The Byron Journals (8 page)

‘But surely you could—' ‘Look,' he said. ‘I'm here to show Heidi and my sis a good time. That's it. I'm not here to talk work or business or whatever.' He turned to Heidi and Jade and winked. ‘Don't worry, girls. I'm going to take good care of you while I'm here. Anything you want.'

‘Works for me,' Heidi said, and she gently removed Andrew's hand from her waist.

After the girls left with Sam later that evening, Tim and Andrew settled on the couches with bowls of rice and a spicy vegetable stir-fry. Tim had a West African tribal drumming compilation playing on the stereo and Andrew attempted, without success, to follow the manic thump-patter of the polyrhythms.

‘Hey, Tim…' ‘Yeah?'

‘How did you meet Heidi?'

Tim lowered his spoonful of rice. ‘I was working in the music shop and she came in to try out one of the drum kits. She played for ten minutes and by the time she'd finished she had a group of people gathered round listening. I was looking for a new flatmate and she'd just arrived in town, so...'

‘And did you two ever…?'

‘What?'

‘Sleep together.'

‘Me and Heidi?' He screwed up his face in confusion. ‘Yeah…Umm…but just a couple of times…' ‘And how did it end?'

‘I dunno. She broke it off and I hooked up with Jade. Until recently, things were kinda strange between us. Heidi's a tricky one. She was a different person when I first knew her. Kinda prickly. Spent a lot of time locked in her room. It was only when she met Jade that she started coming out of herself a bit. The two of them used to be mad together.'

Andrew spooned some rice into his mouth and tried to sound casual. ‘What happened to Heidi's mum?'

Tim stopped chewing and played with his food. ‘She hasn't told you?'

‘No.'

He looked at Andrew. ‘But you know it was a car accident?'

‘No, she hasn't told me anything.'

Tim stood up, fanning his mouth, and walked into the kitchen. ‘Sorry mate, it's not my place to say. I guess she'll tell you about it when she's ready.'

The girls returned late the next morning wearing the same clothes and too out of it to say much. Andrew followed Heidi into the bathroom and watched her undress and step into the shower. ‘How was it? Did you have fun?'

She laughed. ‘Yep.'

He studied her body for new marks or hickies. ‘Where did you go?'

‘We went out to this stupid backpacker bar and danced to bad music…on the tables…then went back to Sam's hotel, took heaps of coke and drank expensive wine. It was luuusssh!'

He watched the steam drift out the open window into the hot, still day. ‘Heidi, what happened to your mum?'

Water slapped onto the tiles at her feet and, if she heard him, she pretended she didn't. He couldn't stand being shut out like this; everyone seemed to know except him.

‘Please, Heidi,' he tried again. ‘I want to help.'

‘Get out.'

‘What?'

‘I said, get out. Now!' Her voice quavered and Andrew saw she was crying.

He headed into her room and stood there for a moment, uncertain. He changed into his board shorts, cursing himself for pushing her, grabbed his towel and left for the beach. When he returned a few hours later, Heidi was asleep in her bed, snoring quietly with the floor fan rotating beside her.

nine

‘Who bought you the perfume?' Tim shouted over the music, the empty box dangling from his hand.

Jade laughed. ‘Don't you like it?'

‘I hate it. Who gave it to you?'

Jade frowned. ‘Some tosser from work.'

‘Some tosser from work?'

‘Yeah, babe. Don't get weird about it. We did a shoot, the company was happy. One of the photographers asked me what my favourite perfume was, and he sent it to me the next day.'

‘Have you had coke already tonight?' Tim asked.

‘So what if I have?'

Andrew pushed back his chair, abandoning the game of cards he'd been playing with Tim, and made his way to the stereo. Madonna's ‘Like a Prayer' was pulsing through the speakers.

‘Can I
please
turn this down?' he called.

‘Don't you dare!' came Heidi's voice from the bathroom. He hooked around the couch, squeezed sideways through Tim and Jade's argument in the hallway and turned into the bathroom, the mandarin-vanilla scent of Jade's perfume lingering in his nose—the same perfume his mum wore. Heidi was wearing a backless long-sleeved dress and high heels, her face close to the mirror while she applied eye-liner. He wanted to tell her she looked beautiful, but instead he found himself saying, ‘You never dress up like that for me.'

