Wingnut

Robert leapt up the polished hardwood steps of the New Farm art deco apartment building, an overnight bag slung over his shoulder and a bunch of flowers in his hand. It was Friday night and after a two hour journey he was just metres away from his destination.

He'd first made the trip to Audrey's home twelve months ago. He'd gotten hopelessly lost driving around inner-city Brisbane in peak hour, and by the time he'd finally located the grand structure in which Audrey – or Ordie, as he called her - resided, he'd felt flustered, awed and insignificant. Unworthy. He'd remembered her as an angry, helpless woman, frail from anorexia and viciously unforgiving of the small town in which she'd suffered a series of sexual assaults at the hands of her stepfather.

For years he'd dreamed of somehow being able to help her, to be a protector of sorts, but when he saw her apartment he'd been struck by the realisation that Audrey didn't need him to be a hero. She was her own saviour. Still emotionally delicate at times, sure, but not a woman who needed rescuing.

As he stepped over a neighbour's cat, he recognised that he now felt very differently about his journeys to the city. He was growing comfortable; finding his place within the densely packed apartments, busy streets and thriving cafés. He knew which lanes he needed to drive in, how to merge in thick traffic, where to take his girlfriend for a romantic stroll, and most importantly, how to make her clutch him to her and wail as she came.

Robbie reached the door of Audrey's apartment and hesitated for just a few seconds. He touched his hair, which was overdue for a haircut, ran his tongue over his teeth, and tried to ignore the thumping of his heart. With each day that passed he was pleasantly surprised by just how wonderful it was to know what love actually was, and to experience the anticipation of a reunion.

He didn't have much to offer her. No money, that was for sure. He owed money to the bank, his parents, the tax office and several suppliers. Exactly how much, he wasn't sure, but it was a lot. Nor was he good-looking. He was just another twenty-nine year old man, with brown hair, a close cropped beard and brown eyes. Five foot ten in height but thinner than he should be. He'd skipped more than a few meals in the last year.

He knocked on the door and waited for her to answer. Every time he arrived here, there was a small part of him that feared that she'd tell him she was sorry, but he needed to go back home. She'd found someone else. A client or colleague or a man off the street had asked her out and she'd said 'yes'.

Audrey cautiously opened the door. When she saw his face, hers lit up with a smile and she flung her arms around him. Her rich, chocolate coloured hair, straight ironed so that it swung like a sheet of silk, smelt of Argan oil, and her lips tasted of cosmetics. She wore a lot of make-up, but she wore it well, and she was always beautifully groomed. Sexy, understated, professional. A stark contrast to him in his well worn jeans and faded green and black shirt.

'Hey, hey, not here,' he said, bubbling with happiness. 'Take your flowers and put them in a vase, and then you can kiss me.'

Her blue eyes dropped to the flowers and she bit her lower lip pensively.

'Robbie, you shouldn't have... you don't have the money,' she said quietly. 'I told you that you don't need to buy me anything.'

'C'mon,' he pleaded. 'Can't I do anything for you?'

She accepted the bunch with a regretful smile. 'Naughty,' she told him.

'I love you,' he said simply.

Audrey shook her head at him. 'Naughty,' she repeated, turning on her heel and walking into the apartment living room. 'Unless you're going to tell me that Jock Anderson finally paid you?'

'Well, no,' he replied, thinking of his largest individual creditor. Two thousand two hundred dollars. A complete house rewire, installation of safety switches, new light fittings, motion sensors, the works. He'd cut the man an incredible deal, the sort of deal that only desperate tradesmen offer, and still Jock wouldn't pay. Now he was worse off than before he'd taken the job, because he was out of pocket for the materials.

'Has he given you any hint that he might pay?' she asked hopefully.

Robbie shook his head. 'No. I went and saw him yesterday and he said if I came around once more he was going to shoot me. I don't know what I'm going to do.'

'In which case, you really shouldn't be buying me flowers,' Ordie said, not unkindly.

He could tell she wasn't happy to have received the gift, and felt a bit flattened. He'd wanted to make her feel special, and instead he'd just been reminded that he didn't have money and she did.

