Pants on Fire Read online

  “Bills, mate,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  “Just chatting to my new friend Georgie here. Come and say hello.”

  Rory came over and shook my hand. He had lovely pale blue eyes.

  “Rory Stewart, g’day,” he said, doffing his hat. I noticed that although he had very black eyebrows, his hair was silver all over. He wasn’t pin-up perfect like Billy, but there was something very attractive about him too.

  “Georgia Abbott, how do you do?” I replied, suddenly a bit shy and formal, but also wanting to burst into hysterical giggles because he had actually said “g’day” and tipped his hat. He was dressed the same way as Billy and I decided on the spot that moleskin pants do something for a man. Specially men with nice long legs like this Rory person.

  “Georgie’s just moved here from London,” said Billy. “She’s working on Glow with Debbie.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun there. Say hi to Debs for me, would you?”

  I nodded, starting to wonder if Debbie Brent had first dibs on every attractive man in Sydney. Rory then turned to Billy and said, “Mate, I was looking for you to tell you I’m going. I’ve left Scooby in the ute and I’ve got to let her out. I’ll see you back at the house, OK? Bye Georgia, good to meet you.”

  And he left. Shame, I thought, he’d actually got my name right, but at least I still had darling Billy to flirt with.

  “Was he speaking in tongues?” I asked him. “Didn’t make a word of sense to me.”

  “Oh, that’s just old Rory. Been my best friend all my life. We grew up together. We’re like family. Great guy.” He laughed. “God, we’ve had some funny times together.”

  “Yes, I saw you laughing after you stuck your tongue in my mouth earlier . . .”

  “Uh—oh, that was something else . . .”

  I let him squirm a bit. “Anyway, he does seem very nice, but isn’t he a bit young to be grey?”

  “Yes, he is. He’s the same age as me, but he had a big shock and his hair went grey.”

  “What on earth happened?”

  Billy turned quiet. “It was really sad. Rory comes from quite a big family—he had three brothers and one sister. He’s the youngest. Eighteen months ago all three of his brothers were killed in a light plane accident on their property. It was terrible—all over the papers here. Debbie Brent was engaged to the eldest one, Drew.”

  “Oh no—I had no idea. She just seems like one of those people who have a perfect life; how really awful for her. It must have been terrible for all of you.”

  “You’re not wrong. That accident devastated so many people. Rory’s father has never recovered from it. He had a stroke not long after and now he’s paralysed down one side. Rory had to leave Sydney and go and take over the farm, which he never wanted to do. His brothers were always the farmers. Rory was the youngest and thought he was free of it—now he spends his life trudging around in cow shit. But he never complains about it. I get him down here to stay with me as much as I can. Make sure he has a good time.”

  It was a very sad story, but I must confess I was paying as much attention to the movements of Billy’s beautiful mouth as he told it, as I was to what he was saying. Those lips . . . yum. I had to keep him talking.

  “Who or what is Scooby?” I asked him, not caring in the slightest.

  “Rory’s cattle dog. She’s a character. You’ve never seen a dog who can jump higher than Scoobs. They ride along in the ute and she sticks both her front legs out the window.”

  “What’s a ute?” I was practically cross-eyed, trying to squint down his shirt. He looked at me like I was an alien.

  “A utility . . . a van for the farm. You know, you have a little cabin in the front and a big tray in the back where you can put bales of hay, or sheep, or women. Ha ha ha.”

  “Oh, a pickup . . .”

  “Yeah, that’s what the Yanks call them, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t get my joke. Antony would have, I thought. Oh well. Billy shifted around in his seat and shuddered a bit.

  “Still gets to me, talking about the Stewart boys. They were all like brothers to me. Drew was my hero when I was a kid. The best shot in New South Wales . . .”

  He looked into the distance for a moment and then suddenly turned to me and grinned. “Let’s dance.”

  He stood up and offered me his hand. Then he pulled my hat off my head and threw it on the floor, followed by his own.

  “Too hot,” he said and led me to the dance floor, where they seemed to have lined up all my favourite dance tracks. Out they came . . . “Car Wash,” “Groove is in the Heart,” “Love Shack”. . .

