by Natasha West
‘I picked it up today. Do you think we should test it out?’
‘Yes, but I don’t want to run the battery down, so we should probably be conservative.’
‘Good thinking, boss’ Jordan said. She took the earpiece out and began to fit it all together while Ellie watched. ‘OK’ she said, once she was confident. ‘You wear the piece; I’ll speak to you from outside. The range is fifty metres.’
Ellie took the earpiece and fitted it gently into her ear.
‘Can you see it?’
Jordan took a good hard look at Ellie’s ear. The earpiece was cream coloured but not invisible. ‘Maybe a little.’
Ellie sighed, disappointed. And then she realised it didn’t have to be a problem.
‘Janice will have to mention being a little deaf in one ear. That way, if Caitlin sees it, she’ll assume it’s a hearing aid.’
‘Are you sure you want to complicate Samantha Frost’s back story? We don’t want Janice to have to juggle too many bits of info.’
‘That’s what the earpiece is for. If she gets in trouble, we can help her out. Are you ready for the test run?’
‘Yep.’
‘Do we have the reverse mic? For listening in?’ Ellie asked.
‘Oh no, I forgot!’ Jordan gasped.
Ellie’s heart sank.
‘Just kidding’ Jordan said as she produced the other mic from the sideboard. ‘What kind of fuck up do you think I am?’
‘I don’t think you’re a fuck up Jordan. Far from it. I’m just being thorough.’
That pleased Jordan. She couldn’t think why. ‘You’re not a fuck up’ was hardly a shower of compliments. But then she realised why it felt good to hear it. Jordan had made some very poor life choices vis-à-vis partner selection. Even the smallest of encouragements had meaning to her right now. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to her in weeks.
Realising that was quite depressing.
‘Are you alright?’ Ellie asked.
Jordan realised her game face must have slipped for a minute.
‘Yep. Fine. You got the ear piece in?’
Ellie knew that she’d caught a wisp of sadness on Jordan’s face. But if she didn’t want to talk about it (and clearly she didn’t) what could Ellie do? If it had been anyone else, Janice for example, she might have gently pushed. But Jordan was still quite a mystery to Ellie.
‘It’s in. Let’s do the test.’
Through the earpieces, Jordan and Ellie began to perform the test run.
‘Hello?’
‘Instead of hello, perhaps we should say ‘Come in.’
A pause and some static…
‘Ellie, I’m not doing any of that.’
There was a large sigh and then ‘Fine. But these communications exist to avoid confusion.’
‘In this case, I think they’d only add to it. We don’t need it. People don’t say ‘Roger’ over the phone, do they?’
Another pause.
‘I suppose not.’
‘And can you really imagine asking Janice to have to remember all that when we’re telling her what to say? As well as carrying on a functioning conversation with another person who’s not supposed to know we’re running the show?’
‘Alright, fine. You make a good case. But I still think it would have been useful.’
A sigh and then ‘Ellie?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you want to do it for fun?’
A very lengthy pause.
‘Maybe a little.’
‘Just this once then. Over.’
‘Roger that. Thanks. Over.’
‘Do you think this is going to work?’ Over.’
‘Affirmative. Over.’
Chapter Nine
Janice looked amazing.
She was wearing a high-end looking charcoal power suit and heels you could kill a man with. Her usually delightfully messy hair was tucked into a tight French twist.
‘Oh my god!’ exclaimed Ellie, as Janice strutted out of the toilets. The last of the children had been collected and they were the only staff members left at Little Tykes. ‘You look like a CEO!’
‘Costume designer had this from last year’s production of ‘Wall Street: The Musical. God, it was terrible.’
‘Did you get a speaking part, though? I mean, obviously the two leads are male but…’
‘Nope, I was stuck on set painting. ‘Couldn’t find the right role for me.’ Typical.’
‘Janice, you’re a star’ Ellie said sincerely. ‘There’s only so long they can ignore that fact.’
‘That’s sweet. But I don’t know if that’s a realistic dream.’
‘Well, you’ll have the starring role today.’
Janice smiled and drew herself up to her full height.
‘I will, won’t I?
There was a rapid knock on the window and they both turned to see Jordan waiting.
Ellie went to collect her from the main door and brought her into the room to meet Janice.
‘Jordan, this is the woman who we are about to owe big time.’
Jordan smiled and stuck her hand out but Janice was having none of it.
‘We’re in the fox hole together. Let’s not stand on ceremony.’
She grabbed her in a bear hug. Jordan looked over Janice’s shoulder at Ellie with an eye roll. But Ellie noticed that Jordan wasn’t struggling to end the hug. But that was Janice, she was motherly. You couldn’t help but be sucked in by it. And apparently, Jordan was not immune.
Finally, Janice released Jordan. Then she took a long look at her, a look of naked assessment.
