Grease Monkey Jive (19 page)

“We did it as a bet.”

“A bet?”

“Ant bet the three of us we couldn’t last a term of ballroom dancing.”

“How much?”

Fluke hesitated. It was one thing to tell her about the bet and another altogether to mention the money.

“How much, Fluke?”

Fluke bent for his board, might be a good time to make a quick exit. “Ant pays each of us two grand if we last the term.”

Alex didn’t look the Hollywood sophisticate anymore, she looked more girl next door as she whipped off her hat and shades and laughed, open-mouthed, at him.

“What’s so funny? I figured you’d be pissed.”

“The three of you walk away two grand richer for putting up with Scott and me for twelve weeks.”

“Yep.” Fluke took a couple of steps towards the sea.

Alex jammed her hat back on again. “That’s brilliant. There’s no way any of you are dropping out, is there?”

He turned back to her, “Nope,” and before he took off to the water’s edge, he thought he heard her say, “Brilliant.”

When Dan trotted back up the beach, dripping wet, his hair plastered back, water droplets sparkling on his chest and shoulders, Alex had to remind herself she was with Phil, had to stop herself from running her tongue over Dan’s bicep to taste the muscle under the salt. “You’re amazing out there,” she said, to give her tongue something else to do.

He flashed a smile. “Ta, been doing that since I was a kid. If I can do it till I die, I’ll be happy.” He stood beside her, dripping into the soft sand, and they watched Mitch, Ant, and Fluke. She thought how simply Dan defined his happiness: a board and a beach. He appeared to have no ambition at all.

“You didn’t have to come back. You were right; it’s beautiful here. I’m fine on my own.”

“I’ve had enough for the morning. I’m hungry,” he said and Alex would have placed money that Dan meant more than just the most straightforward meaning. He wasn’t looking at the sea now, he was looking at her, and his eyes were so blue behind spiky wet lashes and his smile so open and his perusal of her so calmly obvious, it made her hotter than the early sunlight warranted.

This was a very bad idea. Dan’s sheer physical magnetism was mucking with her senses. It made her feel edgy, nervous about standing beside him wearing almost nothing, which was idiotic considering how much time she’d already spent in his arms.

“What’s next?” she said. Suddenly she saw this scene for what it was – role reversal. Now Dan was the teacher, cool and in command, and she was the student, hopeful and ill at ease. She just wished she knew what the lesson was about.

That they were regulars at the café was no mystery: their coffee orders were delivered minutes after they sat, barefoot and half dry in assorted beach wear. That Dan was a favourite with their waitress was also no surprise. Alex thought she might’ve abandoned taking orders and sat in his lap if he’d let her.

She’d just witnessed Dan’s mastery of the sea and couldn’t help but be impressed. Now she was being treated to his talent with the opposite sex and tried to hide how awkward that made her feel. He didn’t even have the grace to look uncomfortable when the waitress ruffled his hair.

“And here I thought you guys were monks,” the pigtailed waitress said, turning to Alex for the only breakfast order she didn’t know off by heart. “They’ve never brought a girlfriend for breakfast. Who are you with, honey?”

“Me,” said Dan, and Alex turned to pin him with a stare. She spoke quickly to correct him, “I’m just...”– saying his teacher sounded stuffy and partner would confirm what everyone was now wondering, and she wasn’t Dan’s friend, so she said, “passing through,” and from the look on the waitress’s sun-tanned face and the snickering from the boys, she knew that was worse. She’d just made it sound like she’d been his one-night-stand.

“Alex is my teacher,” Dan said, rescuing her from the description that had made four sets of eyes pop. He had a wicked smiled plastered on his face.

“Don’t you want to know what she’s teaching him?” said Ant. The bubble of laughter popped when Fluke answered, “If we’re lucky, humility.”

“Play nice, Flukey. We have company,” said Mitch. “Don’t mind him, Teach. He’s mad at Dan, but we’re hoping he’ll thaw out eventually.”

“What are you mad about, Fluke?” asked Alex. She was slightly mad herself. Why had Dan spoken for her, said ‘me’, like he owned her?

“We don’t want to get into that,” said Dan, with was authority in his voice. It had no impact on Fluke; he said, “We might.”

