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Beau was leaving, Piho was staying, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it all.
“You sure?” she asked him for the third time.
He shrugged as casually as he could, “Yeah, we, ah, had a little talk and everything’s cleared up and we’re going to try and work together on ... on just getting along; yeah.”
“Okay. So, I might see you on the weekend then. Like after Thursday?”
“Sure. Maybe. Totally. Whatever. Yeah.”
Beau glanced at Tammy. Piho saw Tammy wink. Then the girls had a long hug. “Well, see you next time.” “Great to see you.” “Take care.” And all that. Then Beau was gone. Piho had an odd sinking feeling as he watched the car move off but tried to cheer himself up by thinking about huge piles of money. And it all depended on a single phone call, and by that time he was going to be totally trapped once again ... with Randy.
#
“WHERE’S THAT?” ASKED Piho.
“Sammy’s Sandwich Bar. It’s in the main street.”
“So, like, what do you do?” asked Randy.
“Just make sandwiches and stuff...” Right then a car tooted in the street. It was the weirdest car horn Randy had ever heard, more like a sheep in pain than a car. “That’s my ride!” said Tammy, “See you!” She skipped away out the front door.
Randy went out to see her squeeze into a small red car that drove off in a curling puff of blue smoke. It was the weirdest car he’s ever seen. Sounded like a motorbike.
“We need to talk,” said Piho, appearing beside him.
“Definitely,” agreed Randy. They retreated to the coolness of the lounge.
“So when do you phone this guy?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“What, now?”
“No, tonight.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay. So we’ve got the whole day to do some planning. Now it’s absolutely essential that we find that fossil. Right?”
“Definitely! We’re going to find it!”
“Yeah, so first we’ll need some transport, then some way of digging it out.”
“Definitely.”
“So ... what? Jackhammers?”
“Ahh, I guess. It’s all rock and stuff. Pretty heavy.”
“Alright, so add a four-wheel drive truck to the list.”
“Check.”
“And what about a chainsaw?”
“Could be useful.”
“Bulldozer?”
“Yeah, if we need to make a road in.”
“Okay, and we’ll both need mobile phones of course. Ones that work here.”
“Ah; hah-hah ... check.”
“And speaking of cheques we’ll need a bank account to put the money in.”
“Oh yeah, good idea.”
“Well; that about covers it. What have we got so far?”
“Err, transport, jackhammers, truck, bulldozer, chainsaw, mobiles and a bank.”
“No I mean, what resources do we actually have so far?”
“Ahhhh, well there’s Tammy’s bike, except I think it’s got a flat tire.”
Piho plonked himself into a chair. “This sucks!”
Randy slumped down too, “Yeah.”
“We’ll never do it!”
“No.”
“Bloody hopeless.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s just sell the egg and be done with it.’
“Whatever.”
“Forget the millions.”
“Y- what?! No way!”
“You’re right! What am I thinking?”
“You are so negative sometimes.”
“Am not!”
Piho just scowled, huffed, then leapt to his feet and paced the room. “Look, there’s got to be another way. We’ve got to find a way to get someone else to do all the dirty work.”
Randy freaked out, “No way! It’s got to stay a secret!” He paced for a while too and eventually, after a lot of hard thinking, he came up with nothing as usual.
Finally Piho said, “Look, this is what we’ll do: we’ll ask the museum dude for some money up front, five or ten thousand at least, then we’ll hire what we need, go in and get it out ourselves, deliver it to the man, then he can go off to his museum and we’ll be rich for ever and no-one else needs to be involved. Agreed?”
“Agreed, but how do we convince him we’ve even got a fossil?”
“Photograph it, ya moron.”
“Oh yeah, of course!” Randy was silent a moment. “Bugger – my phone got trashed in the flood, and your phone ... .”
“My phones a perfectly good phone!”
“ ... For the year 2001.”
“Aw shut up.”
“Hey: Tammy’s got a digital camera. Maybe ... ”
“yeah, good, but we’ve still got to get back there and find it, remember?”
