Troppo (22 page)

Up at Roger's, everything's sharp, the bamboo and frangipanis are cut with cartographic precision.

We talk small. Josh asks if I've settled in, how it's going.

I give him a sanguine, if somewhat untruthful, picture of my time here. Don't mention the panic and adrenaline of the morning. Or last night. Or the police visit …

Our coffees arrive.

Josh looks at his hands. ‘I don't quite know how to say this, Penny,' he begins.

He looks different. His hair is longer, there's more grey in it. His shoulders are bigger, and it looks like he's not just running but that he might be swimming again and back on the weights. He's calm and grave as usual but there's something else in his countenance, the throb of some unknown impulse, new to me. New and almost exciting.

‘This is really hard for me,' he says, and spontaneously, sympathetically, I reach out and take his hand.

He gently wrings it free.

‘I, um. I've been seeing someone,' he says.

My coffee mug is almost to my lips. I stare at him over the rim in disbelief. ‘What?'

‘Well, not just “someone”. I'm actually back with the ex.'

The cup slides, coffee spills, my fingers burn.

‘Oh.' That's all I can manage. I draw out a serviette, start wiping.

‘Penny? Come on, Pen, at least look at me. At least say something.'

I stop wiping.

‘Pen?'

‘You came all this way to tell me
that
?'

‘Well, yes and no. Jessica and I are having Christmas in Bali.' He seems relieved to be able to explain himself. ‘Our flights were via Jakarta so I thought the right thing to do would be to tell you in person. I flew to Bandar Lampung then got a driver from the airport but we didn't get in until late last night. I was going to drop by Shane's tomorrow morning to see you, then head back to Bandar Lampung tonight. But there you were.'

‘But here I am.'

He's still looking at me, evenly, honestly. ‘I also wanted to bring you the rest of your things. You didn't leave much but … well, Jessica's moved back in.'

All that indecision. All that guilt. For what?

‘Okay,' I say.

‘Okay? Is that all?'

‘No. That's not all. Can you leave my things at Ibu Ayu's?'

‘Sure. That's actually where I stayed last night.'

I manage to lift my eyes to his. I wish with that look he could know my question, wish he could feel the terrible deadness and storm in my heart. ‘What happened?'

‘It probably started six months ago. We ran into each other in town, went for a coffee. Probably a month before you left we were sleeping together –'

‘No, I don't care about that. I mean what happened with me? What was it about me?'

First Matt, now Josh. Or really, first Josh, then Matt.

‘Nothing,' he says. He's lying, trying to soften it.

‘Tell me.'

‘Look, how do I say this? I was reading something on the plane, in the inflight magazine. In the article the journo reckoned you learn more about a man through his plans than any other way. Because plans are daydreaming and that's the absolute measure of a man.'

‘Well, I'm not a man,' I say hotly, childishly.

He ignores me. ‘But I never know what you've planned, you're always drifting, you're never quite present. Always watching but never quite involved. You've got no goals, no drive. How can I try to structure my own life around you, when you can't even tell me what you're doing? Where you're going? When you'll be home?' Then, with the faintest hint of accusation, ‘Were you even planning on coming back?'

My fingers grope against the wooden table in search of the car keys. The waitress is approaching the table with our lunches. I can't stay a moment longer.

‘It doesn't matter,' I say, eyes wet. ‘None of it matters.'

‘I'm sorry, Penny,' he says. ‘I'm so, so sorry.'

I get out of there before I start bawling.

The machete swing of a setting sun: within moments it'll bury itself in the water. There's a bule in the surf-check tower, longlimbed, his rapt, soft-eyed gaze spelled by the wave.

When Shane storms out onto the balcony in a Bintang singlet fingered by years of laundering in unfiltered tap water, his bruised face spasms.

‘Oi!'

The belting has clearly done nothing to curb Shane's aggression. If anything, he seems worse.

The bloke in the tower turns around.

‘What the fuck do you think you're doing up there?'

‘Just checking –'

‘Just
nothing
,' Shane barks. ‘That view's for paying customers only.'