  Billy was a great dancer. He understood all about being funny on the dance floor, about dancing stupidly and ironically as well as dancing sexily, doing the Hitchhiker and the Pony and singing along. He knew all the moves for “My Sharona” and “Night Fever.” We did the Twist. We did the Mashed Potato. We even did the Macarena, during which I thought I was gong to wet myself, because he did the wiggle in such a funny way. And when he took my hand and spun me around, out and back and into his arms, I was in heaven.

  It was wild on that dance floor. Suddenly it seemed that every person at the party was dancing. Danny Green, cameras still around his neck, was prancing around like the Mad Hatter on speed. I could see Jasper and Lin Lee on the other side of the dance floor and noticed with satisfaction that she had absolutely no sense of rhythm, although he had a louche hip-swivelling style.

  Antony and his eyebrows went by a few times, accompanied by a series of laughing women, each one very attractive. All of his friends from the dressing room were on the dance floor too and they kept coming up and kissing me on the cheek in the middle of a track for no apparent reason. “Having fun, Georgie?” they’d ask.

  “Go girlfriend!” said a drag queen in a red sequin kaftan, with a platform shoe as a hat on top of a blood-red wig.

  “Woo hoo!” we all sang. Especially me. Woo bloody hoo. “How do you like Sydney, eh Georgia?” asked Antony, appearing suddenly and whispering into my ear. How did I like Sydney? I bloody loved it. That’s how much I liked it. I hadn’t had this much fun for years. And Billy spun me out and in and round and round, never missing a beat, until I was breathless with excitement.

  “Water! Water!” I cried, slumping on a gold salon chair, while he went off in search of liquid refreshment. It wasn’t until I stopped for a minute that I realised it was dark outside and that the room was beginning to thin out. I’d arrived at the party at four o’clock and now it was nearly eleven. I’d been carrying on like this for seven hours.

  Billy came back with water and champagne and, as he crossed the room, I had another good look at him. He may have been only half a Brent, but he was all gorgeous. His shirt was now unbuttoned to the waist so I could clearly see a perfectly smooth, muscular chest. He had slightly bandy legs, which I’ve always found very attractive, and his riding boots were fetchingly worn in. His blond, slightly wavy hair flopped over one eye. Crikey. What a dreamboat.

  “There you are, darl,” he said, taking the seat next to me. I skulled the water and then we sat sipping the champagne in a happy silence.

  Billy turned and smiled at me. “Where did you learn to dance like that?”

  “I could ask you the same question,” I said. “I’ve always loved dancing. My whole family loves it. My parents had a lot of parties when I was growing up and there was always wild and crazy dancing. And we used to go to my grandparents’ in Scotland for hogmanay and there’d be reeling, so I suppose I’ve spent a large proportion of my adult life skipping the light fantastic.”

  Now I’d started, I couldn’t stop talking.

  “One of the things I’d started to hate about London was that there was nowhere to go dancing. All the nightclubs were about being eighteen and cool, or they were ghastly pick-up joints with men in white shoes, or Annabel’s, which I really have to be in the mood for—i.e. drunk. And none of my friends have proper parties
any more. They’ve all got children and you’ll be invited to hideous Sunday lunches with thousands of kids everywhere, or drink parties where you all leave at nine-thirty and go out and spend £40 a head on dinner, which you don’t get until ten-thirty . . .”

  I could see his eyes glazing over. “Sorry, I’m going on, aren’t I?”

  “No worries,” he said, clearly oblivious. “I love this song. Come on.”

  It was a slow one. Don’t ask me what it was. I couldn’t hear it. All I was aware of was the smell of Billy’s neck, a combination of soap and sunshine and clean shirt, as he held me tightly and slowly moved us round the floor. It was divine. There were lots of slow songs after that and we danced until my knees were practically buckling. I could feel the hardness of Billy’s body pressed against me. He felt like he was made entirely of muscle—he may have been a stockbroker during the week, but he felt like a farmer. Was it the champagne, the music, the powder plate, or just pure pheromones? Maybe it was the way he was humming along with the music in my ear. I don’t know what it was but I would have followed Billy Ryan around on my hands and knees at that moment. I think for the first time in my life I really understood the meaning of the word “lust.” I was practically drooling.