“It’s old, Fluke,” said Ant, and Alex found herself somewhere she’d rather not be, with her playboy partner and his mates, in an argument about God knows what. This wasn’t fun anymore, it wasn’t exciting, it was stale chocolate cake and she didn’t want another bite of it.

“I think I’ll go,” she said, sliding some notes on the table to cover her coffee, toast, and eggs.

“Don’t, Teach,” said Mitch, pushing the money back towards her. “We’ll behave, won’t we, Fluke?” Fluke was making a pyramid out of the sugar satchels. He tossed one of them at Mitch. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t trust them, Alex,” said Dan dryly. He’d been irrationally pleased about having a whole day with Alex, a day where he wouldn’t have to worry about treading on her, yet that’s just what he’d done and they’d not even made it past breakfast.

“Alex, will you stay if we entertain you with embarrassing stories about Dan?” said Ant.

Dan groaned. “No, she won’t. She’s smarter than that.” He looked at Alex. “She’s nicer than that.”

“Whatever gave you that impression?” she said. She turned to Ant, “Dish.”

He did. And Alex needed another coffee to get her through the list of misadventures and pranks that were part of Dan’s history. They told her how he’d blown up letterboxes, stolen fresh baked bread, got caught and let off with a warning for drag racing, and, in one inspired event, managed to talk a group of twenty guys into targeting a small beachside street in the dead of night with the aim of shuffling all the cars.

“By shuffling we mean moving them from where they were parked,” said Ant.

“You had to break into them?” asked Alex, not sure if she was about to learn Dan had a criminal record for theft. She glanced at him hesitantly, but he looked perfectly at ease.

“Nah, we just picked them up,” said Mitch. “Some we left in the same spot, but turned to face the other way, some we moved to the other side of the street.”

“You picked them up?” she gasped incredulous.

“We moved, how many cars, Dan?” asked Ant.

“Fifteen.”

“That’s right, fifteen,” said Ant and he pounded on the table with mirth. “Fifteen!”

“And that’s not even the funniest thing,” said Mitch, shoving at Ant to quiet down.

“It was pretty friggin’ funny,” Fluke choked out. He was red-faced from laughter, his freckles faded in his heightened skin tone.

“Ask Dan what the funniest thing was.” said Mitch, and Alex turned an enquiring eye on Dan. He was sitting back in his chair, a sprawling posture, relaxed despite the best attempts of his mates to, as Fluke described it, ‘heap shit on him’. He’d taken it all in his stride, speaking up not in his own defence, but to correct a detail here or there. There was something oddly admirable about the fact he didn’t squirm or try to duck. He stayed open in a way that said, ‘do your worst’ without protecting himself from whatever was coming, as if he had nothing to hide.

Dan let the laugher stall, leaned forward, looked around the table. He was building the suspense with his slow response. “The funniest thing was there was a cop shop in the street and we rearranged the cop cars too.”

“And,” prompted Mitch, the word strangled with his laughter.

Dan looked around, paused. “We went back and it did again the next night.”

Ant thumped the table, Mitch thumped Ant, and Fluke almost swallowed his own tongue. Alex watched them fall about the table, buffeted by the memories of those two strange nights and a hand of shuffled cars. Dan looked on, the benevolent leader, humouring the troops.

“How did you get away with it?” Alex said when she could make herself heard above the shouted laughter.

Dan shrugged. “The hardest thing was trying to keep everyone quiet. Bastards kept giggling like little girls and I was sure we were going to get caught before we were finished. And it’s important to finish what you start,” he grinned.

Alex shook her head in disbelief and Fluke said, “There’s more.”

“He was the only kid at school who’d ever slept in a bus shelter,” said Ant.

Alex spun to look at Dan, the laughter exchanged for horror. “You slept in a bus shelter?”

“You don’t know my old man,” he said. They weren’t the words he wanted to say. He wanted to swear at Ant to shut the fuck up. Instead he was thinking about another night not so long ago and a bus shelter and some plate glass and what it had shown him about who he was.

“How old were you?” Alex said, aghast, and Dan had to drag his thoughts back into the room.

“How old was I, Mitch?” he said, rubbing his jaw, trying to deflect the question by fuzzing the memory. He’d been ten and he’d slept in a bus shelter for four nights before Mitch’s father had picked him up and Mitch’s mother had cooked him dinner.

“Old enough to still think it was fun,” said Mitch, in a tone that told them this wasn’t a story to joke about.