Robert followed her into the disproportionately tiny kitchen where she set about filling a vase with water and adding a spoonful of sugar. She'd bought her apartment a few years ago and he had to admit that despite the tiny kitchen, he understood why it had appealed to her. It had been built in the nineteen forties and being of art deco style had high ceilings, wide polished floorboards in the living areas and bedroom, ornate cornices, a black and white checkboard tiled bathroom floor and casement windows. In conjunction to the (miniscule) kitchen, there as a bathroom cum laundry, living area, sunroom and a master bedroom, with an allocated car space in the yard at the back.

She'd said a month or so back that she wanted a baby. She'd bought this place because of the sunroom, knowing it could be used as a nursery. Ever since she'd told him that, it had played on his mind. He wanted to buy her a ring, marry her, and give her that baby. He wanted to see her still-too-slim – she hadn't entirely exorcised the demons of her eating disorder – swell with new life. But how could he give her that, when he could barely afford flowers, and when he bought them for her anyway, she made it clear that she thought he shouldn't have spent the money on her?

'Hey, come here,' he requested softly.

Audrey was in the midst of arranging the flowers in the vase, but she paused and glanced up when he spoke. She must have correctly interpreted the expression on his face, because she didn't ask what he wanted, she didn't speak at all, she just stopped what she was doing, hugged him tightly and rested her head in the crook of his neck.

The silky material of her blouse soft beneath his fingers, and the body beneath it was frail and warm. He thought 'oh God'. It shouldn't be like this. He was nearly thirty.

'Horny?' she asked with a giggle.

For a second he thought she was misinterpreting his request for a hug, but then he realised he had a hard on and it was poking into her.

'Mmm, how about you?' he asked.

'Period.'

'Fuck.'

She laughed. 'Maybe after dinner I can take care of you?'

He gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head.

'If you're in the mood,' he said.

'I will be.'

Audrey's eating habits governed by a set of rules that he found incredibly restricting. The more she felt comfortable around him, the more she allowed him to be privy to her oddities surrounding food, and he now had a good idea of what to expect.

Everything was weighed, every calorie accounted for, every meal time scrupulously planned. She wouldn't eat breakfast before nine, for example. Even eight fifty-five am was too early. Lunch was at one, preferably one thirty, and dinner at seven. At nine o'clock, she ate over half her daily calorie content in the form of lollies or chocolate, carefully weighed and portioned out in a zip lock bag.

When they'd been together for a few weeks, he bought her a box of chocolates. She'd refused to accept them. They weren't part of her plan, and therefore, while she appreciated the gift, she made him take them back home with him.

Likewise, she was picky about what she'd eat from cafés, sticking to black coffee, boiled eggs, fruit salad, and plain toast. She always asked for the toast to be served unbuttered with spread on the side, and if it arrived buttered, it was sent back, and if the unbuttered toast was served with a pat of butter, she reached into her bag for a portion controlled individual serving and used that instead.

After a few months of observing these peculiar behaviours, he'd decided he needed to help her loosen up. He'd offer her some of his chips, or would buy her a jam donut from a bakery, or would get up to make her breakfast in bed. She'd refused the chips, handed him back the donut, and had greeted the scrambled eggs with anger, yelling at him that she was sick of him sabotaging her.

Bereft of any ideas as to how he might help her, Robert now settled for quiet acceptance. She was eating, and she wasn't too skinny, so he ignored the elephant in the room. He didn't want to risk their relationship by pressing the issue any further. He loved her, and he didn't want to lose her.

Dinner was eaten and was followed by her whatever-the-fuck-you'd-call-it nightly chocolate binge, and throughout it all, Robert's mind was racing. Ordie's reaction to the flowers had accelerated a fire that was already burning within him. He needed to change his life. He needed money. He needed to secure his, and Audrey's, future together.

'Ready for bed?' she asked him. 'I'm exhausted. It was a hell of a week. I just want to snuggle up to you.'

Audrey did something in an office in Fortitude Valley. She worked long days but was handsomely rewarded for her troubles.

'Sure,' he agreed, even though he'd worked precisely twelve hours this week and had been keeping some strange hours.

But when they were lying in her bed, and she started to kiss him, and he knew she was trying to seduce him, he temporarily forgot his troubles. All he thought about was Audrey, and her tall, slim frame, her small breasts and her nimble fingers.