‘Well, you’re a pretty girl, I must say.’
Jordan seemed stuck for a response. Ellie realised she hadn’t actually said anything in Janice’s presence yet. Imagine that, Jordan Payne with her mouth shut. Will miracles never cease?
Eventually, Jordan found her tongue.
‘I guess I’m alright.’
‘Alright? You’re a stunner! Ellie, don’t you think so?’
‘What?’ Ellie said, surprised. She was fine with watching Janice drown Jordan in compliments. That was classic Janice. But she had no desire to get sucked into the conversation.
‘Jordan? Isn’t she gorgeous?’ Janice reiterated.
Ellie could have just about died.
Sure, it was hard to ignore the fact that Jordan was good looking, in a scary sort of way. Her porcelain skin was flawless, her long straight black hair was silky and thick and her sharp green eyes were hard to look away from. Not to mention the fact that her lean frame made her a natural clothes horse, which was lucky because not everyone could have pulled off Jordan’s uniform skinny, worn black jeans and baggy t-shirts paired with the sharp black leather jacket she was never out of. Offset with her dark eyeliner and ruby red lipstick, she was hard to miss.
Yeah, Jordan was kind of sexy, Ellie would have to say if pushed. Which she was being. No, that was underselling it, she admitted to herself. Jordan was clearly very sexy. If you liked that sort of thing. And Ellie didn’t. She liked the more sophisticated, less in-your-face types.
Still, Jordan was indeed, in Janice’s phrasing, a ‘stunner’. But there wasn’t a chance in Hades that Ellie was going to say that to Jordan’s face. She wasn’t sure why but she would sooner have jumped off the roof.
After what began to turn into an uncomfortable silence in response to Janice’s question, Ellie went for a smile and a shrug. She wasn’t admitting that Jordan was hot. Nor was she refuting it, thereby insulting her. It was safe in its neutrality.
Or so she believed. But if she was shooting for inoffensive, from Jordan’s perspective, she missed her mark. Because Jordan was quite surprised to find herself disappointed by Ellie’s answer.
Initially, she’d been embarrassed by Janice’s declaration. She wasn’t a big fan of being defined by her physical traits. Jordan knew she was good looking. But so what? Plenty of people were good looking. Ellie, for example. If you managed to get past the ‘G
irl Next Door’ vibe she put out, she had a lot going for her. She had lush, wavy, honey coloured hair, a very cute button nose, a golden complexion and large, warm, hazel eyes. And that wasn’t even getting into her hourglass figure. She was a very wholesome beauty. If you were into that. But Jordan wasn’t. She liked a bit of edge to her women. And Ellie was all floral print dresses and little cardigans. Not Jordan’s cup of tea at all.
But still, Ellie’s ambivalent response to the question of her attractiveness, somehow it had hurt.
‘Anyway…’ Jordan said dismissively.
‘Yes, let’s run through the details’ Ellie added quickly. ‘We haven’t got long.’
Janice looked from Ellie to Jordan and she couldn’t miss the strange little moment that had just occurred off the back of an entirely innocent observation. And she thought ‘Hmmm.’
But she said nothing. She just decided to let nature take its course. Somehow, Janice knew it would. It always did.
Janice walked through the Grind House café, looking around for her target. And then she spotted her. She’d been told to look for a ‘petite, cute, olive skinned girl with a pixie cut and a very curated ‘French’ thing going on’ as Jordan put it. ‘She looks all innocent but you can totally tell there’s a shark underneath it all.’
And there she was, just as described.
Janice braced herself, reminding herself to do the accent she’d been practising. It was supposed to be a few notches above her own normally working class accent. Ellie had not asked her to do it but she knew instinctively that it would make her more believable.
‘Caitlin?’
Caitlin jumped up and stuck out her hand.
‘Hi, Samantha. Great to meet you.’
Janice took the hand, shaking it gently. She was pleased to find that she took an instant dislike to the girl. Despite jumping at the chance for some revenge on Ellie’s behalf, Janice wasn’t naturally malicious and she hoped it wouldn’t be too hard to do this. But her immediate sense that this was a person who was very pleased with herself… That was going to make this all a little easier.
‘So glad you could meet at such short notice. I’m very excited to talk to you about what we do at Vindictae.’
In an alley behind the café, Jordan and Ellie were standing by some extremely stinky bins, looking like the world’s most awkward delinquents. Ellie had the ear piece that was picking up the conversation inside the cafe into her ear and she was holding the mic that fed her words to Janice.
Ellie listened as Caitlin and Janice made some standard initial chit chat. Ellie thought for a second that she was picking up a different conversation than the one she’d been expecting, because she didn’t know who this throaty posh woman that was speaking to Caitlin was. And then she realised it was actually Janice.
