by Zoë Folbigg
Daniel didn’t really want to go and drink alcopops in a fancy-dress theme night at a club with a guy who called women birds, and he couldn’t really face chitchat. He wasn’t very good at small talk; he wasn’t interested in hearing people’s travelling routes, just as he didn’t expect people to be interested in his. But he didn’t want to stay in the hostel common room watching The Simpsons or Friends all evening with the other backpackers without any friends. Plus, walking into a bar or club with people he didn’t really know was easier than walking into one on his own. Daniel knew he had to dig deep, and he had to make an effort.
I’ll try.
‘Sure thing mate.’
He was a week into his trip and becoming accepting of his new single status, getting used to not having anyone to share sights, experiences and snacks with. Sometimes he even felt a little bit proud of himself, as he walked through leafy Hyde Park eating a prosciutto panini, taking in the sights. Although he wasn’t as keen as Dougal to ‘pull’ – the thought of it terrified him as he’d only ever slept with Kelly.
Daniel politely declined the kind offer of being Dougal’s wingman and he didn’t want any of Dougal’s pills he was offering, so he stood awkwardly around a tall round table with the rest of the Woolloomooloo backpackers – two English girls from Leeds and the French guys, who didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone – sipping from a bottle of something called Sub Zero he’d not seen in the student union at the University of Creative Arts in Surrey. What he really wanted was a beer and to find a bar where he could watch England v Scotland or France v Spain in the Euros later. Surely Dougal and the French guys would fancy that. Or maybe he could do that on his own. Sport was that wonderfully unifying thing where Daniel found he could make friends of strangers in a bar and feel a little less self-conscious.
*
‘Heyyyyy,’ slurred Lou, one of the English girls from the hostel. She apologised for her little red swing dress, that swished flirtatiously at her cocktail-stick thighs, and said she just didn’t have anything in her rucksack that could double as a film character, but mumbled something about her friend Sally being someone from Hairspray. Daniel hadn’t seen Hairspray but he could tell from Lou’s tone that she wasn’t being kind.
‘Don’t worry, this isn’t fancy dress either,’ he shrugged. Daniel was never one for costume parties.
‘You could pass for Keanu Reeves in Point Break if your T-shirt was tighter,’ Lou said with an intent in her eye, as she pressed his chest as if to make it so. ‘And if your hair was a bit darker. And if you shaved.’
Nonsense.
Daniel laughed politely, as he rubbed his traveller’s stubble. His features were gentler. His hair was messier. The soft undulating brown of a grizzly bear’s coat was nothing like a Hollywood film star.
‘Well, I do have two eyes, a nose and a mouth,’ Daniel replied. Lou narrowed her eyes to check if Daniel were joking – and he felt a bit mean about being rude. ‘And I am booked into surf school in Byron Bay in a few weeks.’ He softened the situation with a smile, which he then worried would be perceived as flirty.
Lou’s hair was tied back in a ballerina bun and her narrow face and chest were sunburned, even though it was winter in Australia. ‘I’ve always fancied Keanu Reeves,’ she slurred, still pressing onto his T-shirt. ‘Since Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.’ She fixed her dilated pupils on him. Daniel leaned back against a speaker, raising his bottle so it was a little barrier between his chest and her obtrusive body. Even when he remembered he wasn’t in a relationship and could do what he wanted, he didn’t want any of this. Plus he had a feeling Lou might do this every night – that she was just trying to get one up on Sally, sitting alone and self-conscious on a bar stool while her friend kept trying to prove she was more popular.
As Daniel pressed his spine against the high back of the speaker, a woman hopped up onto a little platform on the other side of it. It was her metallic leather sandals Daniel noticed first, and a gold chain caressing one ankle, sparkling under the blue and purple hue of the nightclub lights. Then her long bare legs as he looked up. She wasn’t in fancy dress either, but she was jiving like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, to the song Uma Thurman jives to in Pulp Fiction. She twisted her bottom in well-worn denim cutoffs. Her hair was big and unkempt.
It’s her.
