by C L Green
Jake.
Instantly sifting through all the emotions in my head, those same damned emotions that kept me awake half the night, I decide (even thought I know it’s not a good idea) to let the ugliest one take control of my tongue.
Anger.
“What?” I ask acidly.
“Open the door, we gotta talk,” Jake rumbles against the door.
“Sorry, no can do. Just having a quick shower,” I reply sweetly before adding for good effect, “On my own.”
I hear a soft thud against the door (my guess, his forehead) and silence follows. Literally turning my back on him, even though he can’t see me doing it, I start washing my hair. The silence continues. Long enough that I shampoo, rinse and then have time to condition my hair.
“Your pissed at me,” I hear his low rumble against the door again.
“What for?” I ask acidly again as I squeeze some body wash onto my loofah and start scrubbing angrily at my arms. More silence.
“Open the door Arianna.”
“Nope, what’s the rush? You clearly didn’t feel like talking last night. In fact you couldn’t even be bothered getting a message to me.” Even I can hear the venom snaking into my voice.
“Arianna,” Jake lets out an audible sigh. “Open the fucking door.”
“Not gunna happen Jake. I think that perhaps you might want to think about steering the fuck clear of me for a few days while I let the sting of watching you drive off with your wife fade. Your very beautiful wife I might add. Your very beautiful wife who by the look on her face last night, clearly still holds a very big fucking candle for you.”
I hear a loud thud. A loud thud that if I had to hazard a guess, was a motorbike boot against the door. “Open the fucking door Ari, we gotta talk.”
“No we fucking don’t. That shit you pulled last night, whatever the fuck it was, smelt a lot like Tony. I’ve seen that shit before. My so called boyfriend driving off and leaving me somewhere and then not coming home. Admittedly I’ve never had to watch Tony drive off with his wife so you scored a whole new wound with that one. Fuck. Off.”
“Arianna.”
“Fuck of Jake. Seriously. I need time to work this through in my head and right now, I’m just warning you, if you don’t back the fuck off, I’m headed for Sydney.”
“What the fuck Arianna?”
Creating my own span of silence I finish scrubbing my body and start rinsing the conditioner from my hair. I hear another soft thud against the door.
“Arianna please open the door,” Jake says so softly I barely hear him under the sound of the water pouring down on me. “What’s in Sydney?”
Wounded, angry and jealous, I feel the knot in my stomach tighten. The knot that formed in my stomach last night when I saw Jake drive off with his wife and the knot that twisted so hard it kept me awake for hours. And even though I know the words I am about to say are going to tighten it even further, I say them anyway. “A new life with my father.”
This time the silence stretches to the point of agonizing. Unsure whether Jake is still at the door, I rinse the conditioner from my hair and switch off the taps in the shower. Listening carefully for a moment, I hear nothing. No breathing, no movement.
Deciding I can’t wait to find out whether he is still behind the door, I wrap a towel around myself, unlock the door and yank it open.
He’s gone.
Feeling another twist in my gut I close the door quietly and finish getting dressed.
*****
I spend the rest of the day hanging with Emma and a guy called Dregs in the new camera room. Dregs is yet another biker who has been dragged in to watch the now fully installed camera’s that provide a constant feed on the goings-on inside and outside both the Harley shop and Jake’s house.
Dregs is only a small man. So small in fact that even I feel like I might stand a chance against him if we had to go into hand-to-hand combat. With long brown hair, a goatee and his arms covered in cheap looking tattoos, he looks like a typical biker. Albeit a small one.
Having spent the afternoon getting to know him, I like him. He’s polite, funny and true to form of all the men I have met at the shop so far. That is, he’s very loyal to Jake and Zane. He’s also smart enough to know where to finish a conversation to avoid rough waters. I only truly realized his skills in moving a conversation along when, on asking him why his name was Dregs, he mumbled something about, “Being small and getting the last dip.” He then assured me I most certainly did not need to know anymore and changed the subject to talk about the fun and games to be had when shearing Luke’s alpaca.
