Green

by Nick Earls

  I go to the storeroom to get more tequila and I ask the food and beverage manager if it’s always like this. ‘Like what?’ he says, and he sucks on his cigarette, bored with it all.

  It’s my turn for a break. I pour myself an orange juice and then, maybe because I’m in the habit of adding it to everything tonight, I toss in some vodka. I decide to get away from the crowd—if that’s possible—maybe get to the railing somewhere right down the back and work out where we are. We headed upstream and we haven’t turned yet, but I’m not sure how far we go.

  I skirt the dance floor. Fail to skirt the dance floor. A yellow glow-in-the-dark feather boa loops around my neck and almost takes my head off, and I’m dancing. A girl puts her hand on my shoulder and shouts into my ear something like, ‘Your cocktails are fantastic’. I’m pulled by the neck into the middle of a hens’ night crowd, and it’s the bride-to-be who has pulled me there. She’s wearing a condom pendant and waving a large glow-in-the-dark drink-bottle penis, into which someone has poured a lot of cocktail. She’s gripping her boa with both hands and working it round my neck like a fanbelt. The penis, in her right hand, keeps thrusting forward, spurting cocktail. I know I’ll dream about this. Her friends are around us, clapping. They pick up the pace, she picks up the pace. I’m trying to break free before she breaks skin, but I think my struggle might look like dancing, almost like real non-white-man dancing. It hurts, but I’m good.

  That’s when Frank turns up and I shout, ‘Thank god, the cavalry.’

  No one hears. Frank pushes in, they push him away. He pushes forward again, they move to repel boarders. No one’s getting aboard this hens’ night, with the exception of the hens and their close-enough-to-virginal human sacrifice. Frank reappears, dancing in an overtly suggestive way, with his shirt knotted around his waist and a pineapple held on his head. It’s confusing as hell, but I give him a thumbs up for this valiant attempt to distract them. They move in closer to me, dancing right up against me. Frank’s gone again. The pineapple bobs around the circle like a trophy, like the head of an enemy taken in battle. One of them holds a brizgarita up to my mouth and it pours down my chin. The song ends.

  I duck, push under the bride’s flailing penis, and I’m out of there, catching a spurt of cocktail in the hair as I go.

  That’s enough time off for me, and I escape to the safety of the bar. Frank’s there already, tucking his shirt back in.

  I’m about to thank him when he says, ‘I hope you feel cheap, flirty boy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You could have shared them around.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not cute. Don’t play cute with me. You were an animal out there.’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  It’s no good. There’s too much noise to explain, so I just have to shrug my shoulders as if it happens all the time. Me? Animal? Sure. The lion auditioning the lionesses, that’s what it was. So Frank has come at me with a mixture of admiration and jealousy, and I’m not used to either of those. Nothing I’m used to was happening out there. My neck feels like it’s copped a carpet burn but, for a moment, I stopped trying not to dance. I set down the white man’s burden. And I became flirty boy. That’s Flirty Boy. It’s a superhero’s sidekick’s name—Love Master and Flirty Boy, by Mattel. Comes with cape, mask and special Flirt Power Boaª. Detachable arms sold separately for daytime use.

  I mix drinks with new enthusiasm. I watch flashes of glow-in-the-dark yellow over on the dance floor—the boa, the penis—and this could be looking pretty positive. I can pour, perhaps I can dance. These people don’t know me at all, and I’ve started well. My cocktails are fantastic, and it wasn’t even the bride who said that. It might have been someone single.

  Even Frank’s treating me differently now. We’re working like a team at the bar, both pouring drinks by the row. He’s the only one spooning powder out of his pocket for girls but, other than that, we’re a team.

  Victoria Bridge passes overhead. We’ve turned somewhere upstream and come back. We’re halfway through the cruise.

  A woman leans over the bar, shouting. I hold up a drink, but she shakes her head. She says something about med students, and a friend who’s sick. It’s help she wants. I signal for her to come around to my side, and she follows me down the corridor to the storeroom.

  ‘What are you after?’ the guy there says.

  ‘Someone’s sick. I’m a fifth-year med student. It’s too loud to talk out there.’

  ‘No worries.’