Suddenly Daniel felt single. And it was OK. He looked up at the woman from the cafe as she sang every word of the song, although he couldn’t hear her under the sound of the nightclub speaker. Daniel looked at her lips. He could see from the way her mouth moved that her English was perfect too. This made her even more exotic and alien to him.
On her back was a tiny backpack and her loose paisley shirt was tied in a knot at her stomach. She looked down at Daniel, inconvenienced by the small plastic cup of something and Coke in her hand that kept sploshing drops on her fingers and toes, and thrust it into his as if to say ‘Hold this for me,’ without saying a word. They looked at each other for a second. Her eyes were speckled and mischievous, but perhaps that was the illumination of the UV lights.
‘Buddy?’ Lou asked. Trying to get Daniel’s attention back. He couldn’t take his eyes off the girl on the speaker. He looked up at her and gawped, his mouth open in a half smile. He watched her jive even more freely now she wasn’t holding the drink, her bottom twisting artfully to the raucous chords of the boogie-woogie piano, and he forgot all of his words, not that she would have heard any.
For some reason Daniel wanted to take a sip of her drink but didn’t. He just stood there feeling voiceless, mesmerised; bottle in one hand, plastic cup in the other.
‘Buddy?!’
Lou looked from Daniel to the woman on the podium and raised her arms above her head to dance a sexier dance. She started writhing against Daniel to distract him, rubbing her groin up and down his thigh to get his attention. He frowned briefly in discomfort but still didn’t draw his eyes away as Lou dry-humped his leg.
The Essex man, who turned out to be called Terry, not Dougal, jumped up on the speaker, pretending to be John Travolta, but his Madchester moves were unwelcome and the girl with the tiny backpack turned her back on him.
‘Excuse me BITCH!’ said a drag queen in a black bobbed wig, white fitted shirt and black cropped trousers, as he almost picked up Terry by the scruff of his neck, dropped him on the floor off the podium and started jiving with the redhead. They got closer, he being careful not to spike her toes between the gold straps of her gladiator sandals with the sharp end of a platform stiletto; she enjoying the fact that most of the club were watching.
As Chuck Berry played, Daniel knew she had forgotten all about him holding her drink.
The dancefloor was packed with reverent clubbers, all facing the unlikely coupling on the podium. As the song finished, the girl took the drag queen’s hand and did a polite curtsey as he brought her to his neat cleavage then kissed her hand and then her forehead, careful not to smudge his makeup. They hugged and laughed before she jumped down, straightened her backpack and weaved back to the bar to get a new drink. The old one was long forgotten.
‘You Got The Love’ came on and the crowd cheered to the drag queen, who started lip-syncing theatrically on the podium. At his huge black stilettos, Daniel noticed the sparkle of the girl’s ankle chain glimmering on the flat speaker surface, level with Daniel’s eyeline.
‘Hey!’ Daniel shouted. Looking from the speaker to the girl as he watched her walk away. He grabbed the chain, which felt weightier than its delicate appearance would have him believe, and followed her; so he could give her the chain back, and her drink too – or buy her a new one if she fancied.
He apologised to Lou and excused himself without saying much, smoothed down his T-shirt, downed his alcopop for Dutch courage, winced, put down the bottle and walked at a fast pace so he could catch up with her, so he could get to the bar and talk to her before anyone else could start talking to her. Having seen her on the Blues Point Road, having seen her on the podium, he knew
his odds weren’t great.
‘Hey, you lost this!’ he was thinking he could say, imagining himself dangling the chain and raising one eyebrow in a heroic and sexy manner.
‘And your drink. Perhaps I can buy you a new one?’
In his head he tried to channel James Bond, cool and composed. In reality, he weaved awkwardly, clutching the chain in one hand and her half-finished drink in the other, bumping into people as the bustle grew near the bar.
‘Hey!’ he called, losing on her.
Daniel watched her snake through the club, to some applause, pats on the back and admiring glances, as he followed with a sense that he was falling back.
A group of tall men in an assortment of German football tops past and present unwittingly blocked his way.
‘Excuse me please,’ Daniel said too quietly to one of their shoulder blades.
Shit.
‘Excuse me please, mate…’
I can’t see her.
