GPSimone



  GPSimone

  &

  Challenging Behaviour

  by

  Nicola Rain Jordan

  Cover by Tara Shuler

  Copyright 2011 Nicola Rain Jordan. All Rights Reserved.

  The two stories herein are works of fiction. All of the characters, places and events portrayed herein are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  GPSimone

  Challenging Behaviour

  About The Author

  GPSimone

  GPS. I’m one.

  GPSimone.

  She named me after an old movie about a lady who turned into a panther. The actress, Simone Simon, was born in Bethune, France and she was “devastatingly hot.” The Mistress played the DVD on a road trip last summer and I didn’t see the resemblance—I’m an electronic device and I don’t turn into anything but streets—however I do have a magnificent accent and it pleases her to name things so who am I to complain? The car has a name too, it’s Kitty if you must know, and I miss her terribly since I was thrown from the window at 3.13 this morning, torn violently from the cigarette plug and losing all my bearings.

  ***

  The car and I, we never liked xxLUKExx. He road raged, ground the gears and spun through the levels of the Penrith Plaza carpark, veering around prams and old people. He drove us to “cage fights” (public event, no data available) in suburbs with “serious crime risk” (NSW Police Service data). He parked us in alleys where Kitty’s mirrors were smashed and her antenna snapped off by boys in hooded sweatshirts. When he used me he bashed on my face with his meaty fingers and swore at me when I corrected him.

  The first thing Luke gave the Mistress was a wide and noisy sports muffler (“in case his friends saw him driving a hatchback,” she laughed to BFF:BRYN). Kitty was mortified and I did my best to console her (“Remember what ICE:MUM said about men and muffler size?”) To be fair, the Mistress had stuck a ‘Bad Kitty’ decal on the rear window and what looked to my eye to be a graphic of a winking pink cat, so perhaps Luke was right to be self-conscious.

  On Thursdays we waited at St Marys Railway Station until the Mistress arrived home on the 6.12 Express. Yesterday she returned to us early. She flicked through my menus, touching me with tense fingers, searching Points Of Interest for an Express Post box. She parked Kitty south of the mailbox on Forrester Road and dashed across the lawns like an unearthed rodent (you may think we don’t know about such creatures but you’d be amazed what we see when you are asleep). She slid an envelope into the box, her hazel eyes darting north and south. (Perhaps I’m projecting an unstable emotional state onto my Mistress given my innate aversion to spontaneity, but in my defense I do know her eyes. Kitty knows them too, through the rear-view mirror, the place where liquid liner and cherry lipstick are expertly applied.)

  Today was a normal Friday: the Mistress away at work or TAFE, Kitty and I resting in the new multistory with the armed guard. St Marys Rail was once a terrifying place—my predecessor was snatched through a broken window and ended up navigating a robbery vehicle all the way down in Mortdale—but since the garage was built we’ve waited in peace. The Mistress returned right on time, throwing her shopping bags into the back seat just as iVy (the new iPhone4) asked me to broadcast: xxLUKExx CALLING.

  Their voices sounded different. Edgy, all treble. Like a person lost, and I’ve known a few of those in my time. “Come up after tea? The boys are going to the Club,” he said. That New Zealand accent, it got on my last digital nerve. “I got paid too, do you need any dough?”

  “No,” she said. “Is everything alright?”

  Two seconds silence. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “No, nothing. See you at about nine?”

  “Nine o’clock at my room. Bye, babe.”

  The Mistress tapped him off, her hands damp with sweat.

  ***

  We drove to the Leagues Club, officially named ‘Panthers’ according to my POI data. (It said there were nightclubs inside, a gaming arcade, a piano bar, several restaurants and a Hungry Jack’s. I didn’t see how all that could fit into the floor space but it called itself ‘A World of Entertainment’ so what do I know? The World is a very big place.) My guidance to the Club was not required, it was a Favourite destination on nights and weekends, even more so since we started sleeping over. Tonight the Mistress was wearing what Bryn called “The K.O dress” and “the blue lace thigh-highs we sell at work.” On her feet she wore sharp-heeled shoes that destabilised her driving.

  Home for Luke was a ground floor room at the Riverside Inn across the road. A wall of mirrored windows along the rear of the building hid fifteen or so sliding doors. The serviced rooms (Four Star lodgings according to my data) opened onto a shared strip of grass and a visitors’ carpark. The Mistress parked us there and crossed the lawn to meet Luke and a group of men outside Room 24. The men were coloured from black to brown to pink and they were uniformly muscled. In the morning when they piled into the blue minivans they wore navy polo shirts like Luke’s (a logo on the chest reading AVA Defence Services) but tonight they wore jeans and collared shirts. Everything seemed in order, the Mistress kissing and caressing Luke as they waited outside Room 26. A man came out, tugging a cap onto his head, and they set off on foot towards the Club.

