by C. J. Duggan
He was a big, bearded, gruff, biker-looking kind of fellow, who cared little for his health if the caffeine consumption and chain-smoking was anything to go by. As far as I knew, the reason Adam had roped us in to help out was largely due to Uncle Eric’s wavering health. No doubt it was a bonus that we were still in school so he could pay us minimum wage off the books. Kind of like a sweatshop for child labour.
He gave us an assessing look.
“We could do with some fresh blood around here. Tess and Ellie will be front-of-house in the restaurant.”
There was a not-too-subtle agenda: Uncle Eric tended to work in a way of capitalising on people’s strong points so as to attract the right clientele. Little did he know that I was silently freaking out over a coffee machine, let alone what else this job might entail. Just breathe, I told myself.
Just. Breathe.
As if sensing my unease, Adam elbowed me and threw me a friendly, reassuring smile. Ellie, who was as giddy as a schoolgirl, flashed me her pearly whites as if what Uncle Eric was saying was truly magical. I felt nauseous with information overload. I had only been inside the Onslow a few times for the odd dinner gathering, but Mum and Dad were not regular pub goers. They were more accustomed to wine and home-based dinners with close friends than pub hopping.
Now the beast of a coffee machine lay silent, the noise replaced by yet another scary sound: Uncle Eric wheezed out an uncomfortable series of chest-rattling coughs. I folded my arms and fought not to wince as the sound and smoke blew my way.
“Thought you quit that nasty habit, Unc.”
An older version of Adam appeared through the divider that sectioned the main bar from the restaurant – Chris. He brushed past us in the small space, ensuring he slammed Adam hard in the arm as he made his way towards a lower cupboard, crouching to search for something. They never used to look alike. Adam went through a phase where he thought he was adopted because Chris looked so much like his parents, but nowadays there was no mistaking the resemblance. Lean, with clear alabaster skin, big deep, dark eyes, and dark unruly hair. The main differences were that Chris kept his hair cropped shorter, he was taller, and he held himself differently. Adam was a lot more outgoing whereas Chris was the far more serious sibling; he tended to go about in life as if the weight of the whole world rested on his shoulders.
Chris found an exercise book and flicked through it, a crinkle forming between his brows as he concentrated.
“What habit? Coffee or smoking?” Eric mused.
“Both,” Chris muttered. His brow furrowed further as he thumbed each page.
When we arrived to begin our trial at the hotel, Adam had looked forlorn. Not a good sign. Not much seemed to worry Adam, but when I saw Chris behind the bar taking stock of inventory, I automatically knew the reason behind Adam’s sullen mood without even having to ask. Uncle Eric had chosen Chris to manage the bar.
Smart move, Uncle Eric.
Knowing what Chris was like, we knew he’d run a tight ship and not give us an inch, especially Adam. Suddenly goofing off and free pool seemed like an impossible dream. This was strike one against the ‘dream job’ I had envisioned. Strike two quickly followed.
Uncle Eric moved aside.
“Tess, why don’t you make Chris a coffee? Show us what you got.”
Oh God! Why didn’t I pay attention to how he did it?
I moved closer to the machine, fearing it would come alive and burn me with its evil steam spout. I was just about to fake the ‘I totally know what I’m doing’ routine when – saved by the bell! The bell being the distant jingle of jewelry and a gay, breezy voice that could not be mistaken for anyone other than Claire Henderson. Eric’s younger, oddly glam, attractive wife. Well, glam and attractive for Onslow standards, anyway. I had heard Mum and Dad say on more than one occasion that it was an ‘odd’ marriage, and not just for the obvious aesthetic reasons. Claire had a tall slender frame dripped in Gucci and smothered in French perfume. Her silky, ash blonde hair was never out of place. I know opposites attract, but seriously? Claire Henderson leant over the bar, reaching for the keys to her Audi convertible.
“Hello, poppets! What do we have here?”
“Orientation,” Chris said. He flipped through the mysterious exercise book but with less interest now.
“Of course. Adam these are your friends, the ones you always talk about? You must be Tess and Ellie.”