  It turns out I’ve been followed by two women and, in the storeroom lights, they both look drunk but not sick. We shut the door and the volume drops.

  ‘You’re the one we danced with,’ the one who spoke at the bar says. ‘Our friend’s throwing up over the side. The bride, Belle. Someone said you guys are med students, and that maybe it was something you’d cooked up in biochem.’

  ‘What was something we cooked up in biochem?’

  ‘The um . . .’ she looks at her friend.

  ‘Brizgarita.’

  ‘Oh, okay. I wouldn’t worry. We always had to cheat at biochem. The stuff in the brizgarita’s more an upper in the post-sport sense. Nothing too dangerous.’

  ‘But you guys are med students?’ the first girl says.

  ‘Yeah.’ And it seems as though that’s newsworthy in itself so I add, as if I’m channelling Frank’s wanker side, ‘But biochem was years ago. We’re practically finished now. I’ve just come off a twenty-four hour shift in Labour Ward at the Mater.’

  UCLA comes to mind, I fight it off. Get back, you big lying Love Master, get back. Leave this one to Flirty Boy.

  ‘I’m Jacinta,’ she says. ‘In case you were wondering.’

  ‘Phil. Hi.’

  Played cool. Very cool. Her friend is more attractive, so I don’t get her name and she doesn’t talk. That’s a tribal law we established back in the school-dance days, and we all know it. At least, it’s always looked like some kind of law as far as I’ve been concerned—the really attractive girls stand back and have a less attractive emissary do the talking for them. Jacinta has dark curly hair and slightly buggy eyes, but in a way that’s far from unattractive itself. Her mute friend is of the type often described, I think, as willowy. Tonight, though, the willow is swaying and has a few small greenish bubbles clustering at the corner of its mouth. She’s looking risky, and maybe conversation isn’t an option.

  They take me to their friend, the bride, who is clinging onto the railing at one of the less noisy parts of the boat. She’s still clutching a plastic cup in one hand, and I take a look at it to see what she’s been drinking.

  ‘I didn’t know there was punch.’

  ‘Um, no, there’s no punch,’ Jacinta says. ‘There’s sangria, but Belle’s been drinking brizgaritas.’ She takes a close look at the contents of the cup. ‘That’s just, well, backwash. She’s a bit of a mess. Stuff goes down, stuff comes up, you know. And she’s never been good with seafood.’

  ‘I don’t feel good,’ Belle says, sounding angry and sad and sick and showing me her cup of prawn swill. ‘And I’ve totally lost the penis.’

  ‘Belle,’ Jacinta says firmly, ‘don’t worry about the penis. We’ve got a doctor here instead, and that’s what you need right now.’ Belle looks no happier. Jacinta turns to me.

  ‘I always wanted to be a substitute for a penis. Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sure you can be a real penis if you try,’ she says, and laughs. ‘Or maybe that only happens when you graduate.’

  We take Belle to the storeroom and clear the bottom shelf so that she can lie on it. We find a bucket she can throw up into, I pour her some water and I tell the others to keep her on her side while I go to check with the manager.

  It turns out he’s more than happy with how it’s all being handled. In fact, he’s impressed. He asks if they’ve got our contact details, and how we feel about weeknights.

  By the time I get back, Frank’s in the storeroom and turning on the charm, d
espite days of telling me he’s not interested at the moment. Straight away, I feel like the substitute penis, and Frank’s definitely behaving like the real thing.

  He sees me and says, ‘The man. I’ve just been telling these ladies about that time you saved that guy with the ruptured triple A.’ What is it with this lying? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a man with an aortic aneurysm. Frank’s turning on the charm on my behalf. Suddenly, the situation’s slipping out of control, and I don’t think I like it. ‘Cool Hand Phil, they call him. He always downplays things. Don’t be fooled by that. He’s a man of action—a man of total action—when it counts.’

  ‘Yep.’ What can I say? I can’t come up with a second syllable and that makes me completely Cool Hand Phil by default, just when I was starting to grow into Flirty Boy.

