Monkey Business (9 page)

I groaned, opened my eyes, squeezed them shut and prayed for a time warp to snatch me away, suck me up, whatever it is they do. Or a simple reversal of time. Twenty-four hours would be good. Take me back to Melbourne airport, where I would say to the check-in lady, ‘No guarantee of flights leaving Darwin? No worries. I'll just stay here and carry on with my boring life.' Maybe the baggage-handlers' strike was a sign from the universe that I shouldn't be going to Saint Sebastian. The entire universe had set that up, just for me, and I'd rudely ignored it.

I sat up, groaning some more and registered that I was on a sofa in an unfamiliar living room. I rubbed my eyes and, out of habit, pushed my hair out of my face. But something was different. Something was wrong. I ran my hands over my head. There was no hair to push! I bolted upright, standing, looking frantically for a mirror. Where the hell was I? Yvonne's house? I stumbled down a passageway, pushing doors open until I found a bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror. Oh, good God. My hair was short like Yvonne's, except I didn't look like Halle Berry. I looked like Anne Hathaway after she sold her hair in
Les Mis
. I burst into tears.

After ten minutes of conversation with the toilet-roll holder, we decided it was a good thing. My hair had always been a nightmare. And anyway, it would grow back. But for now I could be nice and cool. My head felt lighter, in fact. And I probably weighed less! That thought made me feel much better, but I didn't look in the mirror again. I found my way back to the living room and my things, which were neatly stacked on the dining table with a jar of hair product. There was a note.
Hey Ruby, great to see you. I hope you're OK about the hair. You absolutely insisted! Here's a jar of wax. You'll need it. I had to go to work. Let yourself out. Yxx

As I looked around, snippets of the previous evening dribbled through my memory bank. I'd told Yvonne all about Jack and my mother and she'd finally half-walked, half-carried me out of the bar and taken me back to her place. And cut my hair.

There was a map drawn on the note to show me where I was and how to find the backpackers. And under that:
My friend in Sebastian, as promised
. And a phone number and address. Yvonne had said something about living in Saint Sebastian? Actually, I didn't remember Yvonne getting to say much at all last night. I felt a slight pang of guilt. But only slight.

I glanced at my watch.
Oh shit!
My flight was in an hour and a half and I had to get to the backpackers and get my stuff. I snatched up my bag and shot out of Yvonne's front door, letting it slam behind me, hoping I'd got everything, hoping her door had locked itself.

I raced down her driveway and stood on the street, my head swivelling from side to side, trying to work out which way to go. I had Yvonne's map in my hand; I headed for a main road where I started waving frantically at any car that passed, knowing that, without a doubt, I would hitch a ride with Jack the Ripper if necessary.

I shoved my bag into the overhead locker and flopped onto my seat. I was sweaty, hung-over, thirsty and hungry. There'd been no time to shower or eat, after I'd finally managed to get a ride in an old Commodore with Beavis and Butthead, who'd sniggered all the way to the hostel. The only reason I made the plane was because it was delayed. There was a lot of police activity at the airport and I felt very glad I hadn't brought my gun. Imagine if Jack had come home to discover I'd been arrested trying to sneak a gun into Saint Sebastian – a gun that was registered to him. And because he'd just been there, the police would want to know, ‘Why was Ms Jewell in possession of a gun registered to you, Mr Jones? And why was she trying to smuggle it into Saint Sebastian where you just happened to be? Hmmm?' He'd be pretty shitty with me if he survived some dangerous mission in Saint Sebastian, only to end up arrested in Melbourne.

The plane taxied away from the terminal but only for a hundred metres or so before it stopped. We sat there for twenty minutes and I watched through the window, past the guy sitting next to me, as a police van rumbled across the tarmac towards us.

I could sense the guy watching me. He was wearing a cowboy hat and I'd guessed he was American. ‘You seem worried,' he said.

I sat back. ‘No. I'm not worried. Why would I be worried?' Apart from about a million reasons.

‘Well, the police are checkin' for stolen goods.'

He was watching me with his sparkly blue eyes, and he seemed almost amused. What was that accent? Texan?

He leaned towards me. ‘You stolen somethin'?' Was he teasing me?

I smiled. ‘No, have you?'

He waggled his eyebrows. ‘Maybe.'

‘Like what?'