  Then the music stopped. Coming back to consciousness, I saw that the room was empty, apart from the DJ packing up, Danny Green asleep on a sofa and his poodle sniffing around the empty glasses and full ashtrays. I could hear naughty giggles coming from one of the side rooms.

  “We’d better go,” said Billy. “I think this party is officially over. I’ll take you home. Where do you live?”

  “Elizabeth Bay,” I murmured, blinking up at him. “Billyard Avenue.”

  “Well, that won’t be hard then. We’re already in Elizabeth Bay. I’ll just go and get our hats.”

  He came back wearing mine and handed me his. I put it on. When we stepped outside the night was still warm and very starry.

  “This city never stops showing off, does it?” I said, looking up at the huge vaulted inky sky, with its unfamiliar constellations.

  “Mmm?” He didn’t seem to have heard me. “Did you say you live in Billyard Avenue? Let’s go the long way round.”

  He took my hand and instead of walking straight to my street, he turned left down some steps to a park. It was so peaceful. The water in Rushcutters Bay was completely calm; the lights reflected in it were barely twinkling. Even the air was barely stirring. We leaned on the seawall for a while and then I asked Billy if he could show me the Southern Cross.

  “Too right,” he said. “But let’s get away form these lights.”

  He led me to the darkest part of the park, where we lay on our backs on the grass.

  “OK. See that bright star there? That’s your guide star. Then you just go along and you can see the five stars of the Southern Cross. It’s kind of upside down at this time of year. See it?”

  I did see it. It was beautiful.

  “And if you draw a line from the head of the cross to the foot and continue over—that bright star is called Achenar. Now come back in a circle towards the Southern Cross—see those three stars in a row? That’s called the Peacock. Don’t ask me why.”

  “What’s that very bright one there?”

  “That’s Sirius. Aborigines call him the Eagle. Come across from there . . .” He was holding my hand while he said all this, tracing the direction. “See those three bright stars in a row? That’s Orion’s belt. That little cluster is his head and—if you follow the line down here—his left foot is called Betelgeuse. It’s a red star. Great name, isn’t it?”

  I looked and looked and, while I was looking, he kissed me. Not a yucky kiss like the one he’d given me on the dance floor when I first met him, but a really nice kiss. Lots of really nice kisses. Slow ones. Confident ones. Confident kisses and confident hands, moving and exploring and unbuttoning. I was lost. No one had kissed me like this since Rick. But the point came, lying as we were in the middle of a public park, when I thought, we could get arrested if we carry on like this. Billy had his shirt off and in the light of the moon he looked like he was carved out of soap. It was a very fine thing, I must say, but suddenly his trousers were unbuttoned too and the top of my catsuit was all over the place. When he rolled on top of me I decided I’d better do something quick. So I rolled him straight over the top.

  “Eugh! Oh no. Yuk!” he cried out as he hit the ground on the other side and an all-too-familiar smell filled the air. “I’ve rolled in dog shit.”

  “Yuk! You poor thing.”

  Talk about destroying the moment. We both sat up and there it was all over his back. I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw up.

  “Why is dog poo so vile?” he said. “Kangaroo or sheep poo won’t do you any harm if you roll in it, but dog poo is evil. I feel sick. Pass me my shirt, will you, Georgie? Would you rub it off me? I can’t stand it being on there.”

  “With your shirt?”

  “It’s all we’ve got. I’m not rolling in the grass, I’ll just get more on me.”

  I wiped it off with his shirt as best as I could.

  “It’s really sticky. Oh yuk.” The smell was making me retch. “It really is disgusting. I think you’d better come back to my place and have a shower.” I said it without thinking. Honestly.

  We got up and walked back through the park, Billy holding his shirt out from him as if it was radioactive.

