Missing in never never l.., p.21
Missing in Never Never Land, page 21
As she kissed him goodnight after their best sex yet, he looked at her, almost pleading. “You know I really can’t pay what you are asking.”
She shook her head and turned away, “Well, you know what comes next; it is all downhill from here. Goodbye career”
Chapter 33 - Fugitive
Amanda returned to the Professor’s office at the same time next week. She had not seen him in private and he had avoided her eyes in class which was unusual as normally he looked at her way too much. It made her uncomfortable, like he was seriously sweet on her. For her it was just profitable sex, though she had started to increasingly look forward to her weekly trysts for the pleasure they brought her. She would sometimes think of him privately with affection remembering these times.
It would be nice if he could find the money to continue, she could not cave in on that, better to move on to another person, she had two other possible candidates in mind.
So she would play hard ball if she must, not full and immediate exposure but a trickle, first releasing less incriminating bits to keep the wind up him and give him a chance to find at least part of the money that would buy more silence. That would be best, she thought.
She found she was unusually nervous today, not her normal super cool self. She wondered if she had a premonition of a problem as she lifted a hand to knock on his door.
She paused and undid the top two buttons on her blouse, still feeling a desire to keep the sexual thrill going; it was more pleasurable doing it for high stakes than simple lust. Perhaps he was still trying to assemble the money. If so she would give him another free sample to keep him keen. She found this thought turned her on, big time.
When she knocked she heard a muffled, “Come In,” but the voice was strange; it sounded pained.
He was sitting at his desk, still not really looking at her, his face drawn. He pushed an envelope her way, it seemed skinner than usual.
He spoke, still not looking up. “You need to take that money and get out of here. My wife found out about you and the money, she checked my accounts and demanded to know where it had gone. I ended up telling her about our affair and that I paid you because you filmed us and threatened to release it. She confronted me last night. She had been suspicious and asking me questions all week. In the end I told her as it seemed the only way to save our marriage and for me to keep access to our children.
“She called the police today; told them I am being blackmailed by you. They came and met us this morning and questioned me. I told them what happened. They asked when I would see you next and I said I expected to meet you tomorrow. When that time comes they will be here to arrest you, to charge you with extortion.
“As a result I expect to lose my job and you are likely to end up in jail. My job is as good a gone, but I do not want to see you in prison.
“On my way here I got a small amount of extra money that my wife does not know about. It is here for you. It will give you enough to cover your travel and living costs for a couple weeks.
“So I strongly suggest you leave town and go somewhere far away, overseas would be best as they are likely to trace you and arrest you if you just go to another state.
“Provided you are not here tomorrow I can say I do not know where you are or where you have gone. If they cannot locate you elsewhere it might just go away for us both. If they arrest you I will be forced to give evidence against you. That will be bad for me and even worse for you.
“The funny thing is, despite knowing what you are like, someone who uses and manipulates people, I find myself very fond of you. You are very bright and have great ability. I don’t want you to end up in jail like any other convicted criminal.
“Part of me wishes I had enough money to set you up in a nice place and let you enjoy a good life. Maybe that person would have become a better you, someone who lived up to all the potential you have inside you.
“However that time is past and this is the only help I can give you. You must go and go quickly. Even now you need to be careful. The police may already be looking for you, though I think they have yet to seek an arrest warrant. I understood that this afternoon they were going to try and trace the money, to see if you deposited it. If they get information that shows you receiving large sums of money I think they will arrest you.
“So I suggest you go back to your house very unobtrusively and collect anything essential like a passport and vanish. It would be even better if you could ring a friend from your house, ask them to get a few essential things for you and meet you somewhere, make up a story that sounds plausible and meet them in a local cafe.
“Then, as soon as possible, you should leave town, perhaps take the Airtrain to JFK where you will have the best choice of aeroplane options to faraway destinations.”
Amanda found herself struggling to take it all in, to comprehend how quickly her world had turned on its head. She had thought she was clever; now she was a fugitive.
He was right. She must get out of here quickly. Unexpectedly she felt sad about saying goodbye to this man. As lovers it had started ordinary but become increasingly good. But what moved her was his unexpected kindness. She knew that what he had done today would not benefit him. It may make his situation worse if shown that he had helped her.
But yet, despite her using him in a get rich scheme, and him knowing it, he had treated her with unexpected decency. She felt a tear in her eyes at his goodness. It made a tiny chink into her otherwise hardened soul.
She stood up and walked over to him. He put out his hands, took her hands and pulled her to him and held her against him, stroking her head like a favourite daughter for a long minute. Then he pushed her away.
“Go now; perhaps one day you will realise that this was a good life lesson and remember me with kindness. Perhaps you could send me a postcard from a far away and exotic destination. I won’t promise to come and meet you but you never know.”
