Until I saw a green exit sign.
Until I was outside with only a thin hospital towel between me and a charge of gross public indecency.
A garbage truck rumbled past, trailing a thought-bubble of flies. I ran after it and stepped onto the bar at the back, hooking each arm around what looked like pistons.
The smell emanating from inside the truck was sickening. And the flies, obviously seeing me as some sort of competitor, were now dive-bombing me, trying to drive me away.
I could see more security guards hurrying out of the hospital doors, but the garbage truck turned around a corner and I was out of sight.
I’d thought – I’d hoped – that the garbage truck would continue to trundle around, picking up garbage, and I could’ve picked a convenient place to get off.
No such luck.
We were headed for the entry ramp onto the freeway. And we were going too fast for me to jump off.
The wind was now trying to rip off my towel.
I unhooked one arm, holding the towel in place with that hand.
A car came up behind me, the driver an old lady with a halo of blue hair. I could see her eyes widen as she noticed me on the back of the garbage truck. I let go of the towel to give her a reassuring thumbs-up.
I’m okay, Granny.
But as I did the wind whipped the towel from around my waist.
I just managed to grab it before it flew away and ended up on the old lady’s windscreen. She gave me a smile and a thumbs-up of her own before she put on her indicator and shuffled over to the next lane.
Anzac Bridge, said the sign, and now I knew I was in Brisbane, that somehow The Debt had brought me here.
I knew why, too – they were flexing their muscles, punishing me for trashing ClamTop.
As we drove onto the bridge, the traffic slowed considerably.
And people started beeping their horns. Brisbane, and the Anzac Bridge in particular, is famous for its traffic snarls. But then I realised that some of them were beeping at me. And behind me, a man in a Lexus was on his mobile phone. A few minutes later there was the wail of a police siren. The traffic had slowed down to walking pace now and I knew it was time for me to lose my garbage truck.
‘Bye, flies,’ I said. ‘It’s been a buzz.’
I stepped off the back, and, dodging cars, ran over to the side of the bridge. Unfortunately, I’d chosen the side that didn’t have a footpath. Now, even more people were beeping their horns.
‘Nice butt!’ a woman yelled.
There were two police sirens wailing.
I looked over the railing, at the swirling waters of the Brisbane River below. It looked a long way down, but I didn’t think it was that far, not jump-and-you’re-dead far. The police sirens were getting closer, and somebody whose voice rang with authority yelled, ‘Hey, you!’
I climbed up onto the railing, the wind ripped the towel off, even more horns beeped, and I jumped.
It was further than I thought – I seemed to be in the air forever. And the water, when my feet hit it, felt like concrete, sending a judder through my whole body. My momentum kept taking me down, deeper and deeper, into water that was darker and darker. Eventually, my feet touched bottom. I kicked against it, but there wasn’t much to kick against, just slimy mud. Eventually, when I was knee-deep in it, I stopped descending and slowly began to ascend.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been under, but now my lungs were burning. I looked up and could see the sun etched on the rippled surface of the water.
Not far now, I kept telling myself, kicking hard, grabbing rungs of water with both hands, pulling myself upwards, but my brain was complaining about the lack of oxygen and I was starting to feel light-headed.
Eventually, I broke the surface.
It was a state I was familiar with from running: the need to gulp in air, to replenish my lungs. When I’d finished I could see that I had another problem: the current was ripping along, and taking me with it, towards the open ocean.
I knew, having being caught in a few rips in the surf, that even if you’re a good swimmer you don’t try to swim against a strong current, you don’t try to fight it. Because that was one fight that the current, undisputed world champion in all weight divisions, was always going to win. Even swimming across the current, making for either shore, wasn’t advisable when it was ripping as ferociously as this. You’d soon tire, you’d soon drown.
Conserve your energy, settle back and enjoy the ride, Dom, I told myself.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot to enjoy. Yes, the water was warm but that was about it.
As I neared the open ocean, as the river widened, I thought the current would slacken off.
I was wrong. If anything, it became stronger. Relatively calm before, the water was boiling now.
I wasn’t a gun swimmer like Tristan, but I could swim a kilometre freestyle, no problem. And I could probably breaststroke all day if I needed to. So I was still confident that once the current released its hold on me I’d have the strength to make it back to shore.
That was until I saw the tanker. A great, giant brute of a thing, it appeared from behind some containers stacked on a distant wharf.
Keep going that way, I told it. Don’t come here.
The bow heaved around, and the great, giant brute of thing was now headed directly for me. And what’s more, I was headed directly for it. In fact, I was probably going faster than it was.
I knew that if I was anywhere near the tanker when it passed I would get sucked into its whirling vortex. Then there would be no escape – I would get carved up by its enormous propellers.
Why did I run away from the hospital?
Why did I get on that garbage truck?
Why did I jump off that bridge?
And then another question: why did I go to Preacher’s in the first place?
But before I could answer that I saw it: about halfway to the left-hand shore was a navigation buoy.
A boo-ee, I thought, because for some weird reason I always saw buoys through Mom’s American eyes.
The boo-ee was red, streaked with birdpoo, with a shag sitting on top of it.
