by Luna Blue
Mike marched into Studio One to continue his show after the news break, signalling the end of the conversation. I sat at the computer in Studio Two and started to prepare for today’s Airwaves of Attitude. My last show for a whole four sleeps. A shiver of excitement coursed through my body, as though a tiny, hyped-up-on-sugar fish was swimming in my blood, which actually made sense. Anything swimming in my blood would probably die from a sugar overdose. The thought made me giggle and I forgot to be mad that Mike didn’t notice my brilliant mathematical skills. Anyone who could count four nights’ sleep using their fingers was brilliant in my books.
The songs of Sinatra and Bennett were calling me today. Crooning voices from eras when women weren’t needed for a lot, weren’t allowed to do a lot, but where romance was the main objective of most undertakings, if you judged entire decades by the songs they produced, which I did.
Was I being romantic? Did I even have the right to be romantic with Mike? Perhaps he was more the type of man who liked to do the romancing and not be romanced by a woman. If this was the case, we were in for a few more clashes. So far it was pretty obvious that we both liked to be in control. But the few things he had said about Lee, she seemed to be a pretty independent woman, and Mike had no noticeable issue with that. Her death really was a tragedy. Not only because her death had left an obvious and potentially unfillable void in Mike’s life, but because she was young and clever and was supposed to do something with her life. Not just die because an unknown person shot her in the back.
Perhaps the time of the crooners was the time Mike belonged in. I smiled at the thought, despite the heaviness of Lee’s death weighing on my newly discovered heart. I could see Mike twirling around in a white tie and top hat. Sinatra sang “I’ve Got the World on a String.” I would use this song to open my show today. If the string was sturdy, more like a chain than a string, and if Mike cooperated, I could indeed have the world. As long as you try to be nice and improve the plethora of personality defects you have created over the years. And lose weight, I added.
Mike’s theme music broadcast the beginning of his show. The twanging tune from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”—an ironic gesture of revolt against country music some thought, me included, was played too much at the station. But for every person who hated country music there was one who loved it. So, country music was played at the station. A lot.
At least I hoped Mike’s theme music was ironic.
“That’s right, folks, it’s time for One Less Bushman with your old pal, Mike. You are tuned into Pindari’s very own True Blue FM.” Was it just me or had Mike’s voice gotten sexy suddenly? I didn’t remember ever listening to Mike’s show before. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Still nowhere as good as mine though.
The theme music faded and Mike launched into a story about a female firefighter from the local area who was changing the gender inequalities within the Australian fire brigade.
“Bronnie has played professional Rugby Union in Australia and America, has a bachelor’s degree in sports science, and is an avid property investor. But these aren’t the things that make Bronnie an inspiring woman. The inspiring part of her story begins in 2014 when she was promoted to Fire Station Manager.” Listening to his segment, I thought he had a natural journalistic streak. He was showing glimpses, just slight slivers of intelligence and respect for women, cartwheeling in and out of his consciousness, that were suggesting the arrogance was a front, an on-air personality. Or, that I had fabricated a complete personality for him. Suddenly I was hopeful.
Myanmar was in four sleeps, so I would find out for sure what kind of man Mike was then. No way would he be able to hide his true self with our adjoining rooms and me basically obsessing over him, but in a suave and sassy way. If there was such a thing. I would also find out what kind of woman I was, apart from suave and sassy, of course. I was in for a huge undertaking and I was as nervous as I was excited. God, please let me turn out to be really nice and sexy and tall.
***
Saving my long list for today, I knocked on the door of studio one as the latest Rhianna song started.
“I’m heading to the medical centre tomorrow for my vaccinations. Want to come and get yours?” I asked Mike. “We can see who’s the toughest. It will be me, though.” I looked at the muscles pulling at his t-shirt. “It might be me.” I put my head down. “But most likely it won’t be.”
