingers. I didn’t hear the meatiness in the exhaust you got from the Kingswood. The handle on the front door turned up, then down, and Anaya walked in.

‘I got us something to drink,’ she said, offloading a carrier bag with a 7/11 logo onto the table. She brought out two bottles of spring water, unscrewed the top, passed one to me and sat down. I hid my delight at her return, and appeared as casual as I could be in the circumstances.

‘You thought I’d gone maybe, uh?’ she said, smiling. Was this kindness, or was she playing with me? Was this how our great love affair would be?

‘I thought everybody had gone.’ I gulped the first water I had drunk in days.

She sat opposite. This was strange new territory with Anaya. In fact, with anyone. I had rarely stayed the night with anybody, certainly never spoke with them the next day, in daylight, without any of the devices that had got us there in the first place. She looked different to me now. She looked real. It had nothing to do with make-up, for she only wore a bit of lip-gloss and mascara in the evenings if we all went out to the pub. It was something else, I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was I wanted to say things to her, like: ‘I love your face, it’s the sexiest face I’ve seen in my life. I love your cheekbones, and your perfect olive skin and your blue-green eyes.’ But I daren’t say those things, not quite yet.

‘Where are the others? How’s Scotty, do you know?’

‘Did you really think that we had all just run away?’ She laughed.

‘Well, you know, I mean after yesterday.’

‘Is that what people do in your life, Kerry? Run away?’ She held my gaze.

‘Maybe,’ I said, trying to play down my elation at her return.

‘I’ve bought some tea and milk. I’ll make some.’

I nodded.

‘I’ve just spoken to Jim and Karin.’

‘Yeah? What’s happening with Scotty?’

‘Jim wants to have a break today, just to be alone. They are at the hospital just now. Scotty is doing OK, but they’re not sure if he will go back with them or stay in hospital for a bit, then go back in an ambulance. He won’t know until tomorrow.’

‘What about the trip, what does Greg think?’

She filled the kettle as she spoke. ‘I’ve spoken to Greg, don’t worry. He wants you to rest today and start again tomorrow. He wants everybody to do that.’

‘Do you love Greg?’ I asked cautiously.

She turned round, looking right at me. ‘I don’t expect anybody to understand me and Greg. I’m OK with that.’

‘Why were you going to Byron Bay, Anaya? What was the real reason?’ I wanted to hear the truth from her, whatever it was.

‘Like I said, a trip up north’ she lit a match to the stove ‘a surprise.’

‘Well, it certainly is a surprise,’ I said, smiling out of the less swollen side of my mouth.

‘So today’s a kinda limbo, yeah? We can start again tomorrow.’ She put teabags in two cups she found in the cupboard, while I wallowed in her use of ‘we’.

After drinking tea and staring out at the bad weather, we both took showers and went back into the bedroom. I showered first, and washed my hair with my OK hand. Afterwards, I lay in bed waiting for Anaya. I felt awkward without the bar, the drink and our soundtrack. Instead we had only rain, washing over us in the van.

She came into the room naked, towel-drying her hair. Then she sat on the edge of the bed with her back to me, running her comb through her hair. That’s when I noticed that at the base of her spine she had a tattoo.

‘What is it?’ I said, reaching over and touching it, my heart thumping again.

She bent over so I could get a proper look at it. ‘It’s a swallow. You like it? I got it done when I was sixteen.’

‘Do you believe in fate, Anaya?’ I asked, tracing it with my finger.

‘I believe that we can all have whatever we want, if we want it bad enough.’ She got into bed beside me. My mind raced. It was all leading to this, all of the time, everything that had happened so far. This is what Joyce saw; this had to be my fate. She would become my life now. Maybe she would come with me to find my mother. Maybe I could stay in Australia with her, and we could run the selling together. Or we could live like this, moving around caravans until we ran out of options. But what would a life with Anaya be like? How could I live with the all-consuming desire that I finally had to admit to myself I’d felt for her from the second I saw her face in the bar?

We both lay down facing each other again.

