CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"Be my magic coffee grind, fly me down to Capital City." (Oasis.)
"No." I shove the joint back into Joel's hands. "I can't."
"It's alright, you don't have to."
"Okay." And Joel smokes some more. I pick at my fingernails. "Joel, is it even safe? We don't know where it's come from."
"Those kids probably left it in here. At least now we know why they were so damn protective of this car." He laughs. He sobers up a second later, and looks a little worried. "You know, Nathan, I'm not so sure it is safe." I laugh nervously and watch as Joel takes one more tentative breath and puts the joint out. "Let's hope I don't get brain damage off that." He says.
"Do you feel okay?" I say.
Joel bites his bottom lip. "A bit...floaty? Does that make sense? But that's normal." His brow furrows in concentration. "I'm really tired."
Raisa stirs. I straighten out her ankle again. "I'm no marijuana expert, but I think that's normal, too."
Joel's head is on his shoulders and his body is tilting slowly to the left. I chuckle to myself and relax back in my seat. "Good night," I say, and lower the windows, letting out some of the smoke.
-
Somebody's got a hand on my face. "Get off!" I slur and wave my arm in the general direction of my attacker. I blink a few times, trying to untangle the weird kaleidoscope that is my vision right now. A girl with white hair and a freckle on her nose comes into focus.
"I think the police are looking for us." Says the girl.
"Hrrrrrrrhg." I say. A boy with patchy stubble and white teeth appears next to her.
"I think they are." He confirms.
"Huh?" I say again, but with more urgency. "Are they, like, actually looking for us? Or are you just thinking that they probably should be?"
Raisa grabs my shoulders and makes me sit up properly. She wipes at the side of my mouth—was I drooling? "Nathan, think about it. I ran away from a party, Joel should have been charged with assault, and I don't even know where you came from."
"I told my parents I'd be home by the morning." I say. "What time is it?"
"Ten past eleven." Answers Joel, and how long was I asleep? "Raisa, what's this about me being charged for assault?"
"You punched a guy."
"Ah, yeah. So I did."
I rub my eyes. "Have you seen any police?"
Raisa shakes her head. "No, but if they aren't looking for us they aren't really doing their job."
"Why did you guys make me break so many laws last night?" I'm more awake now; the sleepy haze is fast fading and anxiety is settling in. "I..."
"I think we should go somewhere they'd find us easily." Raisa says.
Joel's face goes red. "Why would we want to do that? I don't want to be put in jail!"
"Young Offender's Act," says Raisa. "You're okay."
"No I'm fucking not! I'm nineteen!"
"Oh."
"Guys," I butt in. "Raisa's right. Joel, people get punched in pubs all the time. We need to go to the first place the police would look. We're missing persons, now," Raisa looks at me with wide eyes. "If we run any further we'll just make everyone panic more."
"Do we need back stories?" Joel says, quietly.
"The way you said that makes me wonder how many illegal activities you've been involved in before," I say. Joel looks at the car's floor. "And no, we don't. I think we should just tell the truth."
"That's a great idea!" Joel rolls his eyes. "Yes, officer, actually. We've vandalized council property, broken into a cemetery, had our car stolen, stole our car back, trespassed onto someone's property, and smoked weed that we didn't even pay for!"
"You smoked weed?" Raisa shouts.
"We trespassed?" I say at more or less the same volume.
"The twats who took my car left a bag of weed under the seat," Joel says. "And remember where we watched the fireworks? Yeah, that's someone's private lookout."
"I hate you." I bury my face in my hands.
Joel repositions himself and falteringly takes the steering wheel. "We're going back to the Bridge pub."
Raisa doesn't speak. I feel the car move out of the ditch and my stomach feels like I've left it there. I grab Raisa's wrist and ask in a hushed tone, "How's your ankle?"
She looks straight at me. "I am in so much fucking pain right now."
My face falls. I rub the pad of my thumb over the bump of her wrist bone. "Do we need to go to the hospital?"
Raisa looks at where I'm touching her, and then up to my eyes. "No," she says, "I'm okay."
-
Sydney has resumed, apparently. People are now on the streets, walking their dogs and looking at the windows of stores to determine when after the Christmas break they will re-open. Woolworth's is open, and that makes me try to remember whether or not I have an upcoming shift, or if they even want me there at all, anymore. It seems unreal, and a part of me starts to think that this is the weird existential part of the dream I've been having all night.
But Joel flicks on a song on the radio, featuring what sounds like whistling and maybe a bit of distorted guitar but arguably little else, and I start wondering if everything other than last night was a dream.
I like the song. It sounds like a rusty coffee machine.
Raisa has stopped thinking about her ankle, at least, I think that's what happened. A few hundred meters ago she became mute and instead looked out the window. Another hundred meters pass—two, three, seven, nine, one kilometer, and she's in the exact same position.
Sunshine pours in from all sides; the irrevocable plea of the Australian summer, and I'm reminded where I am, who I'm with, now that the cold night has been lifted. It's mind-bending to think I've forgotten. Raisa's face is lit up by that same sunshine, and I like to think I'd stay alive, just for this.
