Desk Jockey Jam (12 page)

She bent to pick up her
hairclip and bag.  She wouldn’t look at him.  “This is not happening.”

He caught her arm.  “Hey,
talk to me.  You have to talk to me.  You can’t just walk out I’ll be in your
face on Monday.”  Was that it, was that what was freaking her out, the whole
colleagues thing?  “I get we have to keep this out of the office.  I’m good
with it.”

She put her hand down over
his.  “We have to keep this out of everywhere.”

“Are you saying this was a
mistake?”

“Of course it is.  You
don’t even know me.”

“And you have no interest
in letting me get there.”  It wasn’t a question.  He could see by looking at
her.  The Bree who’d teased him, come on to him, then followed him into that
flashflood of lust was gone.  The cold bitch was back.  He’d gotten it all so
fucking wrong.  “Fine.  Whatever.  Let me put you in a taxi.”

She nodded to that and he
escorted her back to the street where he got lucky whistling up a passing cab. 
He walked the couple of blocks to where the Alfa was parked, paid the ransom
money to get her under the boom gate and back on the street and peeled the top
down for the ride out of the city.  At least his old girl was faithful.  He
drove to the beach, parked her under a street light and walked a couple of blocks
back to Son of a Beach Bar.  The plan was to get smashed, walk home and come
back for the car in the morning after a surf.  The plan was to forget Bree
bitch Robinson existed, hook up to some equal opportunity with a random who
wouldn’t mind positive discrimination in Ant’s favour.  As plans go it was
foolproof, battle tested, honed and perfected over years, so the outcome was predictable. 
What was shocking, bone jarringly awful, was how it made him feel. 

Empty.

11:      Suicide Zone

Bree eyed the penalty
box.  It was only a bench seat positioned at the side of the track, but it was
where roller girls who’d pulled something illegal got sent for a minute. 
Perhaps if she looked at it hard enough she could avoid going there during the
bout, because her mood could best be described as savage.  She felt like
pushing, punching, elbowing, head-butting.  She felt like ignoring safe contact
zones and doing some damage. 

Last night with Ant had
been out of bounds, off the track, and she only had herself to blame.  She’d
acted like fresh meat who didn’t know her arse from her elbow in a jam.  She
knew better.  She’d known players like Ant all her adult life.  They were heart
crushers.  They were sanity wreckers.  They were a plague of bad skin and
hideous weight swings.  They were the stain of regret that never quite washed
off.  They were a good reason to skate alone, because they’d whip you into a brick
wall soon as a better option showed up, or you challenged their notion of the
world.  

She did not need a man
like Ant in her life.  A colleague.  A competitor.  A stickyfoot.  He made Tom,
with his demands and his assumptions, look like a safe option, a reasonable
person.

But she’d wanted him. 
She’d wanted his big sticky paws all over her.  And now she wanted some
violence with a capital Vee.

She arrived at the track
way too early, but she’d been so restless there’d been no point sitting around
at home.  She sat in the stands and watched an intake of newbies in a fresh
meat tryout.  They were running an obstacle course relay around thick ropes, chairs,
scuffed witches hats and tatty boxes.  Each participant had to use a variety of
skills from sidestepping and tip toeing to jumping and manoeuvring at speed.  If
she’d have been in the mood there were plenty of laughs as skaters who thought
they knew a thing or two found their expectations and skills levels challenged
and discovered how much harder being a roller girl was than it looked.

The league needed all of
these girls for their fees and all of their friends and family to fill the
stadium.  And it needed sponsors for teams and for bouts.  Knowing that only
made Bree feel guilty on top of cranky.  She’d promised to help find a new
sponsor for the Tricks, but had done nothing about it.  Partly because she didn’t
know how long she could keep up the double life of weekday financial market
analyst and weekend derby doll without coming unstuck, but mostly because she
had no idea where to start to find the money they needed to keep competing.