At that point, as the meaning of his words dawned on me, I welcomed the conversation change.
Throughout our conversations I also discovered that a roster is now in place to ensure that two men watch the cameras overnight and one man watches them during the day. Whoever is watching the cameras during the day can ring Jake, Zane or Emma if he needs to leave the camera room and they will arrange someone to fill in. The nightshift needs two people to ensure that one man stays watching the camera’s while the other takes breaks or does other stuff like walking Pierre, grabbing food or having a smoke.
Interestingly, when I asked Dregs if he knew where Jake’s house was he gave me a firm, “No.” He was honest enough to tell me he could see it was near the State Forest (based on the camera view of the surrounding trees), but it wasn’t his concern to know where the house was. His job description was to watch camera’s and if he saw something, ring Jake or Zane and let them handle it.
Dregs’ information supported Jake’s statement that not many people knew about his house. Something I was glad to hear as part of my new confusion and anger at Jake was not knowing if he was telling me the truth about not wanting his wife or not.
Emma, throughout all my conversations with Dregs, was busy.
Very busy.
She was doing something to hook-up all the cameras and set up facial recognition on all the screens. She explained that this meant, to a certain extent, her software could warn the men watching the screens if a new face appeared on any cameras. She was also planning to train the software to log the details of the faces it recognized which would also give us times and dates when people came and went.
Emma’s security software was turning out to be very high tech and very cool. I’m not so sure Jake and Zane quite understood what they were in for when they gave my girl free reign to take the security as far as she liked.
In between camera link ups, facial recognition programming and various other crazy things Emma was doing on the screen, she was also running background checks on everyone who came in contact with Jake and Zane’s Harley Shop. This in itself was a huge job but she had already set up a separate laptop to deal with the job as she worked on her main laptop. This meant that reports were building on the first one giving her enormous lists of information on her chosen targets. This information was also linked to the security feeds.
As Dregs and I watched her work, we both rolled our eyes. As usual she was working like a woman possessed, sucking down cans of Redbull with her fingers flying over the keys on the many keyboards she had set up about the room. I couldn’t decide if watching her work was the coolest thing I had ever seen, or the scariest. No wonder she and I had become fast friends so quickly, it was clear that before we arrived in Ridge Creek, neither of us had a life outside computers.
Finally at the point where I can no longer sustain the willpower to watch Emma smashing her keyboard and Dregs staring at the boring, boring screens for any longer, I lift from my chair and announce I’m leaving. At that same precise moment, two men appear in the open doorway to the camera room.
One is the huge, bald guy with the long black curly beard and tattooed head I spoke to in the communal room on one of my early days here. The other is an average sized guy, a bit on the lean side with long gray hair and a long gray beard. His gray hair is tied behind his head in a ponytail and my first impression of him is that he ha
s an uncanny likeness to Willie Nelson the American country music singer.
Huge, bald guy leans against the doorjamb, yet another cigarette hanging from his mouth as he grins at me. His eyes are shining warmly so I give him a small smile in return. “Hey sugar,” his raspy voice drawls out slowly as his cigarette does its bobbing thing between his lips.
“Um, hi.” I return slowly, suddenly feeling claustrophobic with this man blocking the doorway as his friend stands just inside the doorway and to his left. I’m starting to feel like I’m in one of those prison scenes where the baddies stand in the doorway ominously before something bad happens. Something like a beating or a shivving.
Bald guy really is big. He clearly likes his protein and carbohydrates. Unsure why he’s standing in the doorway looking so happy with himself, I stare dumbly at him for a moment before asking, “What’s chewing?”
A look of surprise crosses his face as he lifts his hand to pull his cigarette from his lips. My eyes follow his hand as I watch him flick ash on the floor at his feet before shoving the cigarette back in his mouth. Raising his eyebrows, he flicks his eyes towards his gray haired friend, takes a long suck on his cigarette and then grabs it out of his mouth again so he can blow a long cloud of smoke out.
