Saving from Monkeys

by Star, Jessie L.

  "How exactly were you suggesting I'd pay for this trip to Papua New Guinea?" I asked slowly, my voice becoming so incredibly dangerous that Elliot instinctively straightened up and away from where he'd been slouched against the counter.

  As if knowing the actual words 'I'd pay for you' would be the ones that would see him run through with a bread knife, he simply levelled a long, serious look at me that said it all.

  The rustling of the thin plastic hygiene gloves I wore told me that I'd actually started to shake with fury.

  "Out," I said fiercely. "Get out, right now."

  He looked for a moment like he wanted to argue, but then he shook his head as if deciding it wasn't worth it, and started for the door. Still, I saw that momentary defiance and it blew away any of my desire to finish this so early. How dare he get to leave this thinking that I was the unreasonable one?

  "Wait," I said, running past him and putting myself firmly back into his path, blocking the doorway. "I've changed my mind, you don't get off that easily. I want to shout at you for a bit."

  I saw the tiniest flicker of what better not have been amusement cross his face, but then he just lifted his eyebrows as if to say 'go on then.'

  I took a deep breath and drew myself up tall, although I was swelling more from self-righteous anger than from the oxygen I'd inhaled.

  "You have no right to come into my workplace and do this," I started, finding the words easily enough now. "Did you think you could just flash me the Sinclair smile and I'd forget that I wouldn't let you buy me lunch let alone a trip to flippin' Papua New Guinea? Seriously, after all these years, how can I make it clearer to you that I don't want your money?"

  "I wasn't offering you money-" he started to say, obviously trying to distinguish the purchasing of tickets from actual money, but I cut him off.

  "Of course you were!" I almost howled. "How else were you planning to get me there? Barter system? Thievery? Were you setting up some elaborate scheme where I stowed away on a fishing boat? And even if you had organised for me to roll around in a cargo hold singing sea shanties and sustaining myself on barrels of rum on the journey, what would possibly posses you to do it? Why do you even want me to come...? Oh, monkeys!"

  The answer to my own question hit me squarely between the eyes.

  "For God’s sake," I snapped. "This is about last night, isn't it? You feel bad because your mean old friends were being typically awful and you wanted to reassure yourself that you're not like them anymore. You wanted to make it all better by buying me off. That's it, isn't it?" I'd been looking pretty much anywhere other than at Elliot as I'd ranted, but my last question I directed straight at him, seeing the defensive set to every line of his body.

  "Seriously, can the dramatics, Rox," he drawled, his tone dismissive, but his eyes sparking in a way that told me I'd well and truly got to him. "No-one was trying to buy anyone off."

  "Yes, you were," I contradicted him, knowing I was right and pretty much incandescent with rage at his denial, "and you know where you can shove your rich boy guilt, don't you? I don't want or need it. You want to iron the wrinkles out of your upper class soul, you send some do-goodery the way of people who do want and need it, there's plenty of them out there. Just don't ever pull anything like this with me again."

  His expression slammed shut at that, leaving him looking down at me as if he didn't even know who I was. So there I was, my chest heaving, my body aching with anger and frustration, and there he was, cool as a cucumber.

  "Are you done?" He asked, not even rudely, just as if he was genuinely interested in making sure I'd finished having my say.

  I nodded, my words having suddenly dried up again.

  "Right, OK." He turned and let himself out the side door, without so much as another glance at me.

  Right, OK? No apology then. A tiny little thread of doubt crept into my mind as my anger was so easily dismissed. Had I massively overreacted?

  I watched him go, walking away so effortlessly, and a horrible thought suddenly occurred to me. The next second saw me whirling through the doors, chasing after him again as he strode down the cement path behind the ref.

  "Sinclair!" I shouted, and I saw his shoulders hunch momentarily, but he obediently stopped and turned to look back at me.

  "Jesus, what now?" He asked, a bite finally entering his tone. "Got your third wind?"

