The Byron Journals (3 page)

‘He's not here.'

He tried not to look at her breasts. ‘Do you know where he is…or when he'll be back?'

‘Do I look like his secretary?'

‘No.'

She dropped a hand on her hip and nodded down the street. ‘He's playing at the markets…with Heidi.'

Andrew glimpsed the edge of a tattoo, something written in cursive, along the underside of her left arm. He looked down the street and turned back to thank her but she closed the door.

He followed the sound of drums between crowded market stalls selling fruit and vegetables, second-hand books and tropical plants. The heat and humidity had doubled since his swim that morning and he wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

When he found Tim and Heidi, they were in full flight—Tim on a large African drum, and Heidi on a stripped-back drum kit. They were surrounded by people—some dancing, but most just watching. The high hat sizzled, the snare crackled, the bass drum kicked off the back-beat. Tim punctuated her rhythm with rapid-fire fills, spinning in circles, jumping and shouting, his chest and back slick with sweat. Andrew moved to the front of the crowd and looked at Heidi, who, in spite of the heat, was wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt under a lime-green patterned dress. She held time beautifully, everything in its place. Up until then, most of the girls he knew played classical instruments—viola, cello and piano. Yet here was this girl—from Adelaide, of all places—smashing the be-jesus out of a drum kit. The rhythm ended and applause rippled, then broke from the crowd. A couple of sharp whistles lanced the humid air. Tim lifted his hands and raised his voice. ‘If you like what ya hear, don't be scared to come forward. Dance! Enjoy! Give gener—' Heidi cut him off with a galloping rhythm and Tim glared, but she ignored him and kept playing.

They finished and the crowd dispersed. Andrew had planned to approach Tim and wait for an introduction to Heidi, but Tim disappeared through the crowd with his drum slung under his arm. Heidi muttered under her breath as she dismantled her kit.

‘Need a hand?' he said.

‘No, it's—' She glanced up. ‘It's fine.'

Andrew took a chance. ‘Let me help you. We can drop off your drums and…I don't know, head out for a while…go to the beach, or…' She smiled. ‘Thanks, you're sweet.'

He was sweet. He was caramel-fudge-sundae sweet. He wondered how he could be sweeter.

‘I'm Andrew.'

Her hand was sweaty but delicate. She looked him over with her quick, grey eyes and gave him an off-centred smile. ‘Heidi,' she said. ‘I remember you from last night…you played that funny solo.'

‘What do you mean, funny?'

‘I don't know—weird. Then you left suddenly.'

‘I had to take a friend home.'

‘Let me guess—too drunk?'

‘Too stoned.'

He helped her stack the drum kit onto a flat-bed trolley and pushed it through the market lanes.

She left her drums in the corner of the living room behind a couch draped in a faded Batik sarong. Other instruments lay around the room: African drums, maracas, a battered old acoustic guitar. But what caught Andrew's attention was the dusty old Rhodes keyboard leaning against the wall near the stereo. And the pornographic way Jade was kissing and straddling Tim on the back verandah.

‘Cute, aren't they?' Heidi said, then raised her voice. ‘Feel free to clean the house when you've finished fucking!'

She smiled at Andrew's raised eyebrows, took his hand and led him into her room. He could smell unwashed clothes and lavender oil. The sheets lay twisted on the mattress and there were clothes, shoes and paperbacks strewn across the floorboards.

‘I need a shower,' she said. ‘I'll be quick.'

He heard the tap whine, followed by the patter of water. He liked the thought of Heidi naked; he liked the thought of her naked with water streaming over her. A couple of photos were stuck to the dressing-table mirror and he moved closer to look. They were old, professional shots, curled at the edges and faded with age. Heidi as a little girl, her hair in plaited pig tails, and her parents, he assumed, looking severe and conservative. The drawer beneath was open and overflowing with underwear, rich, silky colours. And stuck to the wall were paintings on butcher's paper, mostly lumpy, badly composed female nudes.

Heidi opened the door and walked in with a stained purple towel wrapped around her. ‘Can you just…?'

