The Dark Part of Me (8 page)

We stop.We’re upside down. Silence, complete as a vacuum. Am I dead? Ha. I could be dead. It strikes me as funny, being dead. Ha, again. I wriggle my toes, my fingers. I open my eyes.
Grass is growing from the sky. Sounds come to me. The pretty tinkling of glass. Static on the radio. The hiss of air escaping. A breeze blows through the shattered windscreen, carrying a dank smell
of soil, vegetation. Petrol. I get a vision of the car and me inside it, exploding into action movie flames.

Fuck. Get out. Quick. Gotta get out.

I unfasten my seat-belt and my body slumps forward. My legs crumple into my chest and my knees bash against the steering wheel. I twist around to fumble with the lock. My hands are shaking, my
fingers slippery with panicky sweat. The door swings open, flattening the knee-high grass.

Curled like a foetus, I tip sideways out of the seat and onto the ground. I flip onto all fours and crawl fast through the spiky weeds. At a safe enough distance, I slump against a gravel
incline and gaze over at the car lying, hidden from the road, in the middle of a vacant block. It’s on its back like a Christmas beetle, its wheels pawing at the air as if struggling to get
upright. Its sides are buckled, the windows shattered, but it hasn’t exploded yet. A lone kookaburra peals with laughter and I tilt my head to the sky. Greenish storm clouds have gathered
thick above, sun burnishing the edges.

I’M ALIVE.

The hum of freeway traffic. The rev of a lawnmower. Blue-skinned skinks chirping in the grass-roots.

Scott.

I turn and scamper up the bank, slipping and falling against the rocks. A strong gust sweeps across, blotting out the sun. A heavy raindrop splashes on my bare bikini-ed back and all the time
I’m thinking, Scott, Scott. As I climb out onto the pavement and start walking, the storm hits with tropic force, rain pinging off the tarmac. My skirt sucks around my thighs and my hair
hangs in wet clumps over my face. A car approaches, tyres hissing on the wet. Scott’s Gemini mounts the footpath, breaking onto a grassy verge. He leaps out and dashes over to me, his eyes
wild.

‘What happened?’ he shouts above the storm. Water droplets stream off my face as I stare at him blankly. He grabs me by the shoulders. ‘I’ve been looking for you
everywhere. Where the fuck’s your car?’ He shakes me and a pain rips up my left arm. I wince and fold it like a broken wing between my breasts.

‘Babe.’ His voice softens. He strokes my cheek and looks down. ‘What’s wrong with your arm?’

But my tongue is dry and useless. I nod back down the hill.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘Show me.’

We skid down the bank. The storm shower has ended but the incline is alive with hundreds of little waterfalls, tumbling over the rocks. The sun comes out, warming my
shoulders.

‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ Scott spots the car, lying heavy, sinking into the soil. Its metal underbelly glistens wet from the rain. ‘C’mon, stunt-woman.’ He’s
laughing as he sprints over to it. I float behind in a trance, mud squelching between my toes, the long, wet grass licking at my calves. I look up at the sky. The storm clouds scud away, leaving a
sky so blue it makes me want to cry.

When I get to the car, Scott is lying inside, his bare legs sticking out of the wreck. I crouch down on the ground and tug at his shorts with my good arm.

‘Did you land upside down or did it roll over?’ His voice is muffled from inside the cabin.

I pinch the skin on his thigh, aching for him to hold me.

He wriggles out. ‘Here. Show us that arm.’ He takes my fingers, gently pulling until my arm is fully extended. ‘Tell me if it hurts.’ He presses the soft pads of his
fingers along my arm, bending down as if to listen to the bones, working his way from the wrist up to the elbow joint. Pain shoots through me, up to my neck. He frowns. ‘Yep, it’s
broken alright.’ He stands and pulls me gently by the armpits, but I shake my head and lie down on the ground with my bad arm cradled into me. I’m so happy here in the sun, in the
sweet-smelling grass.

He crouches over me, brushing my hair out of my eyes. I struggle to sit up. He inches closer, wrapping his arms around me. I press my face to his bare chest, lick his salty skin. I find his
mouth, falling on to it open-jawed like I’m biting into a peach. My tongue searches out the walls, the teeth, the gums, his silky palate.

He pulls back. ‘C’mon. We better get you to a hospital.’