She reached forward and kissed him gently on the lips, a kiss of affection rather than passion. “Thank you, you have been good to me. I will send a postcard when I can, signed with a big A, carrying with it my affection.”
Chapter 34 – Pickup
Over six months had passed. Amanda found herself working on an island resort in the far north of Queensland.
Fortunately she had kept the money that she had been paid by her Newark professor in cash, not having lodged it into a bank account.
In the late afternoon when others were off having a drink she had slipped unobtrusively into the share house and gone to her room, quickly packing an overnight bag with her best clothes, anything else valuable and her passport and cash, still over fifteen thousand dollars, plus another four thousand in the envelope.
She made a snap decision, as she was packing, to head for Australia via the West Coast. So she booked an evening flight from Newark to LA. In LA she bought an open return ticket and arranged a working holiday visa for twelve months Australia, it was easy with US university student status. By lunch time next day she was airborne, flying across the Pacific Ocean knowing that in another half a day her next touchdown was Sydney. It had all seemed so easy it was hard to believe that there could be any problems following her, but still she knew she must take care.
She only stayed a week in Sydney, it was an expensive city and she wanted to ration her money. So first she went down to Melbourne, the other main city, and got work in a bar for a couple months. Then, when Christmas came, she returned to Sydney for the fireworks show, meeting up with a few casual friends she had made when she first came here. She stayed in a backpacker hostel near Bondi Beach, during the long hot days of summer, doing odd jobs as they turned up.
By February, with the heat of summer easing, she decided to go north and follow the sun; that was the way the other backpackers talked of it. She worked her way up the east coast, stopping here and there and taking more short term jobs to replenish her money.
Learning to dive interested her so she booked a diving course on the Barrier Reef in Queensland. It was at a place called Airlie Beach. With her qualification in hand and using her friendly manner, inside a second week she had a job offer at a nearby resort at a place called Hamilton Island.
It was an hour and a half by ferry from the mainland town. She had now worked here for two months and found it easy and enjoyable, with the chance to practice her diving in the afternoons or when tours were going out and they had an extra space to give away.
Her job was in customer service, booking local tours and island activities for overseas visitors, particularly the rich world of an American traveller clientele. Her American accent always ensured good tips when she gave service with a smile to her fellow citizens, and she had a good story to tell of an American student, on a gap year, seeing the world.
Now she had a stable address she sent a post card to the Professor as well as a letter to her Mum telling of her decision to make an Australian trip and defer her studies for a bit.
Her Mum wrote a letter back which came two weeks later, telling of the local news. It said nothing said about the police or other authorities looking for her. Perhaps with her gone and no money to trace it would just fade away, like she and the professor both hoped.
She would like to know she decided, she could stay here for another month but ultimately she wanted more from her life than jobs in holiday resorts. It needed to know if there was an arrest warrant or open criminal investigation that would cause problems should she return home.
She tried to ring the Professor but the University receptionist merely informed her he longer worked there. They would not provide information on where he had gone, only that he left unexpectedly late last year. She realised this was due to her and felt a bit sad about it.
She was starting to find life dull on the island, she had done most of the tours and activities, she had added an additional $3000 to her bank balance since coming here, she had tried a couple very transient affairs with other tourist staff, but all in all it was becoming boring.
One night, a mid-week night when business was quiet, she was sitting in the resort bar where she worked, having a drink with a Canadian girl who worked with her. There was something comfortable in their accents and backgrounds that made them each enjoy the company of the other.
She noticed a man in his thirties, buy a drink, a rum and coke. He took it to a corner table, in the furthest corner away from the bar. There was something incredibly self possessed about him.
He was not exactly handsome, quite weather beaten looking, tanned from many long days in the sun, but there was a sense of physical power and toughness that she found appealing. His body had that hard look of a person doing manual work.
She tried to catch his eye, to see if she could draw a smile. It was as if he sensed her interest and avoided it. She felt her interest piqued.
She asked her friend if she knew who he was, few came to the island as unknowns except the tourists and he did not look like a tourist.
Her friend replied. “He just arrived today. I think he is here for three days to do some maintenance on the resort machinery, maybe the air conditioners. I heard his name was Mark, Mark something. That’s right, he was talking to the Resort Manager when I was on the front counter and he was introduced to our head of maintenance as Mark Brown.”
Amanda said, “Let’s go and introduce ourselves to him. If he is here on his own he might be looking for some company. God knows, interesting men, who are not jet setting tourists, are few and far between.
So they went across and said hello, smiling brightly in their best girlie way. He nodded politely but evidenced little interest in keeping them company. He was not rude but it was as if a dark spirit sat on his shoulder, giving him a serious demeanour and little ability to smile.
He sat and talked to them in a low key way for a few more minutes while he finished his drink then said, in a quaint and almost courtly way, “Well, nice meeting you ladies. Got a big day’s work tomorrow, replacing several air conditioning units in the west wing, then the same the next day in the east wing. So, at this stage of the evening, I wish you good night.”
