Amid The Hours

We spent a lot of time at the airport, days it seemed, waiting for the model Michelle Leslie, who had just got out of jail after spending three months for possessing two ecstasy pills. The Bali tourist market must be dead by now. If they're not blowing them up they're busting them. You think Bali was so popular all these years because of the quality of the sea food, or because it was party town? And when the party was over for all of us, and you still had to show up for work. That was what was confusing. That there didn't seem any way out anymore. That in all the nestling and bustling something entirely abstract was lost. We had dealt into all of it, dwelt in all of it, and these passionless slides of colour was all there was to show? That was it, that was what hurt the most in the end, that everything he had ever believed in had turned to dust. In the end there was no salvation for what he sought. There was no redemption. The body grew less and less fit to deal with it. He allowed a grime to coat what had once been a sparkiling spirit. He couldn't keep the swamp at bay, all those viruses, all that danger. He was caught in it and he wasn't sure there was any way out. There just wasn't enough money to make a full escape. She wasn't on the flight all Sunday. She was on the flight first thing Tuesday. The controversy had raged all the while; a beautiful young model, a millionaire boyfriend, drugs, who could want for more. It was one of the worst crushes I had seen in years, print, radio, television, absolutely no one cooperating. It was great theatre. There was nothing to embroider. The graat weight was gone. Again. Amid the hours we had waited and the flights we had ticked off, there wasn't anything else to play but a straight bat and downbeat humour.