Hungry arse

One look at you and I can't disguise
I got... Hungry arse
- Eric Carmen, 1989
(lyrics slightly modified by Flange Gasket, 1999)

They did it, somehow. Somehow the thunderous end-of-world evil above lifted with just enough clearance before curfew (and about five minutes to spare) to get our Qantas 767 down the still-sodden strip and off the deck into the black and rumbling skies, with a hearty cheer from all on board. The trip was bumpier than a flat-out run in an ocean going powerboat, but at least the flat-out part of the deal was held up, the jets howling against the stiff headwind, contrails searing off the winglets. We were several hours late into Brisbane, into a mostly deserted airport, but at least we were here. And the several hours late thing was only a bother for people who had someone waiting for them. No problem of mine.

I’d had plenty of time to dwell on the posh girl in the empty apartment in Point Piper craving a touch of human warmth, but I wasn’t about to take that decision back, even if I could. I knew why I was here. I’d chosen the path of right and decency, etc etc etc. Which didn’t quite explain why I was scanning the few bedraggled faces in the waiting crowd for pretty girls. That was just down to basal-level programming, I’m afraid. Even after the last 48 hours I’d had… scratch that, the last fucking week I’d had… and even as a crashed-and-burned dead man walking, I couldn’t help it. Yeah, pathetic. I know. Move on.

The girl in the corner looked lonely. She was curled up on the unforgiving plastic chairs, all bare legs, Havaianas thongs and black nail polish, behind a trashy, yellowed novel – Diana Gabaldon or someone. Just a tousled mess of dark hair and black square-framed glasses peeked over the brow. Don’t know why, but she just projected a sort of fragility. She had a vulnerability to her that made me kinda hope she’d find who she was waiting for. Maybe I was transposing my own mindset onto some stranger with her own story, her own agenda. She had a boyfriend - some decent, stand-up sort of guy, who didn’t get propositioned by newsreaders in airport lounges - who was about to walk through that arrivals gate, and she’d bounce to her feet and dive into his arms.

I so very, very didn’t expect it to be me.

OK, so the bouncing to feet and diving into arms thing… that didn’t happen. We just sort of stood there. I was just gobsmacked. I know it seems obvious now, but it was the last of all the last-ish things I was expecting. The first I was hoping for, which meant it was the last I was expecting. And Beth had come all this way, waited all this time, must have been hours and hours… in order to not say anything to me.

Say something intelligent, Angus.

“Good book?”

Fuck this. I’m resigning as Head of Strategy.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve read it before. Know how it ends.”

“Useful,” I nodded with a wry smile. “Wish I did.”

That seemed cleverer when I thought it.

Beth smiled, bashfully. The fragile thing wasn’t just me. There was something about her tonight. She’d cut her still-dark hair short – literally, she’d hacked at it herself, it seemed. Either that or she’d paid hundreds for some stylist to do it, but it looked the same to me. The glasses looked new, or new to me. She only wore them for driving at night, even though her driving in daylight suggested a bit more spatial awareness wouldn’t be a bad idea. Despite the heat of the day, it was now late enough and chilly enough under the unrelenting aircon for goosebumps to be raised on the bare skin of her legs and arms.

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“What makes you think I’m here to see you?” she contended softly, but sternly.

I pulled a face.

“A little birdie might have told me,” she admitted. Made sense. I hadn’t told Daniela or Joey – or anyone, really – that Beth had left me. If she was ever with me in the first place. As far as they were aware, we were still together. If that’s what we’d been to start with. “Come on,” she said, slipping her hand into mine. Hers were cold to the touch. My bag was slung over my shoulder. We walked out into the stale humidity of another Brisbane night, across the carpark to where her silly little yellow VW sat on its lonesome under moth-clouded floodlights. She popped the boot with the remote, I wearily eased the bag off my shoulder, and nudged the boot open.

Another bag. Not just a little overnight bag, either. Not a suitcase, by any means. A gym bag, but not her gym bag. Not with her gym gear in it, anyway.

