A Woman's Love: Lesbian Romance Collection

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Selby is just outside of Belgrave, in the middle of Puffing Billy country. The old steam train stops at the old station on its way to Gembrook, my grandmother took me on it when I was in primary school. It’s a tiny town with a population of just over 1,600. It attracts a lot of tourists hoping to see Australian wildlife but it’s a b***h of a place for bushfires. Every year the locals pray for a cool summer and the local fire station is always on standby. Every spring the locals clean the dead leaves out of their guttering and cut back overhanging branches.

I’ve always loved the winding roads of Mt Dandenong, especially on my bike but that day I took my car, a 1976 Chrysler Charger that runs on LPG and goes like s**t off a shanghai. Her house was at the end of a steep driveway and had a good view of the road below. It’s built in Western Red Cedar with a long verandah out the front. The small front lawn was hemmed in by a well kept garden of bushes and flowers. I heard dogs barking from the back yard.

I rang the bell and a moment later I saw the sign saying Office at Rear and an arrow pointing back along the verandah. I followed the direction of the arrow and walked up the driveway beside the house to a five foot tall cyclone fence. At the end of the driveway was a small bungalow also of Western Red Cedar but as I trudged towards it, a Blue Heeler hurled himself at the fence barking like crazy. Another dog loped towards the fence as well, this one was a large Rottweiler although he seemed to be the more placid of the two.

“Tam, shut that f*****g racket,” Jodie yelled as she opened the door.

Tam stopped barking and she smiled.

“Sorry about that. He’s Scott’s dog and he barks at his own shadow.”

“So the Rottie is yours?”

“Jack’s my dog, he actually comes from the same father as Tam believe it or not.”

I ascended the five steps to the tiny porch overlooking a much larger back yard. The fence cut the bungalow off from the yard but there was a gate at the back and another closer to the house. At the back of the house was a wooden pergola, on one side was the obligatory barbecue and the other side had an oven built with fire bricks. I could hear a Celine Dion song playing in the office.

“Nice place you got here.”

“Thanks,” she peered out over the roof, “Scott built the pergola, he has his own landscape business but doing the pergola was a freebie and it does benefit both of us.”

“Nice guy.”

“He is,” she peered at my car, “one of my ex-boyfriends used to own a Charger.”

“His name wasn’t Tony was it?”

“Greg,” she took a step back, “come in, do you want a coffee or tea?”

“Um, coffee thanks, black, no sugar.”

“Just like your women?”

“Ha ha,” I grimaced as I shut the door, “to be honest I’ve never been out with a black woman and it’s not for the lack of trying.”

“I’ve never been out with a black man,” she grinned, “I’ve certainly flirted with them but maybe I wasn’t their type,” she flicked the button on the kettle.

“Cosy office though.”

“It is,” she turned the music down. “It was a chook shed when I moved in. I had it completely gutted and rebuilt, I’ve never looked back since,” she indicated a chair at the desk.

“Pull up a pew and make yourself at home.”

I sat down to take stock of my surroundings while she made coffee. One of the things I noticed was her blouse, it didn’t strike me as being standard office attire. It was a soft pink silk, the ruffled collar was held together by three off centre gold buttons, the ruffles cascaded down the front to hide the other buttons.

“What?”

“Just wondering where you bought the shirt?”

“Style on me,” she flicked at the ruffles, “it’s an internet site, you like it?”

“Not on me but my nanna would certainly wear that.”

“Just put the words together and add the dot com after it. I love it, but I can see you wearing something like this though.”

“Maybe,” my eyes flickered to the black pinstripe skirt, “sorry, I wasn’t you know.”

“Checking me out?” Jodie chuckled, “check away, you know what side of the fence I’m on but considering our little agreement you’ll get to see a lot more.”

It was a throwaway line in reference to our deal. It also sounded flirtatious but I thought it was innocent enough until the end of our session when she leaned back and stretched, a sly smile nudged her lips.

“This looks fairly easy but I will tell you that I require the utmost honesty from my clients, so if you’re hiding a pile of money under your shirt or any other place, I need to know how much and where you got it. I’ve had some very generous offers from some very crooked people to hide their ill-gotten gains and I always refuse them.”

“It’s all there,” I replied, “I keep all my receipts.”

“So I see,” she eyed my shoebox, “it might be an idea to staple them together and keep them all in chronological order, it makes my job so much easier,” she leaned over and opened a drawer.

“But now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s show some skin,” she smiled at me and took out a drawing of a dragon.

“Nice drawing,” I studied it.

“Yeah,” she undid her collar and started unbuttoning the blouse, “I’ll show you where I want it,” she stood up and pulled the blouse out of the waistband.

Despite the fact I thought she was beautiful, I kept my cool as she parted the blouse and turning around, dropped it onto the desk to expose her back.

“I want it here,” she reached around to the small of her back, “and is it possible to have the tail curling over my cheek? The drawing I’ve got is about the size I want.”

I reached over and touched her spine.