  ‘Anyway, we should be getting back to business. You know where we are, girls, if you need us.’ Frank leads me out the storeroom door, and it shuts behind us. He claps his arm around my shoulders. ‘Man, you’re looking good with that chick with the eyes. Hope you didn’t mind the triple A story. I just figured a little help wouldn’t go astray.’

  ‘No, that was great. In fact, I think you’ve helped me so much—so much—that I should really try to take the next step alone. There comes a point when you’ve got to fly solo.’

  He looks at me with something that might be a glint in his eye, but it’s hopefully just a trick of the light. I’m willing him not to say he’s proud of me, and somehow the message gets through.

  ‘Hey, the brizgarita,’ he says. ‘It’s working.’

  ‘Working? What do you mean?’

  ‘They love it. Like, love it. And people keep hitting on me for drugs, all the time now. All the time.’

  ‘What? I can’t believe it. Are you trying to screw up the plan? Objective number one: money. Objective number two: get me a girl. And somehow, just when that’s starting to work nicely, you’re like the big drug baron around here, and all you’ve got is a family-size jar of Staminade in your pants.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you put Bolivia into my head and now I’m stuck with it. Do you reckon there’s any way I could actually make money out of this?’

  ‘Out of selling Staminade? Yeah. You could get a job in a supermarket. Don’t even try it. If that goes up one nostril while we’re still on this boat, you’re a dead man. And I’m not going down with you.’

  I’m annoyed with him again. Typical Frank. The moment he gets in anyone’s good books, he rips out the pages.

  I’m still annoyed when I claim a toilet break twenty minutes later. There are too many people talking about whatever it is Frank’s got, and I’m sure the evening is now only going to end in trouble. I pour myself a stiff vodka and orange, and drink it on my way to the bow. The toilets at the stern are too close to the dance floor, and so busy it’ll be a cesspool in there by now.

  One of the lights is out near the bow, but it’s not so dark that I can’t find the door handle. I need some Frank-free time to think, so I go straight for a cubicle.

  I’ve made the right choice of facility. It’s clean and there’s No one around, and Patrick Hernandez’s ‘Born to be Alive’ is a dull noise at a party somewhere far away. There’s a blast of it when the door to the corridor opens, then the door closes again and there’s only the sound of feet on the floor, the click click of heels.

  The click click of heels?

  A woman speaks. I’m in a cubicle in the forward female toilet.

  Of course. There were no troughs, and it’s way too clean. How did I not notice that?

  They talk about guys, and not spewing. One of them goes into a cubicle but leaves the door open so they can keep talking. Has No one told her sound travels over the top?

  ‘Have you had one of those drinks with the marching powder?’ one of them says. ‘They’ve got a bit of zing to ’em.’

  ‘Yeah, I had a couple, but they were a bit salty for me.’

  ‘That’s the garita part, apparently. It’s garita if you add salt. Brizgarita, margarita.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I reckon it tasted pretty much like tequila and Staminade.’

  ‘And what would you know about how tequila and Staminade tasted?’

  ‘Yeah, I s’pose.’

  Someone else comes in and, for the next ten minutes, the traffic is heavy enough to trap me. Should I shout ‘Maintenance’ and make a run for it?

  More feet. Never a crowd but a steady stream in and out. More conversations. Most of the men on board aren’t being ranked too highly, including the men on the bar.

  ‘That med student Frank’s a bit of a wanker,’ one voice says, and I think it might be Jacinta, the one with the eyes. I shouldn’t keep thinking of her that way. ‘But I don’t mind his friend.’

  Suddenly, pay dirt. Go, Flirty Boy, go.

  ‘What, the one with the chin?’ her friend says, and there’s a pause. I think lipstick’s being reapplied, something like that.

  ‘Yeah, Phil.’

  Go, Chin Man, go. What’s that about? I check my chin right away, and it feels no different to usual.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ the non-Jacinta one says. ‘I wouldn’t say No.’

  I wondered if she was the willowy one. Now I know she isn’t. That’s not the way life goes. The willowy ones? No is their best word, if they bother to talk at all.

  ‘Hey, I’ve met him,’ Jacinta says. ‘I’m halfway there.’

  ‘Yeah? You reckon?’

  ‘Yeah. Okay then.’ She laughs. ‘Five bucks says I pash him before you do.’