Wondering if I should mention that this room a bit too small to be choking us all with his cigarette smoke, I err on the side of caution and keep my mouth shut. I may be getting bolder in my dealings with the rest of the world but I’m not yet bold enough to tell a big biker to stop smoking.
Letting his eyebrows drop again, he swings his eyes back to mine. “What’s chewing?” He asks. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean sugar?” He starts grinning again.
Okay then.
Brilliant. Not only am I stupid enough to try to engage this guy in conversation, I kick-off the conversation in a language he doesn’t understand.
“I meant what’s going on…” I mumble as I swing my eyes to Emma who has now stopped tapping away at her keyboard. She’s staring me like I’m an idiot as she shakes her head. She stops shaking her head, rolls her eyes, flicks a glance at the two guys in the doorway and then starts tapping on her keyboard again. “Shift change,” she announces to no one in particular.
Oh.
Shuffling closer to Emma, I look at the bottom right of her computer screen to check the time. It’s twenty to seven. “Oh, okay. What time does shift start?” I ask musing that these guys are either late or early because no one starts a shift between half hourly markers do they?
Still grinning, bald guy announces, “Now.”
Moving his eyes to Dregs he gives him a quick nod. Dregs nods back, gets up from his seat while announcing, “Later,” to no one in particular and heads for the door. Bald guy moves backwards to let him out and then refills the doorway again.
Grey haired guy, watches Dregs leave and then wanders over to sit in his now vacant seat. Skimming his eyes across the monitors, he leans back, crosses his legs at his ankles and turns his gaze to Emma and me. I get the distinct impression he wants us to leave.
“Five minutes guys,” Emma announces while she continues her furious tapping on her keyboard.
Grey haired guy nods and turns his eyes back to the screens. Bald guy in the doorway grins at Emma before announcing, “You work to fuckin’ hard crazy lady.”
“Fuck off,” Emma snaps under her breath as she swings to her second laptop and starts typing something else.
“Just sayin’,” bald guy announces as he finally decides to move into the room. Walking direct towards me I find myself having a mini-freak out as various hairs on my body stand to attention. Seeming to sense my unease, he smiles at me again as he lifts his cigarette to his mouth for one last drag. Sucking deep, he then drops it to the floor and scrubs it out as he continues to stride towards me. “Gunna have to move sugar, I’m taking your chair.”
“You,” Emma has now stopped typing and has her head turned, her eyes pinned on bald guy, “Are going to have to stop smoking in here. I told you last night, no smoking near the monitors or the computers.”
Quickly darting sideways to get out of his way, I watch as bald guy lowers himself into my recently abandoned chair. Still grinning he directs his reply straight at her. “And I told you last night, not gunna happen.”
Emma narrows her eyes at him.
Uh oh.
I’ve seen that look on her face before and at a guess, whatever spews out of her mouth next will not be pretty. Her gray eyes flash stormily and I watch as she slowly spins her chair so she is facing directly at bald guy.
“Rabbit, I thought we sorted this last night. Jake and Zane have spent a packet on this shit and your second hand smoke could kill the fans. Quit fucking bitching you dumbass and learn that whoever your poor mama was who let you get away with shit all your life, I am not her. I don’t care if you’re a big fat-assed biker or not, this shit will not stand with me. The way I see it, you’ve got two choices. The first is to listen to what I say and act on it. You do this because Jake is paying you to do this job and he is also paying me to make sure you can do this job. The second is to ignore what I say and leave it in my hands to explain to Jake that you plan to smoke in here and destroy his very expensive equipment. If you go with the second, I assure you I will come prepared. That is, with a six-pack of beer, a packet of Twisties and a deck chair to sit on while I enjoy the show of Jake kicking your fucking ass.”
Holy shit.
I so need to take lessons off Emma on how to talk biker. She’s good at it.