The bloke thinks it's a joke, his lips twitch to smile. But when he sees the look on Shane's face, he quickly climbs down.

‘Whaddyawant?'

‘Someone in town told me you do board repairs.' He's Irish. ‘Yeah? Well I don't. Anything else?'

‘No, no, I suppose that was it.' The bloke has pale eyes, is sunburnt to the wrists. He isn't fixing for a fight.

I find myself looking on with indifference. All my nerve endings are dead. My capacity for empathy exhausted. Maybe I should be scared, should get the hell away from this deadly
lime-lick of coast, but for the moment, I feel only a crushing apathy. I sit down. Apparently I have no imagination, no plans. It probably serves me right; I asked for him to explain.

I slide my feet from my thongs. The Irishman casts me a curious look as he leaves.

Shane turns on me. ‘What do you think you're doing sitting down? Sort a man out with a drink, will ya.'

I slide my feet back into my thongs.

When I join Shane with beers it doesn't seem like a good idea to bring up the windscreen.

He looks dreadful. Battered blood vessels hook against a yellowing cheek. There's a cut on his forehead, the crinkled ballbag sag of his throat.

‘What's up with you?' he says. ‘No-one likes a sulky woman. Did those pricks leave money for their rooms and the car hire?'

I nod.

‘Good.'

Around us, the rip and slither of a tropical night. If I keep sulking he might snap again so I rouse myself, ask something that's been at the back of my mind for weeks. ‘Is there much malaria here?'

Shane takes out a packet of cigarette papers, a tin of tobacco.

‘Reckon I got a dose of it right now.' He taps out a line of tobacco.

‘Oh yeah, what does it feel like?'

‘Like shit.' Shane rolls his cigarette with a massive hand.

Suddenly there's a hatch of moths. It starts with five, then they multiply; there are ten, there are hundreds, grilling themselves against halogen, beating tough, translucent wings. We watch the carnage in silence.

At last I ask, ‘Shane, what were you doing up in Aceh?'

And that does it. That softens him. Because he's lonely.
Because he's past his prime. Because no-one is interested in his stories anymore.

‘Why?' he asks gruffly, but I can tell it's a front.

‘I was just wondering. I'm keen to hear about the waves.'

‘Love,' he says, ‘you shoulda been there thirty years ago.'

I bite back a grin. Sip my beer. Feel it chill my lips then burn as it streaks into my stomach. I plan on putting a few of these away tonight.

‘The only bules there were a coupla French dickheads who'd married locals and ran some basic accom,' Shane's saying. ‘That was it. Not like now. Aceh'll be the next big thing. You just wait, in ten years that place'll be crawling with Swedes and Germans who've come to Indo to “do the surfing”.' He scoffs and a tiny orb of spit catches in his stubble. ‘When I first got there, I walked the coastline from Lhok Nga to Tapaktuan, looking for waves.'

‘Jeez! Were you alone?'

‘Course I was alone. Not many people got the guts to do something like that.'

He's right. At home, most people won't surf a wave they can't park in front of.

‘When I found surf, I pitched my tent and stayed until the swell died.'

‘Did anyone hassle you? For camping, I mean?'

‘Wasn't the people I was worried about.'

‘No?'

‘Nah.'

He can tell my interest is piqued so he takes the opportunity to stand, stretch his oiled muscles. Kristi must have given him a massage this afternoon. ‘Gotta piss.'

I'm convinced half of what he'll say tonight will be bullshit, the other half disfigured by time and memory. When he comes back, he tells me about a fishing village he stayed at along the
way. The village was built into the side of a hill, a series of terraces stepping down to the ocean with an escarpment soaring above. Ladders and crooked staircases connected people's gardens and rice plots to their homes.

‘There was no electricity. Not back then. At night, if you were on the beach looking back up, the lamps looked like strings of fairy lights.' Shane stubs out his rolly. ‘I set up my tent but a local family insisted I stay with them, so I did. Every month they had a market on the soccer field, and I happened to be there for it.'

Shane's voice is changing. Bravado coalesces with nostalgia.