We offered pleasant smiles; wait a minute, I’m wrong. I offered that smile. Ellie was beaming in such a way I feared we all may have been blinded by it. She stepped forward with an animated hair flick.
“I’m Ellie Parker, Mrs Henderson.” She took Claire’s hand to shake. “I love your shawl. Wherever did you get it?”
Claire Henderson honed in on Ellie with interest.
“Why, thank you. It was a gift, to me from me.” She winked, and she and Ellie beamed at each other, instant friends. It was so clear, Claire Henderson could see herself in young Ellie Parker. It was a like magnetic pull towards each other, like for like.
Ellie beamed, Claire beamed. They didn’t just enter into a room, they filled it with their vibrant energy and just when I was about to ask my own question about the shawl, Claire’s bright, friendly eyes cut from Ellie to me and dimmed. A crinkle pinched between her perfectly manicured eyebrows, a crinkle that looked as though it really shouldn’t be there considering I’d heard she had her plastic surgeon on speed dial.
“Ah, Tess, sweetie. Tut tut tut.” She waggled her finger. “Uncross your arms and stand straight. Body language is everything.”
I quickly unfolded my arms and stood straight like a soldier. All of a sudden I was very aware of every body movement I was going to make. What else did I do unconsciously that might be offensive? I blushed and felt like a naughty five year old.
Without further thought, Claire jingled her keys.
“I’m off now, poppets, don’t work too hard.”
Oh, we weren’t allowed to work too hard or have bad body language, I thought bitterly. And on the same breeze Claire Henderson blew in on, she blew away. Probably to her townhouse in the city that Uncle Eric purchased for her. Another conversation overheard from my mum to one of her friends.
“They don’t even live together! He has his pub; she lives in the city all week. What kind of marriage is that?” my mum would ask in dismay.
One that obviously skipped the ‘in sickness and in health’ vows, I thought, as I studied Uncle Eric’s grey complexion. No doubt made worse by years of working indoors in a dark bar surrounded by cigarette smoke and a lifetime of pub meals. Was this what he meant by fresh blood? My heart sank. I knew it was only weekend work, but it was a weekend with minimal sunlight, no fresh air and no lake.
This was going to hurt.
The remainder of the trial went on in a string of awkward chaos, even when Uncle Eric retired himself to his residence upstairs. Crusty old Melba, the kitchen hand, took over some of the orientation. She whipped us into polishing silverware and glasses, folding napkins and various other jobs that we all apparently did ‘wrong’.
“Hearts like a split pea, this generation, honestly.” Melba snatched a napkin out of Ellie’s hand and showed her how to fold it the ‘right’ way. It was nice to see not everyone succumbed to Ellie’s charms. Not even Adam’s good nature could steer Melba in a less moody direction. And he had known her all his life.
“Did she really babysit you when you were young?” I whispered to Adam who was helping me frantically to polish cutlery.
“She sure did,” he sighed.
“That is the scariest thing I have ever heard,” I said. “I didn’t know your parents hated you.”
“I guess when you have three boys you need the Terminator for the job.”
We snickered, and her beady eyes settled on us from across the dining room. We quickly looked back down and polished like we were demons possessed.
I went to get a cloth from behind the restaurant bar when I noticed that the book
Chris had been so focused on earlier was, in fact, a reservations book. I skimmed a couple of pages, working out just how busy to expect my days to get. I found today’s page and saw a reservation circled in pink fluro texta. It highlighted something sinister. A lunchtime group booking for fifteen … today!
My breath hitched. They knew about it all along? I wondered if Adam knew? Was this some kind of test? My heart pounded as the double doors swung open and a congregation of permed, blue-dyed hair poured slowly into the restaurant bringing with them a mass of high-pitched chatter.
Chris appeared beside me and reached for the book; he took in my ghost-white complexion with mock interest.
“I know, a pokies tour bus,” Chris said as we watched elderly people flood into the restaurant. “It’s as frightening as it looks.”