I look into his eyes and suddenly the world is purple – the grass, the sky, his skin. Such a beautiful colour. With my good arm I push him down into the grass and pull off his boxers and
all the time he’s staring at me, unblinking.

‘Oh, babe,’ he murmurs. His purple cock is pointing at the sky.

Holding my arm stiff as an oar behind me, I dip down to lick and kiss the smooth, rounded tip of his penis. He groans, slipping back the triangles of my bikini top and twisting my nipples into
buds. I crawl further up his body, straddling his thighs. With one hand, he reaches down, slides the crotch of my bikini bottoms to one side and pushes his fingers up into me. I close my eyes and
tip my head back towards the sun, kaleidoscope reds and orange swirling behind my lids. I pull his fingers out of me and rear up, my pussy hovering over his dick, nudging and brushing against
it.

‘Oh, fuck.’ He bolts upright and pashes me. Then he stops, draws back and looks at me. ‘What about your arm?’

I push him back down again. His eyes flutter shut. I wait, one, two, three before sliding on to him. At first, it hurts. I bite hard on my bottom lip. But then, I’m spreading, opening, and
he’s in me and I want to get inside him, too. Right deep inside him. A soft, dark drowning in his blood. I’m having strange thoughts of being consumed, absorbed, devoured by him.

‘I love you,’ I say.

‘I fucking love you, too,’ he says.

I kick and shudder. My spine sways and teeters and I collapse on to him, just like I’m dying.

It was nearly nine by the time I parked under the leopard tree a few houses up the road from Scott’s. From inside the car, I watched a pack of his old uni mates
shouldering cartons of VB across the lawn. I patted some extra foundation on my scar, opened the door and stuck my legs out on the road to do up my strappies. I had a wild thought that maybe later,
after the party had ended, Scott would take me down to the bottom of the backyard and fuck me under the mango tree where we’d done it heaps of times before. But I told myself to play it cool.
Straightening my mini, I sashayed down the footpath and across the lawn. I knocked on the side door which everyone, except Avon ladies and Mormons, used instead of the front.

Mr Greenwood appeared, stubbie in hand. ‘Well, hello there, stranger. Long time no see.’ He was wearing a ‘World’s Best Barbie, Mate’ apron. Since retiring from the
police force, he’d aged a lot. His face was thinner and his hair white all over. He must’ve been pushing sixty. Slurping on his Fourex, he motioned for me to come inside.

‘So, how’s life been treating you, Rosie?’

‘Not too bad, Mr Greenwood.’ I scanned the room for Scott but he wasn’t around.

‘Call me Bill.’

‘OK.’ It was weird being back in the house but in two years nothing had changed. Down one end, the mirrored bar with the same old sign, ‘No Sheilas or Darkies Allowed,’
which Mr Greenwood had found at a garage sale and strung up as his idea of a joke. There was the vintage record player in the corner with stacks of LPs – Buddy Holly, Elvis, Neil Diamond
– on either side. In the middle of the room was the pool table, set with Tupperware bowls of coleslaw, potato salad and mixed beans, buttered bread rolls for the snags, and two casks of
Fruity Lexia wine.

‘Er, what’ll you have to drink, Rosie?’

‘Wine, thanks… Bill.’

A ripple of male laughter drifted in from the backyard and I pricked up my ears for Scott’s voice. As Mr Greenwood squirted some cask wine into a plastic cup, I edged closer to the screen
door to see if I could spy him amidst the groups of guys standing in faded jeans and T-shirts on the lawn. I spotted Bomber, and Muzza with him. They were leaning back in their chairs, sucking on
stubbies, grinning from ear to ear at some private joke. Bomber looked like he’d been pumping iron – his shoulders were busting out of a retro seventies shirt – and he’d
swapped his thick Italian curls for a blade two crew-cut. Muzza was just the same as before, except skinnier. His clothes hung off him as he slouched back in the chair, his John Lennon specs
perched on the end of his nose. Scott wasn’t with them.

‘Here you go, love.’ Mr Greenwood shuffled over with my drink.

‘Glad Scott’s home?’ I sculled the ropey stuff.

‘Yeah, but after all his gallivanting he better bloody well simmer down and get himself a decent job.’

‘They say it takes a while to settle back in,’ I rallied, anxious to defend my man.