“Beth,” I asked warily (and not a little wearily), “what are you up to?”

She looked a little guilty.

“Kidnapping you?” she offered.

Hell, I was game enough to find out what that meant. Or too tired to care, one way or the other.

“Fair enough,” I said, and dropped my bag into the boot.

She said I could sleep – that she wanted me to sleep. I slept. I didn’t need a second invitation. I was completely fucked. Even the passenger seat of a VW Beetle seemed like a Louis XIV four-poster bed. Barely stirred. I have a very fuzzy memory of listening to Beth singing along very softly to a Missy Higgins song on the radio, somewhere on a deserted highway in the middle of the night – I pretended to be asleep, not wanting to spoil the moment – but that could have been another delusion of a fevered mind. Where were we going? What were we doing? Didn’t know. Didn’t care. I was with Beth, everything else was details. So long as she didn’t hit me over the head with a shovel and bury me in a shallow grave, I was content to be kidnapped. And hell, even if she did, it’d make a good story for the papers.

I finally stirred awake. It wasn’t light, but it wasn’t truly dark, either. Somewhere in between. We weren’t moving any more, either. By fuck my neck hurt. I unclicked my seatbelt, opened the door and carefully extracted myself from the passenger seat. Foot was asleep. Arrghh.

We seemed to be on a headland, somewhere. The VW was alone in a little bitumened carpark, from which a short path led up to an old wooden railing. Beth was leaning against it, her eyes seemingly on the horizon. She had to be cold. It wasn’t light, but it was lighter out there. A less black shade of blue. She would have heard me, crunching through the gravel behind her, but didn’t react. I reached the railing beside her.

“Always darkest just before the dawn, hey?” she said. Her eyes were wet. Not the first time I’d seen that in the last 48 hours. I realised that I’d never actually seen her cry. Not properly, anyway, not more than a few angry, resentful tears. Not that I’d ever wanted to, but I wondered, given all she’d been through, if she even could any more.

“You alright?” Again, with the BRILLIANT opening lines. I should write a book.

She shook her head, still not looking at me. “Nup.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Nup.”

OK then. Got any other killer lines, Casanova?

“You want to tell me what I’m doing here?”

“I’ll take you back now,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m just… a mess.” A strained laugh, aiming for ditzy, scoring neurotic.

“Where are we?”

“Don’t know,” she exhaled. “Somewhere near Coffs?”

“Coffs.” Over four hundred kays from Brisbane. Halfway to Sydney, you could almost call it. There was some kind of heroically daft irony in that. I’d spend half the night trying to get out of the place, and come next morning, waking up, I was halfway back.

“Not quite Coffs, a little further north. One of those little beach places before you get there.” Looked like it. Arrawarra or Corindi or somewhere. Little places like this were our second home over the years. We’d stopped at most of the little towns and rest areas and scenic reserves along the length of the Pacific Highway, to stretch our legs or lunch on bakery pies or take stupid photos or break the cabin fever in the Flange Cruiser with an impromptu dive into the surf or a game of beach cricket, if time was on our side. Or if it was dark and the schedules were against us, just to crash out for the night, before we crashed into something solid.

So we were somewhere north of Coffs. The question was, why. She preempted the question by saying sorry, again, and saying she wanted to take me home, again.

“What if I like it here?”

A sad smile, humouring me. “You wouldn’t like what we’re here for.”

As good a time as any to go for the obvious question.

“What are we here for, Beth?”

She took a little time over replying.

“We’re here to kill a teenage girl,” she said. “And scatter her remains over the dunes.”

“Sounds… unpleasant.”

“Yeah,” she said, “she was a nice kid. She didn’t deserve to die.”

OK, I get it now. I’m not fluent in overdramatic depressive, but I could guess which dead teenager she was planning to bury. Since I kinda liked the twenty-five-year-old that girl had turned into, noone was going to bury anyone on my watch. I slipped behind her and wrapped my arms around her. She felt cold and docile, like a big squeezy hug would crush her like a papier mache mannequin.

