Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin (7 page)

CHAPTER 9

‘So that’s one Star Fagurter, one Star Chopper-double-proto-slab with a side of synthicheese, two orders of StarRings and a couple of StarMega-gloops?’

‘Yeah,’ the young man replied lethargically over the holo-vid display.

‘That’ll be ten creds, point fifty-five, please,’ said Ellie. She looked up at the dummy-card on the wall beside her in the booth. ‘Oh yeah, if your order goes over fifteen creds, you get the twenty minute delivery promise,’ she added with a smile and a well deployed tone of infectious enthusiasm.

‘Yeah? What’s that then?’

‘Oh? The promise? You get it within twenty minutes, otherwise you pay absolutely nothing.’

The man on the end of the call shrugged casually. ‘Oh, Right. Stick another couple of side orders of rings on then.’

‘
Star
Rings, sir?’ Ellie said, remembering Mr Noah’s dictum that if it wasn’t
Star
-food it wasn’t on the menu.

‘Rings?,
Star
Rings?…whatever, chik. Just stick another two orders on. What’s that make it now?’

Ellie kept her till-smile firmly in place, as she added the side-orders to the rest and checked the total. ‘Fifteen credits and ten, sir,’ she beamed cheerfully back at him.

‘Fine.’ The man swiped at something out of sight and the till instantly registered the payment.

‘Your order will be there in twenty minutes or less. Thank you for eating with-’

‘Whatever,’ the man replied before disconnecting the call.

Charming.

Ellie looked up at the delivery roster display and saw the order appear on the end of the list, and alongside it the timer displayed nineteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds left. Already valuable seconds were ticking away. The previously placed orders in the queue were busy counting down too and already dispatched and on their way through the humming airspace of New Haven on the back of a delivery d-ped.

‘Despatch order 997, another with the twenty minute promise,’ said Ellie into her throat mic, knowing that almost immediately, one of the delivery-girls would be hopping on a d-ped, gunning the engine and anxiously waiting for the order to slide through and be placed into the warm-box on the back.

Noah stuck his head into the order cubicle and looked at the delivery roster display. ‘Everything all pukkadoo?’

Ellie nodded. ‘Yes Mr Noah.’

‘Good, you’re selling the delivery deal?’

‘Yes, sir. Every order so far has been over fifteen creds.’

Noah reached out a large flabby hand and ruffled her hair. ‘Atta-girl,’ he said. ‘None of those suckers out there actually bother to clock the time the order takes anyway. Good girl,’ he muttered as he closed the door of the cubicle again.

Ellie patted down her messed-up hair and smiled with a vague sense of satisfaction. Four days on the job and already she felt like she had it pretty much nailed. Mr Noah seemed satisfied with the way things were going. Okay so she might not be a big crowd-puller on the counter, but she was doing an efficient job taking the orders, she hadn’t made a single mistake yet.

The call-order cubicle was a solitary plexitex blister on the side of the StarBreaks building that overhung the edge of the pedestrian plaza. As she waited for the next order, she cast a glance downwards past her feet, through the plastic bubble to the city below. The first morning she had settled into the cubicle she had suffered a terrible, dizzying bout of vertigo as she studied the tiny dark dots of milling people on the ground far below, and the larger swooping blurs of airborne traffic passing by beneath her. But now she had grown accustomed to it, it was a spectacular distraction to fill the few slack moments in the day between taking and despatching orders.

*

Jez looked the two young boys firmly in the eyes. They were perhaps only a year younger than Ellie. Scruffy young street-shavs, both of them grinning, showing gemstone teeth implants and countless pigment-swirl arm tattoos.

And they were also taking the piss.

‘I already gave you some StarSauce cartons,’ she replied icily pointing to the tray. ‘There? See them?’

The bigger of the two young lads, winked at her. ‘Well, I’d like another, miss.’

Jez turned round reluctantly and bent down to grab another few cartons from the dispenser. As she did, she heard both of the young boys snigger.

‘Hey
Star
Chik, nice tail.’

She gritted her teeth as she stood up again and slapped the sauce cartons down on the tray along with the other ones they had already asked for.

Just keep your cool, girl.
She dug down deep and pulled out her best over-the-counter-smile. ‘Is that everything?’ she said flatly through her teeth.

The tallest of the two young boys leaned casually against the counter taking his best shot at appearing sophisticated and cool. ‘So, you got a tug-friend? You want to go love-pup with me, chik? One-on-one date-action?’ he asked, his adolescent voice warbling up and down awkwardly along with his bobbing Adam’s apple.

She sighed.

Although this StarBreaks outlet turned out to be conveniently close to home, it seemed unfortunately, to also be one of the principle gathering points for New Haven’s young bucks. More specifically, the young lads who skulked around in the daylight hours in their hooded puffas, and at night raised a racket surfing the various tower’s thermals on their carbolite-boards.

‘Sorry…I’m betrothed,’ she replied drily, ‘anything else?’

