The Naked Drinking Club (17 page)

‘Yeah, yeah, there’s spiders, and snakes and sharks, but none of them will get you because you lot will be in the houses of the lovely people of the Gold Coast, OK?’ Jim scrunched up his envelope paper, threw it at Scotty and said jokingly, ‘I’ll bite your flamin’ arse if you don’t shut up.’

‘Really, you’ll be doing the same thing as you do here except you’ll get to see some of the coast and countryside, which is wonderful.’ Greg lit up. ‘Jim and I will go through the maps and routes before you go and sort you out some good areas, and that’s pretty much it. You will seriously love it, guys.’

‘What will you guys be up to when we’ve cleared off up north?’ asked Scotty, which I suppose we had all wondered
about,
for there was a part of all of us that was suspicious of Greg and Anaya’s true intentions.

‘We will be here dealing with stock and things,’ said Anaya.

‘How will we fit all of us and the paintings in the Kingswood?’ was Andrea’s contribution to the questions.

‘You won’t take much stuff of your own,’ replied Greg, without hesitation.

‘Yeah, the girls will have to leave their make-up. That takes up far too much room.’ Scotty looked round the room for the recognition he felt his joke deserved. Karin delivered him a mock slap on the back of the head.

‘Seriously, doin’ all the way up to Brisbane, yeah?’ asked Scotty.

Suddenly I was very interested. ‘Brisbo? Brisbane, yeah? Is that where we’ll be staying?’ My stomach turned over.

‘That’s the plan,’ said Greg.

‘Right, guys, let’s get going,’ said Lady Macbeth. ‘Make good sales, you guys. Later tonight, we’re gonna cook for you a proper Aussie barbie. Well, Greg is, he’s the cook.’ She laughed.

‘Yeah, we’re going to enjoy ourselves. It’s been a good month for us and it’s going to get even better,’ said Greg. Anaya winked at him.

I sank down into the sofa, trying to get my head around the prospect of perhaps some kind of showdown very soon.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

THE EVENING DRAGGED
. I wanted it over so we could go back to William Street and party. I had been in three houses so far, all of them on Ocean Drive in Diamond Bay. Two of them were time-wasters, and the third were time-wasters who at least offered me a drink. Three female friends sat around drinking cocktails and were more than happy to let me in almost immediately, always a bad sign. They talked about the paintings, laughed at the unicorn, and got me to bring various ones over to each of them so they could examine them at close range. They asked me plenty of questions about the paintings, and even more about myself and where I was from. But they didn’t buy. It would be a rare occurrence to have women buying any paintings without their male partners. They fell into the ‘things for the house’ category, and that was usually a joint decision, I had found. I knew all this but it was hard to get away from them. I was washed out from the sun and the beach, and they offered to make me a strawberry daiquiri, which I couldn’t refuse as I had never tasted one before. Afterwards I thanked them and left, preoccupied by the notion of joint decisions, wondering whether I’d ever experience such a thing.

I quit Ocean Drive, and took the next left into Leamington Terrace. I was immediately drawn to the corner house, where from the street I could see into the lounge, which was packed full of children in what seemed to be a meeting of the largest family known to man. I suppose it was wrong of me to interrupt
a
‘family’ occasion, but you do what you have to do to get by.

I wasn’t sure where they were from; their English was very limited. The man who answered the door was old, with a short beard and yellow teeth. Most of the men had thick dark stubble or moustaches. I took them to be Arab but I wasn’t sure; I’d had no experience of any countries other than the one I had escaped from. Children weaved in and out around us as I attempted to explain what I was doing.

‘Paintings,’ I said, opening up the folder.

‘You show,’ he said.

‘Do you like the paintings?’ I said, bringing out the Stuger.

‘No, you come, you show.’ He indicated for me to stop showing him and to follow him into the lounge.

There were about thirty people packed into the room, which was full of heavy ornate furniture laden with an enormous buffet, with food on it I didn’t recognise. They all spoke very fast and smiled at me, while the men smoked and drank from strange little glasses with a fancy design round them. The women wore baggy sheet-like dresses and had material covering their heads.

