Page 3 of Out of Luck in the Outback

“What’s the budget?”

“Fifty Australian dollars a day for food, travel, and sundries. Fifty for accommodation.”

“That’s incredibly low,” I mumble and look at the floor. “Do you want me to stay in hostels and eat ramen?”

“If it’s a spontaneous decision, yes. If you have to sleep on a bus bench and use a camp stove to make noodles, make it an adventure. Hitchhiking is much safer there.”

“You want me to go to Australia without reservations and hitchhike?”

“Hitchhike, cozy up to a bunch of uni students in an RV, or just think outside the box,” he swipes his hand over his desk like none of this really matters. “We’ll take care of your flight there, and you can call Carol and tell her what city you want to fly out of to get home. I had Carol make you reservations for two nights in Sydney. That should get you started. But make no mistake, Ava,” he says, leaning forward and looking straight into my eyes. He doesn’t blink, and I want to look away. Would that be disrespectful? “I want an adventure. I want you to do something besides stay in Sydney. Find the hidden wonders. Find the hole in the wall restaurant with Thai food that will melt your tongue and clear your sinuses for five bucks. I want more than a rousing article about eating a beet on your McDonald’s sandwich.”

“Beets?”

“They eat beets on their burgers down there for some odd reason.”

“Dear God, where are you sending me? Snakes, poisonous spiders, and beets on burgers?”

He waves his fingers, and I know that’s my signal to leave. No arguments. I rise from the chair and walk to the door like I have cement bricks attached to my legs. Like a younger and blonder Jacob Marley.

“I want adventure,” he says as I turn the doorknob. “Once you get to Sydney, you have two days to figure out where to go and something to write about that will make readers want to start saving for a trip Down Under. I want to be dazzled. Knock my socks off and make me want to keep you employed.”

I nod, gulp, and make a finger gun at my boss while smiling the best grin I can muster. “Be prepared to be dazzled, sir.”

Stranger Danger

“Whatdayisit?”I ask the middle-aged woman at the front desk. Wiping my eyes, I focus on her and cover a yawn.

“Saturday, dearie,” she answers in a cheerful voice. Everyone is so nice here.

“How can it be Saturday? I missed a day?”

“You’re a yank. When you fly over the International Date Line, you move ahead a day, and it took you almost a day to get here.”

“This is so weird. I get confused when I visit my sister in New York, and she’s an hour ahead. I can’t believe I lost a whole day. It was a Friday, too. Why couldn’t I have lost a Monday?”

The woman bites her lip and cocks her head, and I suddenly want to sink into the carpet in shame of how dumb I sound right now. She taps her long nails on her desk and looks at me. “If it makes you feel any better, you’ll get the day back when you fly home.”

My mind whirs, trying to wrap my head around the time zone difference in my exhausted and jet-lagged state. “Let me understand this. If I leave here on a Tuesday morning and travel for exactly twenty-four hours, it’ll be around the same time on Tuesday when I get home?”

“That’s correct. You’ll have two Tuesdays.”

“But I don’t get the Friday. Holy shit, I’m so confused.”

“Breakfast is in the dining room,” she says, obviously finished with my space time continuum conundrum and wanting me out of her hair. She points to a room off to the side of the living area of the bed and breakfast I was too tired to take in and appreciate when my airport shuttle dropped me off late last night.

I can’t sleep on planes, and it was no different on an eighteen-hour flight from Los Angeles. I certainly couldn’t sleep on the first flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. I only had an hour layover, so I was nervous about making my connecting flight the entire time. By the time I arrived in Sydney last night, I hadn’t slept in…

To hell with it. I have no idea how many days that translates to, and my brain is too fuzzy for math. I’m alive, breathing, and my stomach rumbles with hunger. I trudge to the dining room, running my hands through my hair that I’ve left down in waves over my tank top straps.

That’s another nice perk. It may be a cold and miserable week in Chicago, but February in Australia means summer. Tank tops. Shorts. My kind of outfits.

“Baked beans on toast, love?” a man asks, lifting a silver dome off the breakfast buffet.

Baked beans for breakfast? “Uh, no thank you.”

“Vegemite then?”

Lola, one of my coworkers, warned me about the Vegemite. Australians love it. They also love watching Americans try it for the first time and making the typical Vegemite face. It’s an acquired taste. An acquired taste I can’t fully appreciate on a jet-lagged stomach. Thankfully, I packed some oatmeal packets from home since Mr. Gosnell limited me to such a strict budget.

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