Donna Joy Usher - Chanel 01 - Cocoa and Chanel (4 page)

Bobby’s 4WD was in the driveway when I pulled up outside their house. I could see Becky coming out the door, a bag in her arms. She manoeuvred it awkwardly into the back of the car before she noticed me walking up the driveway. I had expected her to be excited to see me – she wasn’t.

‘Chanel,’ she said awkwardly, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Hi yourself,’ I said. ‘I’m visiting Mum.’

‘Oh…how is she?’

I was surprised Becky hadn’t been to visit her. ‘In pretty good spirits considering her leg is broken.’

She winced sympathetically and then shot an anxious look over her shoulder towards the road.

‘Is this a bad time?’ I asked. It felt weird saying it. Becky and I didn’t have bad times. We were always happy to see each other.

‘Of course not.’ Her words and voice were at odds with each other.

‘Becky what’s going on? You’re starting to freak me out.’

She wiped her hands nervously on her pants and then beckoned me into the house, checking the road again before she shut the door.

‘I’m not going to find Bobby’s dead body in the kitchen am I?’ I said.

She snorted in amusement. ‘No.’

‘In the bedroom?’ I asked.

‘Of course not.’

‘Ahh, he’s in that bag in the car.’

She smiled. ‘Like I’d be able to lift him.’

‘People have been known to have amazing strength when they need it the most.’

‘Bobby’s fine,’ she said. ‘Well actually he’s better than fine.’ A grin broke through the stressed look on her face. ‘The thing is, well what with all the dramas we were having with the families….’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, we sort of got married this morning.’

‘Sort of got married?’ I tried to keep my voice level, but I heard it climb up an octave.

She grimaced as she said, ‘Okay, we got married.’

A part of me was devastated that I hadn’t been there; hadn’t been her maid of honour like we’d promised each other in primary school. But I managed to push it aside. Tears welled in my eyes as I reached out for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she hugged me.

‘Don’t be. I’m crying because I’m happy for you,’ I said, wiping my face with my arm.

‘Really, you’re not mad?’

‘I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed I hadn’t been there. But I’m not mad.’

She let out a huge sigh. ‘I’ve been so worried,’ she admitted.

‘Geez, don’t worry about me. What on earth are you going to tell your parents?’

Bobby entered the kitchen as I was speaking. ‘We aren’t planning on telling them,’ he said.

‘Huh?’

‘The grapevine in this town works just fine. They’ll find out without us telling them.’

‘Ouch,’ I said.

Becky crossed to Bobby’s side and put her arms around him. ‘You caught us packing for our honeymoon. We’re trying to get out of town before the hysteria starts.’

‘We’re hoping they’ll have time to reflect on their actions that drove us to this before we get back,’ Bobby added.

‘Good luck with that,’ I said, thinking about how upset Becky’s Mum had gotten when we’d bought Becky’s formal dress without her.

I helped them pack the car and then waved them off on their round Australia trip. They wouldn’t be home for months. I didn’t bother mentioning my dilemma with Cocoa. It was my problem not theirs and it was just one more thing Becky would have felt guilty about.

***

‘What about a kennel?’ Mum said the next morning. I was leaving in only a few hours and we still hadn’t solved our problem.

‘That’s a great idea,’ I said. ‘Except…’

‘Except what?’

‘Well the only kennel near Hickery got closed down for cruelty to animals last year.’

‘Oh that’s right, it did too.’

It had been a huge scandal.

‘However,’ I said, thinking furiously, ‘I could take him with me and put him in a kennel in Goulburn.’ That would be nice. I’d get to visit him.

And so it was that Cocoa was riding shotgun when I left for the Police Academy. I was planning on hiding him in my room until I got him into a kennel. We drove the whole way only stopping once for a toilet break and pizza – I had Hawaiian, Cocoa had meat lovers – and made it back to Goulburn in record time.

‘Don’t make a sound,’ I warned him as I zipped up the small backpack I used for smuggling him places dogs weren’t allowed. I breathed a sigh of relief when we made it up to my room without running into anyone who wanted to chat. He seemed pretty impressed with my quarters, sniffing the perimeter before settling down on my bed.

It wasn’t long before I heard knocking on my door. I opened it a little to check it was Susie before I let her in.

‘He’s so cute,’ she said in her shrill little voice when she saw Cocoa. ‘How’s your mother?’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘But I have to book Cocoa into a kennel until she’s out. Do you know if there is any nearby?’