He turned and moved towards the window. She pulled some clothes out of the drawer and he caught a whiff of honey-scented soap. When he heard her towel drop to the floor, he stole a glimpse in the dressing-table mirror: her long, dark hair hanging wet over her shoulders and her small, pale breasts, spattered with moles. There was also a long Y-shaped scar running up the inside of her left forearm. She caught his eye in the mirror. He looked away, heart thumping. ‘Sorry.'

He heard the snap of her bra, and the sound of her putting on the rest of her clothes. He picked up a book from the floor. The author was Anaïs Nin. He skimmed the back cover:
a glittering cascade of sexual
encounters…
‘Read it?' she asked.

‘Not this one,' he said, still thinking of her naked. ‘But I've read a few of his other—' ‘You mean
her
other?' Wearing a red patterned dress and long sleeved shirt now, she fixed her hair in front of the mirror.

‘Yeah…
her
other.'

She looked at him sideways, her eyes twinkling with delight, then she sprayed herself with perfume and grabbed her sunglasses. ‘Let's go.'

She lit a joint on the front verandah and they started walking. Dark clouds hung low and heavy in the south, infusing the air with the sweet smell of approaching rain. Heidi drew on the joint a couple of times before offering it to him.

‘I thought I told you not to look,' she said.

He took the joint. ‘I didn't do it on purpose.'

‘The scar on my arm—just so you know—it's not what it looks like. I got pushed through a window when I was a kid.' She lifted her arm in front of her then let it fall to her side. ‘I wear long-sleeved shirts 'cause I get sick of people staring.'

He decided to say nothing, then replied too late. ‘I barely noticed.' The smoke burned his throat and he struggled not to cough as he handed the joint back to her. An image of her half-naked flashed through his mind. Anyway, her scar was sexy.

They crossed over disused train tracks and passed between the vehicles in a potholed car park. She stopped beside an old silver Mercedes, looked around, then bent the Mercedes badge forward, snapped it off with the base of her palm, and shoved it into her purse. Her technique was efficient enough for him to assume she'd done it before. He opened his mouth to say something, but she gave him a look that told him to keep quiet. They continued through the car park and finished the joint.

‘Where are we going?' he asked.

‘The café where I work.'

They turned onto the main street and headed towards the supermarket. A couple of surfers, still wet from the ocean, walked past with boards under their arms, and on the other side of the road some Schoolies slid through the traffic, pushing each other in shopping trolleys.

‘How long are you staying in town?' Heidi asked.

‘I don't know…but I don't want to go home.'

She shrugged. ‘So don't.'

‘It's not that simple.'

‘Why not?'

He looked away. ‘Tim mentioned you were from Adelaide.'

‘Fucking hole,' she said and scratched her cheek. ‘You?'

The pot was kicking in. Would she go cold on him if she found out it was his hometown too?

‘Melbourne,' he replied, immediately regretting it.

She bit her lip. ‘Where in Melbourne?'

‘Just…the umm…eastern suburbs.'

They sat at the back of the café near a palm tree potted in a half wine barrel, and ordered coffee. Stoned, his thoughts slipped out of his grasp before he could put them into words. To his relief, Heidi started talking. She spoke quickly, her hands dancing—the weed animating her, rather than mellowing her out. She talked about drumming on the streets with Tim, swimming naked in the ocean, and crazy parties in the hinterland. She told him about her first time scuba diving at Julian Rocks out in the Bay. How scary and exciting it had been descending the anchor chain surrounded by schools of fish. The wobbegong sharks she'd seen sleeping on the sea floor and the huge manta ray that had passed directly over her. The white pointer fatality at a nearby submerged pinnacle, twenty years earlier, when a man on his honeymoon saved his wife by lunging into the path of the attacking shark.

‘But everyone keeps quiet about any bad stuff that happens here,' she said. ‘Shark attacks, drug overdoses and Rohypnol rapes. Stuff like that doesn't really fit with people's idea of Byron.'

Her eyes slid over him, a breeze rustled the palm fronds behind her, and the hem of her dress lapped at her thighs. He was entranced by the lilt that came into her voice at points of the conversation, her bursts of nervous laughter and the way she drew her fringe away from her eyes.

