I had also staged a second protest at the time when I refused to attend with my ministerial spouse, the official Prime Ministerial welcome to President George H. Bush at the National Maritime Museum where, on behalf of the American people, Bush was presenting the Museum with a fat cheque. The gas guzzler ahead of me pulled out and overtook the small green rust bucket in front. I watched this Master of the Universe head his mighty gas-guzzler towards the traffic circle and made a small bet with myself.
And I was on the money. No way did he stop for the hitchhiker. No sense of a moral obligation there.
The driver of the old green car in front, short of the roundabout, tooted a pedestrian, a girl with bum-length dreadlocks, wearing a long skirt, a quilted top and Jesus sandals. She ambled across the road to the driver, tossed an apologetic wave to me then stuck her head in the driver’s window. A good rainbow country citizen wouldn’t let herself get too upset about such a minor delay, I cautioned myself. This wasn’t Sydney. We didn’t sit on the horn in Byron Bay or rudely overtake just to make our point. Instead, I bade my time and spent it reflecting on how most of the streets in Byron Bay were named after literary legends. Jonson Street led into Browning, which converged with Tennyson at the roundabout where the hitchhiker stood with his thumb out.
Ruskin, Byron, Keats, Milton, Wordsworth and Shelley, I’d spotted them all during the day, and as well, my map showed a Marvell, Carlyle, Cowper, Burns, Kipling, and Scott. I’d even noted a tilt at the Aussies with Wright, Lawson, Kendall and Patterson Streets. The city fathers must have thought they could expunge the district’s savage history as a whaling station and abattoir with all their poesy. But one of my favourites, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, seemed to have missed out on his eponymous street. I thought of the books I’d purchased this morning at Ringo’s Café, a 1921 edition of Coleridge’s Literary Criticism.
No car had come up behind me. I was chilling, waiting for the two hippies in front to finish their conversation. Another friendly wave to me as the girl finished chatting and strolled back to the pavement. Now the little green car would stop for the hitchhiker, I figured, and I would be relieved of the duty to be kind and considerate to a stranger.
But I was wrong. The little green car took the first exit on the left out of the roundabout and headed up Tennyson, going in the opposite direction from the hitchhiker’s intention. That left yours truly as the next car into the circle.
I now entered the force field of the stranger. Weave a circle round him thrice.
The hitchhiker made eye contact with me. And close your eyes with holy dread. His look was an appeal to my humanity. A challenge. Compassion or disregard for a fellow traveler. I felt half annoyed that he could turn this chance meeting into a personal issue between the two of us, two people who were strangers to each other.
The Golf was almost stationary inside the circle and I could see he was no civic monument but a real life, flesh and blood virile male with a tanned and muscular body that showed up well against the stark white cargo shorts and the dark blue and white floral Hawaiian shirt. The boat shoes weren’t doing the casual chic look any harm either. And the hair I’d seen from way back blowing around his face was very straight, very black and very shiny.
I brought the Golf to a stop a short way past him and rolled down the window, watching in the side mirror as he picked up his bag and stood for a moment, looking around. Tall. Muscular. Broad shoulders. And, surprisingly, a Dr. Zhivago moustache. He began walking towards me. I spotted the gold earring. A gypsy!
When he came up to my window it was as if Omar Sharif himself was standing there, and how often had I’d drooled over Doctor Zhivago’s dreamy, come-to-bed eyes.
For he on honey-dew hath fed.
The man at my window had the features of a mogul warrior. High chiseled cheekbones, scaffolding for the olive skin. This is ridiculous. I had better things to do than mess with handsome strangers who wore gold earrings.
What if he had a switchblade under that Hawaiian shirt? A dagger stuck in his white cargo shorts? The FBI weren’t stupid. They knew things. He could be a serial killer. No one was accounting for my whereabouts and on reflection, it wasn’t Omar Sharif, at all. There was something more powerful in his bearing; something darker in his aura that warned me the man was trouble.
I shrugged, and before he could speak, I’d rolled the window back up, put my foot on the pedal and accelerated away from him. The sensible thing to do, of course.
I was looking back over my shoulder, embarrassed and trying to send some kind of lame apology but, in doing so, I managed to miss my exit. Now I would need to full circle the roundabout and that would mean having nowhere to go but towards the Hawaiian shirt again if I were to get out of the circle and onto Bangalow Road.
His thumb was still out but there was no stepping forward this time as the Golf approached him. He simply raised a quizzical eyebrow and grinned, a cheeky do-you-want-me-or-don’t-you-want-me kind of grin.
I kept my eyes straight ahead, making certain I’d catch the southbound exit this time. My intention in coming into the village had been to pick up a bottle of wine, the Echo and a few candles, not a stranger with God knows what mischief on his mind. Let someone else take their chances with him, I needed to ease myself carefully into the life of the Bay, get to know people.
I had my local rag and all I wanted was to get back to the shack and check out the Classifieds for a carpenter, someone good with timber. Once I had the place up to scratch I figured I would start inviting people around, create a bit of a salon of interesting Byron Bay types. I could forgive Wayne Young. And Di Morrissey might be up for teaching me something about novel writing. I would join a yoga class, maybe an outdoor painting group, a book club, bush walking, the local branch of the Labor Party. There were so many ways I planned on bringing myself up to speed as a fully-fledged Byronian woman.
As I was about to leave the roundabout, I glanced in the rear vision mirror. With the setting sun illuminating the hitchhiker’s physique and having just seen the man up close, staring him down for a second or two, but enough to have caught the sexy smile, my impulse was to reassess the whole aura thing. It wasn’t disturbing, it was just unusually powerful. In fact, I felt sympathy for the poor man and annoyed at my own rudeness and timidity. J. Edgar Hoover? What would that vicious old closet queen know about Aussie hitchhikers, anyway? Keats Street was up ahead. Keats reminded me again of Coleridge, the rich poetry. Opium-fueled. High on laudanum and magic phrasing. In Xanadu did ...
Kublai Kahn.
That was it! That was the image the man back there had brought to mind. Not Doctor Zhivago, but Kublai Khan. In Xanadu did Kublai Kahn... Xanadu. Caves of ice. Abyssinian maids strumming dulcimers. I slowed and let a cyclist overtake me, myself still overtaken by indecision.
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
The last line came to me as I pulled over onto the side of the road, reversed along the curb then leant over and threw the passenger door open.
I watched through the side mirror as he took his time sauntering up to the Golf. Rather than go straight to the open passenger door he strolled past on my side and around in front of the car, all the time keeping his gaze locked on me through the windscreen. Was he daring me to take off again? He stuck his head in the open door and smiled, one eyebrow raised and flashing the half-smart grin he had just given back at the roundabout. I got what it implied; recognition of a moment shared, a moral dilemma settled.
‘You’re sure about this?’ he said, tilting his head to the side, smiling with his whole face.
The American accent! Unexpected. I smiled back at him and shrugged. ‘Sure, I’m sure. Why not? You’re not an axe murderer, are you?’
‘No, lady, I’m not.’ Grinning, he tossed in his bag and without further discussion settled it