One warm night, a lone dance on Jonson Street becomes a celebration of music, strangers and the unexpected connections that make Byron Bay feel magical.
By Linda Brucesmith
Summer magic. Think Byron Bay. Imagine a clear day fading into evening and people with sun-bleached hair and suntanned bodies drifting up from Main Beach, past the surf club, past the buskers performing their hippie hearts out in Apex Park. Picture those people who don’t stop to listen wandering into town, looking for pizza or fish and chips, and hunting down something to drink. (Definitely, something to drink.) Notice their feet: some bare; some in thongs.
We pull chairs up to the verandah ledge of a café on Jonson Street and order dinner. The night sparkles and fills with people with salt on their skin. From where we sit, we watch them sitting at the tables on both sides of the covered footpath below.
Enjoy the passing parade.
Across the way, a bald man is playing incredibly good, incredibly amplified guitar and singing incredibly infectious Latin American songs and it isn’t long before the warm, starry night - and my years of mixing it with effervescent Brazilians at Latin dance classes - make it impossible for me to sit still.
The introvert I am shrugs off her shyness, and dances. On the footpath. Alone.
As people walk by and look. As the guitar-man declares ‘I am from Ecuador!’ and smiles, delighted by my daring. And I haven’t even sipped my drink.
A big man with huge, dark hair and a huge, dark beard stands to one side of the footpath, watching. He holds an especially tiny chihuahua with black, anxious eyes. His friend - a young man with shoulder-length straight hair and a kind face - stands beside him. Watches, too.
A favour for a stranger
The Ecuadorian man sings and plays.
Infatuated by the place, I approach the big man, his dog, and ask the kind-faced man beside him would he, perhaps, (if he doesn’t mind), like to dance? And we do. His leading is gentle and considerate and I think he might handle a kitten in just the same way. I dance with my shoes barely touching the ground.
Others dance. Children. Their parents. Couples…
Fast forward a little, and after I’ve asked the Ecuadorian man whether he has CDs (‘No, I should have, I know!’) I find myself talking to the big man, his little dog, and the man with the kind face. The big man studies me.
I tilt my head at him, and smile. ‘What’s up?’ I ask.
‘Would you do me a favour?’ he asks.
‘Sure!’ I say.
He points to the table behind me where a girl is sitting, alone. ‘Her friend’s coming back,’ he says. ‘She’s wearing a black top. Will you say something nice to her about me?’
I jig on the spot. ‘Absolutely!’ I say, delighted to sprinkle some fairy dust.
When the girl the big man is waiting for returns to join her friend, I leave him with the man with the kind face and head for the café door. My route takes me past the girls’ table, where I stop. As if distracted. I lean down. ‘It’s such a beautiful night with so many beautiful people,’ I say, as they look up at me, in surprise. ‘Can I share something? Don’t you think the man with the cute dog is wonderful?’
The girl in the black top doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Oh yes!’ she says. ‘He’s a babe!’
I nod.
‘Wait a minute,’ she says, twinkling. ‘Why are you telling us that?’
‘Because this is Byron!’ I say.
The black-top girl accepts this truth without question. ‘Oh.’ She smiles. ‘Well. Yes. He’s a babe.’
I wish them a good night. Before I step back into the café and return to my chair by the verandah ledge, I turn back to the big man and the man with the kind face.
Hidden from the girls’ view, I give a joyful thumbs up.
The waitress serves our meals.
The magic finds its mark
From our seats, we watch happily as the big man, his little dog, and the man with the kind face gravitate ever so gently to the girls’ table.
Later, at an appropriate moment, the big man looks up at me from where they are sitting. He brings the tips of the fingers of one hand together, presses them slowly to his lips, and blows me a kiss. It floats up over the window ledge, and lands on my cheek.
The Ecuadorian guitar-man sings and plays all the while.
Two hundred metres away, the ocean glitters under the stars.
And on the distant headland, the Byron lighthouse beams.
Linda Brucesmith is a writer and public relations consultant based in Brisbane, Queensland. Her short fiction has been published in Australia and the United Kingdom.