Roos on the grasses

Part 1 of 2. An Australian man takes an American girl out for a romantic date under the stars

We sat with crossed legs, one arm propping us comfortably and the other arm latched to the hands that would soon pour champagne into our mouths. She was beautiful, even with the evening shadows concealing most of her features. But light, even the faintest light, found a way to glow on her cheeks and swell in her eyes. We sat on a blanket in the grasses, a bottle of unpopped champagne sat between us.

            “You’ll see kangaroos, hundreds of kangaroos and their little joeys,” I had said to her back in the city. That was my pitch. “You’ll see the kangaroos, they will mob away, the moon will peep over us, and we will sit, the stars gleaming in the bubbles of our champagne, and believe me Yankee girl, drink is not cheap here in the Land of Aus.”

            My accent helps to get these American girls out in the field with me. Well, I’d like to think it was something about me rather than the kangaroos. Whether it is me, or the kangaroos, or simply the free buzz, these American girls always join me on the moonlit grasses. There was a construction job on the site, but it has been delayed for years and now the field remains for mammalians of all heated sorts. Of course, these American girls don’t give it all up on the first date just because my tongue rolls an accent and they have an audience of stars and kangaroos. I don't expect them too, but someone has to show the girls the beauty of the Australian al fresco. Someone has to pass the stars on to their eyelashes and open their ears to the cricket-strummed night. 

So the yankee girl and I looked up to the night sky from the blanket under our bums. I popped the champagne over the grass and when it calmed down, I splashed her a half glass and myself one too. A thin stream whispered in the air and narrated the flow of the evening.

“This champagne tastes a little funny.” She said. Silly American girls, they all had said that.

“It is Australian. Would you say that these stars shine a little funny? You have already said that I speak a little funny, but what would you say if I told you that you were the funny one?”

“I would say,” and she sipped on her drink, her lips puckering on the rim of the glass, “I’d say ‘Croiky mate!’ you really think so?” She laughed and I laughed and she nudged me with her shoulder as she rocked on the blanket. We took sips from our glasses and the stars.

 

***

I awoke in the morning to the calling of birds from the grasses and a block of sunlight on my cheek. My face was buried into the blanket, my eyes creaked to see the yankee girl with hair flushing over her face. The bottle of champagne, most full, was still between us, pitching green in the sunbright and our glasses tipped two over the cliff of the blanket.

I pushed my palm onto her shoulder. I rocked her steadily waiting for the new day to stir within her. Little moans filtered through the light hair. “Hey wake up.”

“What the Hell?”

“Yeah, what the Hell? How did this happen?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Me neither.” We both sat up. “Ah, my arse is sore. What the Hell?”

“Ah God, mine too.” She swiveled her gaze about the blanket and set the glasses up right. “I can’t remember a thing, and we didn’t drink much.”

“I remember something, God, its crazy, no I must have dreamed it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I remember looking up to the stars and then one of them lit up and started moving about, getting brighter all the time. And me, it was like I couldn’t look away from it and watched it, not saying a word as it came closer,” My voice drifted off when I saw the Yankee girl’s lips parting at the taste of bitter fear.

“You must be joking,” But she wasn’t laughing.

“I must be, oh Lord, it’s wicked.”

“Abduction? I come to Australia for the summer and I’m probed by aliens.”

I grabbed tight to my thighs to keep my hands from flinging about, “We have got to tell somebody. Police? Scientists? The news?”

“What? And tell them that we snuck under a private construction area to get buzzed and instead we get abduc�"No, we aren’t going to say anything.”

“No, no you’re right, we won’t say anything, its crazy, impossible. Let’s get the Hell out of here.”

I rolled the blanket and pressed it into the pit of my arm. One hand held the two glasses and the other gripped the neck of the bottle, the funny tasting champagne splashed within the glass. We followed the stream to the construction line, kangaroos peeped from the grasses, but the Yankee girl was no longer amused by the buggers. It’s a good thing my car isn’t fueled by conversation because there was none during the drive. She had nothing to say and I didn’t want to probe her mind for her memory of the night, she had had enough probing for one trip. She believed it, in that inextinguishable part of the mind reserved for the supernatural and unbelievable.

I pulled curbside to the hotel she was staying for her trip. “Well, thank you for going out with me.”

“Yeah,” She was a beauty in that passenger seat; she pulled the door handle and set her feet onto the street. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” And the car door shut. Her American a*s disappeared behind the automatic door of the hotel,“you gullible, Yankee b***h.”

Author's Note

This is only part one

Reviews

[Chadvonswan]

Hahaha this was really funny. I liked the character interactions, they seemed raw and I liked how the champagne bottle was always mentioned, like the bottle is the medium of interaction and catalyzed the entire scene.. . . .

[ZackOfBridge]

Good literary eye Max!