“I’m sorry,” she said, again. “I have this strange memory of having broken up with you. Said I couldn’t see you any more. Goodbye. Everything. I’m sure that happened.”

“Yup.”

“So this now makes me a crazy stalker ex,” she concluded. “Officially.”

“Yup,” I nodded. “Totes stalkery.”

She didn’t want to smile, but dammit, I was going to make her. Even if I had to tickle her until she gave in.

Of course, given the time of day, my plans were derailed by a certain reality of human physiology. It was dawn. I was a man. Stuff was stirring. And making its presence felt in the small of my crazy stalker ex-girlfriend’s back. I hate me sometimes.

“So… stalkers do it for you then?” she suggested.

“I’m sorry. Seriously. I wish there was a fucking off switch on this fucking thing.”

“Yeah, right. Then what would you blame for everything?” But I’d made her smile. Yay me. Comic relief for the clinically depressed, that’s me. At least I had a niche. King of Comedy Erections.

“Beth,” I said, “what am I going to do with you?”

“I know what you’d like to do with me.”

“Ha. No, I’m giving that up for Lent. Or Ramadan, or something.”

“You’re giving up sex?”

“I’m retiring from international… sex… hmmm. Doesn’t quite work. I’m in detox. Taking ownership. Making better decisions. Inventing cliches. That sort of thing.”

“Well that sucks,” she said. “How am I supposed to bribe you into wanting to hang out with me now?”

“Your inherent awesomeness?”

“Yeah, that’ll do it,” she replied sardonically. “C’mon, I’ll take you home.”

400 kays since midnight. She surely wasn’t up to another 400 before breakfast. Then, presumably, back down here for whatever reason that brought her here in the first place.

“You’re right to drive?”

“Sure,” she said.

“I’ll rephrase that. You’re not right to drive.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You’ve had so many energy drinks you’re actually resonating at high frequency,” I pointed out. The back seat footwell of the Beetle clanked with her spent ammo cartridges; the silver and blue of Red Bull, the nasty radiation green of V (my eyes... the goggles do nothing!)

Beth was too tired to argue. She slipped the keys into my hand as we walked back to the car. The door swung open with an effort, and she slumped into the passenger seat like dead weight. The Beetle’s little four kicked into life and we motored gingerly back towards the highway, through the sleeping streets of wherever-we-were. Arrawarra. Or Mulloway, more accurately. About thirty kays north of Coffs, by memory. So about fifty to Grafton, another one-thirty to Ballina, another hundred to the border, another hundy to Brisvegas. Still an hour before dawn, I’d figure, so optimal conditions for, erm, ignoring certain posted limits related to velocity, at least until the highway patrol started making themselves known around sunrise. Still school hols, of course, so they were about a bit, racking up the kills.

“Angus… that’s left.”

“I know.”

“Left is south. Brisbane isn’t.”

“I know.”

“What are you doing?”

“Finding out what we’re doing here,” I said. “Figured I’d drive until we reached wherever it was you wanted to be. Or until you told me where that was.”

“It’s Launceston,” she said.

“Really?”

“No,” she said. “Not really. I can’t back that up.” Too tired even to give it more than a pretty lame Dr Evil impression – she really was shattered. Too tired to argue with me about heading further south, also. So we headed further south. All else failed, I could always get a flight back to Brisbane from the nearest regional centre to wherever we ended up.

“Where are we off to, Beth?”

She took her time over answering; we were up to highway speeds on the overtaking lane past the Safety Beach turnoff, on the run into Woolgoolga, when the reply came.

“Urunga,” she sighed. “You know it?”

“Know it?” I said. “Decent pie shop there. Could stop for breakfast. That’ll satisfy yer ‘unger...”

She groaned like a harpooned whale. “Please… no Dad jokes. Can’t deal, not at this hour of the morning.”

“Sorry,” I admitted, “that was a Dad joke. Pretty sure mine used it.”

