The Near Miss (25 page)

‘An', nemen, when they're red, you have to stop.'

‘Sure, Skip. So! Here we are!'

Grace frowned and clung to the steering wheel. ‘Do you know the way? I need to stop and get the oil checked.'

Melody breathed deeply and exhaled slowly. Grace had been able to borrow a car, and
while Melody had planned to catch the train and hitchhike to the dreaming camp, a close look at the map had revealed that there would be little traffic going to such an out-of-the-way place. The universe might provide, but, then again, she could find herself on the side of the road with a four-year-old and a backpack, in the middle of a rainy night. The universe might provide little more than a stern lesson, which Melody wasn't really in the mood for receiving. And maybe Grace's presence was the universe's way of providing. She tucked a feather back into the nest of her dreadlocks. ‘Shall we play I-spy, kids?'

‘Yeah!' shouted Lotte. ‘I spy wi mi-liddli . . .'

‘Can you tune in the radio, so we get the weather forecast?'

Melody ignored Grace and felt her spirits lift. With feathers threaded through her hair, she wore flared purple leggings with a short striped dress over the top. She had Indian chains on her ankles, a new gold ring in her nose, and she liked the sensation of being Melody, herself, again. She was shaking off all that TV energy. Melody tried not to think of it as negative energy, because it had brought her positive things. It had brought them money, and they had met some good people. But it was a weird space to be in.

She tuned in to a good song.

‘No, no, we need the weather,' said Grace.

‘I'll give you the forecast, oh spacey Gracey. A weekend of vegetarian food around a forest fire, with the retelling of Aboriginal dreaming stories by a wise elder of the tribe. Kindred spirits, the gentle crunch of leaf litter underfoot, our children running wild and feral, eating from the communal pot and playing in the communal teepee—'

Grace groaned. ‘Followed by chanting and group sex, after which we smear ourselves with the semen of the guru and await the end of the world—'

‘What's semen, Mummy?'

‘It's a man of the sea, darling. Like a sailor.'

‘Is he going to be there?'

‘Who?'

‘The semen?'

‘No. I mean, yes . . . I hope the studio can cope without us.'

‘I don't need to be back in the studio until Sunday.'

‘Are you sure we're all going to fit in your tent? It didn't look very big.'

‘What tent?' Melody sat back and watched the paddocks turn green. She wondered if Van might turn up to the camp. Probably not with that reward out on his head.

‘The one in the back. That big bag, thing.'

‘That's not a tent. It's a swag. You don't need a tent with a swag.'

Grace stared at her furiously. ‘You said you'd organise a tent!'

‘And I will! Don't stress!' Melody reached out and patted the shoulder of this woman who had become her unlikely friend. For whatever reason, they had been brought together, and Grace was being taken to a corner of the world that she would never have visited before. Melody was overcome with a feeling of warmth towards her, and shame for scaring her. ‘There's teepees there, Grace. You and Lotte will be able to find a place inside them, no problem.'

‘I'm not sharing with strangers.

Melody sighed and watched a strip of shops flash past. This wasn't the way. ‘Where are you going?'

‘I just want to drop by Eddy's, and . . . borrow some camping gear.'

‘It's seven o'clock! And I just
told
you . . .'

‘Okay, okay, I want to see if he's back yet, from wherever they all were last night. My God, they sounded drunk. It won't take a minute.'

‘Grace! What do you really want from Eddy's?'

Grace sighed. ‘I want to find out whether Miss Laura was out on a date with Tom last night.'

‘Oh, who cares? Let's just go to the camp. Please?'

‘Okay.' Grace subsided sulkily.

Eddy had had four very different orgasms throughout the night. One, he would have described as a sort of purple colour, as if the long evening of his arousal by Miss Laura had inflamed the world. The next orgasm had been a light grassy green, a sweet, spiritual floating through space, under golden tree arbors and through fern. Looking back, he thought he might have smiled at the moment of climax. The third had come after a short sleep, when he had woken with a mad itch in his genitals, driven crazy by the woman beside him, her sloping breasts, her dark nipples, the territory which he jealously wanted to claim all over again. He had fucked then like a teenager, selfishly and wildly wanting to scratch that itch. Then she had woken him at dawn, her naked body crouched over his, kissing his mouth, down his chest, down his stomach . . . He was a lost man, drowning in pleasure, and his fourth orgasm was a gently blissful one, pale pink and deliciously sleepy, her breasts wobbling above as she sat astride him and fucked, grimacing with pleasure.

