Chapter 11
Anzac Hill is a nice walk in the late afternoon. The panoramic views of the area are dazzling due to the electric blue of the sky out here. Johnno, our guide, smokes a cigarette and ignores us.
It’s swelteringly hot, and Mischa has abandoned most of his clothes for just shorts and a black top that shows off his rounded, muscular sun-kissed shoulders and long legs.
He’s already the most popular person on tour.
He’s relaxed, confident and attentive, and it makes everyone melt.
Every person he befriends feels like territory he’s conquered.
He’s hanging around the other girls and guys.
I stay in the shade and watch to see if somebody better catches his eye, so he can finally move on.
He’s talking to the British girl again. Or rather she’s talking to him. Talking and talking and talking. Her name is Amelia, I think. Pretty, but I didn’t think he’d find her funny too.
Billy reminds Mischa about their drink, and he beckons me down the hill. I follow the bodyguards apprehensively. It’s very out of character for my brother. I wonder what has got into him.
The dangers of the town seem overblown, until we reach the street our chosen bar is on. The ambiance has definitely deteriorated on the block before our destination. Dusty, weathered people in threadbare clothes mill around the street.
Mischa and my brother don’t look like types to mess with, but I clearly seem weak.
A basketball is launched at my head by some kids and my reflexes kick in.
I catch it and start bouncing it from foot to foot.
I smile at the buck-toothed kid with sun-bleached orange hair who threw it at me.
He ducks as I send it back to him, and the boy behind him catches it laughing, and their game continues.
Mischa turns to watch, so I resume walking. There are several motorbikes outside the bar. Kane and Hayden stop William at the door.
“You think this is a biker pad?” Hayden asks.
Billy scoffs. “This isn’t Reno, guys.”
“Maybe we could try the nice bistro closer to the center of town?” I suggest.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Mischa insists. “The other students are probably on their way here soon.”
“I’m not looking for trouble,” William rolls his eyes. “Non-aggressive de-escalation.”
I look to Kane and Hayden, but they’re only supposed to help us live our lives, and stop us from getting killed while we do, not tell us what to do.
Kane nods. “Just let us deal with any issues if they appear.”
The place has a rancid ambiance, and the stink of stale alcohol and daytime alcoholics. There are a couple of leather-clad bikers peppered around the place. Not enough to be intimidating.
“My God,” I say, as I lift my shoe and it unsticks from dried beer on the floor.
William is already ordering drinks.
“You study business?” he asks Mischa.
“Yeah, and some chemistry but it’s not exactly a passion. I like more physical things, You know if you ever need a sparring partner, for training, we could work well together. I train all the time.”
“We’d love that,” my brother says, for both of us. “Maybe we could start tomorrow morning at the hotel gym?”
“Perfect.”
If this was chess, I am losing my last bishop. Mischa has charmed even my asshole brother. My blood is starting to boil. Mischa is like a disease I can never be rid of, because Billy is an illness I am already lumped with.
An unwashed old man approaches us. You know the look, crazy-homeless, with bugging eyes that stick out.
He pulls out a grimy pack of cards. It is an ancient tarot deck.
The greasy, fat, mustached bartender watches the derelict like he wants an excuse to throw him out.
As dreaded as such an encounter usually is, it is a thousand times better than watching my worst nightmare befriend my stalker.
“Read your fortune?” the man asks us. “Sing a tune? Clair de Lune?”
Hayden and Kane get closer but I raise my hand and tell them to back up.
“Oh yes,” I say. “Absolutely. The tarot one.”
I smile at Mischa and William. They look bewildered as the man pushes in beside me and clears away their drinks. The man smells like dirt and vinegar, and fumy vapors like industrial paint-stripper.
“Cross my palm with silver,” the man instructs me.
I think for a moment, and hand him a wad of colorful Australian notes and the white-gold chain off my neck. The filthy man is thrilled. I’m also thrilled, but only because I’m temporarily distracted from the urge to smash Mischa’s face into something.
I know William hates this, and I hope Mischa does too. The man hands me the dirty cards. They are old, hand-made, and foxed around the edges, and the pictures are mysterious. As I shuffle he mumbles to himself and looks around. Probably at things that aren’t there.
“A big one,” he says, when he gets the cards back. “My son. Run run run.”
Mischa and William look at each other. Did they not guess this man was mad before?
The man lays four cards in a diamond formation, then places three more in a line along the middle.