-
The Balmain Bridge appears on the horizon, and I'm surprised to see no police cars hustled around it. The walls of the pub are covered in people's drinks and tasteless graffiti, and already I'm thinking I'd really like to get another fake I.D. so I can revisit this little oasis.
Or, I could wait two years until I'm legal to drink.
But it's the 21st century now, and if there's anything I've noticed it's that nobody has any patience.
We've become quiet—even Oasis has stopped singing—as Joel drives up the hill and turns into the car-park. It all feels too real, if that makes any sense. The bar looks pretty closed, as it should be, being as it's eleven in the morning, but the little garden area out the back is littered with a few hungover-looking people eating steak and chips, the beer glasses next to their plates with beads of condensation on the glass.
"I'm a bit hungry." Says Joel, parking the car.
"Me too," says Raisa. "A bit."
"I think I might have some shrapnel in the glovebox," Joel says slowly. "Or behind, under, around the seats. Who knows?" His voice is as unsure as I was a few weeks ago. I take a moment to try and process what exuberant trouble I'll be in once I do get home. A rustle of plastic comes from next to me, and Raisa has dived under the passenger seat.
"What are you doing?" I ask her, and she dead-set winks.
-
We find fourteen dollars ninety worth of ten and twenty cent coins, and it's sweating in my pocket. I forgot that it was summer, somehow. Joel walks up to the entrance of the pub—and an official-looking person in a black waitress' uniform stops him. "Are you over eighteen?" she asks him.
"Yes," Joel puffs out his chest, and retrieves a ripped photo of himself on his driver's license. He points to it. "I was born on the seventh of August, nineteen-eighty, thank you very much."
The waitress woman, a tall, stoic figure with hair pulled so tight I can see her skull, stares at the driver's license and ignores it. She looks straight at me. "What about you?" she says.
"I'm eighteen," says Raisa.
"No you aren't." says the waitress.
Joel barges back into her field of vision. "Yes, but I'm a responsible adult, which means they can be in here with me as long as I'm supervising them." He has a certain egotistical edge to his voice. I wonder if it's his go-to negotiation voice.
The waitress' eyes widen. "To be fair, a 'responsible adult' is defined as someone older than twenty-one," she shrugs, and Joel rolls his eyes. She leans in, a bit, and adds in a lower tone, "Why are you kids here?"
Joel takes a step back. I can see something wash over his face, kind of like how I would imagine enlightenment or revelation. "I'm mates with Daniel Johns!"
"What?" the waitress blinks.
"Yeah, I'm a roadie. Is he still here?"
"Shouldn't you know that, being his roadie mate?"
He nudges me but I don't know what to say. Joel picks at a tear in his licence's plastic cover. "Ha, just testing you. I am his mate. He is still here. And so is Ben Gillies and...—"
"Chris Joannou," I supply.
"Yes, that guy. They're all still here."
The waitress looks over him, then me, then Raisa, who oozes so much fake confidence she might as well be the envoi, here. But she remains silent.
"They're supposed to leave in an hour or so," says the waitress, and steps aside to let us in.
The inside of the hotel is just like it is any other time I've been here. I look at a corner booth and see myself drinking there, alone, on my sixteenth birthday, when I got my fake I.D. from one of my friends. It's cozy but at the same time I can hear Creep by Radiohead coming from the jukebox. I'm imagining pitch black darkness except for the lights on Joel's dashboard and the city as it blurs past me.
Raisa and I go outside to the garden after I give our fourteen dollars to Joel, but we choose the table under a shade sail. I'm scanning the premises for my favourite band, and strangely it's the least anxious I've been in a long while. "I feel like this was the worst idea I've ever had," I say. Raisa's eyes narrow at me. "It just turned out really well."
"I don't know about that," says Raisa. "Look at these eye bags."
Before I can laugh, someone brushes my shoulder and I stare up at them. It's not who I think it is, though. Joel returns with one glass of beer and hoards it to himself in one corner of the table, having organized all his lanky limbs into the wooden seat. He reminds me of a giraffe.
"I want some," Raisa pouts like a child. Joel produces some straws he was holding in his other hand and sticks them in the glass. Raisa just looks at him.
"Are we really going to treat beer like lemonade?" I ask.
"Why not?" Joel says, and takes a pen out of his pocket. He writes a 'J', 'R' and 'N' on each respective straw. When I get to have some, the beer is cold and perfect.
Another person brushes my shoulder, but it's not him. I resign to the fact that we were ever going to meet my idols and concentrate on listening to the Radiohead coming from inside. "You don't look over eighteen," says someone. They sound a bit like Joel but his accent is less Sydney metro and more....Newcastle?
A weird, embarrassing little sound comes out of my mouth.
"Hey," Joel says, and stands up to offer a spot at our table to the man. He sits down and stars in disbelief at our diminished pint glass.
"Why are there straws in it?" he asks, and looks straight at me. A voice in my head says I should find this situation humiliating but I just don't. I laugh and look straight at him, and I think, some things can go unanswered.
-
who is this man