He could hear her neighbours arriving home, but he paid them no mind. His girlfriend was touching him in all of his special spots, and after a week without sex, everything was a special spot. He took off her shirt and busied himself with her tits. She'd been heavier, a little on the plump side, when she'd reached sexual maturity, and with her too-thin figure they had a little bit too much sag, but he liked them all the same. They were still soft little pillows with rock hard nipples.

Audrey reached beneath the waistband of his trunks, the only item of clothing he was wearing, and grabbed his arse. She forced him to grind against her, and he urgently thrust his cock against her groin until he was desperate for more stimulation.

He scrambled out of his underwear and pinned his lover to the bed. She laughed huskily, spreading her legging-clad legs and running her hands down his back. Just a few thin layers of cotton separated him from her cunt, and he could feel the outline of her sanitary pad, and the heat of her pussy through the fabric. He was so close, so very close, to his target, and yet he was so far away.

It all got too much and he rolled over onto his back and started wanking himself. Audrey lay on her side, propped up on one elbow, and watched him with liquid blue eyes. Once upon a time she'd found it difficult to enjoy his public shows; they reminded her too much of a painful past, but now she often encouraged him. Sure enough, as he continued to jerk himself off, she began to touch and kiss his face and chest.

'Gonna cum,' he warned her.

'Yum,' she said with a cheeky grin. 'Don't be quiet. I hate it when you stay quiet.'

Incapable of refusing an order like that, he let out a long, loud moan as he climaxed. Her mouth was pressed to his left nipple and she was laughing quietly, happily.

He lay on the bed, sated and panting, and threw a guilty grin in her direction.

'Sorry,' he said.

She planted a kiss on his nose.

'You said you were horny,' she said.

'So are you,' he countered.

'Yes, but you know...' she trailed off.

She didn't need to say anything more. She refused to let him pleasure her when she was on her period. Even shower sex was out of the equation. The scars ran deep.

'Love you, Ordie,' he whispered, reaching for her arm and pulling her down. 'I love you so much.'

'I love you, too, Robbie,' she replied. 'I'm going to go and get you some tissues to wipe up that mess before you get it all over the bed. Everyone's going to be doing their washing tomorrow, and I'll have no chance of getting any line space.'

Until Robert had made a crucial error in hanging out laundry, he'd had no idea about the politics surrounding the apartment complex washing lines, but he'd been schooled in the matter by a cranky lesbian neighbour when he broke the unwritten rules. Who would have thought that pegging clothes too far apart was a crime that warranted a verbal spray?

'The muff diver still glares at me every time she sees me,' he agreed.

'She glares at everyone. She's not a happy woman.' Audrey slipped out of bed. 'I'll be back in a second.'

Ordie padded out of the room, still in nothing but her leggings, and returned a minute later with a box of Kleenex. Robbie wiped himself clean and dropped the tissues on the floor, before pulling his girlfriend into an embrace.

She was so different to the girl he'd once known. It was as if she'd created a whole different life for herself, one which was as radically different as possible to life in the country town she'd lived in for six, unpleasant years of her life. Her rejection of his hometown was absolute. He was the only remnant. He was the only relic of her past.

After a while, Audrey grew sleepy. She slipped out of his arms, pulled her shirt back on, and buried herself under a mound of blankets.