Amanda felt her interest doubly drawn. He had the edges of a nice smile that she had almost glimpsed a couple times, as if in response to her obvious pickup lines which he clearly saw through. It was like he was saying. I have been around lots of bad places and tough motherfuckers and I have seen it all before. There was an edge to his manner. It spoke of challenge and maybe danger. She refused to accept his brush-off.
He was there in the bar again the next night. This time he stayed for two drinks, though he refused her offer to buy him one and did not offer to buy her one in return.
However she sensed that she had intrigued him too, just a tiny bit, but he was now conscious of her and intrigued by her interest. He told her a small bit about his work as a jack of all trades across the vast open spaces of Australia. She told him she was at University in New Jersey, just the other side of the Hudson River from New York and had decided to take a gap year and travel and see the world. Now she said she was enjoying life in Northern Queensland.
She knew as she spoke that he had seen through her shallow lies, not that he seemed to care, but his manner told her he had a nose for scenting out things that were not fully truthful.
He said, “We all have our stories; I have given you a tiny bit of mine, true but telling nothing. You have given me a tiny bit of yours, part true and telling even less. That’s how it goes.”
With that he stood up and left again.
The next night he was not there, Amanda asked around and found he had departed to the mainland on the last ferry. She felt disappointed that he had left without her knowing or saying goodbye.
A week later her Canadian friend left. Now she had no more drinking partners and there was no one else she found interesting at the resort at present. She decided she needed to do something to pass all the empty nights. She went to the bookshop and bought a novel with good reviews. It had stickers saying it had won a major prize, something called “Man Booker”. It seemed like a big deal prize in England, not quite a Pulitzer but still a big something.
Hopefully it will be OK, she thought as she settled in to reading it that night, nursing a drink on a corner table of the resort bar.
She realised that a person was coming to sit at her table, she looked up. It was the man, Mark. This time he was carrying a drink for her as well as one for himself. He had ordered her regular mojito and she wondered how he knew what it was, but his eyes were sharp, little went past him.
She looked him up and down appraisingly wondering if tonight would be her lucky night, the start of something new and exciting. She was confident in her ability to bait the hook and catch the fish from here.
Chapter 35 – The Wrong Man
Amanda and Mark talked for maybe an hour that night. When he looked at her she felt like she had his total attention, his eyes looked at her with such penetration. It made her a bit giddy and breathless, she would not let him get away tonight without something more.
She asked him what he was doing back on the island and where he was off to next. He said he was just back for a day to service the new air conditioners he had installed a week ago, make minor adjustments and ensure that all were working well. Tomorrow he would return to the mainland when he finished. Then after a night in Airlie Beach he was off early the next morning to go prospecting for opals in central Queensland, a place he had been told about which was promising. He would spend ten days to two weeks out there, the length depending on what he found. When that was done he would go further west, across to the NT where he was booked to do a few weeks of station work, contract mustering cattle.
She kept asking him questions about his life and what it was like out in “The Outback”, as he called it, was it like the American Wild West.
Finally, after about her tenth question, he turned to her and looked at her with eyes that bored straight into her soul.
“If you really want to see it you can come with me for a week or two. It won’t be exciting. I will be digging for opals. It is hard work. And once I leave here I won’t be coming back this way anytime soon. So if you get bored I can take you a four hour drive to the local town to catch a bus if you want to leave. Or, when I am finished, I can take you on to Mount Isa from where you can catch a plane. Or, if you really want to stay on longer you can come on with me to the NT and see a couple real cattle stations at work. When that is finished I will bring you to Alice Springs or Katherine which are the nearby towns. By then I am sure you will have had more than enough of the Outback and you can leave from there.
There was something implacable and hard in his eyes when he said those words that it gave her a little shiver. It was as if he had laid down a challenge to her, a challenge for a trip and a challenge for control. She liked challenges and she liked control.
She nodded, now exerting her own control. It could be interesting. “What do I need to do if I decide to come?
He shrugged, dismissive; as if now regretful he had made an offer, but not willing to go back on his word if the challenge was accepted.
“I will be catching the last ferry back to the mainland tomorrow. If I see you on the ferry I will take it you are coming with me.”
With that he stood up and nodded a good night.
Amanda sat there for a further five minutes, feeling wildly exhilarated, thinking how the strangest things in life came when least expected. She was determined to accept his challenge; she would be on the ferry. She would give notice tomorrow saying she was leaving at the end of the day, that a job offer had come up on the mainland that was too good to refuse and she needed to start immediately. They would make up her pay by the end of the day and she would be gone.
She would say nothing of her plan to travel to the outback with Mark. It would be fun. She knew, despite his challenge, that she could control him, the same way as she had always managed with other men.