It makes a sort of cross and he places more cards at the end of the line above and below in a vertical line.
Then he surrounds it with a circle of cards.
Some cards slip out of the deck and he crosses them over other cards. Some are upside-down.
He points to the first card on the horizontal line. A tower with people falling from it.
“Fuck!” he gasps. “What happened to yous fellas?”
“What?” Mischa asks.
“Disaster has befallen your past, last, arm in a cast, run fast, everyone asked, wears a mask. Tick tick boom. Doom.” the man taps his forehead and sighs, like he’s trying to stop the flow of words from his mouth.
He points to the next card, which is the Devil.
“And you have already met the big bad. Big mad. Things will never be the same after the big sad, but did you want that?” He points to the queen of cups, upside-down, and a couple other cards.
“Alone, at war. Your mum’s not around. Your dad’s a fuckwit.
But there’s a good man taking care of you anyway, paying for the holiday.
The alliterate ones are your sword and shield. ”
“You mean me?” Mischa asks, and shakes his head. “Can you please stop rhyming?”
“I’ll try...” The man laughs to himself and points to the cards placed on their sides.
“The Wheel of Fortune, Clair de Lune. And all the threes. Three fates intertwined: three of cups, obviously... three of coins...” he rolls his eyes.
“Three wands—this adventure you are on, but—the three of swords?”
He shows us the card. It’s a heart pierced by three swords.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
“Heartbreak,” he says, and holds up the card placed before it, a man and a woman holding cups. “Young love... and then heartbreak. Terrible, horrific, heartbreak.”
Mischa holds up the two naked lovers further along. “But what about these guys?”
“That doesn’t mean what you think, think, think.
..” the man clears his throat, annoyed, like he’s almost wrestling to not start rhyming again.
“It’s a fork in the road.” He points to the flaming bush and the apple tree next to the nude lovers on the card.
“Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge. The choice between frivolity or responsibility, obligation or freedom, duty or desire, big liar. Where do decisions come from, louche aplomb? The head or heart? Wise or smart?”
“But does the romance work out?” Mischa asks.
He shows a card with a man on the ground with ten swords through his back. Then another card of a man in a black cape crying.
“Horrendous. Death is your only hope.”
The man points to a few sword, pentacle, and wand cards, and then points to me and Billy.
“Poor boys,” he says. “So many brothers without mothers. Fireworks. Networks. Cigarettes. Gingerbread. Moonshine. Valentine. Hungry boys hunting squirrels... Humble... Rebel. School is Hell. Let Doctor Feelgood help.”
William and I are at his full attention.
“You’re wrong,” Mischa interrupts. “These two had a silver spoon in their mouth from the moment they were born...”
“Shut up,” I tell him. “You don’t know us.”
The man turns his attention to Mischa. “You’re from a world made out of cheese,” he tells him. “Like on the moon. Can I have some more please? Wealth and privilege taste like ashes in your mouth.”
“How’d you know that?” Mischa frowns.
“You’re a fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Red Riding Hood.
Three little pigs. Pigs fly too. You’ll get the happily ever after, after, after.
..” he holds up the death card, and flicks it at Mischa, and his face drops.
Then he points to William and me. “You two; alone in the world. No home to go to. Big city, big smoke. You have a nice job until the old lady finds you. Fly away Peter, fly away Paul. Buzz buzz. Fly so far and so high the darkness tries to swallow you, but war is over, rover, bend-over, Mister Controller.”
“Jesus Christ,” I gasp.
The man points back to Mischa. “Now you have one another; a brother.”
Mischa frowns. “Which one, Rumpelstiltskin? I have eight of them.”
He points to William. “The one you are with.”
“William’s not my brother,” he says. “William’s his brother.”
“Obviously,” Billy’s brow furrows. “We’re fucking identical.”
Mischa hands the old man the card with the skeleton on it.
“So... I will get my happy ever after, only when I kill someone? So who I gotta murder?”
The man holds up the Five of Swords that sat in the middle of all the other cards.
“I’ll leave before the brawling, crawling, fighting, sure thing, diamond ring, on her finger, dad’s a singer...”
The man keeps talking as he collects his cards, and leaves out the door, never stopping rhyming. We all stare at the door after he leaves, thinking about what just happened.
“Did he say alliterate or illiterate?” William asks.
“The alliterate ones,” I look in his eyes.
He reads my mind.
“Austen, no,” William says. “You’re very silly.”