  A fair enough assumption, but that actually wasn't it. Awkwardly wringing my hands in a way that made my gloves squeak annoyingly, I bit at my lip and tried to find the right words.

  "That's probably not going to be the last time I'll shout at you." Yeah, those weren't the right words.

  He looked at me in that painfully familiar 'what are you on?' way and then flicked me a sarcastic thumbs up. "Great, well that's something to look forward to," he said, and I knew that if I didn't get to the point he was going to just walk off again, and this time not stop.

  "Promise me you'll tell me if something else happens with Nan," I blurted out and he flinched backwards as if I'd raised a hand to him.

  As if hoping to cover this reaction, he shrugged, clearly working to convey that he just couldn't be bothered with my antics anymore. Or maybe he didn't have to work at it. "Fine, got it."

  No, he hadn't got it. I reached out, my hand landing for a split second on his arm before I caught myself and snatched it back.

  "I mean, really promise. Even if I do nothing but shout at you every day for the next year or…" I grasped for something unforgivable to him, "...set fire to your stupidly big TV. Even if Abi and Jonah break up and we go back to having nothing to do with each other. I just need you to promise me that Nan stuff will stay totally separate to whatever else is going on. Mum's no doubt given you my number, so, please, if anything happens, call and let me know."

  He understood then, I could see that he did, which was just as well because I was pretty much pleading with him by that stage.

  "Nan stuff stays separate," he agreed. "I'll call you."

  Relief made me visibly relax, but then I remembered whose company I was in and the stunt he'd just pulled, and I stiffened again. It was my turn to walk away and I started to do so when Elliot said quietly, "Rox?"

  I stopped, but didn't turn around as I asked, "What?"

  "Don't set fire to my TV."

  A smile pulled at my lips as I heard in those words a poorly articulated, but definitely there, apology. Desperately trying to achieve some modicum of his cool, however, I continued on my walk back to the kitchen, simply calling over my shoulder, "I make no promises, Sinclair."

  ~*~

  "You'll never guess what Joe just asked me."

  It was later that afternoon and I was sitting on my bed calming my frazzled nerves by analysing trade agreements of the Asia Pacific, when Abi burst in.

  "He asked you to go to Papua New Guinea with him next week," I replied, making another mark in my textbook before looking up and seeing her standing, stunned, in the doorway.

  "OK, maybe you will guess," she choked out and I smiled grimly.

  "I had my own invitation earlier."

  Her cheeks were already flushed a bright pink, but this pronouncement darkened them further. "To Papua New Guinea?" She asked, sounding exactly like I had earlier in the day; squeaky and shocked. "From whom...? Oh my God, Elliot asked you! That's why he wanted to know where you were! So he could ask you to Papua New Guinea! I need to sit down." She pushed herself off the doorway and staggered across the room to collapse on her bed before staring across at me through wide, heavily kohled eyes. "Unbelievable," she breathed. "This is so weird."

  "Trust me, weird isn't the word I went for," I assured her, closing my book and hugging it against my chest.

  "All these years of 'Elliot and his friends are scum' talk and then suddenly they're inviting us to Papua freaking New Guinea," she continued, as if she hadn't heard me.

  "I think the 'suddenly' was helped by the crazy amounts of sex you've been having with Jonah," I pointed out, but
she shook her head, sending her kooky earrings jangling.

  "Sex doesn't equal Papua New Guinea," she said faintly. "Trust me, I've been having sex for years and this is the first time international travel has turned up as part of the deal."

  "I told Elliot you wouldn't be going." I was surprised by my own smugness. Maybe Abi spending all her time with Jonah had got to me and I was enjoying being the friend who knew her better than him. Then again, it could've just been that it was good to see someone justify how freaked out I'd been with Elliot.

  "Wait. What?" Abi stopped shaking her head abruptly, and looked at me almost accusingly. "You told Elliot I'm not going? Why would you say that?"

  Taken aback by her response - had I got it wrong? - I trod carefully as I asked, "So...you are going to Papua New Guinea?"