I knew that if I could somehow get to it, wrap my legs around its mooring chain, then I might have a chance against the tanker’s fearsome suction.
So I started swimming.
Not towards the buoy, because then the current would take me beyond it, but towards a point on this side of it.
I put my head down and thrashed hard with my arms.
I was Tristan.
I was Ian Thorpe.
I was Michael Phelps.
And I missed the boo-ee by about a metre.
I watched it fly past, the shag throwing me a sympathetic look. I desperately tried to get back to it but it was no good. Not even Tristan, Ian Thorpe, or Michael Phelps could’ve made headway against that current. I looked up and the tanker was almost on me, the huge vee of its bow, its towering superstructure, the shuddering throb of its engines.
They say that just before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. They’re wrong. Nothing flashed before my eyes. All I could think of was those dreadful propellers, slicing me up like the salami at Taverniti’s.
And I thought of what Gus had said: ‘No creditor wants to destroy their debtors, because then there’s no chance they can make their repayments.’
Well, it looked like The Debt got this one wrong.
I didn’t see the white unmarked jetski until it was almost on top of me. The man driving was wearing a black wetsuit, wraparound glasses and a cap.
He came alongside, leant over, grabbed me by the wrist and yanked. He was immensely strong, and it felt as if my arm was going to pop out of its shoulder socket. It didn’t, though, and I managed to scramble onto the back of the jetski. There was a boom from the tanker’s foghorn. The man twisted the throttle and the jetski responded immediately, rearing up, then accelerating away. Another blast of the tanker’s foghorn, but we were safe
and I watched as the great steel wall, streaked with rust, passed us by.
‘Oh my god, thanks so much!’ I said, but my words were whipped away by the wind as the jetski headed towards the shore.
When we were close, the man eased the throttle and we glided in towards a stretch of mucky sand.
‘Thanks heaps,’ I said. ‘What are we going to do now?’
The man answered by twisting the throttle hard. The jetski reared up, my legs flew into the air and I tumbled off the back.
I sat on the muddy bottom, oily water lapping my waist, and watched as the jetski, gathering momentum, headed back upriver. Even when it had disappeared from view I didn’t move. I moved my focus to the tanker, watching until it too had disappeared. It was only when a dead fish, its silvery belly distended, floated past that my brain seemed to start working again.
Did all that really happen? Had I really almost been killed?
It seemed that after such a momentous experience I should be having feelings, emotions, that were equally momentous. But I wasn’t. Sitting there, water washing around me, dead fish floating past, I felt extraordinarily calm, more calm than I could ever remember feeling before. And I probably would’ve stayed there, except that I suddenly realised crabs were nipping at my extremities, fingers, toes, all of them.
I got up and waded to shore, thinking about what to do next. I was butt naked and a long way from home. It seemed to me that I should do something about the former before I tackled the latter. The beach – if you could call it that – was littered with debris, layers and layers of it; it looked almost post-apocalyptic, the earth choking on all this crap.
Surely, I thought, among all this stuff, there had to be some clothes here, something I could wear.
I was right. Sort of. There was clothe. Singular. A skirt. Pleated. Tartan. Filthy. But I put it on, using a piece of frayed yellow nylon rope as a belt, and set off.
Behind the beach there were mangroves. I stood at the edge, looking at the mud, smelling the mud.
Beyond it, I could hear the faint rumble of traffic.
I thought of that rhyme my kindergarten teacher used to sing to us when I was a kid, the one about going on a bear hunt.
Oh no! Thick yucky mud.
Can’t go over it. Can’t go under it. Got to go through it.
Squish. Squish.
Squish. Squish.
At least there were no crocodiles, I assured myself. Not this far south.
So I started squish-squishing through the thick yucky mud towards the sound of the traffic.
As I walked, more pungent smells seemed to erupt out of the mud. Mosquitoes attacked me, penetrating my skin, my blood their frappuccino.
Can’t go over it. Can’t go under it. Got to go through it.
Up ahead I could see an embankment, on top of it a road.
Almost there, I told myself, just as I saw the crocodile.
Well, that’s what I thought it was, but of course there weren’t any crocodiles this far south.
It was actually a tractor tyre, half buried in the mud, which had managed, somehow, to make itself look like a croc.
Still, I ran – stumble trip stumble trip – all the way to the embankment, scrambling up its rocky side until I was on the road.
As traffic whizzed past, I thought about sticking out my thumb. I quickly decided against it, however – there would be too much to explain. Right, so you thought they’d chopped off your leg? So you hopped onto the back of a garbage truck? And then you jumped off the Anzac Bridge? And a tanker almost ran you over?
Forget it.
But then a taxi pulled up in front of me and the driver leant out of the window.
‘You look like you might need a ride,’ he said with an accent.
‘Luiz Antonio,’ I said, remembering the name I’d read a few weeks ago from the licence.
He smiled and said, ‘Hop in.’
So I did.
I was so grateful that he’d picked me up that I didn’t want to think too much about what a coincidence this was: what, he just happened to be driving along this road?