She pulled out her phone. ‘No, but I can Google it for you.’

‘Well while you do that I’m going to see if I can find Rick.’

She looked at me with her eyebrows raised.

‘I’m going to ask him to train us in the evenings.’

‘Do you think he will?’ Her voice got even higher when she was excited.

I hitched my boobs up in my bra and applied a coat of coraliscious gloss to my lips. ‘I’m hoping to put it in a way that he won’t be able to resist,’ I said.

‘When you left I thought that was it,’ she said. ‘What changed?’

‘It turns out I actually do want to make the world a better place.’ I pulled my hair back into a ponytail I was hoping made me look cute and not twelve.

‘That’s the spirit.’ She looked down at her phone screen and said, ‘There’s a few here. Do you want me to ring them while you’re gone?’

‘Do you think they’ll be there at 6pm on a Sunday afternoon?’

‘Someone’s got to feed the animals.’

While she did that I went in search of Rick. I checked the gym, the canteen and even the library, but he wasn’t at any of them. Finally I ran into Mike, one of the other Riot Squad Boys, and he said he’d pass the message on to Rick that I was looking for him. I returned to my room hoping Susie had been more successful than I had.

She was sitting on my bed with her hands over her face.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said. And then I smelt it. ‘Holy Batman.’ I pinched my nose between my thumb and first finger.

‘What did you feed him?’ she said through her fingers.

‘Pizza.’

‘Is it the cheese?’

‘I think it’s the salami. How did you go?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Really? Nothing?’

‘They’re all full,’ she said.

‘Christ, what am I going to do?’ I’d been so confident with Plan A I hadn’t even thought of Plan B.

‘Sleep on it,’ she said. ‘It will all sort itself out in the morning. Just you wait and see.’

I tried really, really hard but was unable to share her blind optimism.

I’m sure if it had been Susie’s dog we were hiding in the Academy it all would have worked out just peachy the next morning. But it wasn’t Susie’s dog. It was mine. So instead I shouldn’t have been shocked when Sergeant Moores pulled a surprise room inspection. Apart from the fact I had no time to get Cocoa out, my room was a mess and my laundry undone.

I could hear him progressing his way down the hall, yelling and screaming at the other students. If I got caught with Cocoa in my room it was all over, I was sure of it.

I shoved the mess on my floor under the bed with Cocoa and placed my bag in front of him. ‘Stay,’ I said in a stern voice, desperately hoping he wouldn’t decide to play with his squeaky pig.

‘Miss Smith?’

‘Yes Sergeant,’ I said, jumping to my feet.

I saluted and stood to attention trying not to grimace as he ran his finger across my dusty window ledge. A week’s worth of laundry tumbled over his shiny shoes when he opened the wardrobe, and my shirts hung in all their crumpled glory. The men’s underpants I’d purchased to uphold the chaffing story were rumpled from my accessing the women’s ones hidden underneath. My bed was unmade and my desk littered with open study books. All in all it was a pretty poor effort. I would have been worried even if I hadn’t been hiding an illegal immigrant under my bed.

Sergeant Moores finished his inspection and turned to face me.

‘Get it over with and go away,’ I thought, watching the grim expression on his face. I was trying hard not to imagine what would happen if squeaky pig noises suddenly came from under the bed.

‘Miss Smith,’ he said, ‘I’ve been doing room inspections for the last fifteen years and I can honestly say I have never seen such a …’ His voice had been increasing in volume as he whipped himself into a frenzy, but I didn’t get the chance to find out what it was he had never seen before because at that moment a smell so foul, so intense that we were both forced to cover our noses, invaded the room.

I froze in horror. It looked like Cocoa’s salami was the gift that kept on giving. Sergeant Moores’ eyes bulged over the top of his hand and I did the only thing I could think of to waylay his suspicion.

‘Excuse me,’ I said.

His eyebrows rode up his forehead to his impressive head of hair as he took his hand away from his nose and opened his mouth to speak. Another wave of putrid air washed over us even worse than the last.

I put my hands to my belly and grimaced. ‘Dairy intolerance,’ I said. The smell kept on coming as Sergeant Moores attempted to draw breath. ‘And gluten,’ I added, apologetically.

He walked out to the hallway, took his hand away from his face and said, ‘You need to get that looked at.’ And then he left.

I closed the door before I flopped onto the bed and let out a sigh of relief. ‘Come here boy,’ I said softly. I could hear movement under the bed and then Cocoa commando crawled out. He trotted over to the door and whined, looking over his shoulder at me.