Robbie was wide awake. He stared at his sleeping lover, almost entirely concealed underneath a olive green cable knit throw, a white quilted doona, and an emerald cotton sheet, and knew that he had to do something. Things simply couldn't continue on as they were, with him always scrabbling for money, and his girlfriend getting upset over a twenty dollar bunch of flowers.

~~~~~~~~

Three hours earlier, and some two hours to the West, Luke Wilms had walked into a country pub and ordered a schooner of Gold. The fifty-seven year old truck parts interpreter had taken a seat at the bar alongside a friend of his, expecting to have a few beers and then head home alone.

That was not how Luke's evening had panned out.

First of all, there had been the angry dispute with Jock Anderson. The argument had annoyed Luke, not the least because he felt that he was wholly and solely in the right.

To understand the argument, you needed to understand Luke's activities in the past few years.

Three years ago, Luke's live-in girlfriend of four years had been offered an incredible job opportunity in New South Wales. The offer had been too good for her to refuse, and given that her relationship with Luke was one more of mutual convenience than any sort of romantic love, the two had sold the house they'd bought together two years earlier, divided their assets and gone their separate ways.

Single and homeless, but not short of coin, Luke had bought the first half-decent property he'd viewed; a renovated post war home on five acres. The previous owners had been hobby farmers, and with the sale of the property came a tractor, four acres of gardens, a small orchard, and more fruit and veg than a single man could possibly consume on his own. Hell, he could have fed a whole army with what he was harvesting.

The solution to the problem of excess produce came from his sister.

'You should package it all up and take it to a farmer's market,' she said.

'A what?'

'A farmer's market. You know, those markets where single women and young mothers go to buy produce while their husbands eat bratwurst cooked by Asians and wonder why the sex kitten they married is now spending six dollars a kilo on potatoes that cost half that at Coles?'

Luke didn't know, actually, but he liked bratwurst, so on Saturday morning his sister picked him up and drove him to Brisbane so he could see for himself.

'They have these things everywhere,' his sibling informed him. 'They normally work on a rotational roster, but some are open every Saturday or Sunday.'

Luke ate a poffertje and glanced around. There certainly were a lot of women, children and dogs at the market.

'You know what the secret to being successful is?' his sister asked as she bought a bag of lemons she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do with. She was not immune to the particular pull that these fairs had on women.

'What?' he asked.

'Dress how people want to see you,' she said. 'Dress in a way that makes people think 'farmer'.'

'But I'm a parts interp...'

'...shhhh. Nobody cares what you really are. You're selling an ideal.' She eyed up her brother. Six foot two. Lean, rangy body. A kind, craggy face, that was tanned enough to make people believe he worked outside, without being weather beaten. Throw him in jeans, shirt, boots and Akubra, and he'd look for all the world like the sort of person people imagined was growing their food.

'You'll make a motza,' she said. She leant in conspiratorially. 'And besides which? At least twenty percent of the women here are straight and single. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.'

'I'm not really sure this is the sort of place to pick up women.'

His sister laughed incredulously.

'Luke, women throw themselves at you when you walk down the street. Don't ask me why, but they do. Trust me on this. You'll make money, and you'll get to meet some new ladies.'

Luke's sister had been incredibly accurate in her predictions. Not only did he manage to sell most of his excess produce, but he'd managed to bed six women in two years. Not a bad run of things, really.

Along the way he'd learned a few secrets. Package everything with biodegradable packaging to keep the hippies on side. Dress like a farmer. Don't mention the job as a parts interpreter, irrespective of good you are at it. And, most of all, pay a lot of attention the well-kept, divorced, early fifties grandmas that accompanied their daughters and grandchildren to the markets.

It had all been going swimmingly when Marlene had come along and ruined things. He'd known right from the get-go that she was trouble, the sort of woman who would want a relationship, and the sort of woman that most men try to avoid ever getting into a relationship with.

It was because of Marlene that for the past month Luke had been noticeably absent from his favourite markets. Back when his exchanges with Marlene were limited to mutual banter, and he was yet to see her remarkably furry pussy, Marlene had cunningly figured out where and when he was selling. Why, oh why, had he given her details? Now he barely dared show his face. Wherever he went, she followed, armed with her girlfriends and a good dose of rage. It was bad for business.

Luke's neighbour, Jock Anderson, a 'proper' farmer, and one who had made a not insignificant amount of smart arsed comments to Luke over the years, had noticed Luke was no longer loading up his van early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. He'd weasled the reason 'why' out of the parts interpreter, and having established that Luke was facing woman problems, had sensed an opportunity for himself. He, Jock, would take Luke's place at the farmer's markets and sell the seasonal fruit and vegetables.

Luke wasn't too keen to follow one bad decision – Marlene – with another – Jock, a man who could make trouble in an empty house – but Jock was his neighbour, and he was remarkably persistent, so after a few days of hints, requests and phone calls inquiring 'whether or not he'd made a decision', Luke conceded defeat. The following Saturday, Jock took the usual stock into Kuraby.