The Boys of Summer (4 page)

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.”

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
thought 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.