Chapter 8 Mischa
Australia isn’t like I thought it would be. Melbourne is hot, but cloudy every day, and colder in the evening than I expected. I also don’t fall straight into a hotel room with Austen and stay there for the duration like I planned, so I have to figure out what I’m going to do instead.
Austen made me doubt myself. Made me think I was manic rather than in love.
They are pretty similar, but this is love.
Spending an evening with him in first class was like a date.
The best one I ever had. I watched him sleeping.
He looked at me when he stretched awake again, and yeah, I’m very in love.
The more I know him the more I want him, but he loses me when we get off the plane and I can’t get near him again.
William is always glued to his side. The heavies disappear into the background, but are always around, even when I forget.
The golden-tanned, dark haired, very gay one who totally wanted to fuck me at the bathhouse is always warning me off with his eyes.
Austen never looks in my direction, and acts as if I don’t exist. But I’m not special in that.
He never looks at anyone. Every girl tries to talk to him and he’s very stand-offish.
He tells them he’s engaged to be married if they ask.
It’s definitely a lie. It sounds painfully awkward every time he says it.
William overcompensates by talking to all the girls, acting like he wants to fuck them but I’m not sure he does. It feels theatrical somehow.
We are a big bustling group as we arrive in Melbourne. I watch one of the taller guys trying to get Austen’s attention, and pulling him aside, yanking him by his elbow.
The moment he touches Austen, it gets weird. William doesn’t like it, but tries not to let it show. The gay bodyguard pops up and goes to Austen. Will steps in to speak to the guy, as Austen takes back his arm, and politely backs away.
“No,” William says, “that’s me. I’m Austen.”
The guy apologizes, and asks if they can swap rooms.
The not-gay blonde bodyguard approaches William after, and gives him a juice pack.
“Will’s epilepsy is acting up,” he tells Will. “Probably the jet lag.”
Jesus. Even their bodyguards can’t tell them apart.
I go into the men’s bathroom. Austen is sitting on the floor leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, holding his elbow like it’s broken. The gay bodyguard is with him, looking concerned, holding a bag of candy and an inhaler. Austen looks drunk.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Fuck off,” Austen says.
I see him a half hour later, drinking coffee in the lobby, sober again.
Our chaperone is a young lady named Athena who looks Mediterranean but sounds Californian.
She pulls me, Austen, William, and a few other students aside to speak to us in a café next to our hotel.
Some of the other kids who are known as bratty boys and party girls.
One organizes dance parties on the side, another is the son of a famous footballer.
“I observed most of you on the plane,” Athena tells us. “I also looked at your profiles online. You all seem like fun-loving people. You are also the most likely to pull something.”
A fraternity-type jock named Kai, with a stupid backwards hat, laughs at the idea.
“Where’s the lie?” he shrugs.
Athena sighs. “This is my last tour for this company, and I wanna make this trip a little easier on myself.”
The group is quiet. I look at Austen but he looks firmly at Athena.
One of the girls looks confused. “Okay?” she says. “So you’re asking us to behave like, better or something?”
Athena shakes her head. “I already asked you all to do that at the start of the trip.”
“She’s asking us to cut a deal,” Amelia, a cute, blonde, British student, explains.
“Within reason,” she says. “You can’t leave for the whole thing, alright?
But if you get arrested for having sex in a bus-stop toilet, I may quietly post your bail and not feel the need to report you to the university.
The only catch is you have to behave in Alice Springs on New Year’s Eve.
If you fuck up there, you are on your own. ”
The group are thrilled, and start talking amongst themselves about the possibilities this opens up. I roll my eyes, as nobody seems to fully understand what’s happening.
“So how much is bail around here?” I ask over the top of everyone talking. “Around nine-hundred? I suppose you’d need that in advance, just in case, right?”
Athena looks relieved and nods with a wry smile on her lips. The kids look a little uncomfortable with the dawning realization that this is a shakedown.
“That’s bullshit,” one of the girls says. “I’m not paying you.”
Athena sighs without a hint of concern. “If you’re the girl that doesn’t want to pay, but thinks she can scream at me to bail her out later, I promise you, I won’t help you.
Make a fuss and I will have you sent home this afternoon for all the shit that I can make up.