“Mine too,” she replied. “More than yours, I’ll bet. My grandparents lived there. Live there. Fuck, I don’t know what the right tense is anymore…”

And so the story came out. Her grandmother had died yesterday. She’d heard the news from her cousin Emma – her only remaining contact with her fathers’ side of the family, and exchanger of dodgy presents like that Barbie instant camera from Christmas – in the midst of a fairly dramatic breakdown fuelled by her residual angst, turmoil and pharmacological comedown from Wednesday night.

“I’m not well,” she admitted, stating the obvious with a lot more grace than I usually managed. “I haven’t been well for a while. Been trying really hard to hide it, but as you can tell…”

“Eventually shows.”

“Yeah, it does that doesn’t it?” A hand reached across the console and squeezed my arm, momentary white-knuckled. “And with all the other stuff that’s been going on… all the shit I’ve been doing…”

“You don’t need to apologise.”

“I’m not.” So all the sorrys were filling dead air? “I’m explaining.”

“You don’t need to do that either, babe. I was there. I’m fucking culpable in this.”

“I’m a grownup,” she contended. “I don’t need anyone else to take responsibility for my fuck-ups.”

The funeral was Sunday, in Urunga, where her grandparents had lived for years, running the caravan park near the beach. Where she and Brad used to go for school holidays. Where she hadn’t set foot since she was fourteen.

“Somebody’s got to represent the family, I guess,” I nodded, supportively.

“You’d think that, wouldn’t you,” Beth replied sharply. She showed me a picture on her phone. It was the grass out the front of her parents’ place. In the darkness, illuminated by flash, were clothes, books, personal chattels.

“That’s the contents of your room,” I said, while attempting to get the Beetle back into the correct lane for southbound travel.

“Seems to be, doesn’t it. Apparently Mother dearest wasn’t kidding about the ‘You go down there and you can fucking well find somewhere else to live’ part of the argument we had last night.”

“That’s not very supportive.”

A bitter sigh. “The Jews and the Palestinians have nothing on the sheer blind hate she has for Dad’s family. And vice versa, too. When you’re talking about people blaming each other for someone killing themself…”

“Pretty grim.”

“That’s about it,” she concurred. “So, yeah, I’m not exactly going with the best wishes of the family. But, like you say… gots to reprazent. Yo. My homey.” She giggled. Amphetamine narcosis was kicking in. Just as well she wasn’t driving.

“It’s cool,” I said. “Come stay with me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you can crash on the couch at Mick’s if you want…”

“Generous offer,” she noted, “but I’m OK. Found an empty house up the back of Point Lookout. Owner’s out of town. Some bigshot musician, apparently. Has the place up for sale, so I just have to cover up my tracks when the weekend open homes are on…”

I laughed.

“What? It’s not like I’m charging you for housesitting…”

Urunga was around half an hour south of central Coffs, or twenty minutes south of Coffs airport. I did think about it, readers. I’ll admit that. This niche I’d ended up with as the go-to-guy for moral support at funerals was starting to wear me out. She read my mind, said I could leave any time I liked, she totally understood. But of course I couldn’t. She’d camped out in a near-deserted airport terminal last night because – as near as I could tell – she didn’t think she could face this weekend on her own. That’s as near as I could tell, because she wasn’t offering any comment on why she’d kidnapped me this morning, seemed fairly embarrassed about it. “I needed a distraction,” was the only reason she gave.

And if all else failed, hopefully the pie shop was open.

Sawtell, Bonville, the hills through the state forest, the big fuck-off overbridge at the Bellingen turnoff that proves someone at the RTA has a sense of architectural aesthetics. After hammering up and down this road for nearly thirty years, the Pacific Highway between Brisbane and Sydney was one long roll of film in my minds eye, frame after frame of mileposts and milestones. So it was for Beth, but her memories were different from mine. I could sense her tensing up as we rolled into the 50 zone on the northside of town.

“Road’s changed a lot since you were last here,” I offered, conversationally.

“We usually came in from the south,” she pointed out, which I felt like an idiot for not realising.

