It’s more than an eight foot drop the other side, onto an empty backstreet, and I try to slide down but my weight is too much for my arms and I have to let go, landing hard on my feet sending a wave of white pain up through my body.
I’m disoriented, not sure which side I came out from and afraid to go by the front of the restaurant again, so I stray left, to get far away.
I walk around stung. I am fucking stupid, like Maria said. And now I’m lost again, typical. This maze of a place.
I turn onto another random side street, straight into the sun’s glare. It’s too hot. I sweat profusely and my pedal pushers are damp and scratchy.
My breathing quickens when I recognize that this street must adjoin the strip, from the hum of the out of sight traffic. I charge down it, hoping I’ve heard the far-off bustle correctly.
I walk like I’m losing my balance.
Calm down, Natalie. Just get food.
A voice comes from out of the brightness. ‘Hey Miss, Miss Miss Miss.’
I’m about to get more hassle. Someone trying to sell something. Everyone’s on the sell here.
I squint into the sunlight and see a kid. I anticipate the usual, ‘Taxi, massage, restaurant, painting?’
He’s outside a dusty one-storey detached house.
I can barely see him with the sun in my eyes.
He calls again. ‘Miss Miss Miss.’
I keep ambling. Notice he’s moving. Something’s moving. I’m puzzled. Something’s wrong. But the sun blinds me. I shield my eyes with my hands and look again.
He has a big broad smile. His arm is moving. I look down. His hand. Up down. The brown shaft of it. Steady rhythm. Up down.
‘Hey Miss, Miss Miss Miss.’
I gasp. Punch in the gut feeling. My legs and arms go limp. His kid’s head. His man’s body. He’s older than I guessed. Has to be older. A young man.
‘Yes, Miss, you will like?’
The sun thunders. I sprint to the main street and don’t look back. Go around the corner. Lean against a wall. Try to catch my breath. A stitch compresses my side.
I gag.
His penis. His childish face. His hand. Why did he call me? Did I do something? Did I do something to make him call me?
Puke sensation. I can barely hold myself upright. I spit sticky saliva. Elegant Japanese women with fancy umbrellas and pasty skin pass. I can’t translate the fragments of their comments but guess ‘pig’ or ‘scum’. The black clouds from the traffic fumes are suffocating. My head tightens and spins. A mangy dog comes over and sniffs my leg with his wet nose.
I focus on the menu and the goosebumps on my arms dissolve.
The waitress takes my order. Citrus juice to drink. Gazpacho and spring rolls starter. Nasi goreng for mains, and a coconut cream pie for dessert.
It’s not enough. I call her back and order large fries and a chickpea curry with brown rice.
She looks at the empty seat across from me. ‘For your friend?’
‘That’s my order. With the mains. For me.’
‘All for you?’
I bow my head and nod.
She smiles sadly. ‘Okay, Miss.’
I eat rapidly as soon as she drops the food down. I don’t even care that she can see me or that anyone else can. I taste nothing as I shovel everything into me.
My stomach is full and guilt gnaws my whole body when I order a second dessert – a cashew ice cream and a local coffee. I repeatedly think about what happened with Jean-Luc, of the teenager wanking.
My attention returns to the room when the waitress places the coffee in front of me. I wince at its bitterness and heat as I swallow, burning my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
I finish the coffee, the ice cream, and at last, I feel numb.
I sit there for a while in a stupor.
On the way out, I stop into the shop part of the restaurant, buy a bag of dry roasted peanuts and a long baguette with soft cheese and spices.
I point at the tiramisu cake that’s on display.
‘You would like a slice of this?’ the boy behind the counter asks.
‘No. The full cake.’
Outside in the sunshine, the food feels like it’s clogged my windpipe.
I keep rambling on towards the guesthouse. I stub my toe off a crack in the pavement and hear laughter behind me on the streets. My stomach balloons. I want to devour the tiramisu with my hands. I barely resist.
Maria is locking her door when I walk dazed through the courtyard.
‘Hey, you okay?’ she shouts over. ‘You look more highly strung than usual.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say weakly.
‘Nat, are you sure? Your face is green.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You going to join me at the beach, I’m leaving shortly?’
‘No.’
‘Come on. It’s only a bit of fun.’
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘Natalie, chill out, you’re gonna have to—’
‘I don’t want to fucking go,’ I say through my teeth and make a gesture like I’ve broken something in half. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’
Maria’s eyes go big. ‘Your circus, your animals.’
In my room, the heat is trapped. I lie down and try to sleep. I can’t. I shuffle to the other side of the bed. The cool side. I strip the sheet from me and point the fan at the bed. I switch back to the other side of the bed. Put the sheet back over myself. Point the fan at the ceiling. I fling the sheet on the ground and get up to look out the window. I open the curtain, the daylight fades.
The sky glows red on the horizon. Maria would probably be there on the beach by now.
I wolf down the peanuts and bread with such intensity that I can barely breathe. I grab the bakery bag with the tiramisu. I open it to see some flies have got at the dessert. I recoil and bat them off but they hover over it and land again.
And the teenager, what he might have done after – maybe cleaning himself up with a tissue, going inside for an orange, flicking on the TV in the dining area, sitting on the cushions in front of it. His grandmother bickering with him about being lazy, about getting a real job. Him rolling his eyes and turning up the volume. Lighting a cigarette.
I could still eat the cake. Even if the flies have laid eggs in it.
He’d shower, put on his nicest jeans, his cleanest linen shirt. Splash some fake CK One onto his cheeks, his neck, his underarms. Kick a stone down the busy streets glowing in the dusk and neon. Abandon it when he reached the sand.
He’d scan the women, stay aloof, mysterious, wait for them to choose him.
The mascarpone cream is turning a crusty yellow at the edges where it has melted and re-set. The flies rub their forelegs together.
Maria, in trying to get away from Bev, trying to make Zander jealous, would signal the teenager over with the curl of her finger. She would slow-dance and dirty laugh and drink Bintang with him in a beach hut. The sun would eventually engulf the night.
I cram the cake into me as quickly as I can, try to make myself feel less empty, or feel sick, feel anything other than afraid.
When I’m done, I’m breathless, lying on the ground, sweating, weighted down, knowing hellishly, miraculously, I have never felt worse.
I double over.
And in the next moment, I split.
I float up and I’m above myself. From the roof, I neutrally look at my bloated body, my panicked guilty expression. I watch myself being helpless. There I am lying on the floor in a ball, full of self-loathing and sugary food.
There I am wishing I didn’t exist.
I’m brought back down and return into myself, gasping and looking at the ceiling. What the absolute fuck. Was that real? I wiggle my toes. I clench my stomach, which grumbles and creaks and is overfull.