She kept her eyes fixed on the mirror. ‘That's because you don't take me out to nice places.'

‘I didn't know you wanted to go to nice places.'

She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Every girl wants to go to nice places.'

‘But I don't have enough money. Busking barely pays for anything.'

‘Well you better get some—if you want to keep me.'

She turned and narrowed her eyes, then smiled, and moved in to kiss him. And all Andrew could think was that tonight she looked, smelled and moved differently from the Heidi he knew. Older. She even seemed to kiss him differently. There was so much about her that he didn't know, that she wouldn't let him see.

He pulled away. ‘You're not going to hook up with Sam, are you?'

She rolled her eyes and sighed. The music stopped and Jade shouted, ‘C'mon Heidi, let's go.'

A car horn sounded out the front and Heidi turned past Andrew and blew him a kiss.

‘Why can't you party in Byron?' Tim called after Jade. ‘Why the Gold Coast?'

‘I told you—Sam wants to meet some of the people I work with. For business.'

‘This is bullshit!' Tim shouted.

‘Seeya boys!' Jade twinkled her fingers on her way past Andrew. She looked hot too, he thought, in a red silk camisole, tiny denim shorts and high heels.

The front door closed behind the girls, and Andrew headed back to the living room. He paused to look at the cards laid out on the table. ‘Do you want to finish the game?'

‘She's sleeping with someone else,' Tim replied. ‘I'm sure of it.'

‘Heidi?'

‘No, idiot! Jade!' He kicked the back of the couch, clutched his foot and swore, then stormed down the hallway, snatching his car keys on the way out. The Valiant's tyres screeched as he took off up the street.

Ten minutes later, Andrew was listening to Pink Floyd's
The Wall
and rolling a joint, when Tim rushed into the living room, panting for breath.

‘Shit, Andy! I crashed it! I crashed the Val.'

Andrew stood up. ‘Are you okay? Is anyone hurt?'

‘No one's hurt. It's the car, Andy. The fucking car.'

‘Don't worry about the car,' Andrew said. ‘We can get the car fixed' ‘Not mine. The other car.'

‘Why? What is it?'

‘It looks expensive.'

‘Did anyone see you?'

‘I don't know,' Tim said. ‘What should I do?'

Andrew looked at the smashed headlight and dented side panel as the Valiant rumbled past him in the driveway. He closed the gate, picked up a beach towel from the verandah and threw it over the damaged panel.

‘What now?' Tim said.

The engine ticked as it cooled off, making even nicks in the night air.

Andrew could smell burnt clutch. ‘Have you got any paint stripper?'

‘What for?'

‘Have you got any, or not?'

Andrew stopped when Tim pointed out the car. It was a Maserati, probably worth over a hundred thousand. Tim had scratched a long jagged groove along the length of the passenger side.

‘Looks expensive, hey?' Tim whispered.

‘It is,' he replied. ‘Let's scrub it and get out of here.'

Together, they ran towards the car. Andrew poured paint stripper along the length of the scratch and Tim scrubbed it with an old T-shirt. Just as they finished the job, someone shouted from a nearby house.

Panting, Andrew slammed the front door behind him and followed Tim into the living room. He sat down to finish rolling his joint, while Tim put on Neil Young's
Harvest Moon
.

‘Do you think anyone followed us?' Tim asked.

‘I don't think so.'

Tim paced the hallway, checking the street from Heidi's bedroom window while Andrew put his feet on the coffee table, lit the joint and settled into the dreamy country strains of ‘Natural Beauty'.

Tim came back into the room squeezing a grip strengthener and continued pacing. ‘She's seeing someone else behind my back, Andy.'

‘What?'

‘She's been acting weird ever since she started this modelling bullshit on the Gold Coast. She's always coming home exhausted. And she's always got new stuff. Usually she says she buys it, but it's bullshit. They're presents, I can tell.'

‘How do you know?'

‘The stuff's never her style.'

‘Do you think she's got a sugar daddy?'

‘Who knows? Maybe it's some sleazy old advertising exec. Just pouring presents and money on her until she gives in. How can I compete with that? What have I got? Nothing! I can't buy her Dolce sunnies and fucking perfume.'