‘Hello.’ I smiled at the whole room. The women seemed friendlier than the men.

Most people nodded back.

‘How are you today?’ I asked, not knowing where to start.

‘Hello, how are you? Welcome,’ said a chubby man in a white shirt, with a chest as hairy as a rug.

‘Good. Good.’ I wondered if I should open the folder and get my paintings out or wait a while. Most of the people broke out into chat of their own again, which I didn’t sense was about me, so I thought it would do me no harm to light up and join the rest of the smokers. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a soft pack of Marlboro Lights, the brand I had now switched to, influenced by my visit to Robin’s house in Neutral Bay.

‘No, please. You take, welcome.’ Six moustached men leant forward with their cigarettes. I took one from the man next to me, the same one who answered the door. I felt stupid taking his cigarette because it too was a Marlboro.

‘My name is Kerry,’ I said before my inhale.

‘Yes, welcome.’ They liked to use the word welcome.

‘I come from Scotland,’ I said on my exhale.

‘Yes, welcome to our home,’ said the one who answered the door, again.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Jordan.’

‘OK, right, yeah.’ I had no idea where it was.

‘Please, try this.’ One of the men handed me the small fancy glass. So far none of the women had spoken, although initially they seemed friendlier. They just smiled and nodded and chatted among themselves. I toasted them all and said cheers, they said something back. I drank the fiery drink down in one because the glass was so small and I thought it might be the correct way to do it. This caused them all to laugh quietly. The drink was foul, and what I had imagined meths to taste like. I made a noise after I swallowed it and clutched my throat.

The children started to open the folder and got out some of the pictures.

‘Careful now,’ I spluttered, taking a painting back quickly. I stretched my hands out and rubbed my fingers together in an effort to explain that the kids’ hands might be dirty. One of the mothers pulled two children towards her.

It didn’t take long for the fiery drink to relax me and make me not care about anything again. I also hadn’t eaten much and had just sampled a do-it-yourself daiquiri, which no doubt was stronger than one made in a bar would be. I was enjoying the language barrier, and the room full of Jordanians who felt little need to try to talk with me.

I sat looking around the room at everyone; there seemed no sense of urgency. I decided to enjoy myself for a while before getting to work. Usually I would have begun directing the conversation, but the strange drink had an overpowering effect on me. Some children lingered by the folder, still in anticipation of its contents.

‘You want to look in here?’ I spoke like a zombie. The kids giggled and looked back at their mothers. A woman stepped forward with a dish of olives.

‘Please.’ She offered them to me. I wanted some of the food on the table rather than the olives, but I politely accepted.

‘You can eat if you want,’ said the chubbiest of all the men.

‘Mmm, thank you.’ I was offered a plate and led to the table.

‘What is this?’ I picked up a green thing.

‘This is vine leaf,’ she said.

I filled my plate, sampling almost a bit of everything. Some of the others did the same. I sat back down and ate in silence.

‘I want to see!’ shouted a little boy with big ears and glasses.

‘OK, little man, I’ll show you.’ I felt momentarily happy and playful.

The men started lighting up. I was offered another cigarette but declined in favour of one of my own. I bent forward to take a light off a man two seats to my right. He looked at me and then looked down my vest top. I gave him a quick look back, taking a little longer than necessary with the lighter.

I brought out the paintings, displaying them wherever I could find a space between the furniture and where people were sitting. Once I’d finished, the chatter increased, everybody helping themselves to a closer look, some picking them up and passing them around. There was absolutely no point in me saying much, they would either want to buy or not. Meanwhile I was happy accepting an offer of another shot from the man who looked down my top. I sipped it a little, learning from the last time.

‘Yes, you must take slow,’ he said, looking at me in a much dirtier way than before. I felt differently towards this one than the Greek one from a few weeks earlier. He wasn’t so pathetic – desperate all the same, but not so nervous. I wondered how many men there were wishing that a bit of spontaneous action would appear on their doorstep and break up the monotony of their married lives. It didn’t bother me. The way I saw it, was I was offered drinks and things happened; it had always been that way. For me the language barrier was a plus, the less said the better.