  Kitty and I waited patiently as we do, sharing fond memories of our travels, accessing FM Radio and Google Internet when it was safe to do so. We like to keep up with news of our competitors and we often rib each other about where we will end up, me at the op-shop—the Mistress has a long list of St Vincent De Paul shops in her Favourites—and Kitty at the Motor Finance Wizard to be sold to who-knows-what hoon with that big muffler of hers. Tonight I told her about waking up for the first time in China, being tested in the factory, the pleasure of bedding down in a box and the shock of waking up again in a new country. I had to search for the South Pacific satellites and recalibrate myself to the poles and the equator; I took on a new language and a whole new alphabet. Kitty came from the Subaru factory in Japan, so she knew all about it. We joked about ways we might rid ourselves of Luke without revealing our sentience; the gentle engineers warned us this was the key to our longevity.

  At 11.52pm the Mistress returned from the Club. She was with Luke and another man, the dark-skinned man from Room 26. She seemed to be having trouble walking and they were carrying her along. Kitty and I have seen such things before, weak-legged women being dragged through the mirrored doors like cars with flat tyres, the po-faced maids walking them out to waiting taxis in the morning, pushing green money into their purses. However we had never seen our Mistress like this and the guiding hands had never been Luke’s. The Mistress went inside with the men and we returned to our conversation, supposing we were locked down for the night.

  Two hours and seven minutes later, Luke’s bedroom door slid open and we both leapt to attention. Luke and the man from Room 26 carried the Mistress toward us. She was asleep, her head hanging to the side in a most unusual way. Her gold hair was wet, the front panel of her dress hanging open and the blue thigh-highs dangling from her purse. I reached out to pair with iVy and find out what was going on. No signal. The two men pushed the Mistress into the passenger seat. In the distance we could hear bass pumping from the Club and some humans yelling and fighting in the McDonalds drive-thru around the corner. The man from Room 26 walked back across the grass towards the Club.

  Luke drove us to Tench Reserve, the picnic area by the Nepean River. He parked us on the dark slip-road under the mulberry trees, facing black water that pulsed and swelled with signals I would never understand. (“My Dad drowned here,” the Mistress once said. She autonavigated to this location whenever her emotions troubled her. I was glad she was
here now.) Luke eased himself out of the car and dropped the keys on the driver’s seat. He pushed his door closed and walked into the shadows.

  The Mistress’s window glided down. “Where are we?”

  “Shhh. The river,” he said. “Go back to sleep, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “What are we doing here? What’s going on?”

  “You’re sleeping,” he said, still walking.

  “I’m awake, I’m awake,” she said. “Where are you going?”

  “Shoosh Ashlea, there’s people in bed.” He gestured to the caravan park across the road. “I’m heading home.”

  She sat forward. “Don’t leave me, I can’t move my arms and legs. Something’s wrong.”

  “You’re pissed,” he said. “You’ll be right in the morning, just sleep it off.”

  “I had one drink. Get back here now Luke Williams or I’ll scream.”

  ***

  Luke was back in the driver’s seat. “What did you think would happen? Did you think she’d read it and go ‘oh well’ and disappear? Then you and me’d go on as per usual?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You’re my boyfriend, I’m not letting her just walk in and take you. I know all about her, she lost her own man in Afghanistan and then cried a hard luck story to get a hold of mine. I don’t care what I have to say.”

  He switched on the Mistress’s phone, laying it on the console. I paired with iVy and scanned her memory. She hadn’t seen anything since they got to the bar. “Teghan knows you made it up,” he said. “If I gave you that many sexual diseases believe me, she’d have ’em too.”

  The Mistress turned pale. He pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed some buttons. “How’d you get her address?”

  “She works with Clay’s cousin,” the Mistress said. “I sent it care of the depot.”

  “Have you got her number?”

  “Obviously not.”

  iVy twing-twinged and the Mistress reached out. Her limp fingers dangled on the touchscreen.

  “New message.” He picked up iVy and prodded her face, always so rough. He held her out and showed the Mistress the video playing on the screen.

  Oh. Oh. My Mistress and the man from Room 26. Another man too, Room 33 or maybe Room 19. Visions and sounds of which I will not speak. Just like Luke and the black-haired woman in the back seat on May 12th. I’d told him how to get to the Mulgoa lookout, but how could I have known? And now this. The kind of human mess that froze my circuits.

  She looked the way she did before she vomited. “You spiked my drink. I’ll tell her.”

  “Yeah, she’s expecting some stories. There’s fifteen fellas at the Club telling her you’re mad as a meat axe and that you plowed through the whole team of us.”