‘Nah, I’ve got one no-hoper for a son. Don’t need another one.’ He waved his stubbie in the direction of Nick, Scott’s older brother, who was setting up on the lawn
with his band. ‘Sure, he’s not brain surgeon material but I always thought Scott’d make something of himself.’ He drained his beer and sighed heavily. ‘Isn’t
that what he went to uni for?’

I turned back to the pool table and re-filled my cup.

‘Here, chuck us another stubbie, would you, love? I’d better go fire up the barbie since no other bugger’s gonna do it.’

I handed him his beer out of the esky. He cracked the top off against a corner brick, took a long pull and exhaled, his red cheeks deflating like a balloon. ‘Why don’t you pop
upstairs and see Shirl? She’ll be tickled pink to see you.’ He prodded me in the small of my back. ‘Go on.’

But I didn’t want to go upstairs. I wanted to find Scott.

I knocked back the rest of the wine, which was starting to taste not too bad, and, once Mr Greenwood had gone, headed around past the mirrored bar towards Scott’s bedroom. I had a vibe he
was in there.

How could I forget the skull and cross-bones sticker, with the words, ‘
SCOTT’S BEDROOM: ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL
’ scrawled in black texta. Its childishness made me
smile and a warm glow spread from my guts down to my toes. Pressing my ear against the door, I could hear music. I opened the door and went in. The room was dark save for a pulsing green coming
from the controls on the CD player, which was pumping out low-volume techno. This was different. Scott’d always hated hardcore, refusing to go to clubs in the Valley because all they played
was ‘that stupid ravey shit for poofs and speed-freaks’. London must have changed his music taste.

I stood still, my ears straining to the possibility that he might be in the room. As my eyes adjusted, familiar objects took shape – his student desk under the window, the double bed
shoved up against the wall, his bookcase, which displayed sports trophies on the top shelves, and a battered collection of textbooks and muscle mags on the lower shelves. I flicked on the desk lamp
and, turning back around, stubbed my toe on the sharp corner of an open suitcase. I crouched down to check out the contents: a pair of new Nikes, a sleeping bag, a duty-free bottle of scotch and a
couple of French porno mags. His clothes were all new – an assortment of designer T-shirts and silky shirts, tartan trousers and a pair of y-front undies – even though he always wore
boxers. I plucked an orange hooded jumper from the pile, held an armpit to my face and inhaled deeply for his smell – that salty, scalpy smell that never ponged, just grew more intense the
less he washed. I pulled the orange jumper over my head with the hood up, feeling safe and alive in his dirty clothes. It was a stinking hot night, even hotter in the room, but I couldn’t
help myself. I turned back to his suitcase, in case there was anything else I’d missed. In the side pocket was a packet of photos.

A thrill of the forbidden ripped through me as I pulled off the rubber band and settled back with the snaps in my lap. Most of them had been taken when Scott first got to London. Fucking Bomber
was there, hanging off him in every photo, at every landmark – Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the Tower of London – wearing his devil grin, posing rapper-style with his fingers splayed
like a tosser. You could have picked them a mile off; two Aussie backpackers fresh off the plane. After six months, Bomber had come home, but Scott had stayed on.

Seeing those early photos slated me big-time. It should have been me, not Bomber, sightseeing around London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam with him. But then, I already had a plan. With my ten
thousand smackeroonies, I’d convinced myself we could do it all over again but better, with style. Staying in nice hotels with king-sized beds and crispy sheets and chocolates on the pillows.
I kept flicking through – Bomber and the Eiffel Tower, Scott and Stonehenge – and that’s when I saw her. My heart dropped to the pit of my ribcage like a dead bird falling from
the sky.

She looked half-Japanese. Late twenties. Her face a perfect oval framed by a sleek black bob and a short fringe. She was wearing a pair of white lace knickers and nothing else. Her breasts were
small and white with pale nipples. Her limbs were long and gangly, her legs draped over the arms of a wing-backed chair. In the background was a tall bay window with a view of the countryside; a
low slate sky threatening rain. Her skin glowed gossamer in the strange, northern light. She had a confidence, an ease, the way she lounged in that armchair. She was smiling, a knowing sparkle of
superiority in her black, almond-shaped eyes, no more than a teasing curl on her lips.
Yes, look at me. Aren’t I beautiful? Aren’t I sophisticated? I’m older, smarter, better
in bed. I know things. What do you know about the world, Rosie?