You will be kicked out of school too, so don’t even think about trying to ruin it for everyone else. ”
“I’ll report you.”
“To my ex-employer? The one who grabbed me between my legs? You have fun with that, Hannah. Your curfew is ten. Not a moment later. By that time, everyone in this room will be in a club talking about how much of a bitch you are.”
Hannah is offended, brimming with tears, but is also the first one to pay. One by one the others agree to get the money to Athena, or pony up the cash right there. After a while it is only Austen and William left.
“We don’t need it,” William says, and stares at Austen “We’re not going to have any problems.”
William gets up to leave and the second he turns, Austen hands her a wad of cash under the table and leaves.
“Have you done this on every trip?” I ask Athena.
“Only after I realized the certainty of bullshit,” she says. “Now every time they pull something, they’ll think it’s all bought and paid for.”
“Isn’t that a bad idea?”
“Weirdly, no,” she smiles. “People think harder about the things they pay for than things that are free. It’s had the strange effect of making these trips a lot less crazy.”
We giggle together at the absurdity. I pull out my bribe and hand it to her. Three wads of folded notes tied with rubber bands. More than everyone else.
She pulls at the bands and snaps them back. “No pin then?” she says, looking at the money. “Greek, Cuban… or Russian?”
“Greek,” I lie.
“Lots of Greeks here, but also Lebanese and Italian too.”
“I’ll behave,” I explain, “I’m only buying your eyelids.”
She shakes my hand. “Consider them closed.”
???
For the last stop on Christmas Eve we visit the State Library of Victoria. It’s built around a six-story octagonal reading room. It has a large glass dome which makes it quite light and airy.
All the UMass students line up at the viewing balconies to take photos. All except for Austen and William, because William is nowhere to be seen, and Austen just walks around the octagon taking it in.
I watch him from a lower window. He goes back down the stairs, past the others to the bottom floor. There he goes all the way around again, trying to find the way out but only finds himself back with me. He gives me a hard look and tries again and comes right back to the same spot next to me.
The elevator has a large group of geriatric women waiting for it. It seems to be hovering around the third floor and not moving anyway.
I follow him up the spiral staircase and try to find a way out on the next level.
Up there it’s the same problem, so Austen gets his sexy gay bodyguard to help.
It seems like a few of the other students are also now finding themselves walking in circles around the octagon, with no obvious way outside.
We go back down a floor and do another lap around the perimeter but the stairs from the gallery are nowhere to be found. The bodyguard scratches his head.
“I mean we came in on the elevator, but there must be another way out,” he says.
The lowest balcony is one story above the reading room floor.
A jump may not be high enough to kill someone, but it is enough to cause a scene amongst the readers below.
Austen looks down as if he’s contemplating the same thing.
The bodyguard heads off to make another dash around the internal balcony.
“You want to find the way out together?” I ask.
“Thanks but no,” Austen says.
He returns looking frantic, and is about to head around again. He’ll probably become even more panicked, so I grab his arm. He flinches.
“I don’t bite,” I smile. “You okay?”
Austen shakes his head. “I’m being hypersensitive. I got trapped somewhere when I was younger, and it’s a bit of a phobia. We’re obviously jet-lagged and disoriented, but seriously; where’s the exit?”
“Look,” I tell him quietly, “the elevator is moving again. Maybe it’s the only way in or out.”
He watches number three light up above the doors.
“We’ll be stuck here forever,” he huffs.
I go behind him and whisper in his ear, “Here’s the plan; I’m going to knock over those little old ladies and charge through when the doors open.
Then you press ‘close’ as fast as you can, so we can ride alone.
If any of them try to wedge their walking-frames to keep it from shutting, I’ll kick them out from under them. ”
Austen tries not to laugh. “Are you crazy? Don’t answer that.”
“I would kill everyone here to make you happy.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
I put my hands on his shoulders. “Are you sure you don’t want me to beat Doris’s head in with her walking stick?”
“No. I mean, yes. Don’t.”
“Very well,” I sigh. “I guess we’ll just have to wait.”
He turns to face me. “I don’t think we should wait together,” he says. “I don’t want to encourage the incorrigible.”
“You think that now, but we’re going to look back on these three weeks and wish we hadn’t played cat and mouse. Please, can we just get to the courtship already?”