by Jamie Mackay
***
The crew arrived at Tatum's door shortly after ten and got right to work. Similar to the day previous, Vinnie and the two teenagers were the first to arrive. Tatum felt a definite pang of disappointment when Jake didn't arrive with the rest, but continued busily unpacking remaining boxes so that her disappointment would not be obvious to the rest of the crew.
"Hey Vinnie, what's your plan for today," she finally heard a deep masculine voice call into her living room.
Her heart skipped just a little.
"We're gonna finish this one up. Should be done around 3, then maybe we can move the equipment over to the next site. We won't get started there today yet though," replied the talkative Italian.
Tatum didn't want to appear too keen, so she continued with her unpacking until a suitable amount of time had passed and then moved out into her living room where she casually asked, "I'm going to have a beer break, anybody else?"
She knew that pushing beer down the street in a shopping cart would have to pay off somehow.
"Beer?" all the crew men said in unison, as if they'd practiced simultaneous answering as a sport.
Boy, thought Tatum, when you want a man's attention...
.
After the beer break, Tatum found herself more acquainted with her new friends and much less willing to remove herself to the other room. The teenagers, who she had since found-out were of age, barely, were clearly the primary workers. Vinnie and Jake were more responsible for supervision and precision work, so they definitely had more time to sit and chat. They actually did not seem to be in much of a hurry at all.
Vinnie did most of the talking.
"So Tatum, you're here to work at the Units. Why would you wanna work with crazy people?"
Tatum was, as always, slightly offended by the comment, much more for the patients than for herself. Thankfully she was also very used to people responding to her career choice in this way, so she chose to ignore the inappropriateness of the question.
"I have a brother with Autism so I've been around people with intellectual and other disabilities my whole life. Plus, I had one unbelievable psychology instructor that sucked me in."
She smiled and followed with, "Amazing the impact a few people can have on your life."
"Yah I guess," Vinnie said, only half listening. "Like I said earlier, I'm a lowly blue collar type, worked for Pete at Home Hardware most of my life, but Jake here, he's the big shot type."
Jake blushed.
Tatum's curiosity was piqued so she casually asked "I thought you worked at Home Hardware too Jake? Isn't that why you're here, buffing my floor?"
Tatum reddened when she realized the implication of the reference she'd just made. The men obviously also found humor in her comment, but chose to let her off the hook.
Vinnie didn't wait for Jake to respond. "Nah, he just hangs out with us little people sometimes in the summer ‘cause his grandpa owns the store. Oh, and the physical labour racket keeps him looking good for the ladies. Hey, big guy?"
Vinnie looked at Jake, but didn't wait for a response. "He's a big shot business guy, family's got oil money and they needed someone to manage it. Who better than golden boy over here?"
Tatum was a bit taken aback. Jake certainly didn't look like any oil executive she'd ever seen.
"You work here in Wainwright?" she asked. Again, Vinnie didn't wait for his friend to respond. "He's stationed here, but he works everywhere. See... I told you he was a big shot. Has to go all over North America to make deals with other big shots and then he goes overseas because the big shots here need to make sure big shots in other countries aren't gonna prevent them from making buckets full of money. Right buddy?"
Tatum could tell by the amount of razzing Vinnie was doing that the two men were long-time friends.
In an effort to understand how two men that seemed so drastically different could become friends Tatum asked "So how do you two know each other?"
"Friends since kindergarten. Same school, same teacher, parents were friends. You know the story." It was Vinnie talking again.
Tatum actually didn't know the story. Where she came from it was pretty unlikely that you would go to school with the same kids since kindergarten, never mind still hang out with them in your thirties.
.
Eventually Vinnie left to tend to his recruits and Tatum and Jake were left sitting alone. With Vinnie not dominating the conversation, a few awkward moments passed while the two got used to sharing some space.
"So, an oil exec, hey?" asked Tatum.
"Well," Jake answered modestly, "My good buddy Vinnie might exaggerate, just a touch."
"But you do work in the oil industry?"
"Oh yes, right out of high school I was off to my MBA. As soon as I graduated, Grandad and my father had the oil stuff together in a file folder waiting on my desk. Wouldn't think it would take a full-time person to manage a single family, but turns out it keeps me pretty busy."
"Your family has an oil business?" asked Tatum.
"Sort of. Didn't start out that way. My Great-Grandad homesteaded here in Southern Saskatchewan. His land turned out to be full of, as the Beverly Hill Billy's would say black gold. One of the major oil companies put up a bunch of wells and the rest is history. We've used some of the profits from our wells to create a system of our own, so now we represent lots of local farmers with oil under their ground. I help them lease their land, negotiate contracts, basically help them understand the mumbo jumbo of oil. Sometimes we also buy their rights if they are uncomfortable with taking the chance with the oil companies. We pay them a fair rate in exchange, and then do the work and place the wells ourselves. It's all pretty boring, really."
Tatum wasn't bored at all.
"So, you have your office in town, then? I think that's what Vinnie said, right?"
They smiled at each other, sharing a moment of humour at Vinnie's expense related to his tendency to talk too much, as well as too fast and too loud.
"Yeah, have you seen the old fire hall off Main Street?"
"I sure did. Noticed it the first day I came to town."
"My office is in there. Not much, but it does the trick."
"And, how do you still make time to do flooring?" she asked.
"Well, I'm not just good at floors, you know," he said with a smirk. "I do deliveries, put together furniture", he looked around the room at her partially constructed furnishings, "Work on the farm equipment. Try to be a jack of all trades. I grew up on the farm and in Grandad's hardware store; it's where I'm most comfortable. I mostly do manual stuff on weekends. I like it. Gets me away from my desk; you know, the paper, the guys in suits."
Tatum did know. 'Guys in suits' was Niko's life. Niko was definitely a 'guys in suits' kind of guy, and that was one of the reasons she'd needed a break from their relationship.
"My time here in Wainwright keeps me grounded. I see some guys in my business get eaten up by the power, the money, the travel, the expensive food and drinks. I just wanna do my job and help my family. I travel to do my work, but I like being here where I can still buff floors occasionally."
He and Tatum both blushed at the re-mention of him buffing her floors.
.
Vinnie cleared his throat, not because he needed to, but because he was trying to send his friend a subtle message that he'd visited long enough and it was time to get back to work. Jake begrudgingly lifted himself off Tatum's kitchen floor and moved slowly over to supervise the edge work done by one of the teenagers.
"Vinnie's already busting my chops to get back to work, and I haven't heard anything about you yet."
He paused, Tatum was hopeful she knew what he was going to say next.
"Maybe coffee sometime?" he continued.
Just like she did when she was offered the work with Dr. Zubert so many years ago, she held her composure and prevented herself from yelling out loud.
With a simple "That would be nice," she and Jake went their separate directio
ns and her apartment renos finally started getting the attention they deserved.