“It’s going to hurt like f**k here because of the bone but yeah, the tail can reach your arse, I can take this drawing with me?”

“Yeah, I printed it out for you,” she pulled the blouse back over her shoulders and proceeded to button it again, “when can you do it?”

“This Saturday night?”

“Perfect,” she looked at my shoe box of receipts, “I’ll have your books done by then.”

“No worries,” I rose, “I’ll make up the transfer.”

“Any advice?” Jodie asked me as she walked me to the end of her driveway.

“Just wear loose clothing, tracksuit pants and a tee shirt, oh and don’t drink beforehand, it thins the blood out.”

“What about dope?”

“Dope is fine,” I looked at her, “I didn’t take you for a smoker.”

“I’m not, Scott likes a pipe after work and I’m usually on the wine but now and then I have a pipe or two. He goes to his girlfriend’s place most weekends so we won’t be disturbed.”

Saturday night came around too soon and for some reason I was a little nervous and I couldn’t explain why. I’ve done this for people many times over the years, maybe my gaydar was working overtime but I couldn’t escape the feeling she was flirting. However, to jump the gun with a straight woman has been a lesson I learned early on, fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Just do the tattoo and not her.

Jodie was wearing almost exactly what I’d suggested, a pair of tracksuit pants and a black tank top but before the session she wanted a smoke and so I sat and watched her smoke a couple of bongs. She had an intense look on her face as she studied the transfer I’d prepared.

“So where did you learn to draw?”

I hesitated before I told her.

“In jail.”

“Jail,” she eyed me, “what were you in jail for, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Armed robbery,” I replied.

Jodie stared at me and then laughed, whether it was the dope or the shock of finding out you’re sitting six feet away from a convicted armed robber I don’t know, probably both.

“I was seventeen at the time, there were two guys involved as well. We did over a Seven Eleven store in Brunswick and got all the way to Preston before we were busted for running a red light in front of a cop car.”

She was still looking at me.

“I did nine months for it and haven’t broken the law since. I wasn’t actually the one holding the gun by the way. Because I was the girl, they got me to stay in the car and look out for the cops. I cracked under pressure when they questioned me and did the unthinkable and dobbed them in, which helped reduce my sentence. I was looking at four to five years.”

“Oh,” she pursed her lips and looked past me, “well that’s good. I’m sorry if I laughed but when you said armed robbery I thought you were joking.”

“I was young and stupid.”

“It’s funny,” she put the bong down, “I could have gone the same way, maybe. My dad’s a retired cop with Maroondah C.I.B and when I was eighteen I started hanging around with the Coffin Cheater’s. My dad hit the bloody roof and he took me into the police evidence room and showed me what these guys did to people.”

“So you got scared straight.”

“I couldn’t sleep for days and when Animal came around to see me I had dad go out wearing his gun and badge. Animal took one look at him and took off, I never saw him again.”

She stretched and locked her hands behind her head.

“Well, shall we?”

Jodie laid the cushions from the couch on the floor and stretched out. She pulled her tank top off, she wasn’t wearing a bra and she did look over her shoulder.

“Would you rather I wore a bra?”

“Nope, I’m too busy concentrating on tattooing to check you out.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did anyway,” she shrugged, “you’re gay and I’m straight.”

She pulled her tracksuit pants and panties part way down her buttocks.

“If my girlfriends could see me now,” she giggled, “me with my arse bared in front of a lesbian tattooist, I never did do things by halves.”

I do talk to my clients while I’m working but most of the time I’m too focused. However because we were alone in her home, and due to my admission, I found myself opening up about me. I never knew my dad but I have vague memories of mum, more like snatches of memories because she was found dead of an overdose when I was five.

“I remember being taken out of school and told I was going to see nanna. She told me my mum had to go to hospital and would be there for a long time. By the time I found out the truth I was eight years old and it came out by accident at Christmas dinner.”

“She never told you earlier?”

“No, I think she just wanted to protect me from harm but at the time I resented her for it, I started getting into trouble at school and by the time I was twelve I was shop lifting. I ended up hanging out with a couple of hardened crims and when they decided to do an armed robbery I went along for the ride.”

Prison will do one of two things, it will either help you to advance your criminal career or reform you and in my case it was definitely the latter.

“I was f*****g terrified. I was skinny and like a cat on a hot tin roof. If it wasn’t for nanna I think I would have ended up necking myself. She used to make the drive every Saturday to see me and we’d sit there trying to pretend that this was just like visiting a hotel. She’d go home and I’d pace my cell and try to recall everything she’d said. It was nanna who bought me the drawing materials, she had to appeal to the prisoner governor before he let me have them.”

“She sounds like quite a woman.”

“She is,” I replied, “she’s more a mother to me than my own mum ever was. My mum was a street prostitute, she worked to earn money for drugs and to raise me. I live in the bungalow out the back of nanna’s house. She was always there for me.”

“What about your father?”

“I don’t know who he was. There’s no name on the birth certificate so we suspect he was some client. For all I know my dad could be a High Court judge or a copper.”

“You never know.”