“I’m all up to date, thanks. Army.” He pointed to the crease in his inner elbow, as if I was supposed to be able to see the needle marks. There were no marks there, only a crease of perfection. “Best interest to keep up with the jabs.” I was a little disappointed that beautiful and sensitive and kind Mike wasn’t going to be keeping me company whilst old, sick people coughed into the air I would be breathing. Oh for heaven’s sake, Rosie, don’t be so dependant! You’ve been to the doctor before all by yourself, you can do it again.
I nodded in agreement with myself and trudged towards the medical centre. Okay, so Mike wasn’t as thrilled as I thought he was going to be. But he was going and I was determined to be happy with that. If he liked me so far, despite my despicable tendencies, then logic dictates he would like me more once he got to know a happier me.
The skip was back in my step.
Dr. Harrison was on duty today and I groaned inwardly. I had been stalwart in my attempts to avoid this doctor.
“Rosie, come through,” the torturer said with clipboard in hand. “What can I do for you today?’
“I’m going to Myanmar and I need all the vaccinations.”
“Okay, we can do that,” Dr. You-Eat-So-Much-Sugar-I-Think-You-Have-Diabetes said, nodding to the nurse.
“Rosie, whilst I’ve got you here, I would really like to do a complete check on you. I know your diet leaves a lot to be desired, and you’re fast approaching thirty, so your body will not be able to metabolise the rubbish you put in your system as well as it used to. You eat so much sugar, I think you have diabetes.” And there it was.
Looking closely at my nails, I refused to make eye contact.
“Rosie,” he continued, as though he was actually getting somewhere, “sugar is a drug. An addictive drug. It can put holes in your brain. Let me do a blood test.”
“Fine.” I still refused to make eye contact. One blood test to keep Dr. You-Eat-So-Much-Sugar-I-Think-You-Have-Diabetes quiet. I need not know the results. And that’s the wonderful thing about being an addict. You can get help whenever you want. Often people are queuing at the door to offer their services, usually so they can feel better about their own lives. But you don’t have to open the door a moment before you want to. The door to Dr. You-Eat-So-Much-Sugar-I-Think-You-Have-Diabetes will be staying closed for a while yet. And dead bolted, just to be sure.
Chapter 8
It’s amazing how time flies when you are skipping instead of trudging for a whole four days. It’s Monday. The Monday. My rude alarm clock was blaring its five a.m. wake up terror. Gently, I turned it off and put it lovingly back in its place. Had this alarm clock always sounded so hopeful? Hmmm, this was new. Five a.m. wake up and not an ounce of rage visible.
It was going to be a good day even though I was going to have to wait for my coffee and buy it at the airport instead of the local coffee shop. It was going to be a big risk, it had taken a lot of complaining to train the local barista to make my coffee exactly how I wanted it. It was a sweet victory, but drinking anyone else’s coffee was now impossible. And airport coffees…well, it was going to be bad. Really bad.
At seven a.m. Mike’s CX 5 pulled into my driveway. I grabbed my suitcase, focusing on trying not to be grouchy over my missed morning coffee and locked the door behind me. Snip sat at the front gate looking furiously at my suitcase. I bent to give him a hug, which went unappreciated.
“Jan will be here to pick you up soon, little Booba.” I missed him already. “Then you get to spend time with Rex. No fighting,” I told him, unsure if Snip was going to pick a fight with Jan�
��s French bulldog just to make me annoyed or if he was going to be too busy having the time of his life. Rex was Jan’s fur-baby and spoilt rotten, so Snip was treated like a king went he went there. He would be fine.
“Here. I’ll take that,” Mike said, taking the weighty case from my hands. He had a pair of aviators on, a perfect fit for his angular face. I could see my reflection on the lenses. I looked happy. Oh god, was I glowing? Cliff Richard pranced into my mind, singing Summer Holiday. I punched him and smiled an even bigger smile.
“No one but Sinatra sings to me, no matter how fitting the song,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Talking to myself. And to Cliff,” I said, opening the passenger door. I was still grinning as I climbed into his red SUV. Mike’s car was pristine, no surprise there. Being ex-army, order and cleanliness were habits that were almost impossible to break. Not that I possessed a clear understanding of order or army level cleanliness, so I was just wondering if all ex-army personnel were excessively tidy. So far, my assumptions were proving correct. I smiled knowingly and decided to break a rule and hum along with Cliff, who had collected himself from the floor of the stage he had been singing on.