“He was the only kid who could drive before he was old enough to sneak into the pub,” said Fluke, trying to shift the mood.

Dan could see from their expressions that Mitch and Fluke were remembering how often he’d come to school with bruises and would never say where he got them and how he’d had more hot dinners with their families than he had with his father. Particularly Fluke’s family. They were virtually brothers.

“How old were you when you could drive?” asked Alex.

That was less embarrassing, less a potential sob story. “Twelve.”

“Why were you driving at twelve?”

He shrugged. “Taxi’s cost money and Jimmy needed a ride home from the pub.”

“And you didn’t get caught?”

“It was an automatic car, nothing to it.”

Alex said, “Oh my God, Dan!” and put her hand to his face. He wanted to squirm. She looked like she might want to hug that boy, but she must have been wondering why he wasn’t dead or in gaol from one too many pranks gone wrong.

He met her eyes briefly and then dropped them. “Ok, ok. You bastards have had your fun. Alex doesn’t need to know anything more about my deprived childhood.”

“Depraved more like,” said Ant. “I’d forgotten half that stuff. Breakfast is on me,” he said, standing. “Alex, when you come again, we’ll destroy Mitch for you.”

“Hey,” said Mitch, mock annoyed.

“After that, there’s Fluke,” Ant said, holding his wallet. “Endless hours of fun just there.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, mate,” said Dan. “This was a one-off, a special guest appearance. Alex isn’t likely to grace us with her presence ever again.”

He looked across at her. At least she wasn’t still irritated with him and no longer anxious to leave. He imagined his face was still warm from her touch. It was enough to hope she’d spend the afternoon with him, let him cook her a meal. It was too much to think she’d ever come to breakfast with the boys again.

Alex said, “Ant. I’ve got a deal for you.”

Ant pointed to himself, “Me?”

“Yes, you. I’ll come to breakfast again when the dance term is up.”

“Oh yeah,” Ant said. He wore his suspicion heavily on his top lip with a shadow of moustache and Fluke shifted uncomfortably, fiddled with the strap of his backpack.

“Because I’d like to see you pay up.”

“Who?” growled Mitch, directing his question straight at Fluke.

“Never mind who told me, but I know about the bet, and there’s no way my boys are going to lose,” Alex said. “So I want to be here to make sure you cough up, Anthony.”

“Yes, Miss,” Ant grinned. “Yes, Miss!”

When they left the café, Alex was looking for Dan’s Valiant and was surprised to learn he was driving a 1975 pastel blue Kombi van instead. She really could have gone her own way at this point, but despite a rocky patch the morning had been fun, well outside her normal Saturday, and she had no desire to step back into her own routine just yet. She had a hankering to learn more about the little boy who’d been following road rules before he’d left primary school. She’d wanted to hug Dan, right there in the café, when that story came out, but he’d looked embarrassed and that’d stopped her.

The Kombi was easy to spot in traffic, so it was a simple thing to follow Dan back to his flat. She expected to wait outside while he dumped his board and changed, but he insisted she come in, that he’d only be ten minutes.

“It’s nothing special, but it’s home,” he said at the front door. He put his key in the lock. “Stand back.” Alex heard whining from inside. That would be the furkid.

Dan pushed the door in and a brown dog came barrelling out, wriggling its backside, helicoptering its tail, giving little yips of excitement. “Meet Jeff.”

“What sort of dog is he?” She offered her hand for the dog to sniff.

“A lady killer,” said Dan, as Jeff threw himself at Alex’s feet, paws in the air, tongue lolling, still wriggling.

She laughed and bent to pat his tummy. “What breed?”

“Bit of this, bit of that. Part Kelpie, part mutt.”

“And you call him Jeff? Like in the old cartoon Mutt and Jeff?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s funny.”

“I’m not just a pretty face, you know,” he said, ushering her inside the cool, quiet flat.

The first thing Alex noticed was how tidy it was. It was a 1930’s built, bottom floor garden unit in a block of four and Dan made it comfortable with quirky period furniture, glossy floorboards, and neutral tone paint. And books. Lots of books – on sport, photography, art, architecture, politics, and history. They filled a bookshelf, packed tight to the ceiling, lined the top of the fridge, and, stacked up in a cube, served as a side table in his lounge room.

“Lucky they let you keep Jeff,” she said, wondering if he could possibly have read them all.