He looked a bit like my pizza delivery guy, who looked a bit like Brad Pitt, but from a long time ago. When he did
Thelma and Louise
. The guy pushed his hat to the back of his head. ‘Could be anything on a plane for Sebastian.'

I
loved
his accent. ‘Are you from Texas?'

He hesitated. Maybe I was being too nosy. But hang on, he just asked if I'd stolen something. Finally, he said, ‘Sure am. Have you been?'

‘To Texas?'

He nodded.

‘No,' I said, ‘never been to America. What part of Texas?'

‘Dallas.'

‘Dallas Cowboys!' I racked my brain for other things I knew about Dallas.

He grinned.

I said, ‘So, why would a plane for Saint Sebastian have stolen goods onboard?'

He regarded me as though I was joking with him. ‘You tell me,' he said.

‘I really have no idea.'

‘You don't know that Sebastian's the black-market capital of the universe?'

Something to do with Jack? I gazed out the window for a few long seconds. I looked back at the guy. He was waiting for an answer.

‘Um. No, I didn't. What sort of stolen stuff?'

He turned in his seat so he was facing me. God, he was good-looking. Blonde hair, and those blue eyes really did sparkle – a bit like Jack's, but Jack's are bottomless in their intensity and they tend not to sparkle so much when I'm being annoying.

‘Well, let's see now,' he said. ‘Everything, really, from rare Pokémon cards to vintage car parts. Current trend is Tupperware.'

I burst out laughing, thinking of my mother. ‘That's ridiculous.'

‘Is it?'

‘Yes. Isn't it?'

‘No, ma'am. Tupperware is hot property. Everyone wants the retro stuff. You just can't get it 'cause it's all stashed away in old ladies' cupboards.'

I stared at him, expecting him to laugh and tell me he was pulling my leg. But he didn't.

‘What do you mean, retro?'

‘Well, the original Tupperware they don't make no more. Like the lettuce container with the spike inside.'

‘My mother has that stuff,' I mused. And what was it she'd said? That there was a Tupperware thief? I scoffed quietly.

‘Oh?' said the man. ‘What does your mom have? Probably worth a whole lotta dollars.'

‘Well, she's got everything really, from the seventies. Oh, and she's got a special-edition lettuce crisper that's still in its box.'

I smiled at the guy and his face turned stony serious. He glanced around before whispering, ‘She's got the special-edition lettuce crisper? From 1976?'

‘Yep,' I said, feeling suddenly very important. I didn't know if it was from 1976 but that sounded about right.

He whistled, low and long, then held out a hand. ‘Dwayne Hitower, and I'd sure like to meet your mom.'

‘Erica Jewell, and you're welcome to meet and keep my mother if you want.'

He laughed and we shook hands. He had nice teeth. ‘You don't happen to have some of that old Tupperware in your suitcase, do you?' He glanced out the window.

‘No.' I said, ‘How do you know all this about the Tupperware and stuff?'

But he didn't answer. Instead he leaned towards me again, fixed his sparkly eyes on mine, and said, ‘First, Ms Jewell, you tell me something. What sends you to hell on earth?'

Flying into Seni, I wondered why Jack couldn't be a nice, ordinary kind of bloke like Dwayne instead of some gung-ho bloody tough guy. Although I didn't actually know what Dwayne did or even why he was coming to Saint Sebastian because every time I'd asked he changed the subject, questioning me instead about . . . everything.

I leaned across Dwayne – asleep with his hat tipped low over his face – and looked past my awful reflection at the scene below. Saint Sebastian really was very green. Densely so. Emerald Island. I bet there were a lot of snakes and other crawlies in that jungle. As we circled I had a good view of the airport, which seemed to be more civilised than I'd expected. Sprawling white buildings and a dozen or so planes, a few Qantas ones. The plane turned in a wide sweeping arc and floated past those buildings on our final descent. Dwayne woke, yawned, gave me a smile and a wink, and watched out the window as we touched down. At the end of the runway we pivoted and headed for the terminals, and I saw a couple of heavy-looking aircraft sitting outside a hangar, their fat grey bellies close to the ground.

‘Hercules,' Dwayne informed me.

I nodded.

He said, ‘Do they make you feel homesick?'

‘No, why?'

‘They're Australian.'

I squinted at the writing on them.
Royal Australian Air Force
. Was Jack here with the air force? But if that's the case, what's JD's involvement? My heart started thumping. I sat back and fanned my face.