He held her as if she might fly away, the force of her orgasm sending her into another land, her eyes closing, her neck stretching. He saw her face twist and thought, I did that. She fell down across him and he stroked her shoulder, shrinking comfortably inside her. Come back, he called to her silently. Come back.

At last she breathed deeply and lifted herself. Dragged her wrist out of the tangle of limbs and bedclothes and blinked at her watch.

‘Shit.' She lay back beside him, in the hotel room bed. Her breathing was long and deep, the skin of her arm touching his the whole way along. He smiled at the ceiling, feeling the tendrils of her life entwining with his already. She was going to be late for work, he would help if he could. From such small foundations, big things grew. He lay on his side so he could see her face.

‘Hello.'

‘Mmm. Hello.' She smiled sleepily, wrinkling her nose. Her cheeks were pink.

‘Can we do room service breakfast? Or should I call you a taxi to get to work?' He felt washed clean of his frantic lust, enough to self-consciously wonder whether he had revealed too much of himself, been too much of an animal. He wanted, now, to be a gentleman. With Romy, he had nurtured and cared for her like a child, and if he had performed well enough in this regard, and a suitable period of time had passed since the last encounter, she might consent to have sex. There was always a sort of rolled-eye tolerance of his male urges, and he always felt slightly guilty afterwards. Four fucks in one night, as just committed, would have incurred a frighteningly large nurturing liability. Thus, he attempted to quickly start repayments.

She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Don't
you
have to get to work?'

‘No one will care if I'm late.' This wasn't strictly true, but he could easily text Alf and ask him to cover for him. Although who knew where Alf might be, and whether he had made it back to the city in time for work. ‘I want to take you to kindy, Miss Laura.' He kissed her on the shoulder, butterfly kisses.

His penis was hardening again. It was a national miracle. He was probably going to do himself some sort of damage. And she had a job to get to. He sat up, and pulled her to a sitting position. ‘Okay, I'm going to stop this now. There are a whole bunch of four-year-olds waiting for you.'

Laura rolled her eyes and swung her feet to the floor. She pulled on her panties slowly, sensible white Bonds-style numbers, and then settled her breasts into a serviceable, flesh-coloured bra, all the while eyeing his erection. ‘I don't think you really want me to go to work, Eddy.'

He looked at her sternly and pulled on his pants. ‘I most certainly do.'

Melody stirred the lentils and sighed. The canvas shelter covering the camp kitchen sagged with the weight of the morning's rain, and water dripped perilously close to the sacks of basmati rice. Somehow the kitchen, stocked with food and apparently no one to cook it, had become the domain of herself and Grace. Not that Grace was present at that moment; she was immersed in a session on kundalini energy in the tent next door, which Melody could hear over the gentle drizzle of rain falling from soaked eucalyptus trees.

‘Reach down and feel the base of your spine, where your kundalini energy sits coiled, ready to spring up and cleanse you to the top of your skull with white light. Only your inner blockages are stopping you from achieving your full power, your inner emotional and spiritual plugs, like clogs of phlegm stopping you from achieving a full life of abundance . . .'

They had arrived that morning, after a trip in which Lotte had vomited in the car and they had had to drive for the rest of the trip with the windows open to escape the smell. When they finally bumped down the last stretch of dirt track, they encountered the sign
Camp
. The words
Aboriginal Dreamtime
, which had once preceded the word
Camp
, had been crossed out and slapped with a flier across the top of it. Melody got out and read the fine print.

           
The indigenous people of this area, being the tribes of Moorta Moorta and Taten Wurrung, would like to advise participants of this function that there has been NO involvement by local indigenous groups, and NO permission given to tell our dreaming stories. We demand that the organisers refrain from continuing the despicable and insidious practice of colonising our culture. If participants want to spend their money in support of the Koori community, we suggest they do so through reputable means.

‘Is this the Abiginaldeamtum camp?' demanded Skip, standing behind her.

‘Well, it's the camp.' Grace had said wryly. ‘I'm so glad I brought my gumboots.'