‘Uh?’

‘Anything else?’

‘That’s it.’ He turned to his friend and flicked his wrist.

She took the boy’s money and then turned to the auto-chef and voiced-in the order. As she waited for the StarMeal to be restructured on the other side behind the fascia of the machine from raw blobs of protein paste, she looked across the kitchen to the order cubicle. She saw Ellie taking another call-in. Her friend looked up and they shared a grin and a wave.

‘Hey! Chik!’

Jez cursed quietly and slowly turned round to face the boy. ‘How about my mate?’ he said, pointing to the kid standing beside him, who, despite the off-world scarlet hue of his skin, had managed to go a tone more red.

Jez ground her teeth. The cheeky little jerk was a determined little sod. She leant forward across the counter. ‘Not in a million years,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘not if either of you dick squirts were the last pulse on this planet.’

There was a soft ping from behind her and, with a sense of relief, she turned round, picked the steaming-hot meal up, placed it on the tray and pushed the tray across the counter.

‘Thank you,’ she said with hooded eyes and her lips turned up into a sneer. The boy turned away with a victorious smirk on his face, no doubt convinced by some nuance in her reply that he had successfully arranged some sordid little group activity for her with him and his friend.

Jez continued to grind her teeth as she watched the boys swagger outside to join several of their friends, hanging around the entrance to the restaurant in a surly group. She watched the jerk who had placed the order tell his tale of conquest, pointing in her direction once briefly, and then watched them as they laughed and cast several furtive glances her way.

If she wasn’t wearing this bloody degrading uniform and on StarBreak hours, she could quite happily go out there and knock a few of their little coconut heads together.

Think of the money girl.

She prepared her composure for the next customer in line; a scruffy looking old man who smiled with a lecherous twinkle in his eyes.

She mustered her best Miss Cheerful singsong voice.

‘Good morning, how can I help you sir?’

‘Can I have some more sauce, please, love.’

*

Their lunch break was mid-afternoon, after the usual midday torrent had settled down to a steady trickle of business. The restaurant was just ticking over with one or two of the counter staff still serving whilst the rest of the girls hurried out to enjoy their twenty minute break.

Ellie and Jez wandered across the plaza and found a street vendor selling coffee and meatie-flasties. They sat down on a bench towards the edge of the plaza to enjoy a view of the hazy city as they ate their lunch. The sinking afternoon sun from the baking clay-orange world outside, cast a strong peach hue through the foggy dome and across the shimmering urban skyline. Every now and then, the flash of reflected sunlight off the hood of an aircar, or the metallic flanks of a skyhound.

‘I’m really not sure I can do this counter job,’ said Jez after her first bite.

Ellie wasn’t entirely surprised. Every now and then, when things were a little less busy she had been checking to see how Jez was doing. And it seemed every time she had looked across, Jez had her back to the counter, was scowling furiously and was muttering something under her breath.

‘I’m used to being ogled at. I can handle that, Ellie. It’s just this stupid daggy pompom that’s really getting under my skin. I feel like a complete cret’.’ Jez turned to her. ‘You know how I look is important to me, don’t you?’

Ellie nodded. ‘I know.’ Jez was singularly the vainest person she had ever met in her short life.

‘Did you know, they don’t wear this kind of crud at any of the other StarBreaks? Did you know that?’

Ellie shook her head, ‘I thought that was standard counter uniform.’

‘Yeah, well, what
you’re
wearing is. But the skirt thing and the pompom thing is Noah’s big idea. Dirty old sod. It’s…it’s…’ Jez took another bite out of her meatie-flasty, barely tasting the soyo-tang filling.

‘Demeaning?’ offered Ellie.

Jez’s eyebrows furrowed, ‘if that means it makes me look like a complete idiot, then yes.’

They watched a skyhound approach the plaza and then disgorge several dozen people onto a bubble-stop nearby, before sailing gracefully down to join a traffic stream below them.

‘I’m going to ask Noah if he can move me to some other job. It’s those shavs that gather outside; those cocky young boys that get under my skin the most. Little…little runts think they can hit on me, just because I’m dressed like a fregging bunny rabbit.’

‘Well, you could see if Noah will let you work in deliveries. You know they get paid a commission per delivery, so the more you can deliver, the more you’ll get.’

Jez nodded unenthusiastically. ‘Yeah, I suppose I could.’

‘And you get to wear the normal version of the uniform.’

‘Bonus,’ replied Jez.

Ellie thought about it some more. ‘Actually, I could cherry-pick your orders.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Give you orders grouped closely together…so that you can take more than one at a time. You know this part of the city like the back of your hand, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You know all the shortcuts. We could really stack your deliveries. I’ll give you all the ones in the same area, and you could do two or three customers with each run. I think it’s like a cred per delivered order that Noah pays out in delivery bonus. You could be earning two or three creds every twenty minutes, that’s another nine creds per hour.’