I was about to put him in the backpack when there was a knock at the door.

‘Susie?’ I said.

‘It’s Rick.’

I shoved Cocoa into the wardrobe before opening the door.

‘Hi,’ I said brightly, desperately hoping the smell had dissipated. I was guessing by the way his face screwed up that it hadn’t.

‘It wasn’t me,’ I said. I could feel my face going red.

He looked past me into the room. ‘Well who was it then?’

I dragged him in to my room and shut the door. I could hear Cocoa scrabbling, frantically trying to get out of the wardrobe.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Rick said, ‘it was the ghost that lives in your wardrobe.’

I let Cocoa out before opening the window as wide as it would go.

‘Is this why you were looking for me?’ Rick asked.

‘No. I was going to ask if you would train Susie and me in the evenings.’

‘Why not,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders.

‘Really?’

‘Got nothing better to do.’

I tried to take that as a compliment.

Cocoa wandered over and sniffed Rick’s boots. His efforts were rewarded with a scratch behind the ears. He groaned and leaned into him.

‘He likes you.’

‘My mother had a schnauzer,’ Rick said, working his fingers deep into Cocoa’s beard. I pictured him kneading my flesh in the same way and tried unsuccessfully to prevent the shiver that ran over me. Why oh why hadn’t I hitched up my boobs before I’d opened the door?

‘What are you going to do with him?’ he asked.

I sighed and then filled him in on my predicament.

‘I might be able to help you out,’ he said when I’d finished.

‘Really?’

‘I know the guy who runs the Police Dog Training School. We might be able to get him a cage there.’

‘Not with a Police Dog?’

‘No, they often have empty cages.’

‘You have no idea how grateful I’d be,’ I said, hoping he might ask for a totally inappropriate form of payment.

‘Let me take him with me. If he can’t I’ll keep him at my room until we can find somewhere for him.’

I kissed Cocoa goodbye and put him in the back pack. ‘Oh,’ I said as Rick was leaving, ‘he might need to go to the toilet.’

‘You think?’ Rick said, wrinkling up his nose.

A sense of humour as well? The guy was one in a million.

***

Rick was waiting for me outside our last class for that day – NSW Policy and Law.

‘All good,’ he informed me, holding up his hand for a high five.

I gladly claimed the high five, wishing I could also do a chest bump.

‘Seven thirty tonight?’ he asked as Susie joined us. I saw some of the other girls in our class look in our direction.

‘Sounds good,’ I said. I know I should have asked them if they wanted to join us, but I was loath to share him.

Susie and I checked on Cocoa at the dog kennels before we went to dinner. We walked down the aisle between the cages, clutching each other and squealing as Alsatians lunged from both sides.

A man approached us from the other end of the cages. He was holding a long shovel and I had a sudden feeling we had wandered into a horror movie. I tried to be brave, but with the barking and shaking of the fencing wire combined with a slight claustrophobia, by the time the man reached us I was ready to bolt in the opposite direction. Susie was making small squeaky noises in time with her rapid breathing so I was guessing she was feeling the same way.

He stopped a couple of metres from us and held up his hands. ‘I come in peace,’ he said, a huge grin on his face.

Susie and I relaxed our grip on each other and straightened up.

‘Chanel?’ he said.

‘Hi, umm…’ I realised Rick hadn’t mentioned his name.

‘Andy.’ He held his hand out for us to shake. ‘Sly dog Rick didn’t tell me you were a total babe,’ he said, looking me up and down.

I could feel myself blushing.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘being gay and everything he probably didn’t notice.’

‘He’s gay?’ I said.

‘Gay as a large group of really happy people.’

‘Oh.’ I tried to hide my bitter disappointment by introducing Susie.

Andy winked at her, soliciting a bout of nervous giggles, and then he led us further down the aisle to the cage closest to the Dog Squad Headquarters. Cocoa was very happy to see us, jumping up and down against the wire of the cage.

‘Sit,’ Andy said in a deep booming voice.

Susie and I dropped to squatting positions behind him before we realised he was talking to Cocoa not us. Cocoa also stopped his jumping and sat.

‘Good boy,’ Andy said. He thankfully hadn’t seen us sit. He opened the cage and handed Cocoa a treat, and then said, ‘Down,’ while he lowered his hand.

Cocoa obediently lay down and stayed there.

‘Shit,’ I said, as I helped Susie stand. She was giggling too hard to get up by herself. ‘I tried to train him to sit, but I never succeeded.’