What were they doing here? We didn’t even have pokies, did we? Maybe they were just travelling through for lunch and then off to wreak five-cent havoc elsewhere. I swallowed my fear as a group assembled in front of me.
“Try not to stress, Tess. They can smell fear,” Chris whispered into my ear. I barely registered his laughter as he returned to the main bar.
I would be fine, old people were nice. They would be easy, surely? Where on earth was Ellie? And Adam? They’d been at the table folding napkins a second ago, but the table stood abandoned now. All of a sudden the glint of spectacles shone my way in a domino effect. The old people shuffled towards me.
I fumbled for a notebook and pen, ready for action. Poised and standing straight behind the counter, I flashed what I hoped was a winning smile and not a scary one.
I can do this. No sweat, this I can do. Just take down the order and handball it to the kitchen. Piece of cake.
Just when I was about to write my very first order as a confident, gathered, working woman, the leader of the group merged forward. She smiled at me sweetly, putting me instantly at ease. Then she sucker punched me in the guts.
“We’ll have twelve cappuccinos, please.”
Shit.
***
After what could only be described as a hellish first shift, I sat in the main bar, deflated with an ice pack on my steam-burned arm. My eyes were watery from the pain of clumsily branding myself in my haste, but the watery eyes were mostly due to humiliation. To my utter relief, Melba had taken over the making of the cappuccinos. I worked the floor with Ellie to conquer the more straightforward aspect of taking lunch orders.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Apart from not knowing the lunch specials. Or whether we catered for the lactose intolerant. Or if our menu was diabetic friendly. Or if it was offensive to someone with coeliac disease. Was our menu offensive? Christ! Old people have a lot of problems. Of course, I knew none of the answers and my table of eight stared at me as if I was some idiot they wanted to squish with their walking sticks. I tried to take solace in the fact that Ellie knew equally as little as I did, but I heard a chorus of laughter at one point and saw Ellie charming her table and writing profusely. Her table was looking up at her with adoring smiles. I had looked back at my bored death stares.
It took all my strength not to get upset the fourth time I had to trail back to the kitchen to ask the short-tempered cook another question. I didn’t know what I feared more – my table, who I had diagnosed with chronic evil, or the psychotic and feisty cook, who would throw pots and pans and swear profusely when things didn’t go her way. There was not much of her, but geez she could swear like a sailor and throw a heavy-duty saucepan with force. The only thing that literally pushed me through the kitchen door and back into the restaurant was Adam and his infectious attitude, though a greater part of me wanted to punch him in the face when I thought back to the very reason I was there. I had been abused by Melba, a busload of geriatric gamblers and a psychotic red-headed cook.
And then a third-degree steam burn. Okay, probably not third degree, but it stung. I drowned my sorrows in a glass of Coke that Chris had placed in front of me without a word. The door burst open from the restaurant.
“THAT was the best shift ever!” Ellie beamed, followed in by Adam who still wore his dish apron.
“Seriously, how cool was that? It was so busy, but good. Made time go so fast, and I even got a tip.” Ellie pulled out a five-dollar note with glee.
“Looks like you had a table of high rollers,” I added glumly.
It was then that Ellie took it down a peg or two. “I saw you had to return a meal to the kitchen. What was with that?”
“Which time? When it was too hot? Or too cold? I actually contemplated blowing on her meal for her.”
Adam winced; he didn’t need to have the full account of my nightmare. He was painfully aware of every time I came through the kitchen door with a new complaint. Each time I did, a little piece of me died.
Adam slapped and rubbed his hands on his thighs.
“Well, the worst is over ladies, you survived your first shift initiation. It’s all downhill from here.”
Ellie clapped with joy.
“Yay.” I glared at him.
Ellie smiled sadly at me. “How’s the arm?”
I sighed. “I’m afraid I will never be an arm model.”
“I’m so sorry, Tess. I know how much you were counting on that to get you through university,” Adam said in mock sympathy.
“I was going to be a wrist-watch model. You know, travel the world, but, alas, it’s not to be.” I shook my head and tried not to smirk.
Ellie couldn’t contain herself.
“You’re such a dork, Tess.”