I hear a chuckle to my right and look across to see gray haired guy smiling big at Emma as his body shakes violently with the effort to hold back his laughter. Bald guy, who I now know is called Rabbit, does not look so amused. The grin fades from his face and to my amazement, he looks like a schoolchild who just dropped his ice-cream. “Sorry crazy lady.”
“My name is Emma, not crazy lady. Go to the communal room if you want to smoke. Ari, this is Rabbit and Willy,” she flicks her hand to point at each man. “Willy is a nice guy, aptly nicknamed because he looks like Willie Nelson. Rabbit is an asshole. I don’t know why he’s called Rabbit and to be honest, I don’t care. Don’t let Rabbit fool you with his grin, he finds fucking with people amusing. Any problems with him, you let me know. I’ve already run his background check and,” she swings her attention back to Rabbit, “if he continues being childish, I won’t hesitate to ring Olga.”
At this point, Rabbit looks shocked. His face pales, his eyes widen and I hear him wheeze.
Emma glares at him. “Yes, I know about Olga your wife in Western Australia,” she announces before swinging her eyes back to mine and showing me a cheeky grin. “Olga has anger management issues and drives a Kenworth truck for a living. From what I’ve gleaned so far, while they were together, whenever Rabbit managed to piss Olga off she would retaliate by parking her truck on his bike. After the third bike, Rabbit hightailed it out of the State. Not before emptying a considerable amount of money from the joint bank account Olga had been pouring all her savings in to so they could buy their own home together. Olga may not know where Rabbit is right now, but I do know she’s still looking for him.”
“You wouldn’t…” Rabbit rasps angrily, no signs of a grin on his face at all.
Emma grins at him. “Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. You don’t know that. Now stop acting like a child and no more smoking around the technology.”
Huffing, Rabbit turns his chair to look at the monitors. His back now facing Emma. Willy still stifling his amusement mutters, “Olga huh? Always wondered why you look so freaked out when a truck comes up behind us on the road.”
“Fuck off.” Rabbit returns in a wheezy rasp.
Emma shrugs, turns back to her laptop and continues typing. I stare at her for a few beats before she stops and tips her head to me. “Any chance you can make us both dinner?”
“Sure,” I agree instantly as she returns her attention to her screen.
“Give me
a yell when it’s done and I’ll finish here yeah?”
“On it,” I announce quickly before continuing, “Nice meeting you Willy and Rabbit. Thanks for looking after Pierre last night.”
“Most welcome sugar,” Rabbit mutters not taking his eyes from the screen. Willy just nods.
Suddenly remembering my manners I ask, “You guys hungry too?”
“Nah, just had a feed. That’s how we knew it was our shift. We start after dinner.”
“What time’s dinner then?” I ask trying to get a handle on the new shift times.
“When we’re hungry,” Willy announces turning his face to give me a grin.
“Right. Of course.” I mutter as I look to the corner where Pierre is still sleeping soundly. “Can you two keep an eye on him?”
“Sure thing,” Willy nods as he turns his eyes back to the monitors.
“Thanks,” I mumble as I turn and leave the room.
*****
I head back to my bedroom planning to change my white top before I start cooking. I’m a messy cook and no matter how much I try, I splatter something all over myself. Even if I’m just making a salad.
Walking past the communal room I notice its busy today. About ten or so guys are hanging about playing pool, sitting at the bar or watching television. Zane is at the bar and gives me a chin lift as I pass the door. There’s no sign of Jake.
Weaving through the honeycomb of smaller rooms, I arrive back at my bedroom. As I open my door my eyes are instantly drawn to my bed. On it lays my laptop, my camera, my mobile phone, a set of keys and a piece of paper.
My thoughts instantly snap to Jake. I don’t hesitate as I head straight to the bed and pick up the piece of paper. It’s a note.
Keys are to Dad’s truck and to my house. Truck’s parked out front. Second gear doesn’t work.
Rev hard in first, dip clutch, shift straight to third. Jake.
Shit.
What the hell does this mean? Does he want me to come home?
As if. It’s going to take me a bit more than a day to get over my feelings about his wife.