“Which means transport!” Randy ticked the item off on his imaginary list. He knew it was time to be decisive. It was time to take charge. It was time to act like a level-headed businessman. “Right!” he said, “So I’ll go fix Tammy’s bike, then...”
“Aw this sucks!” moaned Piho hopelessly, “I’m off for a swim.”
#
TAMMY CAME HOME AT about two-thirty as the day reached its hottest. Piho and Randy were in the pool. “You’re looking better, Randy,” she called as she came through the connecting gate from the street, “Much better!”
He smiled up at her, busting to tell her why he felt so good about life (despite Piho’s negativity). “That’s because...” Piho gave him a warning look. Randy swam to Tammy and reached for her hand, “... Because I’ve now got so much to live for.”
Tammy seemed to melt and go all gooey, “Awwwwwww.”
Piho looked away before he sicked up in the pool.
“Hang on,” said Tammy, bouncing towards the house in that spring lamb way she had that always set Randy’s masculine heart on fire, “I’ll come and join you. Oh, and Nikki should be back in a few minutes.”
“Who’s she?”
“My work-mate. Hang on, I’ll be back.”
She came out a few minutes later, tall and elegant in a one-piece swimsuit. Randy had to look away before he boiled the pool. She dived in.
“Isn’t it great here?” she asked after resurfacing.
“Yeah,” agreed Piho cryptically, “the land of opportunities.” He glanced meaningfully at Randy, but in a warning way too. Randy missed it.
“You will be coming back to New Zealand though, won’t you?” Randy asked.
Tammy’s eyes flicked away briefly, “Depends on Dad’s work. But yeah, we’ll be going back ... sometime.”
It was a good enough promise for Randy. He swam for a bit, then realised just how tired he felt. “Hey, ah, think I might go take it easy. Feeling a bit stuffed.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Tammy, “Can I come and tuck you into bed?”
“Uh, yeah! Sure!” He sprang out of the pool, all tiredness gone. Tammy came to his room five minutes later, wrapped in a towel. Randy, in his underwear, scurried into bed. She pulled over a chair, sat by the bed, held his hand and they talked.
“So, Randy, would you move? You know, like: to be with me?”
“Sure.” (Hesitant.)
“Do you want to be with me, like forever?”
“Sure!” (Certain!)
She glanced towards the door to make sure no-one was listening, “Well you’re the only one for me, too. I know; some people think you’re an idiot but I know you’re not. You’re someone who really cares about stuff, and all those screw-ups at school well they were just because of your self-confidence issue.” She squeezed his hand tightly, “You’ve just got to believe in yourself, Randy, and you can do anything. Anything at all!”
“Like make a million dollars?”
“Yeah! Or be a great artist, or a businessman, or an engineer like my Dad.”
“Ah, not engineering. I’m no good at maths.”
“Oh there you go, putting yourself down again. Please, believe you can do something great, Randy, something that will change the world. I mean you haven’t even finished high school yet.”
“Ah: actually I have.” He saw the look on her face and added quickly, “ – I think. I mean, like, I’m weighing up my options at the moment. For a final year.”
“You’ve got to finish every grade!” she said crossly, “It’s really important!”
“Mmm okay,” he mumbled non-committally, “and, ah, what about yourself?”
Tammy lit up, “Well, since I moved here, a rather amazing thing has happened. You know how this area has got a lot of fossils? Well I’ve become incredibly interested...” She stopped because Randy had started choking.
“Are you all right?” She patted him on the back as he sat up. “All better?”
He sank back onto the bed with a pained smile, his bruised back in agony.
“I’m okay now. Thanks.”
“Good. Now where was I? Oh yes: fossils. Well,” she paused dramatically, “I’ve decided to become a palaeontologist.”
“A pally – what-what?”
“Palaeontologist. Someone who studies fossils and decides what life must have been like millions of years ago.” She squirmed with delight, “I mean, it all just seems so incredibly interesting.”
The words ‘Girl-Geek’ sprang to Randy’s mind but he wisely kept them to himself. Instead he closed his eyes for a moment in order to try and control a peculiar urge he had to rise from his bed, open his bag and straight out give her the egg. This was mixed with an equal measure of panic induced by the realisation that such an action would instantly wave goodbye to a million dollars and his friendship with Piho.