We crept over the long, narrow traffic bridge over the Urunga River, with an oncoming freight train rattling over the railbridge to our left.

“That’s how we used to come, most often.”

“Freight train?” I queried. “Folks too cheap to spring for an XPT ticket?”

She rolled her eyes. “We used to catch the train up from Sydney for school holidays – had to get a bus in to Central from the south coast, or train from Canberra when I was at the AIS. Fourteen, sixteen hours or so, all up.”

“Hell of a trip.”

“For two kids travelling on their own, yeah. But we looked after each other. And we knew Nan and Grandad would be there to pick us up. Too excited to sleep, usually.”

We turned off the highway, to wind down by the riverbank, between the support pylons of the railbridge, and past the riverside reserve. We continued through town on Bellingen St, the golf course to our left, then the town centre to our right, both asleep at this hour of Saturday morning. The pub, where we’d played once, many years back. The bakery – yup, it was still there. This weekend was already a win. And then, finally, the caravan park, on the road which headed south to the comically named, but from memory quite pretty, Hungry Head. As in the big-hair 80s power ballad by Eric Carmen. Or not.

“Just here,” she said. It wasn’t the caravan park, it was just a fairly anonymous bit of streetscape a short way away. Typical beach-village houses, brick and fibro. Overhanging trees. Grass footpaths.

“Here?”

She shrugged. “Anywhere. Office doesn’t open until six anyway.”

Meaning the caravan park, presumably. I suddenly wondered if we were actually expected, if Beth had even told anyone we were coming. Before I could ask, she was out of the car, her Havaianas padding over the rough concrete of the footpath. She was gazing up the street – Pilot St, by the sign – that ran up the rise to the railway station. Lost in her thoughts, which she weren’t sharing. I was left to imagine a younger Beth and her little brother, aching to stretch their legs after a long train ride, racing each other down the street towards the caravan park, her grandparents struggling behind with the suitcases and chattels of a week or two at the beach with their nan and pop. And their ragtag cousins, of course. Over the years, the rest of her father’s large extended family had moved away, apart from her grandparents and Emma, but they’d all been around during school holidays when they were kids. As they would be now, most likely. It’d already occurred to me that the actual funeral was by far the least scary part of the whole weekend for Beth, compared to the impromptu family reunion. If that hate ran both ways, as Beth suggested, it could be fucking unpleasant.

Just as well she’d brought the trophy boyfriend as a decoy, then.

I didn’t mind. I’d asked for an opportunity to win her back, and this was as good a chance as any. Whether I was here for support or just for a distraction, at least she wanted me here. And besides, I always liked Urunga. Well, not Urunga specifically – I’d spent very little time here, usually bypassing it on the highway unless here for a pie, a beer or to play a show – but all the other little coastal, river-mouth towns like it that were sprinkled up and down the coast. Iluka, Nambucca Heads, Laurieton, Port Stephens, Merimbula – not really tourist traps like Yamba or Port Macquarie, just pretty little towns that felt like home. No real surprises. You could throw Evans Head onto that list too, and that was as much my childhood home as Broadwater was, given the years I’d spent there with McCarthy. Obviously, my thoughts about that were pretty conflicted at the moment, but not as much as they’d been a day or so before. When I’d unequivocally believed Chastity Chase, rather than starting to wonder if she’d offed Sam for a share of the inheritance, or something equally dubious.

“What the hell?” bellowed a voice. A woman, about Beth’s height, but rounder of face and, to be fair of everything else, struggling to reign in two big shaggy labradors. She plucked iPod earbuds out of her ears, and repeated the call to arms. “Angus Young from Flange Gasket?”

“Hi,” I said sheepishly. I was never great with sporadic recognition, particularly done this forcefully. “Nice morning for a walk.”

“Or a drive,” she remarked. “Cos if you’re here… my nutbar cousin can’t be too far away…” And there she spied her, halfway down the street. “BETHIE!!!!”

“Ems,” Beth called. “Surprise!” She flip-flopped as fast as her footwear would permit back down the street in order to be smothered in a hug by Emma and licked half to death by her dogs.