  ‘All right. Five bucks? All right. I’m up for that.’

  Okay, I felt weird about the chin remark, but now I know I can get past it. There’s a price on my head tonight.

  ‘Well,’ the friend says. ‘Let’s hunt him down.’

  The door swings open, and shuts. They’re gone.

  Women come, women go. ‘Hunt him down.’ I’m quarry. That’s something that’d work so well for Frank’s outlaw self. I feel more like a pheasant. I talk myself round. Flee, be hunted. Be caught, and give them the full five bucks worth. Use all your special powers, Flirty Boy.

  A cubicle door swings shut. Otherwise it’s silent in here. I make a run for it.

  Back to the bar, I decide. Stay cool. Plus, I’m being paid to serve drinks. I have to remember that. Objective one.

  After only a couple more jugs, I hear someone call out, ‘There you are,’ and it’s Jacinta. ‘The second I start looking for you, you’re nowhere to be found.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been around.’

  ‘Well, it must be time for a break.’

  ‘Um. I just sort of had one, but maybe . . .’

  ‘You should check on Belle. Come with me and we’ll check on Belle. Come on.’

  I turn to Frank and he shouts, ‘Go. Just go. It’s totally covered. Check on Belle.’

  Jacinta takes my hand and pulls me along the corridor. ‘Belle’s fine,’ she says. ‘I just checked her.’ She takes me past the storeroom and around the corner and she shepherds me back into a fire-hose recess.

  ‘It’s quieter here,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Have you bumped into any of my friends lately?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever find you.’ She’s smiling. I hope it’s not just the five bucks she’s smiling about. What the hell, I win either way. ‘I kept bumping into your friend, though. In the end I had to give him my phone number to give to you, just to make it clear to him that I wasn’t interested. In him. I hope that’s okay. I hope you don’t mind that I’m not interested in your friend.’

  ‘No, he can be a bit of a wanker sometimes.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know about that . . . You though, I’m sure that’s a different story.’ She reaches her hand up to my face, runs it along my chin. ‘There’s something decisive about you, and I don’t mind that. Not one bit.’

  I’ve never been on surer ground than this. She’s even tell
ing me to be decisive. I play it the way Frank might, without a single word. I make a move. I put my hands on her hips, I tilt my head a little and I make the move. My open mouth meets hers and I taste the zing of Staminade. Her hand moves around to the back of my head and she spreads her fingers in my hair. Her tongue writhes around in my mouth, and last September was a cruel long time ago.

  I spin it out as much as I can and I give it everything, but finally our heads separate. She gives a lopsided smile, takes a breath, and moves in for more. The five dollars is indisputably hers, and there’s no sign this is ending.

  She runs her fingernails up and down my back outside my shirt, then inside my shirt. She pulls my shirt out at the front and starts swirling her hands around on my abdomen. She pulls herself closer to me and moves us deeper into the fire-hose recess. My back’s against the wall and her pelvis is pushing against mine, pushing and pushing. I move my hands down low on her back, then lower, down to her buttocks and I’m pushing back against her.

  She pulls her mouth away, then bites my neck all the way up to my ear. Her breathing’s different now. Her mouth is cool when it meets mine again. She pulls herself up on the fire hose, higher than me, and I feel her thighs move around me. Oh god, it’s been ages.

  We’re both breathing heavily and she moves one hand down my front, slides it down to my belt and over it, rubbing the front of my pants, rubbing and rubbing. I’m gasping for breath now, gasping for breath with my head back against the steel wall of the fire-hose recess. She’s rubbing faster and faster, my hands are clenched round her thighs. Suddenly, I can’t breathe any more. It’s all . . .

  In one breath out, I let it go.

  One breath, and it turns into more of a moan but it’s far too late to stop things now.

  I grab the front of my pants and she staggers back, away from me. I plunge the other hand down inside to catch what I can and limit the damage. I move the first hand in there to join it, cupping the two of them there, as though it might be any use.

  ‘Shit, sorry,’ she says, and she tries not to laugh.

  ‘Toilet paper,’ I tell her. ‘You have to get me toilet paper now. Lots of it.’