“Oh!” said Tammy with sudden concern, “Here I am prattling away and you need to get some rest.” She stood up, leaned over him, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. His eyes popped open. She was already halfway across the room. “Take it easy, my dear,” she whispered, and was gone.
Above him the ceiling fan whiffled quietly. He might have been lying in a bed but he felt like he was back in the flood; his emotions whirling and tumbling and bumping into a hundred different hopes and fears.
Yet despite all this, he was soon asleep.
#
HE WAS IN THE BUSH, and there was the fossil in front of him. Gingerly he approached, looking all around. There was nobody watching. Crouching he took out his spoon and began extracting the eggs one by one. “$1 million, $2 million, $3 million...”
He came to the last egg. The biggest. He struggled, bending the spoon, but it would not come out. He began to panic. Then up sprang the mother dinosaur, a sinuous creature of bare bones and yellow teeth, her empty eye-sockets gleaming ghostly blue, and she uttered a most terrifying sound, ‘Kook-oo-oo-oo-hah-hah-hah HA-HA-HA ...’
Randy snapped awake, rigid with fear, listening. Then rolled over with an angry sigh and went back to sleep. “Kookaburras.”
#
TAMMY RETURNED TO WAKE him later. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah. Thanks. Um, can I have the rest of that kiss now?”
She smiled wickedly and stepped back, “Come and get it then.”
He slithered half out of the bed, scrambled for his board shorts, and got them on without her seeing too much. Then he stood and kissed her. She allowed him maybe five seconds then gently pushed him away, “Actually I’ve come to tell you something: we’re going out for dinner tonight.”
“Well me and Piho’ll just make some toast or something if that’s alright.”
She laughed again, “Don’t be silly. You’re coming too! Dad’s shout.”
His war-torn face light up, “Cool! So like where’re we going?”
“Best Place In Town.”
“Excellent! So ... what’s it called?”
“Best Place In Town.”
“Ahhh ... right.”
“And Nikki’s coming too,” added Tammy.
“Cool.”
“Now, guess what?”
Randy shrugged, “I dunno. What?”
“Come and look. Quietly now.”
He followed Tammy as she slipped through the house, across the lounge, and up to the inside of the screen door that lead to the pool area.
“Look,” she whispered.
Randy looked. Piho was sitting on the poolside right beside a girl in a bikini. They were both talking, smiling, and laughing at jokes. Now and again they would kick the water, but their eye contact never seemed to stop.
“Have you ever seen Piho like that?” asked Tammy.
“Never.”
Tammy giggled, “I think he’s in love.”
Then, to Randy’s horror, Piho leaned closer to Nikki and nuzzled her for a moment. Seemed acceptable. She mussed his hair in reply, laughing.
Randy had to look away. Deep inside he felt a peculiar shifting sensation, like his friendship with Piho was never going to be the same.
“Well I’ll be blowed,” he said out loud.
“Funny how things work,” said Tammy, “Piho wanted to go on to Brisbane on Sunday, but he stayed. Nikki wanted to come around to meet you, and instead she meets him. Weird, eh?”
Randy watched the two out by the pool. It was like watching a scene from Big Brother. All he could think was that Nikki must have been a lot older than Piho. Now that was weird.
Tammy took his hand and tugged at it until he turned his eyes to hers. “Romantic, isn’t it?” she purred, “Do you still remember our first kiss?”
“Uh .... sure.” He didn't.
“At the manure stand. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah!”
“And the storm.”
“What storm?”
“The storm, remember? We stood on the manure bags to get out of the rain.”
“Oh! Yeah!”
“It was the most romantic moment of my life.” She said dreamily.
“Mine too.”
He kept looking into her eyes. She gazed back at him. Having had more practice at these sorts of moments since that clumsy far-off day, he puckered up and moved in for a long lingering clincher. And just as their lips touched, the front door banged open. They both turned, startled. In through the door, rocking a little oddly and making a peculiar noise, came a Doberman-sized dinosaur!