As Daniel thought about tapping the guy on the back, he was interrupted by the forceful jabbing of a finger on his own shoulder blade.
Eh?
He turned around to an angry scrunched-up face.
‘What are you doing here?’ the face demanded to know.
‘Kelly!’ Daniel felt almost pleased to see her, then realised she wasn’t pleased to see him. He closed his hand around the chain to protect it and downed the rest of the girl’s warm Jack Daniel’s and Coke, and a sickness rose in his stomach. ‘What are the chances?!’
Daniel craned his neck to see if Ian were around. He’d seen him on the plane out; he was tall and gangly, with black hair sticking upright like a toilet brush and he had the kind of mouth that looked like he’d eat crisps in an annoyingly loud way. Which surely Kelly wouldn’t tolerate for very long, she didn’t have any time for loud eaters.
Kelly didn’t answer his question. Her waspish face waited for an answer to hers.
Daniel shrugged. He didn’t know what to say, but he wanted to ask Kelly if she were OK. Which sights she’d been to. How long it had taken her to get over the jetlag. He was surprised by how much he cared about her.
‘Are you following me, Daniel?’
‘No. Of course not.’
The conflict inside made him feel dizzy.
‘Well, if you are it’s embarrassing and I suggest you accept the situation.’
‘I have accepted it – it’s pure coincidence. I’m here with some mates from my hostel.’
Daniel looked around but couldn’t see any of them now. He did however see the toilet brush lingering in the shadows by the dancefloor, craning his neck while pretending he wasn’t.
Coward.
‘You’re only making it worse for yourself.’
What?
‘I’m not sure why I’m the bad guy Kel – Kelly. Look—’
He held the chain tighter in his clenched fist, steeling himself through the power of rock and metal.
‘I wasn’t going to just give up my flights, to give up my plan because of your…’
He couldn’t bring himself to say cheating, it almost felt a bit cruel on her. ‘Look, this is what we both wanted. To go travelling. We both planned this trip for years. Am I not entitled to hang out in Sydney because it’s a bit inconvenient for you?’
Daniel remembered he had other business at the bar and felt a sudden urgency to make this as short and as polite as possible.
Kelly shook her head and swung her ponytail, making sure her angry face looked really angry, so Ian The Bog Brush could tell she was Dealing With It from his corner of the club. Her face was angrier than Daniel had ever seen.
‘It just seems a bit weird to me. Sydney is a big city, I’m sure we can not bump into each other. Who are you even here with?’ Kelly asked, looking around, her hands gesturing vehemently.
‘I’m out with friends,’ Daniel said, nodding his head towards no one in particular, when he just wanted to get away in the direction of the bar.
Kelly pointed her finger at Daniel, her round pale eyes on stalks while she waited for an answer she liked better. Daniel conceded.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, looking around the dry ice and fluoro lights glowing in the dark. His back was to the bar, he couldn’t see that someone else had got there first. ‘I’m going up the coast soon anyway, think I’ll keep moving.’
‘I think that’s for the best. Ian and I are going to try to get jobs here. Extend the trip. Stay a year if we can.’
‘Oh OK, good luck,’ Daniel said, nodding towards Ian. ‘Hope it all works out for you.’
He waved and walked off. Kelly was irked by how keen Daniel was to get away, that he had turned his back on her and walked off to the bar before she had a chance to swish her pony and turn on her heel and walk back to Ian. By the time Daniel passed the tall Germans, the French guys, and Terry whispering in the ear of a guy he was dealing pills to, by the time he finally made it to the bar, there was a gap where the redhead had been. And gone.
*
The third time Daniel saw her was during sunrise in Byron Bay, the cash-rich creative haven where hippies and healers shared tables at bohemian cafes with artists, artisans and actresses. He had set the alarm on his Casio watch and woken in the darkness of his bottom bunk, cumbersomely unzipping and zipping his backpack as he endeavoured not to wake his dormmates before sloping out. None of them were planning on seeing sunrise that morning, not after the savage night drinking mushroom shakes and smoking weed in a bar until 2 a.m.