  "No, of course I'm not going to bloody Papua New Guinea! I've finally got some of my work in a gallery, I'm not going anywhere!" She exclaimed, before letting out a strangled groan and rubbing her hands across her face. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap," she apologised. "I guess I'm just…" She trailed off and then groaned again. "I'm just hacked off, to be honest. Joe must have completely forgotten about the gallery thing. He said they'd had this trip planned for ages, but still..."

  "Oh, hon," I put down my book and crossed over to sit beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "You can't blame Jonah for being so obsessed by you he can't stand the idea of leaving the country without you. He probably got all swept up in being romantic and forgot about real life for a moment."

  It was disconcerting finding myself talking on Jonah's behalf after all the years of thinking of him as just a waste of, quite considerable, space. Come to that, it was disconcerting to find myself on the other side of an argument I'd had myself not that long ago.

  While I let my words sink in, I amused myself by wondering just how hard anyone listening in would want to punch us for having such high-class problems. 'Oh, my boyfriend wants me to go overseas with him'. 'Some guy wants to pay for me to have an international holiday.' 'Wah!' 'Wah!'

  "Do they always do this?" Abi asked after a while, dropping her head onto my shoulder. "Just think that their plans are so much more important than everyone else's?"

  And that, right there, was why this wasn't really a high-class problem. It wasn't about a trip away, it was about a complete disregard for other people's lives.

  I knew it would make Abi feel better if I lied and said that this was a one off, but that wasn't what we were all about. We weren't the 'lie to my face for an easy life' kind of friends.

  "Once, when I was about 12, Elliot saw that my mum was really tired," I started to explain. "He told his parents that Mum needed to take her holiday straight away, thinking he was helping her out. He marched into the kitchen one day and was all 'you're going on holiday for a week, starting tomorrow, no arguments'. My mum didn't see that there was any way she could say no without being really rude to her employers, but," I gesticulated crossly, "that wasn't when she wanted her holiday. She'd been working hard, sure, but that was because her friend was coming to visit the month after and she wanted time off then to be with her. In the end Mum just spent a week at home, bored out of her brain and then didn't have enough leave accrued to spend hardly any time with her friend."

  The injustice of it still burnt white hot. The way Elliot had just stormed in and 'fixed' things…and the way my mum had just let him.

  Sometime during the story our roles had been reversed so that it was Abi looking at me in concern by the end of it. "He really did a number on you growing up, hey?" She said with raised eyebrows, and I shrugged uncomfortably.

  "Elliot was in control of everything, you know? Him and his parents. It's hard to sleep at night when you know that the roof over your head, your lunch the next day, everything is paid for by the family of the kid who laughed about you only having one pair of shoes."

  "Wow," Abi grimaced after a short, ringing silence. "I don't think I've ever heard you put it like that before. You've mainly just ranted about his hair."

  "It is very annoying hair," I said in my defence, pushing back down all those old bitter feelings of subordination.

  "It's a different world," Abi said, unwittingly echoing my words to Elliot earlier in the day. "I didn't know what you were talking about before, I thought you were being a bit dramatic, but you're right. Elliot and Joe, they've grown up so differently from us. I'm the only person in my family to go to university; my parents have never been out of the state, let alone the country. How do I go about dealing with a guy who has grown up so damn privileged?"

  "I may not be the best person to ask," I said with a small laugh. "Maybe fix on something like his hair and mock it mercilessly? That seems to work for me."

  "Seriously, though, how would I even pay to go to Papua New Guinea?" She suddenly exclaimed and I burst out laughing.

  "I love you," I grinned. "That boyfriend of yours could probably buy the gallery you're so mental about with his weekly allowance, but it hasn't even occurred to you that he'd finance the whole thing."

  "What? Pay for me to go on my first overseas trip?" She asked indignantly. "No thanks. When I do get out of here I'll do it on the proceeds of my first big sale."

  "Yeah you will," I agreed enthusiastically, glad to see her suddenly so perky.

  "So I'm going to call Joe," she said, getting to her feet and pulling her mobile out, "and tell him that he's in serious trouble for thinking that my life is something that can be so blithely put aside."