“What the fuck have you done with your hair, it’s awesome!” Emma bellowed. “Woahh Black Bethie, bam ba-lam! You do it yourself?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think. Can’t remember…”

“Shouldn’t have been playing with scissors?”

“Yeah pretty much. Bad day. Broke up with my boyfriend.” She turned, adding brightly, “Speaking of whom…”

“We’ve just met,” Emma told her. “Actually, we’ve met before, he just doesn’t remember.”

Oh that’s always the sort of thing you want to hear when meeting your girlfriends’ relatives: that you’ve shagged them on previous visits and forgotten entirely about it. Cue my look of untrammelled awkward – which I was pretty confident I’d be busting out regularly now I’d mentally committed to my role here.

“He doesn’t remember me, but he should remember my friend Michelle…”

Ah. Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. Receptionist for the local… something. Solicitors? Real estate agents? Nice girl. Was nice to me, anyway, which was all I was really assessing on.

“Guilty as charged,” I admitted.

“I’ll say,” Emma declared. “I was the one who had to delay her boyfriend long enough not to discover you two in the back of HIS car in the garage of HIS house…”

“I was misinformed,” I claimed. “She told me it was her place.”

“Michelle had a habit of claiming things for herself that weren’t hers,” Emma noted.

“Like your husband, you mean?” Beth chirped.

“Yeah thanks for bringing that up, Bethie,” Emma retorted.

“Well, it’s another thing we have in common,” Beth pointed out. “Dating total manwhores.”

“You were warned at least. What was the first story I told you when you said you were dating this one? Apart from having to explain to you who the fuck he actually was?”

“It’s not really a surprise,” Beth reasoned. “What do you want from washed-up rock stars, a long history of celibacy? It’s not like he’s a Jonas brother. He’s high mileage.”

“High maintenance?”

“Yeah, that as well.”

“Speaking of which…” Emma reigned the dogs back. “Don’t suppose the rest of the fam are coming?”

Beth pulled a face, but she let Emma get away with the sledge, gentle as it was.

“You’re lucky to have me,” she contended.

“Haven’t I always said that?” Emma grinned. “I’m lucky to have my favourite cousin Bethie who didn’t talk to me for five years and hasn’t come to see me since we were at uni.”

“I believe the phrase I’m looking for is…” Beth glanced at me for reassurance. “World’s tiniest violin?”

Emma handed Beth the reins. “Arthur and Martha. Even they don’t know which is which, cos the important bits got cut off. You want to have your boy bring the car round? You’re staying, right?”

“Hadn’t planned anything…”

“That’s my Bethie. Don’t ever get engaged, girl, I’d hate to see you planning a wedding.”

“It’d be messy,” Beth conceded.

We were unloading the bags from the back of the VW before I got another chance for a quiet word out of Emma’s earshot. Emma was giving our ‘five star honeymoon suite’ (a double axle on-site caravan resplendent in 80s beige-and-brown) the once-over. We should have called ahead for an early check-in, apparently.

“Beth,” I asked carefully, “just so I know, what version of the truth are we playing under here?”

“Us?” she queried. I nodded. “Erm… we met at your surf club show in November, fell deeply in lust and have been ever since. OK with that?”

“It’ll do,” I surmised. “There really isn’t anyone you don’t fib your little arse off to, is there?”

“See, I told you that,” she replied. “But you didn’t like my answer.” Then leant across, tugged at my shirt and kissed me sharply on the lips. “Thanks.”

“For?”

“Existing.”

“You two at it already?” called a voice from beyond the caravan door. “Christ’s sake. Can you wait until I’ve made the bed?”

I laughed. “She’s the female Jeff,” I offered conspiratorially. “Back from when Jeff used to be fun.”

“We all used to be fun,” Beth observed. “She likes you though. Used to go to your gigs and everything. Though she did tell me to tell you that everything you guys did after Obsessive Compulsive was shit.”

“Don’t need her to tell me that,” I grinned.