‘Forget what’s in here,’ she said, touching my head lightly.

‘There’s so many weird coincidences going on I need to tell you about, Anaya,’ I said, my eyes darting anxiously over her face.

‘It can wait,’ she said, pulling me towards her. We started kissing but my mind was racing and worrying about other things. I felt sobering, terrible remorse over Scotty’s beating, and my general body state was causing my heart to pound. I hadn’t eaten since our arrival in Port Macquarie a couple of days ago, and although I was exhausted, I resisted closing my eyes as it caused me to see lots of tiny spiders climbing down from long fine pieces of web, then multiplying and scattering as they landed.

Kissing was painful and had to be light; we moved our tongues around harder than was normal to compensate for the lack of mouth pressure. We kissed the longest kiss I’d ever experienced, maybe half an hour. I could feel her breathing, and the noises she made vibrated through my nose, which hurt the swelling at the top of the bridge. Our bodies didn’t touch, just our mouths. I moved my injured-thumb hand against her stomach lightly; my hand felt big and hot and ugly in comparison to her smooth tight skin. But I knew it felt good to her.

She reached over with her hand round to the bottom of my spine, and spread it out there. I pulled her towards me more, all the time kissing. My body had reached new levels of agony, probably because I was sobering up and starting to feel my
injuries.
The ribs and the headache were the worst, but I had to persevere with the agony-ecstasy tightrope I was treading.

I pulled away.

‘My fucking ribs, it’s hard to move,’ I moaned.

She breathed out a kind of half-laugh. She started kissing me again, and she positioned herself on top of me, sitting looking right at me and moving around. Then she leant down and kissed my fucked-up hand, and started licking it. It was hard to reach without straining my neck, which hurt my ribs, so she put her hand around my head and helped pull me up to where I wanted to be. She pushed her weight into me as she sat on me, sliding back and forth. I lay back, resting from the agony of my straining. It was so hot in the cabin and sweat had begun pouring from us.

As Anaya moved more and more, I threw back the sheet that was starting to entangle around us, and put my hands on her hips, my injured one only half resting on it, protecting my broken thumb.

I looked up at her; I wanted to tell her I loved her completely, whoever she was, but thought it best not to, afraid that she might hate it. From what I knew of Anaya so far, I figured she would hate people that wanted her too much.

She bent down and kissed me again, then whispered in my ear. ‘Let it go.’

I tried to let go, tried to forget my anxieties about how if I let her in, she might go. But my vicious circle of a life pattern kept moving round in my head. I worried that the hell of the hangover would never leave me, but promised myself that when it did, I would get better – eat, begin exercising, be normal like the others, and enjoy only the odd mad night. I couldn’t wait to start afresh, free of this pain and the ridiculous spider hallucinations.

Anaya increased the pressure of her grinding into me. My thoughts and worries began to shrink, as I melted into her. Her face was completely different to me now, it already felt like it had been a part of my life for ever. She reached round and put her fingers inside me. I was tense at first, not wanting to let her before I had fucked her first. She sensed my apprehension, as I tried to sit up.

‘Let it fucking go,’ she said again.

I wanted to so much. I had always wondered what it would be like to try and truly let someone in. Half my mind was against it, but she pushed further in until I weakened, and let her fuck me until I came.

We lay on our backs recovering, from the heat and the effort.

‘How’re you feeling?’ she asked.

I winced as she secured the strip of micropore that had come undone above my eye. I felt a surge of overwhelming sadness engulf me and couldn’t understand why. I had just had sex with someone I had desired for a while now. Why was I not happy? Perhaps it was the melancholy and paranoia of the drink in my system. But it felt deeper than that. I felt almost breathless trying to push it down. She could see me struggling, but said nothing, just watched me closely and held my face in her hands, which made me feel small and stupid and even more upset. My eyes filled with tears that were to big too hide, but I fought them off, blinking for as long as I possibly could. She put her hand on my chest, just below my throat, and I lost it, just like when Jim arrived and rescued Scotty and me.