‘You okay?' said Dwayne.

‘Me? Yeah. Sure. Fine.'

Inside Seni airport I waited in line to pass through customs. There was no air conditioning; just ceiling fans swirling the wet air. Sweat prickled my scalp and my T-shirt clung to my back. The only thing I was remotely enjoying was my new haircut, as awful as it was.

Dwayne was well ahead of me. I'd avoided telling him about Jack. So Dwayne thought I was simply a misguided tourist, meeting a friend for some sightseeing before heading off to Bali. I didn't ask him to elaborate on the ‘hell on earth' thing. It couldn't be that bad here, surely?

I peered around the queue. I could see Dwayne heading for the exit and before he went through the doors he turned and gave me a wave. I waved back and sighed. How much nicer to be arriving in Bali instead, looking forward to my first evening sitting at a beachside bar, a creamy cocktail with fruit hanging out of it, an orange hibiscus in my hair. And sitting beside me, a hand on my knee and smiling because he was on holiday with me, looking delicious and relaxed and sexy as all get out, was Jack. Or Dwayne.

Unfortunately, I was forced to refocus when someone gave me a poke from behind because the queue had advanced ten metres but I hadn't. I looked ahead. The customs people seemed to be searching every suitcase. Sweat poured down my face. I'd never known humidity like it.

There were men in uniforms with machine guns. The backpacker in front of me had the contents of her bag spread over the search table, and two customs ladies were inspecting every item. The way they rifled through the woman's stuff made them look more like bargain-basement shoppers than officials conducting a search. One picked up a tiny travel iron, examined it and handed it to her co-worker, who walked away with it. The backpacker said, ‘Hey!' but the customs lady moved on to the next person. Me. The backpacker said, ‘You can't take that!' but no one took any notice, except for the guys with guns who were moving towards her. She looked around. Our eyes met. I shrugged and looked away. She repacked her bag angrily and moved on. The customs woman opened my backpack. She pulled my hairdryer out and examined it.

‘No!' I said, too loudly.

She stared at me suspiciously as she handed the hairdryer to her colleague, who walked away with it. She returned to my bag and rifled some more. Pocketed the hair wax. Picked up a packet of tampons and rattled the box, narrowing her eyes at me. Hang on, why did the box
rattle
? Oh, shit. As she opened it I remembered where I kept the bullets for my gun. She peered inside the box, signalled one of the lurking guards, and I closed my eyes. I remembered now, scooping up that packet from my undies drawer, along with a few pairs of knickers, and throwing the bundle into my backpack.
Idiot
. I would be imprisoned in Saint Sebastian for at least twenty years. When I opened my eyes again, the soldier was standing next to the customs lady. She slipped him the bullets; he put them in his pocket and walked away. Without further eye contact she dismissed me, and called the next person in line. I decided there and then that this type of corruption was fine by me. But as I blew out my held breath, I thought that if Jack were still alive, he would surely kill me.

I walked through the automatic glass doors and searched the thin, scattered crowd for Dwayne. I thought I could ask him where he was staying and go there too, but really I just wanted to see a familiar face. I changed some money to local currency, which, surprisingly, was American dollars. I ignored the astronomical fee they charged for the exchange because, based on my experience so far, there was probably little point arguing.

I took a seat and looked around, waiting. For what, I didn't know. There were some backpackers. And some people who looked like tourists, and other people who could have been foreign workers – Aussies maybe – who sat around looking bored, like there was nothing left in Saint Sebastian that could possibly interest them.

So, where were Jack and Joe? Were they dead? No. Time to move. I stood and hoisted my pack onto my back, attached my handbag-cum-small-backpack to my chest, and left the building. I stood at a narrow road that appeared to be the main thoroughfare in and out of the airport. To the left the road presumably led to Seni; to the right was a dead end, marked by tall cyclone-wire gates. Across the road the bitumen morphed into jungle; a jungle that was so dense, the green was almost black. The humidity was so oppressive, I could imagine anything would grow in there. All kinds of fungi and diseases.

There was a bus but it pulled out as I approached. I looked for a timetable. There was none. I looked for someone who might know something about the buses. There were no official-looking people apart from blokes with guns. I was going to go back inside to ask, but thought about the man who was now in possession of my bullets. And the stupid woman with my hairdryer. And hair stuff. What would I do without my dryer and hair wax?