Daniel had had an early night. He was exhausted after three days of surf school. It had been another leap for him, learning a new skill, learning to rely on himself and his body, remembering that he was OK on his own. But it had started badly. On the golden sand at Belongil Bay, Daniel had forgotten his ankle was attached by a Velcro-tight cord to his rented surfboard, and when his instructor told the group to run to the shore and back three times to warm up, his board had whipped into him, violently following his trail and knocking him over – before Daniel had even touched the water. By the end of day three he had ridden a turquoise wave over a rusty shipwreck, surprising himself not only that he physically could, but that he was thinking of the girl whose ankle chain was safely tucked inside his backpack in the surf shack. As he rode the wave, looking back at Byron Bay ahead of him, he beamed.
The next morning his body ached and his muscles felt worn, but he was determined to fight the fatigue. Determined to hike to the edge of the town, to a lighthouse, to the country’s most easterly point – to channel the confidence surf school had given him to get up again and go out alone, at 4 a.m. So he threw on his Levi’s, a T-shirt, a shirt and a fleece to beat the morning chill as quietly as he could and headed out, bypassing the empty communal kitchen. He walked out of town, past juice bars, surf shacks and art galleries, noting that the town smelled healthy – of mango smoothies, cress and hemp – even when the haute hippie eateries were closed, and headed on the quiet road towards the sea. He turned right at the beach he had learned to surf on, past the mast of the shipwrecked Wollongbar, jutting out like a rusty finger pointing him in the right direction, and he walked along a track towards Wategos Beach and the Lighthouse Road, three kilometres out of town.
As he walked past low buildings with orange roofs and white picket fences, the clean white lines of a lighthouse came into view, and below it a small gathering of tourists congregating on the knolls and in the car park. Some were holding cans of VB, Coopers and Tooheys; others were meditating. Someone was sizzling corn on a disposable barbecue and the smell of it mixed with the salty air felt invigorating, even at 6 a.m. A middle-aged couple were doing tai chi on the grass. A young couple huddled like penguins into the cold of the morning that would soon warm up. Everyone was gazing out towards the Pacific, waiting, as if they were waiting for the rest of their lives to start once the sun burst up. An older man wearing a fisherman’s hat sat with a sketchbook, stroking his beard with one hand, drawing in charcoal with the other. Soft strokes f
orming a horizon. Daniel wondered how you drew a sunrise in black and white.
And there she was. Waiting for the sun to rise too.
She was speaking English in a slightly American accent as she talked to an American or Canadian man with long dreaded hair and no shoes.
In this cold?
Daniel stole a glance and kept walking.
The ankle chain!
He didn’t know how he was going to tell her he had it without sounding weird, or how to even talk to her and interrupt her intimate huddle, so he stopped at the adjacent wall of the lighthouse’s base, leaned back against it, and looked out to the Pacific.
Is he her boyfriend?
Daniel struggled to hear; the girl and the guy without shoes on were trying to speak in hushed tones – everyone was, as if speaking loudly might stop the sun from rising – but these two were struggling to keep their voices low.
‘That was so funny!’ drawled the man. He was slightly louder than she was. ‘You totally, like, nailed, eight ball. You were awesome.’
Is he Mike?
She said something too quiet for Daniel to hear but the tone was husky and effervescent. The American or Canadian laughed overly loudly.
Wanker.
Daniel leaned back against the wall of the Cape Byron lighthouse and gazed up above his head. The cylindrical tower looked powerful and majestic, jutting out from a miniature castle with neat decorative battlements, all whitewashed bright, even in the twilight. He inhaled a deep breath as the prismatic lens emitted a beam out to sea.
How do I do it?
He turned his head towards the wall edge she was leaning against, desperately trying to eavesdrop. He heard cosy mumblings; the guy said something about ‘tribes’. The girl mentioned the word ‘Fiji’ – and Daniel wondered if she had come from there – or perhaps that’s where she was heading.
‘Look!’ gasped one of a group of seniors who had just arrived and formed a circle within the fence of their walking poles. ‘It’s coming!’ said another, with a jolly chuckle. Daniel doubted whether the group of elderly walkers had slept in a hostel last night, listening to lumbering, stumbling, snoring and farting. He hoped they were staying somewhere more comfortable.