The newbies moved on to
learning how to take the knee and fall small, keeping their hands in close to
their bodies so not to get run over and getting to their feet quickly without
using their hands to avoid causing a bigger stack.  Bree knew these skills like
she knew how to blink and swallow, but not last night.  She’d fallen big last
night in an ugly way, emotions all over the place, by losing herself completely
in Ant’s honesty and unexpected chivalry, and then forgetting what mattered in his
rough kisses and heavy hands.  She shouldn’t have liked what he did so much. 
He’d used his size to move her around like she was a puppet.  He’d used his
confidence to appeal to her.  And she’d let him.  She could’ve stopped him at
any time, she knew how to hit to hurt, but his sudden interest had thrilled
her, made her blood pump fast and her senses fly off into the sunshine.  She’d
wanted that exasperating man’s hands on her body and his tongue in her mouth. 
And she’d wanted more.  She’d wanted clothes off and lips on, and a lost
weekend of sensation and experimentation where she could be her whole self
finally without judgement. 

But that wasn’t going to
happen. 
No way, no how, not freaking likely
.  And much as she wanted to
blame Ant for starting something she couldn’t finish, she knew that wasn’t
fair.  She was the one who’d jumped the starter’s whistle.  But the jam between
them had to be a onetime only thing, a bout best forgotten, because to continue
to play was a fast, flat track to career headache and certain heartache.

Bree flinched as a cherry
popper took a particularly teeth rattling spill, her face showing how much it
hurt, but the skater got to her feet and kept moving.  That’s what she had to
do.  Push her confusion, anger and embarrassment about how G-man affected her
aside and keep moving.  And what Kitty needed to do was get out on the track, show
the other side who was boss and forget about being Bree, a girl who’d lost her head
over a man who trained in smashing hearts.

·
      
 

The trackside commentator
announced the break between bouts and Ant was surprised to realise he’d zoned
out for the last hour.  Roller derby wasn’t the kind of event you could easily ignore. 
It was loud and colourful, fast and full of spills.  Take your eyes off the
track for a second and you might miss half a team being sent to the penalty box
or a skater landing in the suicide zone where spectators sat at the edge of the
track.  He had no idea if the Hurley Burley’s beat the Admin Anarchists, but
judging by the noise their cheer squad, in short baby doll dresses and tiny
1950s style playsuits were making, they must have. 

“You with us?” said Dan,
as Freddy Mercury and Queen started singing
We Will Rock You
over the
loud speaker and the stadium exploded into movement towards the food vendors before
the next bout. 

“Yeah.” 

“Is it work?”

Now would be the time to
tell Dan he’d lost the bet.  “No.” 

“Bree?”

Now would be the time to
tell Dan about what happened last night.  Get his take on it.  “No.”

“Family?”

“Yeah, all good.”

“Drugs?”

“What?”

“You’re on another
planet.  You were this morning too.”

“Didn’t get much sleep.” 
Truth is he’d had a decent amount because he’d ended up home early after one
drink at the bar.  But he’d been out surfed that morning by grommets, even a
fricking knee-boarder and they didn’t call them cripples for nothing, so he was
definitely stewing in his own juices. 

He’d been so mad for Bree
last night, so sure she felt the same.  He’d thought she came on to him first,
but maybe that was what he wanted to think, because she’d ended things right about
when all logic got bent out of shape and his ability to think clearly had gone
to Disneyland.  And she’d been distressed about it. 

He was clear only on two
points: she didn’t have a bloke, she’d told him that, so it wasn’t about cheating.
 And it wasn’t about the public nature of the hook up, because, yeah, circular
argument, she started it.  Didn’t she?  All the rest was a mystery. 

He knew he’d come on
strong, but she’d had her hands under his shirt and her tongue so far down his
throat she could’ve tasted spring lamb.  Usually when things went that far it was
a sure bet.  No, not usually—always.  The fact he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t
forced himself on her made him feel gut sick.  Especially because he couldn’t
blame the drink.  He might’ve been a player, but he wasn’t the kind of bloke
who’d force a woman into physical contact.  Whatever the truth of this was, there
was no avoiding it.  Monday morning was going to be interesting.