‘This market wasn't your ordinary Thursday market or night market. The people from the mountains would come down and trade with the people from the sea. So, you know, strawberries in exchange for fish. And when I say come down I don't mean hop on a bus. It'd take 'em four days walk to get there, through the jungles and over the rivers. All day they'd trade fish. All night they'd trade women.'

He's there. Reliving the buttery exhalations of kerosene lamps, the flash of red in a kain sarong, the perfect symmetry of a village girl's face.

‘I never wanted to leave. It was the most beautiful place I have ever been.'

‘So why did you?'

A breeze stirs around our ankles, lifts the burnt wings of the moths.

‘I fell in love.'

‘Oh yeah.'

‘With a girl from the mountains. Ended up walking back to her village and then got blackmailed by her dad into fighting for GAM.'

‘
What?!'
He's talking about the Free Aceh Movement. ‘Yep.'

Shane stands, whips off his singlet.

Tattooed in a rainbow across his chest are the words, ‘Merdeka atau Mati.' Freedom or Death.

‘Holy shit.'

He slings his singlet over the back of the chair, sits down again. His leathery stomach sags over the waistband of his boardies.

My mind's moving fast. What did he see? How long did he fight with them? What happened to the girl? Did he kill anyone? How did he get out of there? I think again of the dukun, of the spell, of my promise to tell him. The questions will have to wait. ‘Shane, sorry to change the subject,' I rush, ‘but I just remembered, I've been wanting to tell you this for a few days, I … I think you're being black-magicked.'

‘What? Where the hell did that come from?'

‘Just from … well, it was just something I heard and I've been meaning to tell you because I thought you should know.' I run my words together nervously. Don't mention the twisted black thing Adalie gave me.

Shane's eyes turn mean. ‘Who?'

‘What?'

‘Who's doing it? Who's putting black magic on me?'

‘I dunno.'

He leans forward so his face is a foot from my face. I'm terrified. Not sure whether he's about to bite me or kiss me. But I don't show it. Like with dogs. I move my face an inch closer to his.

‘I said, I don't know.'

He growls in the back of his throat. Leans back. ‘I don't give a shit. Doesn't work on bules anyway. I just want to sit here, drink my beer, and be left the fuck alone. And if any of those cunts get in the way, I'll give 'em a kick that'll send 'em back up the trees.'

Breathing yeast into my coffee this morning, my mind finally turns to Josh. I managed to keep it out of my mind last night. But now, with the pounding despair of a tropical hangover, I think about the situation. I don't have a place to live in Perth anymore. Don't have to worry about keeping Josh hanging. Don't have to feel guilty about sleeping with Matt, the handsome prick, though I still feel terrible for Matt's wife. But most critically, I don't have to stay at Shane's just to prove something to Josh, to prove I have direction or goals or vision or drive or commitment or whatever. I wanted the space. And this is what it looks like.

On the ride out to Dennis' during my afternoon break I'm gripped with a familiar sensation. The hangover shifts and just for a few moments I'm filled with an expansive irrational wonder, coupled with that wild sadness that comes with the consciousness of temporality. The plants seem as if they're being steamed on their stems, the mountain line is glossy as crushed charcoal, the palms spin gold light like windmills. It's so,
so
beautiful and I gorge, the way a poet might; to absorb, to distil, so I will remember, heart stuffed up thick and sad in my throat, tiny bugs from the rice fields gluing and drowning in the corners of my eyes.

There's no way Josh could ever compete with my need for this place.

And then the hangover returns.

A few kilometres from the turn-off to Dennis' village I see the Kiwi flying past in the opposite direction. I slow, look over my shoulder. She's pulled over. I turn around, skid to a halt next to her.

‘Penny!'

‘Marika, how are ya?'

‘I just wanted to say goodbye.'

‘Goodbye? Where are you off to?'

She's dressed as conservatively as she was at Dennis' barbecue.

‘I'm not off anywhere. But I reckon you might be. Has your boyfriend come to take you home?' she smirks.

I almost burst into tears but I catch myself, say evenly, ‘No, he hasn't come to take me home.' I shift the bike to neutral. ‘What's up with the clothes? You goin' somewhere special?'