‘Can you take me to the Gold Coast? Halcyon Grove?’ I said. ‘I don’t have any money on me, but I can get somebody to pay you when we get there.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Not easy to carry a wallet when you’re wearing something like that.’
Okay, I suppose it was pretty funny, but I wasn’t exactly in a laughing mood.
‘No, it’s not,’ I said, smoothing my skirt over my thighs.
We took off, and he switched the car stereo from radio to CD mode.
The music that started playing was very rhythmic, heavily percussive.
‘You like samba?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know much about it.’
‘It’s from Brazil,’ he said.
I remembered that last time he’d picked me up he’d said that he was from Rio.
He sang along to the CD.
‘What does it mean?’ I asked.
‘Basically, if you don’t like samba, you’ve got a bad head and sick feet.’
I laughed at that, glad for anything that took my mind off what I’d just experienced.
‘I suppose I like samba then,’ I said. ‘So you’re from Rio, right?’
‘Cidade marvilhosa!’ he said.
As Luiz Antonio drove he told me about Rio de Janeiro, about the beaches, the football, the carnival.
I’m not sure when I fell asleep, or how I could fall asleep with samba playing, with him talking, with all those itchy mosquito bites, but I did, and when I woke up we were at the Halcyon Grove gates and Samsoni was peering in through the window.
‘Everything okay, Mr Silvagni?’ he was saying.
‘Sure, fine,’ I said.
Apart from the fact that if I didn’t get ClamTop back from the rubbish The Debt would probably cut off my leg.
Samsoni didn’t look convinced and I couldn’t blame him.
‘Some mates pranked me pretty good,’ I said.
Samsoni smiled at that.
‘Do you mind fixing up the driver? I’ll pay you back later,’ I said. ‘I really need to get home.’
‘Of course not,’ said Samsoni, taking out his wallet and extracting a twenty-dollar note.
‘It’s actually two hundred and seventy-three dollars,’ I said, reading the meter.
Samsoni gave a low whistle, put the note back into his wallet and went to hand the driver his credit card, but Luiz Antonio waved it away.
‘I was coming down here anyway,’ he said.
I tried to argue with him but it was no good; he didn’t want my – well, Samsoni’s – money.
‘Do you have a card?’ I said, figuring that if I had his details I could work out a way to get his money to him.
‘Sure,’ he said, taking a card from his top pocket and handing it to me.
‘My house is that way,’ I said, pointing to the right.
As Luiz gently eased his foot off the clutch and we chugged off, I couldn’t help myself. ‘Can you please step on it, driver?’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Luiz Antonio.
He stepped on it and the taxi responded by backfiring twice and then slowly gathering momentum.
By the time my house came into view I already had my hand on the handle.
‘Thanks,’ I said as I got out, the car still rolling.
‘No problem,’ he said.
Readjusting my skirt, I ran straight for the rubbish bin. I threw open the lid. It was empty!
Immediately I imagined the worst: ClamTop in a vast landfill. ClamTop compacted. Me in a vast landfill. Me compacted.
‘Master Silvagni,’ came a voice from behind me.
I turned around.
It was Roberto, the head gardener, the one who didn’t actually do any gardening. In his hand was a bag, one of those green environmentally friendly shopping bags.
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to inject some authority into my voice, not easy when you’re wearing a f
ilthy, pleated tartan skirt kept up by a piece of frayed yellow nylon rope.
‘I’m pretty sure this is yours,’ he said, holding out the bag.
I peered inside. It was ClamTop.
Immense relief, but then several questions occurred to me. Where did he get it? How did he happen to be there exactly when I got home? And the big one: did Roberto, our head gardener, have something to do with The Debt?
‘Where did you get this?’ I said.
‘Take it,’ he said, and there was this tone in his voice, as if he was somebody who was used to telling other people what to do, and I don’t just mean telling the junior gardener to mow the front lawn.
When Dad talked to the staff he sounded almost apologetic, as if he wished he didn’t have to ask them to do things. Mom, however, never said ‘please’ or ‘thank you’; she just gave unambiguous orders in her big American voice.
‘But I asked you where you got this,’ I said, adopting some of Mom’s born-to-order tone.
Roberto didn’t answer and there was this sort of Mexican standoff, the two of us standing there, eyeballing each other, the ClamTop inside the shopping bag between us.
Eventually Roberto broke eye contact and said, ‘I found it, Master Silvagni. And Hue Lin said it was yours.’
Hue Lin was the cleaner; she was often in my room, so it made sense that she knew ClamTop was mine.
So maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he did find it, maybe he didn’t have anything to do with The Debt after all.
I took the bag.
Was about to say ‘Thank you’ but decided not to.
‘By the way, Roberto?’ I said instead.
‘Yes, Master Silvagni?’
‘I reckon the grass around the pool needs edging,’ I said.
‘I’ll see to it myself, Master Silvagni,’ said Roberto, before he turned around and sauntered off.
I hurried inside and upstairs to my room. I realised that there was less than a week until Earth Hour!
What an idiot I’d been. Only a few days for me to work out how to do the impossible, how to turn off all the lights on the Gold Coast.
I had a shower and got changed into clean clothes.
Turn off the Lights Page 6
