Free Luck in the Greater West by Damian McDonald Page A

don’t really judge a guy by his nationality.
    â€”Well ya know Leb guys are fuckin’ well-hung, do ya judge on that?
    Natalie didn’t answer. She looked at the cute one. She tried to half smile at him, but she was feeling too out of herself to manage it. This place, these boys. She wanted to leave. If she could just avoid his eyes. Just get up and leave. These guys would follow herthough; and they were right, no one came here — not one person had come by.
    â€”I might head off now, guys.
    â€”C’mon, babe, the confident one said, and grabbed her around the waist. He pushed her hair back behind her ears and kissed her cheek, then licked it. Then his hand was down the back of her jeans, grabbing her g-string.
    Then the other one, the other Lebanese one, was cupping her breast with tensed fingers. The confident one undid the button of her jeans and Natalie pushed his hand away.
    â€”’Ey, fuckin’ bitch, he snarled.
    â€”Fu — Fuck, Natalie gasped, and she was crying. She hadn’t felt it coming, the crying was sudden.
    â€”Charlie, get the fuck over here, the confident one said to the young one. Hold her.
    She felt the guy’s arms wrap around her. The other two pulled her jeans off. There were hands all over her vagina, fingers cutting into her. They were pulling at her undies, but somehow she managed to keep them from coming all the way off. Someone was yelling in the distance. Natalie shut her eyes.
    â€”Abdullah, ya dirty bastard, she heard more clearly now, and the hands were off her. She opened her eyes. She could smell them, these guys. They smelt of an almost-feminine cologne, stale sweat and marijuana. The one who’d pushed her down, whose hot breath she’d felt in her throat, was motioning or waving or something. There were more guys coming. The other Lebanese guy stood on the barbecue table and yelled something in Arabic. The other one whistled. Natalie stood and ran. They’d pulled off her shoes with her jeans. She hadn’t even felt it. She ran. She ran away from the guys, away from the barbecue table, her jeans, her shoes, her wallet.The guys were yelling. She ran towards the other end of the now-filled-in pool, and through a gap in the cyclone-wire fence. There must be some shops, some houses.
    Â 
    The lighting was way too harsh in the little interview room. They’d given her a blanket, and Natalie sat there with it wrapped around her in her T-shirt, socks and undies until her mother arrived with some pants. A female cop had sat with her, but Natalie was barely aware of her. When her mother turned up, another cop, a man, wanted to talk to her. He said, to start with, just to tell him in her own words, in her own time, what had happened. It was hard to know what to tell them. Her mother kept crying and looking away from her; she seemed pissed off about the guys getting hold of the wallet, knowing her address now.
    â€”One’s name was Abdullah, she began.
    â€”Abdullah, the female cop repeated.
    â€”Yes.
    â€”And the younger one, I think they called him Chris, or — Charlie. They said he wasn’t Lebanese. Italian I think. They called him a choco.
    She couldn’t remember what they looked like. Like any other bunch of guys. Not westies though. They wore those clothes that are meant to look cool but don’t. One was wearing a European or Pommie soccer shirt. She could remember the more confident guy’s expressions. And his smell. My god, please don’t let me smell that cologne again, she pleaded. She seemed to reek of it herself though. She wanted to vomit. They’d gotten her a bucket. But the vomit wouldn’t come. Like the rest of her, her stomach was paralysed. And then she realised there was a name for why she was here, why they were about to take her to the hospital, why the ladyin the four-wheel-drive she’d flagged down had so readily let her into her new Landcruiser and brought her here: