‘She
looks like trouble.’ Alex said.
I
knew exactly who he was talking about.
The girl with the thin red belt.
She was undulating provocatively against a young dopey eyed man in a
union jack t-shirt. The undivided,
evening’s attention.
We
had ring side seats. Two buckling
plastic chairs at the dive shop’s outside bar.
Around 40 Singaporean university students had gathered, at the
invitation of Mike, Owen’s younger brother.
Owen being the owner of the dive shop, who had gone to a dive exhibition
on the mainland. It was meant to have a
Hawaiian theme. However, only Lisa and
Sven, the bar managers, had bothered.
Flower lays, palm frond grass skirts, and coconut bras. The guests weren’t
there for the theme. They were there to
get completely hammered and release the silly humping monkeys hiding inside
them. Things had gotten exuberant with a
surprising rapidity. Andy and Susanne
had said it would.
We
had been sat with Andy and Susanne earlier in the evening. The tension between
them restrained, but palpable. They are
two of the dive instructors. For two
years they had been ‘living the dream’ together. Picking up dive jobs around South East Asia.
‘Just
you wait. Give it 15 minutes and they
are going to be a mess.’ Susanne said in a soft German accent.
‘Yup,
it doesn’t look it now, but 15 minutes, 20 at most.’ Andy agreed.
The
mood amongst the party seemed subdued.
People were talking politely to each other. The BBQ food was being shared out in an
orderly manner. No one was dancing. Drinks were being sipped.
Four
tall blondish girls arrived, and positioned themselves in the middle of the
party. Incongruous amongst the
Asians.
‘Who
are they? They’re dressed like they have
just finished a hard days data entry, rather than relaxed holiday-ers on a
tropical island.’ I said.
Black
pumps, thin tight knit cardigans, low sensible ponytails.
‘They’re
some on my students.’ Susanne
replied. ‘Doctors from Germany.’
Around
15 minutes later, there were squeals from the bar as the tequila hit it, and
the first casualty of the evening slumped in one of the plastic chairs.
‘Right
I’m off.’ Susanne said. ‘You coming?’
Andy
nodded reluctantly.
Screeches,
squeals, laughter and bullying encouragement hit high above the music. Red Belt and her friends were at the bar, on
the tequila shots. One, two, three. Union Jack had followed her. She used his nerdy safety to dance with
raunchy abandon at him, as others cheered on.
One of the locals, in a white t-shirt stretched over a middle aged
bulge, was taking advantage of the revelry.
He bumped his way into the group of friends, and flapped himself
aggressively towards the girl.
‘You
know he is just trying to brush his dick against her arse.’ Alex said.
‘Yeah,
there’s always a few around. See a girl
dancing and think they’re game for a salacious groping. The pestilence of the dance floor.’ I replied.
The
party was undoubtedly underway. The boys
were peeling off their t-shirts flinging them, like strippers, into the dance
floor. Another early casualty, two
slumped victims of the free bar. They
were being used as props in which to pile beer cans, as unknowing participants
in simulated sexual orgies, or the unfortunate at the bottom of a multiple
person bundle. Someone was being sick
off the edge onto the beach below. Girls
were dancing, to rapturous applause, on the bar. The grotesque abandon of alcohol.
‘Look,
Andy’s back.’ I said spying him looking
a little lost in the fray.
‘That’s
unusual. Things must be bad.’ Alex replied.
We
looked at each other, wise and knowing, eyebrows raised.
Red
Belt lurched off the dance floor, eyes swimming, belly held. Union Jack followed her, steading her as she
stumbled. They made their way over to a
group sat by one of the beach huts opposite the bar. Sam and Daniel’s hut, another dive instructor
couple. Alex laughed.
‘Oh
no, she isn’t. Is that her?’ I said.
‘Yup,
she’s vomiting all over Sam and Daniel’s front step.’
Sam,
stern, marched over to the vomiting girl.
She marched back into her hut. A
moment later she returned with a bucket of water to slosh the sick away. Red Belt vomited again. Sam went and got another bucket of water.
The
dance floor was expanding, we were in danger of being danced on. We went to sit with Andy, Daniel and a few
others watching the quickening pace of alcohol intolerant youths, descend into
drunken difficulty.
‘I
reckon they’ll all be in bed by one.’
Alex said.
‘What’s
the time now?’ I asked.
’11.15’ Daniel replied.
‘Midnight. They’ll all be in bed by midnight.’ Andy counter-offered.
Andy
looked resigned. Empty. The ending of his relationship with Susanne
creating an emotional vacuum. He tried
to fill it by talking of a fleeting love for a girl moving with seductive
confidence on the dance floor.
There
was a splash. A scream. A panic.
Coming from the teaching pool. Daniel
darted, Andy and a few others that worked there followed. A ruckus, a call for a doctor, loud tears,
bustle, commotion. Daniel came back and
threw his wet phone across the table.
‘What
happen?’ Someone asked.
‘Fucking
idiot pushed me into the pool while I was trying to help.’
He
walked into the dive shop. An angry
crash and smash. The music from the bar stopped, the revellers thinned out. One of the cardigan wearing German’s ran
towards the ruction. As fraught people
hurried in and out of where we were sitting, snippets of panicked, quick,
serious sentences stitched the situation together for us.
‘CPR.’
‘Can’t
swim.’
‘Thought
she needed refreshing.’
‘Went
down twice.’
‘Mike
dragged her up by the hair.’
‘Drowned.’
It
was Red Belt. Someone had thrown her
into the pool. She had sunk rather than
swum. No one did anything until Mike ran over and threw himself in. He dropped her the first time he tried to
bring her to the surface. Daniel was
first there to help. Someone pushed him
into the pool, for a joke. Phil, a
rescue dive student happily recounted his new knowledge on secondary drowning
to us, as the fracas moved in and out of our sphere.
Red
Belt was carried through a few moments later, dripping, limp,
hyperventilating. Lucky for her, and her
foolish assailant, 3 first aid trained dive instructors and 4 German doctors
were drinking in the bar that night. She was bundled into the dive shop,
followed by a mattress, sheets and calls for water.
‘Rusty,
make sure no one goes in there. No one.’ Andy said reappearing.
Rusty,
the pestilence of the dance floor, stood guard at the door, menacing anyone who
went close. From pervy pest to proud
protector. No one got past Rusty.
We
went to the bar, to distance ourselves from the distress. Andy joined us. No longer empty. Filled with solemn perspective.
‘She
was almost gone. Almost.’ He said.
Phil
put in a music request for ‘Do not resuscitate’.
We
asked Andy who had thrown her into the pool.
He pointed at a nervous looking boy in blue shorts. Blue Shorts walked towards us. I spoke audibly about the stupidity of
throwing vomiting girls into deep swimming pools. What idiot would do something like that? Blue Shorts asked if the cigarettes on the
bar were ours. No. Andy asked him if he knew who had thrown Red
Belt into the pool. Blue Shorts shook
his head and shuffled away without a cigarette.
Someone
else was sick on Sam and Daniel’s front step.
We watched as the remaining unconscious boy in the plastic chair was
carried away by six of his friends. Union Jack had long gone.
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‘Put
a pillow under his back to wedge him on his side in bed.’ Andy called after them. And then to us. ‘I don’t want him to drown in his own vomit.’
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