“So how are you feeling about the conference?” Mike asked. I had almost blocked out completely the fact we were going for a conference. All I had been concerned about was drinking Mai Tais and hoping the boy-legged swimmers I had bought covered enough of my cellulite.
“It will be interesting to learn some new broadcasting techniques. And we’re lucky to have a radio station at all, so keeping it up to date is super important.” Mike looked at me as though I had been shot. “Okay, okay. I don’t really care about the conference, I’m just excited to be going to Myanmar. And hanging out with you.”
“What on earth has come over you, Rosie? Have you gone off sugar or caffeine, or something else? Are you on something?’
“No, Mike. Don’t you think it’s just possible that I’m turning over a new leaf? It’s time for a change. I’ve told you this, like, a million times.”
We arrived at Wagga airport an hour later after a pleasant car ride filled with forgotten conversation and Mike’s arm muscles. So far Mike was receptive to the new me, and I was enjoying the pleasantness of conversation with someone other than Snip. It was nice to have a person respond to my questions rather than just looking at me or scratching themselves. Dad would have been so proud of me.
I made a bee line for the only coffee stand in the overly bright airport. A grumpy, Italian looking barista stood at the machine, clearly angry at the world. I found this confusing since he had free coffee at his fingertips, there really wasn’t a reason he should be angry at all. He was thin too, so fat rolls or a sugar comedown weren’t a logical explanation for his grouchiness.
Mike had asked me to grab him a short black, and the fish started swimming madly in my veins again. It was a fitting coffee for him to be drinking, and short blacks, as far as I was concerned, were the sexiest of all the coffee drinks. They are strong, to the point, no time to mess around with extra luxuries in life. Just do what you need to do, be done with it, and enjoy the caffeinated rush.
Grouchy barista stared at me. “Can I have a double shot skinny latte with a dash of vanilla? Please.” Grouchy nodded acknowledgment and swirled the skim milk. If Mike’s coffee choice showed he was a succinct man, mine was devastatingly obvious about my current confusion concerning my new understanding about myself and my entire life, although it was getting easier. Maybe time to drop the vanilla shot. I was after all, becoming a grown up. In my late 20s, nonetheless, but still, a grown up.
“How long till we board?” I asked Mike, handing him the ridiculously small cup that housed his equally ridiculously small coffee. It got swallowed by his huge hand.
“We take off in forty-five minutes, arrive in Sydney in an hour, with the connecting flight to Yangon pretty much straight away.” I sat next to him in the lounge area of the semi-regional airport, trying not to look too excited, but inside I felt like a small child on Christmas Eve—I was barely containing myself. Plus the fact I was wearing jeans with a glittery Batman t-shirt didn’t really allow for an air of maturity. I took out my copy of George Orwell’s Burmese Days, trying to suck out some of the maturity from the pages of the complex book. I could feel the oppressive heat of Orwell’s Burma seeping through the pages. Thank god Wagga had air-conditioning effective enough to combat the strength of Orwell’s prose. I held the book high so people around me could see me reading it but no one noticed, let alone became impressed with my reading choice. I lowered the book.
“I wouldn’t have picked you for an Orwell fan,” Mike said, leaning over my shoulder. At least he was impressed with my cleverness. Our bodies touched and I felt the now familiar thrill course through my body, pooling between my legs. Instantly it was harder to breathe, I worried about suffocating in my own lust.
“I think everybody is an Orwell fan, in one sense or another. I mean, pretty much everyone on the planet has read, or knows about 1984. What would you have picked me for?’
“Mmmm. Maybe anything in which the woman has to rescue the man.” I laughed and confirmed he was absolutely correct.