‘You have to mean it,’ Andy said, handing Cocoa another reward. ‘Up,’ he said, at which point Cocoa jumped up.

‘Can I pat him?’ I asked.

‘He’s your dog.’

‘Not that you’d know it,’ I mumbled as I pulled Cocoa into my arms. He responded enthusiastically enough to make me feel better about myself.

‘I can help you train him while he’s here,’ Andy said. ‘It would be my pleasure.’ I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to my boobs.

‘What else is there for him to learn?’

Andy’s laugh was earthy and honest. I decided I liked him, even if he was still staring at my chest. ‘Stay, come, roll over, attack.’

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the attack part, but then I thought about Mum and realised maybe a dog that attacked on command wasn’t such a bad thing.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘How much is it going to cost me to board him here?’ I was crossing my fingers and hoping it wasn’t going to be too expensive. Hairdressing hadn’t paid well, and most of my wage had gone on clothes. Now I was without an income and pretty much all of my savings had gone to fund my police training.

‘Well seeing as how we don’t officially board animals, perhaps a carton of beer would do it,’ he said.

A carton of beer? That I could afford.

After we had made a time for me to learn how to train Cocoa, Susie and I headed back to the mess. I was helping myself to a slab of potato bake oozing with white sauce and cheese when Rick appeared by my side with two plates, each containing a portion of steamed fish and some vegetables.

‘What’s this?’ I said in dismay as he handed them to Susie and me.

‘If you want me to train you, you have to eat what I tell you to eat.’

‘But there won’t be enough energy in this to get me through another work out,’ Susie whimpered. Her plate had been piled high with roast chicken, potato bake and roast pumpkin. ‘I need some carbohydrates.’

‘This is carbohydrates,’ Rick said, gesturing at the broccoli. ‘Besides,’ he continued, looking at me with a grin on his face, ‘Sergeant Moores has advised the cooks of your dairy and gluten intolerances.’

I pulled a face at him as I contemplated the ramifications. No more ice-cream? No more custard? No more cake? Oh well, there was always the jelly.

We ate our nutritious dinner and then headed over to the gym. I was feeling a little nervous at the thought of the training session. It hadn’t been so bad when Susie and I had been training ourselves. We had warmed up on the running machine – at a pace that allowed us to talk, and then randomly moved around the weight equipment.

It was better and worse than I thought it would be. Better because he tailored a weight program for each of us to follow, worse because he mentioned a guy named Sam a few times and it became obvious that Andy was right. He was gay. Perving at him just didn’t give me the same satisfaction any more.

The weeks flitted by with our new routine. Between lessons, study, dog training and physical training I didn’t even have time to go clothes shopping, which was good as I couldn’t afford it. Plus, we had started weapons training, which took up a serious chunk of my concentration as I tried to shoot the target, and not one of the other students.

I wasn’t sure why, but Sergeant Moores had backed right off since the farting incident. I waited in fear for Nastacia to get me back for my accidental spying but as the weeks went by and she didn’t I started to relax. I caught her watching me a few times, a strange expression on her face but she never confronted me. In the end I surmised they had gotten bored with tormenting me. I didn’t care why; I was just relieved things had taken a turn for the better.

Susie’s clothes started to hang off her, and even mine were a little loose. We were measured up for our new uniforms, and even though the shoes were a disaster, I was proud to wear mine around campus. It meant we were almost there, almost policewomen. I couldn’t wait to see the look on my Mum’s face at our graduation ceremony.

She had been released from hospital but Andy said it was fine for Cocoa to stay there – I think he had a soft spot for him, and I was enjoying having him near me. Although I almost had heart failure when I went to visit him and found him joining in on the police dog training.

They were teaching the dogs to attack, and the trainers had padding on their forearms which they fed into the dogs’ mouths on the command. The padding was black and furry and I had an awful feeling one of the other dogs would mistake Cocoa for it and tear him apart.

‘Attack,’ Andy yelled. Cocoa charged towards him and leapt, fastening onto Andy’s padded arm. He growled ferociously as Andy shook his arm from side to side. The fact that his tail was waving madly the whole time only made him slightly less scary.

As soon as Andy called release Cocoa let go and trotted back to the start line. He touched noses with one of the Alsatians, a feat which had my heart in my throat, and then sat; his entire focus on Andy. I couldn’t help but notice how his walk had changed. He used to bounce like a puppy now he strutted, his head held high. And just like that I realised my little boy had grown up. It was a bitter sweet moment.