“Bathroom’s this way,” Vanessa told me, leading the way.
I followed her through the now well-lit house. She had vinyl and tiled floors on the concrete, instead of the bare concrete in my shack. The bathroom was old, but definitely a lot better than my tiny mouldy one. I washed my hands in a sink with a brand-new bar of soap, some liquid handwash and a nailbrush that looked too clean to touch.
It looked strangely empty for a woman’s bathroom. A toothbrush, the soap and not much else, except a container of salt. I’d never seen a bathroom used by a girl which didn’t have some makeup or hair products scattered around. Hell, my sisters took up so much space in our shared bathroom, when I was home I gave up putting any of my stuff in there. I just used theirs and smelt of whatever fruit-scented shampoos and soaps they’d picked. There were worse things for my arse to smell of than coconut or mango.
I dried my hands on a pristine white towel that I tried to touch as little as possible.
Vanessa sidled in behind me and started to wash her own hands, taking longer than I had. I watched her for a moment. Her fingers were long and thin, topped by nails that were surprisingly short. She didn’t have any nail polish on them. I looked down. Nope, none on her toes, either. I tried to focus on her toes. They looked long and straight, like her fingers, but something about them was strange. It’s not that they were any longer than anyone else’s toes, just…not right. I felt dizzy and closed my eyes. All those months of no drinking on site, a six-pack of beer and I’m imagining things.
I opened my eyes to find she was right in front of me, those unadorned toes almost touching my feet. Ten perfect toes, perfectly normal.
She reached around me to get the towel, her arm brushing my shirt.
I realised I’d frozen in exactly the wrong spot and stepped out of her way to go to the kitchen instead. She followed me, wiping her hands on the towel as she went. She hung it on the back of one of the dining chairs, before opening the fridge.
“What sort of beer would you like?” she asked. “We have Corona and something called Cooper’s that one of my deckhands likes.”
I accepted a Cooper’s Pale Ale as she chose a Corona, opening them both with the bottle opener on the side of the fridge. A girl’s house this may be, but the bottle opener was in the right place.
“To the miracle man who came to help a girl in distress,” Vanessa said, lifting her beer to clink it against mine. We both drank.
A thought came to her as soon as she had a mouthful of beer. She put the bottle down on the table, opening her mouth to say something, then closed it again, looking embarrassed. “Would you like to sit down, in the lounge?” She said it in a rush.
“Sure,” I replied, following her to the other end of the big room. There were two metal-framed futon sofas here, which presumably earned it the title of lounge.
She perched on the edge of one as I sank back into the other, leaning right back with a sigh. Even her elderly sofas were more comfortable than the one in my shack.
“I figured everyone else would be asleep,” she said. “What were you still doing up, or was I making too much noise?” This had evidently just occurred to her and she looked worried.
I shrugged. “I was watching the footy with some of the Fisheries guys and I’d just got back to my shack when I heard some pretty loud swearing. I was going to go to bed, but it sounded pretty dire. I figured I’d better go help before someone got killed.”
She looked down, embarrassed. “You thought I was going to kill someone?” She put the beer to her lips.
“Well, the way you held that hammer, I figured if the generator wasn’t going to get it, you might use it on me,” I admitted.
She almost choked on her beer as she burst out laughing. “So you braved the mad girl with a hammer to save a generator from a violent death at her hands, at great personal danger to yourself? You’re the generator’s hero!”
I’d prefer to be yours. I grinned back. “Yeah, well it wouldn’t be the first time I saved a generator from death.”
I told her about one night out on site, when the generator had died just as Dean started cooking dinner. He’d been holding a cook’s knife and cutting up steak when the lights went out. Then I told her about fixing the communications for the Fisheries camp.
She looked impressed. “You know how to install communications for a place like this, in the middle of nowhere?” she asked in disbelief.
“Sure,” I told her. “That’s my job the rest of the year. I set up communications and electricity for remote mining camps. Once I get the equipment and the power set up, hooking up the satellite uplinks and the network is easy...” I continued for a bit more, until I realised I was boring her. She had that polite, glazed look I wore when my sisters talked about the merits of tampons, foundation or vampires. I remembered that I was talking to a woman who’d just threatened a generator with a hammer, because she didn’t know it had run out of fuel.
“I’m sorry,” I apologised. “You’re very easy to talk to.”
She smiled. “I’m sorry that I don’t understand. Do you mean that you can set up communications for a house so that we could get the internet out here?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “The equipment is a bit pricey, but if you’re willing to pay for it, I can install it in an afternoon. You wouldn’t even need to get an installer from the mainland.”
“How pricey?” she asked.
I named a figure that was close to my monthly paycheck when I’d been installing lights back in Perth.
She nodded, thoughtfully. “And how much for you to install it?”
I told her how much the Fisheries guys had agreed to pay.
Another nod. “How soon can you order the equipment?”
“As soon as I can get to a phone. It might take a few weeks to get it out here, though,” I replied. Shit, if she pays what the Fisheries blokes did, I’ll have earned two weeks’ pay in a day. If every job out here pays like this, I’ll have my house in one year instead of two.
She took a deep breath. She’s just realised that I’m asking her for a lot of money. She exhaled slowly and surprised me. “Okay. Order the lot and I’ll have your money in cash, when the girls next go out on the carrier boat. I’ll even make you dinner.”
I opened my mouth to accept her offer, but she cut me off, blushing. “But not tonight. It’s a bit late and we both have pots to pull in a few hours. Let me know when you’re free.” She stood up and so did I.
I headed for the front door, then went through it and across the veranda. Before I stepped out of the path of light streaming from her front door to the steps, I turned around. “Thanks. Good luck with your generator. And don’t forget, if you need an electrician, I’m just next door.”
I tripped lightly down the steps, just about walking on air back to my house. I didn’t feel my broken toes, or even the shift of the coral shingle under my feet. I’d just had a beer with my Amazon of a next-door neighbour, I’d managed to keep from sticking my foot in my mouth for the duration and she’d not only agreed to give me a lot of money for a very simple job, she’d also invited me to dinner at her house.
I thought of the pilot who’d brought me here. He’d said these islands were cursed with murder, mutiny and lust. Well, he could take the first two and maybe the cursed, too. He was right about the lust, but it sure didn’t seem like a curse to me.
My strangest house call story just got better. The lady of the house threatened me with the rusty remains of a hammer, while I changed the fuel tank on her generator to save her ice cream, before she reimbursed me for my time with a beer and a dirty handshake. She offered me a repeat job with a huge paycheck. Then she asked me out.
Nope, Dean still won’t believe me.