Dan put his fingers to the
back of his neck and squeezed.  “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think a chick
was responsible for this.”

He shifted to pull out of
Dan’s grip and tried to keep his expression attached to the roughhousing and
not give away how close the guy was to the truth.  Dan dropped his hand and
laughed, so that was an epic fail. 
Bugger
.

“What happened?”

“Fuck off.  I’m not
getting all touchy feely on this.”

Dan faced the track
again.  “All right.”

They sat there together
while the others were outside getting drinks and food and Prince sang
Let’s
Go Crazy
.  Dan could use silence like the hammer of Thor.   

“I might’ve gone too
hard.  I might’ve forced myself on her.”

“We’re talking Bree,
right?  What did you do?”

“I pashed her.”

“This is Bree, the woman
you don’t like?  Who you think someone is knocking around?”

Ant watched a referee’s convention
on the otherwise empty track.  In their black and white striped shirts they
looked like a herd of zebras.  On wheels.  “What of it?”

“Well, first is she safe?”

“She says so.”  The refs
were all blokes.  Some of the coaches too.  He wondered why that was, given
this was an all female league.  He couldn’t think of a single male contact
sport where female refs or coaches would be tolerated.  He’d never noticed that
before. 

“How’d you go from
spitting at each other to swapping spit?”

“She held my hand.  She
touched my face.  I told her she was beautiful and she liked it.”

“The usual stuff, so why
do you think you forced it?”

“She bolted.”

Dan went, “Hmm.”  He knew
immediately where Ant’s problem was.  Chicks didn’t bolt.  Apart from Fluke,
and Fluke was clean a girl up and get her home safely, the boys were smart
enough only to hit on chicks who knew the rules of the game.  He’d thought Bree
knew what she was doing.  “And you don’t think it’s the whole work with each
other thing?”

That was one of the many
things Ant was unsure about.  Maybe that was all it was.  But if that’s what
Bree was worried about, the speculation started the moment she took his hand
and left the restaurant with him.  They didn’t need to make out to raise the
gossip stakes. 

He shrugged.  He felt the
weight of not knowing hanging over him like an avalanche of water.  “Could
be.”  He’d have said more but the gang was back. 

Mitch handed him a coke
and a burger and sat beside him.  “When’s dinner?”  From further down the line
Fluke piped up, “Yeah, when is dinner?”

Next to Dan, Scott said, “I
deserve to be in on this.  I had to suffer your last bet.”

Ant groaned.  There was no
point even trying to fob them off.  He might as well get it over with.  “I
lost, okay.  Bree won.  She wiped the floor with me.” 

The amount of noise that
came out of people he counted as friends rivalled anything any of the derby
team’s cheers quads served up.  People all over the stadium looked at them
including the zebras still on the track.

“Making a new habit of
losing bet’s, eh, Ant,” said Fluke, from safely out of arms reach of a
backhander. 

“Yeah, laugh it up, Fanta-pants.” 

“We’ll get back to you
with our availability, mate,” said Mitch.  And the digs continued to roll in,
but so two did the next two teams, Tricks and Housework Heroines. 

The Heroines skated in
waving toilet brushes and their cheer squad had them too, the sound system
played
Sadie the Cleaning Lady
, one of those old joke songs.  Bree had
once mentioned it.  Funny she’d know that song.

The Tricks were trying to
encourage the non Heroine fans to boo and the biggest wag on the track was
Toni.  She made Ant forget about his issue with Bree and laugh while she hammed
it up, at one point standing in front of a pack of Heroine fans and mocking
them with a pantomime of sweeping, ironing and scrubbing.  They threw toilet
brushed at her.  She caught them and threw them back.