Two Australians and a Scotsman sit around the fire. Their faces are ruddy with firelight and pineapple juice mixed with rice whiskey. The ocean whispers to itself just beyond the flicker of a bonfire.

"Well of course she's mad," one of them says. She's from somewhere around Perth, a desert town bleached by sunlight. Her face is round, her hair is dark and her eyes are blue. She says the word "no" in that peculiar Australian way; adding a few syllables and half of the word "toy." She leans forward on her plastic deck chair and stares gravely at her companion, a very tanned young man with an average face and sandy brown hair.

He slouches in his chair and sucks on his drink, staring out into the pitch above the water. The draught carries remorse into his belly and wrinkles his brow. "It's how she's been acting," he says. He holds the words up like a shield and slouches even lower.

The Scotsman is silent. He has dark skin that at one time attracted abuse from his fellow students. His was the only dark head in a sea of ginger. He is a chef from Edinburgh. His favorite herbs are parsley, coriander and maybe rosemary. He slouches in his plastic deck chair and sips his drink thoughtfully.

The woman leans forward. Her round elbows meet her round knees and locks of long brown hair swing around her face and shoulders. Her voice shoots out like a javelin, quick and sharp in the humid air. "Still, it's not for you to judge and you shouldn't have said it."

Another drink and the average face steels itself against the attack. He's a student, studying to be an engineer. He spends most of the day in the hammock on the front porch of the bungalow, reading a thick fiction book about lawyers. He and the Scotsman once went swimming over a reef. They captured sea cucumbers and squeezed them, trying to make them spit. "You can see the way she's acting. I only told the truth."

"You called her a whore." The last word sneaks out of her mouth, a low breathy sound that heads straight for the fire. It's not meant for any one else's ears, but it still carries. It hits her companion with a force that drives the blood from his chest and into his face. It becomes a beacon in the night.

© 2008 Dustin Driver