The Byron Journals (19 page)

Back at the hostel, Tim lay on his dorm bed with an icepack pressed to his cheek while Jade and Andrew sat down with a bottle of José Cuervo tequila and poured shots.

‘I thought you didn't drink, Andy?' Heidi said, stopping beside them.

It was the first thing she'd said to him in hours.

‘I'm hoping it will solve my problems,' he replied. ‘It seems to work for you.'

She narrowed her eyes and turned to Jade. ‘I'm going to bed, sweetheart. Keep an eye on this one. I doubt he'll be able to hold his drink.'

Jade nodded. ‘Sleep well, babe.'

Andrew and Jade watched as Heidi headed for the dorm. They looked at each other, licked the salt off their hands, knocked shot glasses and banged the liquid down. Andrew was slow with the lemon and the tequila bit into his throat, hot and venomous with a smoky aftertaste. He shook his head and gagged while Jade laughed and poured another two. This time Andrew was quicker with the lemon and the experience was smoother. Other people in the hostel stayed away from them. Maybe it was a clothing thing. He and Jade were in bright beach gear while everyone else was in country gear—akubra and Stetson hats, blue jeans and moleskins, checked shirts and wife-beaters, Blundstones and RM Williams. They sat in large groups, drank Bundy and Coke or cask wine, and took it in turns playing guitars and singing country songs.

They continued banging tequila and Andrew stopped feeling guilty about Heidi's journal; he stopped thinking about her scarred arm, her near drowning in the river, and the liquid acid she was transporting to Melbourne. He remembered now why people drank, why Heidi drank, why his mum drank. His body felt loose, heavy and good, his muscles flooded with blood. The past and future disappeared. Nothing mattered but the present.

An hour and a half later, they'd finished the bottle of tequila and could barely talk. Jade leaned back in her chair and almost fell off. ‘Less go to town.'

‘Wha for?'

‘This place is boring.'

Andrew shrugged. ‘I'm too…drunk.'

‘All right…C'mon. Get up.'

‘What?'

‘Get up!'

She took his hand, led him into the women's bathroom and closed the door behind them. The sour smell of her sweat mixed with the familiar scent of her perfume. Jade put down the toilet seat, wiped it with a handful of toilet paper and pulled out a small plastic bag of white powder. She racked up two lines on the seat, rolled up a twenty-dollar note, snorted a line, sniffed a couple of times, then passed the note to Andrew. ‘This'll wake you up.'

‘Really?'

She nodded. ‘Jus promise me one thing.'

‘Wha?'

‘Promise you won' tell Tim.'

‘Tell Tim…what?'

She frowned and licked her lips. ‘That I've got coke, idiot.'

Andrew bent and snorted the line. At first, he didn't feel anything except a creeping numbness in his front teeth. Then all his drunken fogginess cleared and his thoughts sharpened. He had energy again. And clarity. He felt like a champion. Of course he wanted to go to town. They were wasting their time hanging at the hostel.

They ran into the street and the night was warm and inviting. Andrew felt drunk and clear-headed at the same time. He and Jade moshed in front of an old guy playing a cover of Johnny Cash's ‘Ring of Fire'. They joined a group of people line-dancing and stumbled about, falling over each other and knocking into the other dancers. They stole cowboy hats from a market stall and ran into the crowd with the shopkeeper chasing them. As soon as they'd escaped, they threw down their hats and tried to make money doing a hopelessly tangled waltz. Jade paid for them to ride the mechanical bull but they fell off the moment it started moving. They headed into a pub and banged another shot. Andrew's head began to spin, the coke wearing off.

‘Let's do another line,' Jade said.

She dragged him into the women's bathroom and they snorted another bump off the toilet seat. They pushed out of the pub into the street, wove through the jumbled crowd and stopped beside a country blues band playing on the corner. Andrew focused on the melodic layering—so wonderfully and deliciously sad—and felt Jade's hand slip under his shirt and around his back. He put his arm around her shoulder and she rested her head against him.

‘This is boring,' she mumbled. ‘C'mon.'