I approached the first driver in a line of taxis.

‘How much to Seni?'

He shrugged.

I tried again. ‘Do you speak English?'

He looked away.

I walked to the next cab. The guy held up both hands, showing me ten fingers. He did that five times. What was he trying to tell me? Fifty dollars? That seemed a lot. The airport was close to Seni, I knew that much from Google. I asked the next man who said, ‘Twen fife,' and held up ten fingers.

The next driver was a skinny man with a big smile and some teeth missing.

‘Hello, lady, you need taxi?'

‘Oh, thank God, you speak English. How much to Seni?'

‘I make cheap trip,' he said, his smile widening even more.

‘How much?'

‘Cheap as chip!'

I walked to the back of his beaten-up yellow Toyota – it reminded me with some misguided sense of familiarity of my car – where I waited for him to open the boot.

‘Can you take me to a nice hotel?' On the flight out of Darwin I'd decided that cheap and nasty was a thing of the past for me. No more being a cheapskate. Never again.

‘Nice hotel! You come.' He loaded my pack into the boot and held the back door for me.

As I sat inside the car, I said, ‘How much will it cost? The taxi ride?'

‘Cheap trip. Special price for pretty lady.'

We cruised from the airport at about fifteen kilometres an hour and the driver talked incessantly. His name was Bruce Willis, he said with a straight face. He told me he used to be a driver for the UN, which was why he spoke ‘very good English' and I assumed also why he drove at funeral-procession speed. Actually, slower than a funeral procession. I kept looking ahead to see what the hold-up was, but the road was clear. Actually, it was more like a country lane than a road and fringed on both sides by rainforest, which, after a couple of kilometres, ended abruptly and was replaced by cane fields.

I tapped him on the shoulder to interrupt the verbal flow. ‘Can you go faster?'

‘No fast. Maybe snake on road.'

‘What's the big deal about running over a snake?'

‘Maybe run someone. Man or lady. Look!' he said, pointing ahead.

There were indeed people standing close to the road. Two groups of boys – maybe fourteen or fifteen years old – stood on opposite sides of the road, and they were chucking stuff at each other.

‘What are they doing?' I said.

‘Dangerous gangs,' said Bruce Willis, going even slower. ‘Throw rocks. Kill each other.'

‘Are you serious?'

As we approached, the rock throwers stopped what they were doing and waited while we drove past, now at walking pace. Two of the young men had monkeys sitting on their shoulders. They smiled and waved at me – the kids, not the monkeys – taking bows, calling out things. The driver interpreted. ‘They want to meet pretty lady.'

‘Can't you go faster?'

He resumed his breakneck speed and I watched out the back window as the gang kids started throwing rocks again.

‘Why do they have monkeys?' I said.

‘Big monkey, big man. Important gang leader has very big monkey.'

‘Maybe the gang leader is trying to compensate for something.'

The township of Seni was close to the airport. The outskirts consisted mostly of small, crooked, grubby fibro houses. We passed an official-looking building set back from a high wall with armed guards at the gates, a couple of acres of unkempt property surrounding it. That building was pretty grubby-looking too; crumbling stucco that presumably was once white. There were open market-style shops and some cafes. Grubby.

In stark contrast to the shanty town, behind it rose a magnificent mountain range, and to my right was a surprisingly clean, white beach and ocean the colour you see only in travel brochures. A line of date palms separated the beach from the road. We could have been in some exotic resort town, except for the fact that we weren't. Bruce parked in front of a crappy-looking place called the Koala Bear Hotel. He got out of the car and walked to the boot, pulling my bag out and dropping it on the ground.

I wound the window down and called out, ‘Isn't there a better hotel?'

‘No better hotel. Good hotel for Aussie. Cheap as chip! Good bar.'

I muttered, ‘Thank God, a bar,' and got out of the car, my inner miser taking back control. I looked around. I wanted to go back to Yvonne's. Or El Cheapo Backpackers.

Bruce Willis carried my bag the two metres from the front door to the reception desk. The space was devoid of all character. I'd say it was clinical, but it was too dirty. There were two women sitting behind the desk looking blankly at me. I could hardly see them over the top of the counter. One of the girls handed something to Bruce and he pocketed whatever it was, turned to me and smiled, an expectant hand held out.