Now, Melody added asafoetida powder and wondered whether the city was corrupting her. There were voices in her head, expressing cynicism and doubt about everything. Okay, so this camp wasn't quite what they had paid for. Okay, so it didn't have quite the feel she had imagined. The leader, Pemangku Lodan, had not been seen and had spent the whole time in his teepee, with two girls in their early twenties, flushed with smug importance (and hopefully nothing else) coming and going to him with food and drinks and joints. A woman had had a terrible acid trip that morning and had lain in a foetal position on the ground weeping, convinced that the clouds were on their way down to crush them all with their force and beauty. An ambulance had arrived to collect her, bumping down the track and ejecting paramedics who looked about them with disapproval. A bevy of local lads had turned up with a slab of beer in the transparent hope of picking up hippy chicks, and had been sternly sent packing by a couple of thin young men in dreadlocks. (They're
our
hippy chicks, was the unspoken rebuff.) The removal of Aboriginal Dreamtime from the syllabus had left a massive hole in proceedings, hastily filled with a mish-mash of kabbalah teachings, kundalini exercises, and a tantric workshop. The children, initially promised an enlightening programme of dreamtime stories, boomerang throwing and indigenous painting, were probably having the best time of anyone. They had been gathered, many of them plastered now with mud, beside a vast granite rock where they were painting pictures on the surface with paints that the hippy running it assured Melody would wash off in the next storm, which looked set to be in about five minutes. Melody stirred her pot and watched them absently.

It was at this point that Grace's mobile phone, sitting on a sack of basmati rice where she
had left it, rang. Melody picked it up. ‘Hello?'

Nothing. Was that heavy breathing, or just the wind preceding the next storm? ‘Hello?'

‘Hell— Ohhh . . . Grace?'

It was a woman's voice, either crying or under great strain. Melody froze? ‘Romy?'

‘Can I — speak — to Grace.'

‘Wait. I'll get her.'

She entered the big tent, and was faced by a strange sight. All the members of this workshop, about forty in total, had been seated in a circle on the floor with their legs ahead of them and parted, their bottoms neatly pressed up against the crotch of the person behind. They were fully clothed, thankfully, but the sexual element in the air was present, and a couple of men and women were groaning, whether in discomfort or pleasure was hard to deduce.

Melody sought through the half-light for her friend and found her on the other side of the tent, looking pained. She paused, standing close to the instructor, and noticed the sign
tantric
beside her. The instructor, a man in a loin cloth and a white T-shirt was ordering everyone to close their mouths and breathe through their noses only.

‘Faster! Faster!'

What on earth would Grace be making of this? wondered Melody, straining to see her friend's expression. It didn't seem like her thing at all. The man spoke again.

‘Now, everyone lie back. Lie back and relax on the front of the person behind you. Open your legs and make room for the person in front. Arch your back if you need.'

The tent filled with movement, some grunts and a few murmured apologies. Melody edged around the side to see Grace.

She found her sandwiched between a man who would have been aged no more than 20 on
the bottom, and a big man in his fifties on the top. Grace was flailing helplessly, tears in her eyes as she pushed against the shoulder of the big man, who seemed to be trying but unable to gain the momentum to pull himself up.

Melody gave him a big push sideways into the centre of the circle, and he rolled off Grace and onto his hands and knees, apologising profusely. Grace quickly rolled out of the circle and crouched over her groin. Melody squatted beside her. ‘Are you alright?'

‘God, he was
crushing
me. I'm going to be bruised all over. What
is
this thing?'

Melody sighed. ‘Sorry. Hey, you've got a call from Romy, on the mobile.'

Grace stared. Melody said: ‘I think she might be in labour.'

Minutes later, still furtively rubbing her groin and wincing, Grace rejoined Melody at the camp stove.

‘Rom's having the baby.'

‘Now?'

‘She wants us to come. She has no one.'

‘And what did you say?'

Grace winced. ‘I said I didn't know if we could. I mean, you've been looking forward to this all year. We've only just arrived.'

Melody stared around herself at the mud, the soggy tents, the water now leaking into the basmati rice and the children's rock painting, already running down the sandstone face.

Grace said: ‘She should have had someone organised. I hardly know her. It's only that I saw her last night.'

‘Eddy?'

‘She said she tried him. He's not home, and he didn't answer.'

‘Should we call her an ambulance? They'd be there long before us anyway. It would take us an hour to pack up. And an hour more to get back to her.'

‘She's worried about the police. There's a reward out on her. She'd be arrested if they found her.'

‘It wouldn't take us an hour to pack up.'

‘No?'

‘We could pack up in five minutes.' Melody stared at Grace, and the two of them grew still, thinking.

‘Maybe . . .'

‘Let's go. Let's get out of here.' Melody turned the gas stove off and put a lid on the lentils.

‘Just like that?' Grace looked breathlessly hopeful.

Melody took one last look around herself and knew that it would indeed be just like that. In a life where she had always honored her impulses, she knew she had to embrace the one now gripping her; to get out of this scene and never come back, ever, to anything like it. Romy's baby was merely the best of excuses.

‘Just like that.'