She snatched his cowboy hat and ran up one of the dark sidestreets leading back towards the hostel. He chased after her, but he was too drunk to catch up. Halfway back, she veered down an alley and stopped in the alcove entrance to a building of office blocks. He reached for his hat but she held it away from him. They wrestled over it, laughing, and their bodies rubbed against each other until, finally, they stopped, facing each other, panting and out of breath.

His mouth was full of her tongue. Her lips were dry and there was a faint taste of vomit in her mouth. Their teeth knocked together once, then again. Andrew was repulsed. And turned on. He was beyond stopping himself. He groped her breasts. He scooped his hand under her arse and pressed his fingertips into her softness. He searched for the opening in her sarong. Found it. Slid his hand under her g-string to the rough pubic stubble and the swollen wetness beneath it. He rubbed and jammed his fingers in greedily, fucking her pussy and her arse. His body throbbed with the surging animal need to fuck. She moaned and tore at his belt, loosening it so that his shorts fell around his ankles. Roughly, she worked his cock. They knocked against the glass office door. She undid her sarong and it fell to the footpath. He half pulled down her g-string. She raised her leg and tried to push him inside her, but she stumbled off-balance and fell. She dragged him down with her and he smashed his elbow on the concrete. She rolled onto her back, panting, her legs apart. He pushed inside her and she released a high, tense groan. He started thrusting. He fucked her harder and faster. Pounding her against the concrete. Nothing mattered but this. She kissed him roughly and tried to push her finger into his arse. He tore her hand away but she tried again. Her fingernail cut him and he ripped her hand away and held it behind her head. He opened her legs wider and thrust deeper into her. All his being balanced over a knot, a dense pin-point of energy. It expanded suddenly into his hips and abdomen, then burst and ripped blazing through his whole body, surging in waves. He collapsed on top of her and closed his eyes. And everything was very still. Jade panted in his ear. ‘C'mon, don't stop! Don't stop!'

She slapped his arse a couple of times but all desire had gone out of him. He lay there catching his breath. She held his head and started to kiss him but he turned away. He rolled off her, feeling heavy and nauseous. He didn't want to look at her. He stood swaying and pulled up his shorts, fumbling with his fly and belt buckle. Jade sat up, naked from the waist down and one of her breasts outside her bra. She was still wearing one shoe and her g-string was hooked around her ankle. A block or two away, someone shouted and smashed a bottle. A car cruised by. The light falling on the open street was a sickly yellow and Andrew saw an overflowing garbage bin nearby. Jade got to her feet and started dressing.

Without talking, they made their way back to the hostel. In the hostel courtyard, small groups sat in the shadows, talking, smoking and drinking. Andrew searched his pockets for his key, mumbled goodnight and let himself into the dorm. He couldn't see anything. He knocked his head against a bunk and collapsed into his bed. Someone told him to shut up. He wrestled off his shirt and one of his shoes then gave up and closed his eyes.

twenty-four

Andrew sat up and the blood pulsed behind his forehead. The blinds were open and mid-morning sunlight poured through the windows. There was no one else in the dorm. He dragged himself to the bathroom for a shower and ended up doubled over with his hands on his knees, vomiting until his stomach squeezed itself into a hard, clenched fist. Memories of the night splashed through his mind and he retched again. After fifteen minutes in the shower, he dried himself and stared in the mirror. He hated himself for what he'd done. He was just as bad as his dad. He knocked his head against the tiles beside the mirror and it left a small red welt above his eyebrow. A better man would have knocked himself out. He wondered if his dad ever did anything to punish himself. Probably not. A headache sank its pincers in and, for this, he was grateful—at least the pain helped to block out the memory. He dressed slowly, trying to postpone facing the others.

Outside, Heidi and Tim were playing cards—but not Snap, Andrew noticed. Jade turned the page of a tabloid newspaper, drew on her cigarette and looked up at him. He walked to the table and sat beside Heidi, opposite Jade, but without making eye contact with anyone. Even in the shaded courtyard, the heat and light were intense. Tim looked at him over his cards. ‘How are
you
feeling?'

‘Not good.' Andrew replied. He spotted the empty bottle of Tequila lying in the garden and felt a desperate need to hide it.

Tim nodded, his left eye bruised. ‘Got pretty trashed, hey?'

‘Uahuh...'

‘So, how was it?' Heidi asked.