  “What a waste of a good shirt,” he said, dropping it in the first garbage bin we came to. “And I loved that one. It was my special Easter Show shirt. I always had a good time in it. But it doesn’t matter how many times I wash it, it would always be the dog shit shirt now. People who don’t pick up their dog’s droppings should be shot. Why would you have a dog in the city, anyway? God, I feel stupid walking around with no shirt on.”

  He didn’t look stupid—even though he still had my hat on. He looked magnificent. His back was muscly, he had marvelous shoulders and, I noticed, a tattoo of a tiger on his left bicep.

  “Nice tat, Billy.”

  “Oh yeah, had it done when I was sixteen. Rory and I got drunk and went together. It was his idea.”

  That surprised me—Rory had seemed so straitlaced. “What has he got?”

  “A Maori symbol he found in a book. It’s pretty cool. It means strength.”

  “What does yours mean?”

  “Grrr!” he said, making tigery faces and pretending to claw me.

  When we got to the door of my building I suddenly realised I hardly knew this guy, and here I was letting him come up to my apartment. This was foolish behaviour. But he was Debbie Brent’s cousin, I told myself, and I did work with her, so he wasn’t a total stranger. I turned the key. I just hoped he understood that I was only inviting him in because his back was covered in excreta. It didn’t mean I was asking him to stay the night.

  “I wouldn’t normally expect to come up to your place, Georgie,” he said as I opened the door to my flat. Mind-reader. “But they are slightly unusual circumstances—and I also need to apologise for kissing you on the dance floor ten seconds after we met. I’m sorry about that. It was rude, but I was just showing off to Rory. In fact, he dared me to do it . . .”

  A dare? What was he talking about? Why would Rory dare Billy to kiss me? Was it because I was so ugly? Not judging by his performance in the park. I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or just to let it pass. It was all so weird.

  “Oh, that’s fine,” I said, suddenly all brisk. “The bathroom’s in there. There are clean towels in that basket and you can use my back brush—or maybe not . . . I’ll get you a T-shirt.”

  He disappeared inside. I didn’t pour any drinks. I didn’t put soft music on. I didn’t take my clothes off. I just paced around, not knowing what to do with myself. One of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen was naked in my shower—I could hear the water running and him singing ‘car wash . . . woo ooo ooo . . .” through the door—and my heart was still racing from a combinati
on of all those little platey licks and our passionate snogfest under the stars. So I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do. I had a drink of water. When I turned round from the sink, Billy was standing in the kitchen doorway, his hair wet and slicked back, a white towel around his waist and that smile on his face.

  Seconds later we were in my bed.

  Now, I’d been working on women’s magazines long enough to know that the best way to kill a romance before it begins is to sleep with a guy on the first date. But he was gorgeous. All over. Not an ounce of fat on the man. I felt like I was losing consciousness.

  Then something funny happened. Or rather, it didn’t happen. His body was hard as rock all over—except for the one place it really mattered.

  “Georgie,” he said, as it became patently obvious to both of us that things were not quite right. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “You’re right,” I said, secretly relieved. “I’m sorry. I never should have let it get this far, but it was unusual circumstances like you said.” Not to mention that I’d ingested about twenty-five fingerfuls of Class A drugs, two bottles of champagne and several puffs of supersonic hydroponic Sydney smoko.

  “I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to take advantage of you, but it was such an amazing night and it just sort of happened. I think I’d better go home. Would you mind?”

  “No, it’s a good idea, before we do anything else stupid. I’ll get you that T-shirt.”

  I got up quickly, glad he was going—it meant I wasn’t a slut after all. But I was also sad, confused, disappointed and embarrassed. What had gone wrong? He’d been like a raging bull in the park and then, when we were in a more appropriate locale, it had all closed down. Had he suddenly realised I was repulsive? What was the matter with me? First I had made Rick turn to hookers and now I’d made macho-man Billy Ryan turn to jelly. Was this all part of the dare with Rory?

  “Georgie, give me your phone number. Please. I’m not a bastard, really. I would like to see you again. I’d really like to be friends.”