How the amateur dramatic society had not cast her in a lead yet, Ellie could not understand. Janice was gone. Only Samantha Frost remained.
‘What’s she saying?’ Jordan was asking.
‘Shh, I can’t hear her!’
‘There’s a small flaw in this plan, isn’t there?’
‘Well, I guess we should have gotten the digital kit. We could be listening from a speaker in the flat in high definition sound.’
‘It was hundreds for that. Espionage on a budget is not the most glamorous thing, is it? I’d swear that bin is filled with rotting fish.’
Ellie held her hand up for quiet.
‘OK, they’re starting to get into it. Just lean in, you should be able to pick it up a little.’
Jordan leaned her head closer to Ellie, close enough that she could feel Ellie’s breath on her neck. It was making her skin prickle.
‘Breathe quieter, would you?’ Jordan demanded irritably.
Ellie shook her head and turned her attention to the conversation. Caitlin was discussing her ‘Aesthetic’ while Janice occasionally went ‘Mmm’ and ‘Yes, I see’ and ‘Well, that’s very true’. She was doing a fabulous job of eating up Caitlin’s bullshit.
‘Janice, if you can hear me, drop in the fact that you’re deaf in one ear, to cover the piece.’
Asking Janice to do that served two functions. Firstly, to remind her of the earpiece cover story. And secondly, to see if this communication was going both ways. They could hear Janice. Could Janice hear them? They waited, breath baited.
‘Could you speak up just a little, Caitlin? I’m afraid I’m a touch deaf in one ear’ Janice said.
Jordan, who’d managed to hear that through the ear piece, held her hand up for a high five and Ellie slapped it quickly. Score.
‘Oh, YES. OF COURSE’ Caitlin said, with ridiculous over annunciation.
‘No, my dear. Not quite that deaf’ Janice corrected.
Jordan sniggered. Ellie shushed her and Jordan obediently covered her mouth.
‘Oh, sorry. How’s this?’ Caitlin said at a middle pitch.
‘Perfect. So, what we’d be wanting from you is someone who could design a range for us, in a particular style that I think you’d be suited to from what I saw on your site. Oh, are those your samples? Could I see them?’
There was some rustling as Caitlin produced her work for inspection.
‘When are we going to get to the good stuff?’ Jordan muttered, as Caitlin and Janice discussed Caitlin’s craftsmanship. Janice, of course, heaped praise upon it.
‘Patience. We can’t just launch in. Janice needs to build up trust first.’
‘I guess’ Jordan acquiesced.
They listened for a few more minutes as Janice and Caitlin talked business. It was amazing how Caitlin was buying everything that Janice, who knew absolutely shit all about the jewellery business, said to her.
But then again, how much did Caitlin really know? She wasn’t much more than a gifted amateur, kindly put. She’d only been ‘Creating pieces’ as she called it, for about three months. But that was obviously sufficient in Caitlin’s eyes to believe that she’d mastered it well enough to be offered such a good opportunity without actually having to seek it out.
As Jordan listened to Caitlin waffling on, her eyes rolled so far back she was in danger of disconnecting her optic nerves.
Suddenly, an employee of The Grind House walked around the corner of the alley, carrying rubbish bags in both hands. He was a gruff looking man in his forties, with a straggly pre-hipster beard. When he saw Ellie and Jordan, he stopped a few metres away from them, fixing them with a suspicious look.
Ellie froze, like a dear in the headlights. How would she explain what she was doing? She was hanging around the bins with another woman. How could it not look completely shifty?
Luckily, Jordan was not so concerned about how it looked.
‘Did you want something?’ she asked sharply.
‘What’s going on here?’ the bearded man asked, standing his ground.
‘We’re minding our own business. How about you?’ Jordan demanded.
‘This is Grind House property. I could report you.’
‘For what, exactly?’
‘Loitering with intent. What are you? Prostitutes? Drug dealers?’
Jordan raised an eyebrow.
‘Neither of us is selling anything here so I’m afraid you’ll have to buy elsewhere’ Jordan said.
The man was affronted.
‘No, I wasn’t-’
‘Imagine! Trying to solicit sex and drugs from two young women! It’s a scandal. Wouldn’t you say?’ she said to Ellie.
Ellie, who’d been watching this exchange dumbfounded, nodded along.
‘Shocking’ she managed to spit out.
The bearded man looked horrified.
‘How dare you-’
‘You better get out of here, before I call the cops myself!’ Jordan shouted.
He looked at the two women agape and then simply dropped the rubbish bags where he stood and turned, hastily leaving the alley.
Ellie watched him practically running away from Jordan and she realised something. She’d always
thought Jordan was kind of a bitch. But maybe she was a bitch because she needed to be. She’d used her mouth like a weapon with that man and it had seen him off as well as any knife. Ellie felt a sudden stab of envy.