‘What?'

‘Getting drunk. You haven't done it in a while.'

He wondered if they knew, if Jade had already told them and they were toying with him, waiting for him to confess. ‘I can barely remember a thing—'

‘We went to town,' Jade cut him off.

Tim played a card. ‘And what'd you do?'

‘Dunno,' Jade said. ‘I've got black spots after we left the hostel.'

‘How'd you graze your elbow?' Heidi asked him.

‘I don't know.' He stood up, moved around the other side of the table, grabbed the empty bottle of Tequila and dropped it in the bin. The clatter of glass on glass made them both wince. ‘I'm going back to bed.'

He shut the door, lay down and closed his eyes. Everything was spinning. When he opened his eyes, his stomach turned. He stared at the parallel bed slats above him in an attempt to still his thoughts—but they kept sweeping to one side. He couldn't stop deconstructing and reconstructing what had happened, trying to make sense of it. There was no way out of it; if he wanted to be honest, out of respect for Heidi, he was going to have to tell her, which meant Tim was going to find out too. It was enough, he realised, to put an end to both relationships, and their trip.

When he emerged from the dorm a few hours later, Heidi and Tim had gone into town, but Jade was still there.

‘I'm going to tell Heidi,' he said, slouching into the seat beside her.

Jade pulled out a cigarette and lit it, her eye twitching. ‘Tell her what?'

‘About last night.'

‘What about it?' Jade said. ‘I don't remember anything.'

‘But—'

She threw her lighter onto the table. ‘I said, I don't remember anything. I wouldn't think that you would either, babe.'

‘I guess you know about…' He paused. ‘Heidi's visit to the doctor before we left Byron…I got checked too and I was okay but you'll probably need to…'

‘Great…' She frowned. ‘That's something to look forward to.' She drew on her cigarette, exhaled and flicked ash onto the ground. ‘What happened last night was a mistake. It meant nothing to either of us and it's definitely not going to happen again.
Ever
. It was a stupid, drunk, nothing-fuck. Let's just forget it ever happened.'

‘I can't. I have to tell Heidi.'

‘Why?'

‘If I don't, I'm just like my dad.'

‘Well, boo-hoo.' She frowned, her leg jiggling under the table. ‘You know that Heidi will break up with you. And you'll never be able to go back to Byron. If you tell her, you ruin everything.'

‘Don't you feel bad?' he asked.

‘Of course I feel bad. I feel terrible! But telling them isn't going to make anything better. Tim will get over it, eventually. But you need to remember that Heidi's fragile. So if you really want to tell her, just ask yourself— are you doing it for her, or are you just doing it to make yourself feel better?'

Later that night, after playing a show on the main street without Andrew, Heidi came into the dorm and sat beside him on the bed. It was the moment he'd been unable to stop thinking about all day.

‘Feeling better?' she asked.

Andrew shook his head.

She sighed. ‘Me neither. I'll probably take some sleepers tonight. I didn't take any last night and apparently I woke everyone up with my nightmares.'

‘I was so drunk…I must've slept straight through it.'

She lay beside him, her arm across his chest. ‘I've been thinking a lot since Bellingen.'

‘About what?' He tried to keep his voice even.

‘My mum, recording in Sydney, you and me.'

‘And?'

‘I want you to know I'm sorry. I know that I'm moody and difficult sometimes—and I just want you to know that I'm really grateful you've stuck by me.'

‘I'm sorry too, Heidi.'

‘For what?'

‘Everything. For not doing more to help you in the river.'

‘Hey, it's okay. I've been a bitch these last few days. I'm the one who should be sorry.' She studied his face. ‘What's wrong?'

He wanted to tell her he loved her, but stopped himself. ‘I'm sorry for going through your journal too.'

She winced at the mention. ‘Why did you do that?'

‘I wanted to check you were okay.'

‘You could have asked.'

‘But there's so much you won't talk about.'

She brushed his hair back from his forehead and he closed his eyes to avoid looking at her. They lay in silence and he rehearsed different ways of confessing.

‘Heidi, there's something I need to tell you.'

‘Yeah?' The door swung open and a couple of drunk guys stumbled into the dorm. Heidi yawned and sat up. ‘What is it?' she said.