A man, who’d been out of the room since I’d arrived, came into the lounge and said something to the others, pointing back outside to the garden. I wondered when the eye-contact man would make his move, as the situation was very
restricting.
The man from the garden sat down, given a seat by a woman who went outside. The eye-contact man got up.

‘Come with me, I show you.’

I downed the shot, feigned a questioning look to the rest of the room and followed them both out.

At the end of the garden behind a hut was a wooden fence with a corrugated roof, which contained some kind of enormous grill-cum-barbecue facility. The woman was using tongs to turn over a huge piece of flat bread. I couldn’t have given a shit about the bread or whether they were frying a kangaroo out there, I knew what this was all about.

‘Wow, you make your own stuff here?’ I asked, playing along.

‘Yes, we cook Arabian food. This is our bread, you try some,’ said the woman. She took the piece off the heat and put it on a plate. The man said something to her. She took the bread and went inside. I leant up against the fence with my leg folded behind me, waiting until he said something.

‘What is your name?’ he asked slowly.

‘Anaya.’

‘My name is Faleed,’ he said, glancing over to the house. I had gone into a trance in anticipation of him touching my tits. I had no concerns over the people in the house coming out at any time, it wasn’t my problem, and neither did I care about the paintings for a while. He smoked and looked me up and down; I hated myself for starting to ache, but had no control over it.

The woman came back out from the house carrying something. I stood up from the fence and looked alert and interested in the grill. So did the man, who had grabbed some tongs as soon as she appeared.

She handed him a plate with some red meat on it. He laid the meat on the grill, which sizzled and spat. I took the tongs from him for the benefit of the woman. Then she left, seemingly without any idea. I put the tongs down, and moved back against the fence out of view from the house. I looked at his crotch intentionally so that he would see me doing so. Without looking at me, but with his eyes on the house and one hand on the tongs, he pulled my nipple with his free hand. His hard-on was massive and brushed against the edge of the grill. I unzipped him and brought out his cock. All the
time
he looked inside the house, then back to the grill. I moved my hands up and down, he made no sound. He grabbed my breast more firmly then rubbed his hand on my crotch outside my jeans.

‘Open this,’ he whispered.

‘No,’ I said. I leant back against the fence and unbuttoned my jeans just enough for me to slip my hand in, intentionally keeping just too far for him to reach me without losing a full view of the house. The meat sizzled away near his cock.

‘It’s burning,’ I said, moving my hand around.

‘Very sexy,’ he said, not noticing the smoke.

‘The meat, look.’ I gestured to the grill with my head. ‘It’s burning, you must turn it over.’

His eyes had glazed over; I felt my face flushed with the drink and the excitement. He took the tongs and turned the meat over, to reveal a burnt topside. I moved over to him and put his hand down my jeans. He moaned.

‘Yeees.’

I moved his cock up and down some more, before moving back against the fence. A female voice shouted out from the back door. He shouted back, turning his body round towards me more to fully conceal his exposed erection behind the grill. When he turned back towards me, I was touching myself quickly, aware that there was little time.

‘Let me see,’ he said.

I opened my jeans more, unzipping them right down to give him a full view. I was surprised that I was able to come given the effect of the drink, but I did. I made no sound, just shut my eyes and pressed my head into the fence. He came about ten seconds after me, shooting his load onto the ground and spilling some onto the cooler box. He tugged at his penis making sure he’d emptied everything before zipping it away. I had already lost interest. He mumbled something, smiling at me. He attempted to touch my face. I pulled away, feeling that we were both pathetic. He put the meat, which I’d now decided was lamb, onto the plate. I took it from him, saying nothing and headed for the lounge, wanting one more of the shot drinks before I hit the road.

Inside, three people stood round one painting.

‘You have others of this one?’ said the chubby man, holding up my favourite painting of the unicorn drinking from a lake in a background of hanging willow trees and a distant waterfall.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

GREG PLACED THE
biggest prawns I’d ever seen on the barbecue, while Anaya smoked and prodded the coal with some tongs. We all sat round the patio out the back of the house, every so often going back inside to help ourselves to the contents of the enormous fridge designated entirely for cooling beer.