Tim disappeared into his bedroom. He came back carrying a large black boutique shopping bag and dropped it on Andrew's lap. ‘Look at all this.'

Andrew peered at the assortment of panties, g-strings and bras.

Tim picked out a leopard-print bra and held it up. ‘Jade would never wear this.' He dug a handful of lingerie out of the bag and threw it on the couch. ‘Look how ugly all this shit is?' The grip strengthener creaked in his hand. ‘Do you want to see something else?' Tim tossed the grip strengthener on the couch, scooped up the underwear and stuffed it back into the bag. He returned the bag to his room and came back with a plain white shoebox. ‘Check this out,' he said.

Andrew put the box on his lap and opened it. Cash. It was a quarter filled with fifty and hundred dollar notes. Probably a couple of thousand dollars. He picked up a handful and a G-bag filled with white powder dropped out. When he moved aside the cash, he saw a dozen powder-filled bags, maybe more.

‘What is it? Speed?' he asked.

‘Coke,' Tim replied. ‘I don't think she's modelling on the Gold Coast at all. I think she's fucking a coke dealer.'

‘Shit…' ‘I've never seen a single photo of her modelling. Not a single catalogue. She says she's too embarrassed to show me. It's bullshit. And all this coke! I worry about her, man.'

On top of the bags of coke was a memory card from Jade's camera. The photo of her in black lingerie getting ready for a photo shoot—why hadn't she shown her photos to Tim? Andrew was about to ask, but remembered the photos of him posing beside the marijuana plants. Tim would think he was an idiot for letting Jade take those photos. He let the cash drop back into the shoebox, replaced the lid and handed it to Tim.

‘That's fucked,' he said and left it at that.

Tim paused on his way back to his room. ‘Thanks for your help tonight,' he said. ‘I'm no good when things mess up. The thought of owing people money—or the cops getting involved—stresses me out. It's good to know that when shit goes wrong, you've got my back.'

Andrew thought about mentioning that he'd only agreed to legal protection for the hydro, not for anything else, but he let it slide when Tim's eyes glassed over.

‘Mum was like me too,' he said. ‘She killed herself when I was ten. Dad and I moved up here to start over. He changed our names and moved us onto the commune in Nimbin…As though that might fix everything.'

Andrew stared at the faded patterns on the Persian rug. ‘I'm happy to help, Tim. Anytime you need it.'

‘Thanks. I appreciate it.' He paused. ‘I'm going to bed.'

Andrew waited up another few hours listening to music, reading one of Heidi's books,
Breaking open the Head
, and getting stoned, but the girls didn't return. The next morning, he woke to the hoarse screech of Jade's voice. He clambered out of bed and rushed into the hall where he found her, wet hair and naked except for a towel, her hand on her hip and her cheeks wet with tears, standing in the doorway to Tim's room. Andrew could smell aloe vera moisturiser as he peered over her shoulder. Heidi looked up, her arms folded. Andrew's stomach knotted. She was sitting on Tim's bed, fully clothed, Tim half-naked under the sheets beside her. Tim was red-faced, sitting with his knees bent up awkwardly.

‘What's going on?' Andrew said.

‘What does it look like, dumbarse?' Jade said, turning to him, a tic pulsing above her eye.

‘We were just talking,' Tim said. ‘C'mon Jade, don't make this into something it's not. You're acting crazy.'

‘Oh! I'm acting crazy, am I? I leave for five minutes to take a shower and when I come back I find you and Heidi in bed together all over each other?'

Heidi slid off the bed and pushed past Jade. ‘I really can't be bothered with this.'

Jade turned. ‘Don't think you can pull any bullshit you want just because of your mum's anniversary.'

Heidi paused and faced her. ‘Do you really think I'd do that, Jade? Really?'

Andrew followed Heidi into the bedroom and closed the door on Jade and Tim's argument. He watched as she sat on the edge of the bed, opened the top bedside drawer and pulled out her sleeping tablets.

‘You don't believe me either, do you?' She shrugged. ‘I don't know. What was going on in there?'

‘Nothing.' She tipped some pills onto her palm and swallowed them with water from a half-empty glass beside the bed. ‘Just forget about it, okay?'

‘If it was nothing, then why is Jade going crazy? And why did Tim have a hard on?'