Guest author: James Ricks

Working for an Ex-cop

I have a feeling she’d rather be talking to me. I have a feeling that, if asked to rate the conversations she had participated in that day, her conversation with me would get the top rating.

She had a slender, white neck. Maternal, dark brown eyes. A soft voice. Round, attractive hips. We talked about the value of social connection for the elderly and the mentally ill.

Later, Briony asked me if I thought she was flirty, the question was in connection to her telling Potty that Gerhardt had told her that she smiled too much. I told her ‘no comment’, which offended her. I then had to explain that the reason I did not want to comment was to avoid offending her. This seemed to have a calming effect on her. Potty called me witty. She then qualified this statement by adding that we were both, Briony and I, witty people.

I picked Brendan up on Ferndale road in Dalleyellup, in front of his girlfriend’s house. I had to wait ten minutes before I had to call back to the office to get Potty to call Brendan from the work mobile to inform him that I was waiting in front of his house. A short time later Potty called back. She had taken Brendan’s number down incorrectly. I gave her the number again. About five minutes later Brendan came from the front of the house, walking down the path in dark blue, a fur-lined parka and jeans, with his boots and socks under his arm. His feet looked clean and pink. His hair was wet. He wasn’t shaved. He had a sparse, young-man-in-his-early-twenties beard. The wet cycle-path would have been cold on his feet. He got in the car.

    “G’day Brendan.”

    “Hey, Brendan.”

    “I thought we arranged for a quarter to twelve.”

    “Oh, we probably did. There was confusion over car bookings at the office. I was in the middle of it when I was on the phone to you. I could have just as easily have told you the wrong time.”

    “That’s okay.”

Thinking back, I was unable to remember what time I had told him. I remember vaguely trying to dissuade him from keeping the appointment today. I knew he had a driving lesson later that day. I didn’t want to pressure him with a full book, there was a vague intention to keep him relaxed for the lesson. “Nah”, he had said, “I’d like to meet today. I’m finding our meetings beneficial.”

We were driving towards the beach. He told me the lecturer from TAFE had gotten back to him regarding the Certificate II course in General Education for Adults and had advised him that, because he was partially proficient in mathematics, he should begin by taking maths units, then move on to reading English later in the semester.

    “Seems like a good idea to me.”, I said, “Was there any mention of an in-class assistant in that conversation?”

He was putting an elastic sided boot on, the last one. He sat back straight.

“I slept on my neck crooked last night. If I don’t look at you while I’m speaking it’s because I can’t turn my head that way.”

    “That’s okay.”

     “It’s because I had a shower just before I got into bed. I have a shower and I get all relaxed and I sleep with two pillows and because I’m as relaxed as I am it gives me a sore neck from sleeping on the double pillow.”

    “So if you have a shower a couple of hours before you go to bed you’re okay?”

    “Yeah. That’s when I usually have a shower.”

I looked over at him and he was straining to look at me from the corner of his eye as he spoke. He had straight hair, dark brown, cut in at the sides, much of it at the top, and a lank fringe that played around his forehead. His eyes, or eye that I was able to see, was a pale blue. He had whitepink skin. A long thick neck, somehow like the bow of a young tree.

    “And I get hot at night. I sweat. Stephanie comes to bed with a hot water bottle, two cats, an extra blanket and wants to snuggle. I get bloody hot.”

    “I sleep with two pillows too.”

    “I want to try an L pillow.”

    “I like those. L-pillows are comfortable. I’ve only used one a couple of times.” I remembered an ex-girlfriend from almost twenty years ago. I remember using it after she had gone to work, “It was like two pillows in one.”

James Ricks is the author of 11 Months in Bunbury. He lives in Bunbury, West Australia. Ricks knows that death has many faces.