“You are who you hang with,” I threw back.
Adam squeezed in between us, threw his arms over our shoulders, and kissed us both on the head.
“Oh gross, boy cooties!” I squealed.
“Thank you for doing this. It’ll get better, I promise. You, me, and McGee are going to have the best summer ever, you’ll see.”
Chapter Four
Last day of school was little more than a giant social event.
There were no classes of any substance; instead, students wandered aimlessly around the school grounds. We weren’t privy to a ‘muck up’ day as we weren’t Year Twelves and any mucking up from the senior students had been monitored so severely that we had half expected to see watchtowers constructed for teachers with binoculars and dart guns. Such limitations were largely due to an incident from two years ago that had Andy Maynard fused to a goal post with electrical duct tape by a group of hooded Year Twelve boys. The school frowned upon that and banned Muck-up Day all together. That didn’t mean there wasn’t any anarchy in the schoolyard.
Our theme for the year was Toga. All Year Elevens arrived draped in sheets that would have had all our mums going ballistic because we took them without asking. We all walked around, our shoulders exposed like we were in Roman bathhouses.
“It would be all so authentic if it wasn’t for the gum leaf crowns everyone is wearing,” Adam mused.
I re-adjusted my leafy headgear. “What choice was there? I think it looks good.”
“Oh God, Tess, this is humiliating.” Ellie’s eyes darted around, hoping not to be recognised.
“Relax, Ellie, it’s our last day of school, no one will even remember what we wore.”
We weaved and maneuvered our awkward costumes through a group of Year Eight boys playing hacky sack.
“Yeah, well, if this makes it into the Yearbook, I will never forgive either of you,” Ellie threatened.
“Oh, come on, Pretty Parker, just think of it as the multicultural aspect of the Miss Onslow Show Girl.”
I cringed. There it was, the one thing that turned the usually beaming, bright, confident Ellie into a stone-faced Ice Queen.
Ellie had entered the Miss Onslow Show Girl Pageant in Year Nine (so she was old enough to know better), and it was something Adam had relentlessly mocked her about ever since. I recalled the glee in his mischievous eyes as we sat in the showground stands watching Ellie radiantly wave to the crowd. I thoug
ht Adam was going to pop a blood vessel as he fought not to lose himself to hysteria when the Mayor of Onslow, Hank Whittaker, started singing Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely?’ After a full afternoon of sitting in the sun and being forced to witness every age bracket of the Miss Onslow Show Girl, I couldn’t help but lose it, too. Maybe it was Adam’s infectious laugh, or perhaps I suffered a touch of sunstroke? I don’t know. More likely, it was witnessing Mayor Whittaker, a gangly, balding, fake-tanned man with unnaturally white protruding teeth and a torturous falsetto, mime as he captured a butterfly to his heart and then released it into the air, as if he was a Backstreet Boy. From that day on, any time Mayor Whittaker ran into Ellie, he would blind her with his bleached veneers and refer to her with his pet name for her. Hence, ‘Pretty Parker’ was born. It was no Tic Tac Tess, but still, Ellie came second and never entered again.
“There is no such thing as a multicultural section in the Miss Onslow Pageant, idiot.”
Adam placed his hands up in mock surrender.
“Sorry, Ellie. I guess I need to brush up on my beauty pageant trivia.”
I could see this getting ugly. “So, the break-up party tonight. What time do we rock up?”
Ellie’s head snapped around. “What are you wearing? Do you want to come to my place first? We can pick something out.”
“How come I never get invited to these pre-party fashion parades?” whined Adam.
We both ignored him.
“I haven’t a clue, really,” I said. “What time do you want to rendezvous?”
“Make it seven at my house. By the time we get ready, we will be fashionably late.” Ellie flicked her hair over her exposed shoulder.
Adam rolled his eyes and mimicked Ellie behind her back. I threw him a discreet frown.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, as I lifted my awkward sheet to step over a wayward empty chip packet.
“So we’re not wearing the Togas tonight, then?” Adam pressed.
“No,” Ellie and I said in unison.
