Chapter Fifteen

1.2.26

March 2003

I can't get used to how everything is smudged and blurred with Steve. I'm losing track of time, place, myself.

In pubs he likes to put music on the jukebox. The U2 songs One and With or Without You. Avril Lavigne's Sk8er Boi.

'I can't believe you like Avril Lavigne,' I say. 'She's music for teenyboppers who think they're edgy.'

He grimaces. 'Don't be snobby.' He tells me he sang and air guitared Sk8er Boi after he bungee jumped.

'I saw you,' I say. 'I thought you were a wanker.'

'But that didn't stop you coming home with me that night.'

I shake my head. 'Even though Brandon told me you were an asshole.'

'Did he? He probably just had sour grapes.'

'I don't think so.' I doubt Brandon would have wanted to touch me with a bargepole knowing where I'd been.

'And then Marie tried to put a spanner in the works, on the way to Alice Springs. Saying I was trying to pull Charlotte.'

'Were you trying to pull Charlotte?'

'I would have fucked her brains out.' He lights a cigarette. 'But she wasn't interested.'

I wanted him to say of course not, I was pining over you.

'How did you know Brandon?' he says.

'We were in the same hostel in 1770. The town. Not the year.'

Steve says he shared a dorm with him further up the east coast. 'He tried to barricade the door and kept shouting "you can't come in."'

I wonder what Steve did to make Brandon hate him so much.

We go to Kakadu National Park, a place of crocodiles and high ridges. Steve wants to do some activity that seems to involve falling off the rocks. I just want to see everything.

It's good, I think, as I start the walking tour, that we don't have to be together all the time, as we have been. We can give each other freedom to do our own things.

Waterfalls cascade down cliffs. Heat presses into my lungs. I feel tiny between the high rocks.

The tour guide says he thinks I'm beautiful and quiet. 'You don't talk back, you're just the kind of girl I would want to marry. But I'm already married.' He groans. ' And I can't even be a sugar daddy because I'm not rich.'

I don't know how to respond so I try to act like he didn't say anything. No one else on the tour speaks English as a first language. They seem to be pretending they don't understand what he's saying.

My shoe lace works it's way undone. The tour guide bends down to tie it up before I can stop him. His face feels too close to my legs.

'See, you need a man to look after you,' he says.

In the evening Steve tells me about his activity.

'There was a couple who thought they was Posh and Becks. She was complaining that the helmet made his hair look stupid in the photos.'

I laugh.

'What was your tour guide like?'

'Well, he said I was the kind of girl he'd want to marry.'

'Really.' Steve stares past me. 'The bus driver who took us to Cairns fancied you too. He told me he thought you were cute.'

'Cute?' I never thought that would be a word anyone would use to describe me.

'So you could have had an Aussie bus driver instead of me.'

I shake my head.

We swim wherever we can. In hostel swimming pools, in natural pools where it's allowed. We need to rinse the heat off our bodies.

I come out of the pool one day and in seconds the sun has dried me. I look at Steve who has been sitting on a sun lounger for a few minutes. He is shiny with moisture.

'How come you're still wet?' I say.

'It's sweat,' he mutters.

I wear my bikini under my clothes nearly all the time.

'Why don't you change out of it,' he says. 'It's like you're wearing the same underwear everyday.'

'It's not. Because I'm swimming in it, so it's getting washed.

One night he traces his fingers over the scars on my arm.

'How did you get these?' he says.

I can't tell him. He wouldn't understand. No one does. Even I don't really.

'I don't remember,' I say, the image of a razor blade between my fingers clear in my mind.

'Was you a little girl?'

'I was... littler.'

Maybe he guesses the truth. Maybe he doesn't.