Jez sat upright and stared at her. ‘On top of my basic pay….that’s…that’s-’

‘Fifteen and a half per hour,’ replied Ellie. ‘Not bad, uh?’

‘Ellie-girl,’ Jez said, grasping her narrow shoulders with both hands. ‘You may not be a cutie-chik, but you are most definitely the brains of our little team. Crud…I’m going back right now to talk to that big lump, Mr Noah. He’s going to transfer me, girl. Or I’ll pull his stubby little nose off and serve it up with the next order.’

Jez finished her meatie, and swigged the last few gritty mouthfuls of coffee before turning and striding defiantly back across the busy plaza towards StarBreaks. She pushed her way nonchalantly through an idling crowd of offworlders, several of whom wolf-whistled her as they watched her bunny tail swing with each angry stride.

Ellie watched her go and smiled with admiration at Jez’s natural, antagonistic, self confidence. She envied that quality of hers more than anything else. Only someone like Jez could casually push her way through a pack of rough-looking men like those, dressed the way she was, without a single shred of humility. If Ellie could exchange one characteristic with Jez, it wouldn’t be her beautiful, some might say, striking face, nor her curvaceous frame, nor the husky tom-boy voice that men seemed to find so attractive; it would be none of those things.

It would be that ability of hers to effortlessly front-out everything.

She seemed to have an air of assurance that made her appear almost invincible. Nothing or no-one was ever going to best Jez. She wore confidence like an impenetrable force field.

CHAPTER 10

Jez breezed into Noah’s office without knocking. ‘I need a word,’ she announced sternly.

Noah glanced up from his data screen, a look of irritation spread across his face. ‘I’d like you to go outside, knock, and then try again.’

Jez ignored him. The door swished closed behind her and she took several intimidating steps forward. ‘I want a transfer
off
the counter.’

‘What?’ he uttered, thrown off balance momentarily. Noah recovered his composure quickly and offered her his best
we’re-a-team-here
smile.

‘Hey…You’re my number one
looker
out there on the counter!’ he said. ‘I think you just got to get into role a little more, eh?’

‘Get into role?’

‘Yeah, you know, a little flirty-flirty, shake your tush a bit. The customers just love that kind of thing. Makes ordering lunch a bit of fun for everyone.’

Jez shook her head. ‘No, I’m not shaking my
tush.
Not with this stupid fluffy white thing on my ass.’

Noah pointed towards the counter outside his office. ‘Take a look at Jules. She gets the biggest till bonus on the counter. Look…see? See…she’s grabbing some sauce cartons…there…see the little wiggle? That’s earning her money, girl. Every little wiggle is a bit more money in her pay check each week. That could be you, the top earner here at StarBreaks. You’re my best-looking girl. You just need to grow a sense of fun.’

Jez’s jaw dropped open. ‘Grow a sense of fun?’

‘That’s right.’

‘It’s….demeaning.’

Noah roared with laughter. ‘Demeaning?’ He slapped his ample belly mirthfully then swung a thick arm around her shoulders. ‘What? Did you go eat a Bill of Workers Rights for lunch? Girl, it’s a bit late to be worrying about that now. You’re already wearing my uniform. You’re already
demeaned
. All you need to do is give a little more. That’s all I’m asking. Turn it around, and make some money from it.’

Jez stared silently at him, wondering whether to lamp him one and storm out of his office with her pride intact and her head held high. Or, on the other hand, eat a little bit of pie. She knew it had to be the latter…the money at StarBreaks was too good.

Noah grew impatient with the silence. ‘So, you gonna wiggle that bunny for extra money?’

Jez clenched her fists, ‘hmmm, well see, the bunny tail…that’s the bit I don’t like, Mr Noah. I look stupid with that thing on my-’

Noah waved his hand at her irritably. He decided it was about time to wrap up this little tete-a-tete. ‘Okay Jez, I’m all done being Mr NiceGuy. You either do it my way or you take the sky-way. Understand? There’s only room for one loudmouth around here, and that’s me.’

Jez decided to make her bid. ‘How about I go and work on the deliveries?’

Noah looked bemused. ‘You want to be a ped-jockey?’

‘Yeah.’

Noah studied her intently. It would be a damned shame to lose a real looker like her from the counter, but then he had seen her being a little too snappy with the customers once or twice, showing them some attitude. And that wasn’t being too helpful. The other girls might just pick up on that, and before he knew it they’d all be hurling their bunny tails at him.

On the other hand, that attitude of hers might better serve her down in deliveries. You needed to be a little sassy to push your way through this crowded city on a tight deadline. This girl Jez seemed like she could more than hold her own on that front. Despite being a bit of a stunner, Noah was beginning to suspect she had wa-a-ay too much attitude to be serving behind the counter. Out there delivering StarFagurters, and giving everyone else on the street some grief, she’d be a natural.

‘Hey, if you’re happier doing that, Jezabel, then fine.’

‘That’s not my name. No one calls me that,’ she replied. ‘It’s Jez.’