“Generally, that’s exactly what I like to see when I watch TV or movies, but I’m a bit more relaxed about who rescues who when it comes to books. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is pretty much my favourite thing in the world. But then I like The Great Gatsby too, and Daisy Buchanan is at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to a woman rescuing a man. In fact, the only spectrum she’s on is a mental health one.” I was pleased with my character interpretation of Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.
“Buffy rescues men?” My genius interpretation was lost on Mike.
“Sure, she rescues the whole world on more than one occasion. And she even rescues herself.” The depth of my comment was again wasted on Mike, and I made a mental note to get him watching some episodes. I figured he would surprise himself and quite like it, and if he didn’t, he would be polite enough to sit through at least one episode, so I had better pick the best one. I would pick Hush, a ground-breaking episode made with no dialogue. That would impress Mike. For me, it was a win-win situation.
“What else do you like?” he asked.
“Well, as it turns out, I like men who sweat a lot.”
“Is that one of the reasons you’re excited to be going to Myanmar with me?” Mike asked as we smiled at each other.
Our flight was paged over the intercom, and as we stood, Mike took my hand in his. “Let’s do this,” he said. I think it was one of the happiest moments in my life and I didn’t even have a cupcake.
Boarding the plane in Sydney, I eyed carefully a young Indian mother with three small children in tow. She looked exhausted, and the kids had obviously been drinking nothing but red cordial their entire lives. I prayed they would be seated at the opposite end of the plane, which was going to be a stretch, considering we were booked into the middle of the flight.
Mike offered me the window seat, which I would have loved to take, a secure nook on a noisy, long flight but the new me refused his offer, giving him the opportunity to take the secure nook. As soon as I clipped in my seatbelt, I started to detest the new me. She really was stupid and not at interested in protecting herself, which should have remained her main motivation in everything. Of course the youngest and most hyperactive of the Indian children sat directly behind me.
Little Omjay wasn’t so little, using the flight to practice his kick boxing skills into the back of my seat. His mother, seated across the aisle with the other two kids, half-heartedly told him to stop kicking, once, and that was it for the rest of the flight. A few air pockets and the subsequent turbulence were the smoothest parts of the ride as little kickboxing Omjay sat still enough to question his own mortality. If the new me wasn’t in charge now, I would have given him more reasons to question it.
Twelve hours and five minutes later, little Omjay had exhausted all the skill
s in his kickboxing repertoire and I had played every form of possible murder options in my mind, we touched down in Yangon.
Since learning that Mike had been a drill sergeant in the Army, I had spent many nights pouring over videos and blogs, totally enraptured in the fact that Mike used to be one. He was a man of excellence, which you had to be to gain “drill sergeant” status. He may have joined the army for Lee, but he must have been good at it. I wondered what combat skills he preferred, what he was best at. But the opportunity had never presented itself without me looking like a gushing school girl. Looking like a weirdo was something I had grown accustomed to, but morphing into a gushing school girl would have been a whole new low.
I wondered if it would have been inappropriate for me to ask Mike to teach me some skills. I wondered if it would be even more inappropriate to use said skills on small demon children like Omjay.
“Thank god we’re staying in a five-star resort,” I said to Mike. “Less chance of little demons getting killed by under-caffeinated and trying-not-to-be-grouchy-but-failing Australian women.”
Mike looked at Omjay, genuinely concerned for his welfare. “In one way, it’s kind of a shame the conference was booked at a five-star place,” he said as he pulled our bags from the overhead compartment. He looked taller than he did in Australia. “It’s not exactly the best way to get a feeling for a country, is it?’
“True, but I’m not sure I have the energy for a full-blown cultural experience. I have Orwell for that, kind of. And there’s no reason we can’t learn at the conference, relax at the pool bar, and experience some of the culture.” But I knew my words were a lie. The truth was, I couldn’t be bothered exploring past the perimeter of the resort, aside from the balloon ride, which was only about exploring Mike in a romantic setting. It had everything; the sea, cocktails, room service, a swimming pool, me in my cellulite covering swimmers—fingers crossed—and Mike.
