War Path

Chase didn’t want to go to the party. He wanted to stay in and watch a stupid movie with his family and then after the kids had gone to bed, have sex with his wife.

She was still hot, he thought, after all these years. He looked at her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, admiring the line of her calves and thighs as she straightened, pulling her tights up and snapping the waistband against her firm belly. She caught him looking, stuck out her tongue and shook her dress over her arms and shimmied her body into it.

‘Zip me up, you disgusting man,’ she said, coming over and turning her back to him, pulling her hair to the side, and laughing as he kissed his way down her spine.

‘Eww. Gross!’

Paige, their 11-year-old daughter stood in the doorway, scrunching up her face and pushing her little brother away, not letting him see.

‘That’s disgusting.’

Chase laughed and sprang to the door, enveloping both his kids in a bear hug.

‘You’re disgusting,’ he roared and rolled them over so they ended up sitting on his chest. Hunter squealed in delight and bounced up and down, pumping his little fists. Paige smushed her hands against Chase’s mouth, forcing his lips closed as he laughed and called her disgusting.

‘Let’s just stay in and watch a movie,’ said Chase. Danny threw his jacket at him and stepped past the three of them.

‘The whole thing is for you. Come on – in the car, you dopes.’

‘Is the party for you?’ asked Paige as he backed the truck out of the drive.

‘Your daddy’s been working extra hard,’ said Danny, giving Chase’s leg a squeeze. ‘They want to say thank you for all the hard work he does.’

‘At Caitlin’s house?’

‘Caitlin’s daddy works for the same company as Daddy, remember?’

‘Does he watch airplanes at night?’

Chase laughed.

‘Caitlin’s daddy’s a lawyer,’ he said. ‘He keeps daddy from going to jail!’

‘Your daddy’s kidding,’ said Danny, giving him a smack on the leg. Then their son took over the conversation by yelling the words to his favourite song, which they were all singing as Chase pulled up by the curb, behind a red soft-top.

‘Who’s is that?’ Danny asked.

‘Stan’s. And all I get is some shitty cufflinks.’

Danny laughed. He knew what her laugh meant. He’d gotten a quarter mill bonus this year. And like Danny she said – the whole night was for him.

‘Remember, sweetie,’ Chase said to his daughter, taking a knee on the porch, ‘no one knows we’re moving yet, so you’ve gotta keep it a secret, okay?’

The door opened and Stan stood there, sort of slumped inside a Hawaiian shirt. Chase thought he looked awful.

‘My daddy says you keep him out of jail!’ said Paige.

Stan let out a big fake laugh and pulled them inside. Chase turned his game face on and felt Danny do the same beside him.

Later, after the toasts and a buffet of sticky ribs and corn on the cob and big slabs of cheesecake with ice cream for dessert, Chase was in the kitchen, helping Stan’s wife Cathryn and her sister Louise stack dishes and box up leftover ribs.

He liked the two sisters; they were English and he enjoyed their ruthless sense of humour. Louise was ribbing him for being too good for them. Inevitably, the news of their relocation had spread and Chase had had to deal with good natured fuckery all evening.

‘You can buy yourself a title,’ said Louise. ‘Lord Chase, Earl of New Jerusalem.’

Louise’s daughter ran into the kitchen.

‘Mom, Tyler kneed himself in the face on the trampoline. His nose is broken.’

Louise let out an angry sigh.

‘He better not have messed up those braces,’ she said and tossed her dishrag at Chase as she strode by.

It was just him and Cathryn and they lapsed into an easy silence. Chase was drying wine glasses and Cathryn put them away. He liked how he could be friends with women. Danny wasn’t jealous at all.

Cathryn made a sound that Chase thought was a laugh but when he looked up, she had her arms out and was coming towards him, crying. He thought it was because they were moving, so it took a second to wrap his head around what she was saying between sobs.

‘It’ll be alright,’ he said.

‘But they’re kids, Chase. Women and kids. Right here at home.’

It felt like a punch in the gut, hearing the truth like that in his friend’s kitchen. A truth usually consigned to the back of his subconscious while he worked in the home office at the end of their yard.

‘Chase?’

Danny walked into the kitchen holding a bloody pool towel in her hands. Chase and Cathryn broke away and Cathryn gulped, laughed and picked up a wineglass.

Danny looked questioningly at Chase. He said, I’ll tell you later, with his eyes, then the kids came in, Tyler with a big red nose and two soon-to-be shiners. Chase laughed and took the boy by the shoulder. ‘Show me your teeth,’ he said then cuffed the kid and called him an idiot.

‘Come on,’ he said to Hunter and Paige and they thanked Stan and Cathryn and there were hugs all round. Chase squeezed Cathryn, Stan too, trying to show his buddy he was there for him, but it was like hugging a board.

When she was sitting on the edge of the bed, taking her tights off, Danny said, ‘What’s with Cathryn?’

It wasn’t lying, Chase told himself, when he said, ‘It’s just work. Stan’s new role’s getting to him. It’s time to step up.’

‘And you’re a shoulder to cry on?’

There was definitely something in her voice.

‘She probably thought I could give some advice, you know. Same boat.’

‘You’re not cracking up,’ said Danny, throwing her tights into the wardrobe and strutting into the bathroom.

‘Stan’s not cracking up,’ he called after her. ‘It was always going to be a heavy lift. He’ll get used to it.’

‘Like he got used to her breaking her vows? Remember Daniel – as in Rebecca’s ex-husband?’

‘Listen, Athena, you can get off your war path,’ said Chase, going over and embracing her as she came back in. He grabbed her butt and kissed her on the mouth. ‘I only got eyes for you, babe.’

‘You better believe it,’ she said, moving against him. Her skin was warm and she smelled amazing – like she was radiating come-get-me pheromones.

Afterwards, he showered and steamed, got dressed and grabbed a probiotic from the fridge then walked down the garden path to his office – a prefab unit under the boughs of their old sycamore tree.

Inside, everything was all packed up. Just a laptop and headset left on a stack of cardboard boxes. It was his penultimate night. So many shifts. So many tasks. They’d all blended into one 12,000-foot crawl. A 4-acre square in ultra-HD passing by at 80 miles per hour.

Rural, urban, all four seasons, but never the same pathway – never the same target. But always the same results. At first, he’d marvelled at the technology’s capabilities. But like anything, he’d gotten used to it. And with repetition, he’d even picked up a few flaws in the system.

That was one reason he’d grown to be such an asset. Sure, he had a winning personality, but his ability to shelve hesitation and get on with the job was enough to get him noticed way back when he was still just a delivery guy, before the kids, when they still lived in that old mouldy apartment.

Now he was in the inner circle. A house on the island. Pretty much next door to Tao. For maybe the first time in his life, his family’s security was taken care of – the best schools, opportunities, everything on a plate.

He thought of Stan and Cathryn and the awful entreating tone in her voice, the way she’d clung to him like a little girl.

He’d been standing there with his hand on his closed laptop for some time now and he yanked it open, scrabbled the headset on and punched in his password, forcing himself to ignore his feelings. He booted up the night’s task list and opened the first file, jumping immediately into a UAV flying over a pine forest at dusk.

x.

I recently released Team Human as an ebook on Amazon
Working on getting Eden 2.0 digitised and publishing my next book - Black Skull.

I’ll keep you updated!