  "Atta girl," I encouraged her.

  "Then he's going to apologise profusely and we're going to have such mind blowingly fantastic sex that he won't look twice at any hot little Papua New Guinean girls."

  "As long as you do it at his place, I'm all for it," I cheered.

  She looked down at her phone presumably to dial Jonah's number, but suddenly stopped and looked back at me archly. "So Elliot wanted you to go too, huh?"

  "Urgh," I groaned, "don't start all that again. Go and have your mind blowing sex, I'll explain why I got an invite later."

  I could tell by her expression that she was going to hold me to that and my stomach sank at the thought of having to rehash the 'pity invite' thing again.

  Suddenly, more than ever, I wanted to know what had happened the night Elliot and I had had sex. I didn't think I could stand it if it turned out to be somehow connected to his obvious need to provide me with charity. Pity sex, oh God, I really, really hoped that wasn't it.

  ----------

  The soft wheezing sound of laughter filled the room as Elliot battled with a computer generated foe on his, as Rox would put it, stupidly big TV.

  "I'm not sensing a hell of a lot of sympathy here," he said through clenched teeth, directing his comment towards the mobile sitting on the coffee table before him.

  "Sympathy? Pah!" Nan said in her new, slurred voice. "You're the equivalent of a gazelle that wandered into the midst of a pride of lions, called the alpha a fat lump, and then slit its own throat open. Natural selection should have dealt with you years ago." And she went back to laughing at him.

  Furiously mashing the buttons on the controller, Elliot nevertheless had to watch as his character was delivered a KO blow. He glowered as his erstwhile opponent delivered some pithy one liner about how weak he was. God, was everyone determined to have a go at him today?

  "Tell me again the bit where Rox realised you were offering to pay her way," Nan gurgled. "That part's my favourite."

  "Yeah, yeah," he said dismissively, trying to hide the fact that he'd tell her the same story nonstop for the next ten years if it made her feel better. He knew she wouldn't thank him for such soppy thoughts. "I'm glad you're enjoying this so much. Tomorrow I'll see if I can work my way up to getting hit in the face with a full bratwurst if you like."

  "Sounds dirty," she cackled and he rolled his eyes.

  "Trust me, not even you could make something out of the thing with Rox today." He threw his controller down onto
the couch with a sigh. "The girl was pissed."

  "Of course she was," Nan said, although it took him a moment to decipher what she'd said, her voice was so garbled now. "You'd insulted her. What were you honestly expecting?"

  Looking back, Elliot acknowledged that he really should have expected the reaction he'd got. When he'd thought up the idea of inviting Rox to come with them on their annual mid-semester trip at the bar last night, though, it had seemed genius. He knew Jonah wanted to invite Abi along and if Rox went as well and it got Elliot off the hook a bit for some of the crap he'd pulled on her when they were kids, so much the better.

  Yeah, dumb.

  "Of course you'd take her side." He reached over and pulled his laptop over as he talked. "You should've heard Rox when she said she wanted to shout at me for a bit, it could've been you talking."

  "I've always made it my policy to be on the side of the person who's not an idiot," she said sanctimoniously. "So, what are you doing to fix it?"

  "Who says I'm doing anything to fix it?" He asked, bringing up a search engine as Rox's words 'send some do-goodery the way of people who do want and need it' reverberated around his head. He typed in 'Papua New Guinea' and 'charity'.

  "You always want to fix it," Nan said witheringly. "One good sob story and you'd hand over your whole inheritance."

  Malaria. That seemed to be the biggest deal in his future holiday destination, Elliot decided. And he bloody hated mosquitoes so anything to mess up their plans was a bonus.

  "As long as I have my TV," he said absently as he transferred the amount of money it would have taken to buy Rox's airfares, plus a bit more besides, to what looked like the most reputable charity. Take that malaria. "The best TV out there and my couch, that's all this poor little rich boy needs."

  "You forgot the love of a good woman."