Truck Stop Read Free

well.
    We hear flies swarming.
    Now. Just after it happened.
    Kelly in the waiting room.
    KELLY: Chairs hard, condoms in a bucket. Smell antiseptic. Poster of a girl on the wall with cracks all over her face, some message about getting off heroin but she’s a model. Her bruises are fake.
    KELLY tips the remaining water onto the inside of her arm.
    AISHA: She watches / a drop of water run down her arm.
    KELLY: A drop of water run down my arm and stop on the vein I’d use if I was a junkie. A little bit blue.
    AISHA: Footsteps, high heels up and down the corridor.
    KELLY: Woman at the door. She looks at me but doesn’t smile. Says:
    JOSIE: Hello Kelly, I’m Josie. Would you like to come with me?
    KELLY: A little room with a hospital bed and a desk and more posters on the walls. What is it with the people in those posters?
    JOSIE: I’m a doctor:
    KELLY: She says, asks /
    JOSIE: Why are you here today then? / Fly circles around the room.
    KELLY: Fly circles around the room.
    Pause.
    Clock on the wall.
    Tick.
    SAM : Tock. / On the clock
    KELLY: On the clock. And the party won’t / stop
    SAM : Stop /
    JOSIE: What? Why are you here today?
    KELLY: Um… I think there is something wrong down there.
    JOSIE: Down there?
    KELLY: Want to check it’s okay that I haven’t got… I want to / get tested
    JOSIE: Get tested?
    KELLY: Yes.
    KELLY and SAM look at each other and laugh.
    Then.
    SAM : Truth?
    KELLY: Dare.
    SAM : No. Truth. The sexiest bit on a man.
    KELLY: Easy. Adam’s apples.
    SAM laughs hysterically.
    SAM : Adam’s apples?
    KELLY: Yeah.
    KELLY looks away.
    SAM : Now.
    I sit in a shit suburb in an even shittier demountable, next to some counsellor. She looks at me weird. Like she’s made it and her life’s all sorted. All she does is counselling. Room stinks and the tin walls crack. Fly crawls up her thigh. We’re meat in an oven her and me, she’s yesterday’s left too long. Dried up, grissled.
    MICHELLE stares at SAM and smiles. Waits for her to speak. After a time.
    MICHELLE: How shall we start?
    SAM shrugs.
    Why don’t you tell me why you are here today?
    SAM : Don’t you know already?
    Fly on your face—it’s probably laying eggs on you don’t you want to brush it off?
    MICHELLE brushes the fly away.
    It comes straight back sits on her like she’s a cow shit, a talking cow shit saying:
    MICHELLE: I’d like to hear it from you.
    SAM : Mum made me come. And the school, after it happened they said if I want to stay on then I had to see you.
    MICHELLE: Do you want to be here today?
    SAM : What do you reckon?
    MICHELLE: You seem angry, Sam.
    SAM : I am angry. Everyone I know thinks I am a cock crazed slut.
    MICHELLE: And what do you think?
    SAM laughs.
    SAM : Good one.
    MICHELLE: Would you like to talk about what happened?
    SAM : Camera on me for a long time and then, snap, I tear the singlet off the truckie, run my index finger down his washboard abs, hear him suck in breath, say my line. Nothing can touch us now you know /
    MICHELLE: What about your friend? The girl who /
    SAM : My friend? / We aren’t speaking.
    KELLY: We aren’t speaking.
    SAM : Not a word.
    KELLY/SAM : I hate her / She hates me.
    KELLY: She did this to me. It’s her fault.
    SAM : She hates me. It was her idea.
    KELLY: Josie looks at me doesn’t smile or nothing just asks.
    JOSIE: Has something happened that makes you think you need to be tested?
    KELLY:
    JOSIE: You can say. No need to be embarrassed. Really.
    Have you engaged in oral sex?
    Penetrative sex?
    Was it protected or unprotected?
    Kelly?
    KELLY:
    JOSIE: With one partner? Or more?
    KELLY looks disgusted.
    It’s important we get to the facts. When you say you used protection can you tell me what you used.
    KELLY:
    JOSIE: When did you last have your period?
    KELLY: I’m not pregnant. That’s not why I am here.
    JOSIE: Any stinging or pain? Discharge, any / blood?
    KELLY: Blood. Just a