She stopped talking to look over his shoulder and he turned to see two of the café staff ushering a man out of the cafe.

‘What's going on?' he asked.

‘Oh, he's just one of the local crazies,' she replied, her voice cooler now. ‘He comes here every now and then, trips out and starts upsetting customers. Apparently he used to be some hot-shot lawyer down in Sydney.'

Her contempt was unmistakable.

‘And what happened?' he asked.

‘Came up here on holidays, tried some hallucinogens— mushies, DMT, or something—and completely lost it. Apparently some people have genetic predispositions. Dormant enzymes—switch them on and they're crazy for life.'

‘My grandfather went crazy towards the end of his life,' he said. ‘He was crippled with arthritis, but he'd go out and play eighteen holes of golf, then sit in a stupor for days. Bipolar disorder.'

‘Yeah, well you should probably give hallucinogens a miss.'

‘How come you know so much about it?'

‘I've read up on it.' She paused and looked over his shoulder again. ‘That lawyer…He mustn't have had any close friends or family because no one's ever come for him. Now he's just lost up here, stuck in his own private hell. Sometimes you see him walking down the street banging his hand against his head, other times you see him shouting and crying at the sky.'

‘Sounds horrible,' he said.

She glanced at the man once more before turning her gaze on Andrew. ‘Yeah, but like I said—he was a lawyer—he'd probably fucked a lot of people's lives, so he probably deserves everything he gets.'

‘What have you got against lawyers?'

‘They're the scum of the earth.'

He laughed. ‘You're joking, right?'

She shook her head. For a while, neither of them spoke and Andrew was relieved when he heard the first rumbles of thunder—clouds the size of mountain ranges colliding in the south. There was a pattering of rain, then nothing. Moments later, the clouds broke open and great streaks of rain fell and shattered on the roof.

The sound dragged Heidi out of her thoughts and she smiled again. ‘I love it when it rains like this. It's just so Byron, so changeable and melodramatic. You wait—in half an hour it'll be sunny again.'

And she was right—by the time they left the café, the sun was shining. Steam curled off the hot, wet roads as they walked back to her house.

‘Why don't you stay for dinner,' she said when they crossed the train tracks. ‘I've got some leftover curry. And there's a DJ playing in town later that I want to check out.'

Andrew paused. ‘Sounds good…but my clothes are still back at the apartment and…right now…I really don't want to go back there.'

‘That's fine.' She studied him a moment, then looked away. ‘Just borrow some of Tim's. He won't mind.'

She took his hand and they walked the rest of the way in silence. As she unlocked the front door, he looked at the soft skin of her neck and wanted to kiss her. But he held himself back. What if he had it wrong? There was so much about her that he didn't know, and it made him nervous that he couldn't guess what she'd say or do next. Why had she made it so easy for him to avoid going back to the apartment? And why hadn't she asked him for an explanation?

She opened the door and he followed her inside.

three

A bass-line stretched and wobbled within a tight drumloop as they headed up the chipped concrete steps. The bouncer waved Heidi through but stopped Andrew to see his ID. Heidi glanced at him and suppressed a smile as they went through the doors. He wasn't sure, but she didn't seem to care that he was a year or so younger than her.

In the club's dim, reddish light, people danced, talked and pushed towards the bar. The air was stuffy with body heat, sweat and alcohol, and the music was overbearing—too loud for conversation. Heidi took his hand and dragged him forward. He spotted Tim and Jade on the dancefloor, hands all over each other, and pointed them out to Heidi. She looked away and placed her hand on Andrew's lower back. When they reached the bar, Heidi mouthed the words:
what do you
want?
Andrew shook his head, hoping she wouldn't judge him for it
.

She shrugged, turned and ordered two Cowboy shots for herself. She banged them, looked around the club with disgust and pointed towards the exit.

‘Ugh,' she said, as they descended the stairs. ‘That was way too crowded.' She smiled at him. ‘Why don't you drink? Are you religious or something?'

‘No.' He hesitated. ‘My parents are heavy drinkers.' ‘How heavy?'

‘They're not hopeless alcoholics or anything. They're both quite successful professionally—but they drink to deal with the stress.'