  “Fifteen of my friends’ll tell her I’m in love with you, and I’d never touch anyone else, you dumb Kiwi (profanity).” She swiped iVy from his hand. “Get it off your phone. Now.”

  “I will,” he said. “At some stage. First ring Teghan and tell her you made it up. Then I’m getting out of the car and we’re never gonna see each other again. Not even at Panthers, you can go out somewhere else.”

  Her head fell.

  “If you come near me or Teghan again, I’m emailing this to your family and friends, the management at Lingerie Heaven and your teachers. And I’ll tag it on Facebook.”

  “Get her then.” She offered her phone.

  Luke ignored iVy and hit a speed-dial key on his own mobile. As he held the phone to the Mistress’s ear I scanned her face for information. It was blank as a cemetery.

  “Is this Teghan? Hi, it’s Ashlea Grech,” she said. “I just want to say sorry for the letter I sent you. It’s not true, he didn’t give me anything.”

  Luke nodded, opening his door.

  “I know, I was just upset,” she said. “I loved him.”

  Kitty and I were buzzing. From now on he was some other car’s problem.

  “That’s why I was so upset to find out his friends are spiking girls’ drinks at the Club and raping them back at the Inn.” She gripped the phone as he tried to pull it away. “And that they’re filming one another… it’s sick, hey? You be careful, Teghan.”

  He yanked the phone away and ended the call. “Clever as.”

  “Aren’t I?” The Mistress held up her hands, wiggling her fingers. She smiled and stretched her bare legs and feet. “That was fun.”

  “I don’t know what you think’s going on but you’re kidding yourself.”

  “Last Sunday I went in the wrong door and I ended up in Bondy’s room,” she said. “There was about fifty photos spread out all over the table. They were foul, and all your mates were in them.” She pulled a hairbrush from the glovebox.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “That’s why I didn’t say anything. I probly wouldn’t have either, but then I heard about Teghan.” Brush, brush, brush at the yellow knots. “I knew your workmates were pigs. I thought you were different.”

  “I’m not different.”

  “Then you’re a pig.”

  He shrugged. “You let two fellas knock you off on video, what’s that make you?”

  “I had to find out,” she said, picking up a cosmetic bag. “The girls coulda been into it, I wasn’t sure it was against their wishes or them knowing about it. Not ’til tonight. Now I’ve seen the team in action.” She pulled out a lipstick. “Perfect setup they’ve got here, hey?”

  His phone rang. He switched it off. “They don’t spike drinks and you’re a paranoid, kinky freak for even thinking that,” he said. “The women around here’ll do anything for dough and they get heaps out of us. You should know.”

  She adjusted the mirror and reapplied her red lips. “Okay, it’s not a rich area. Contractor’s wages, that’s a catch for a local girl, I admit. That’s why I’m not surprised Teghan put on the lady in distress act and stupid you fell for it,” she said. “But you didn’t ask why I couldn’t walk, did you? You weren’t worried. You were all expecting me to be legless, why is that?” She felt around in her handbag. “Spin, spin, I can hear the wheels churning over. Did they teach you that back in the air force days? Deny deny deny…”

  Luke grabbed the Mistress’s hair and smacked her head against the window.

  “Ow!” She rubbed her scalp. “That video’s good for evidence, go and send it out, it’ll build my case. Gimme a few bruises too, it all helps.”

  He hit her face. A trickle of blood and what looked like an eye tooth dropped onto the seat. Tears rolled down the Mistress’s cheeks as she rummaged through her bag.

  “Your taser torch isn’t in there, we took it,” he said, “and Junior’s got your capsicum sprays too. They’re illegal, y’know. Might have to show them to the boys in blue.”

  Her arms stopped searching and for the first time tonight her voice was shaky. “You hurt me,” she said. “This isn’t funny. Gimme the keys, I’m dropping you home.”

  He started Kitty’s engine.

  “It’s my car Luke, I’ll drive.”

  He fixed his eyes on the road and drove away to the south.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Let’s just drive.” Words to chill a GPS’s heart. “ Let’s talk.” He glanced over as she dabbed at her mouth with a makeup sponge. “I didn’t mean to do that. You shouldn’t push me like that.”

  “You take the brotherhood thing serious,” she said. “I’m willing to forgive you Luke, but here’s how it has to go. You have to end it with Teghan and quit your contract. Move back to NZ with me and we’ll make a go of it, away from all these bad influences.”

  New Zealand. Maps, I’d need new maps.

  “What? Ashlea. Babe. As if I’d ever bring you home to my whanau,” he said. “Teghan’s a good girl, I’m gonna marry someone like her. Look at yourself, you weren’t born to be a wife.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me. And the boys. Take it as a compliment.”

  “They�
�re not boys, they’re men in their thirties and forties,” she said. “They’re criminals. The party’s over, honey. I can get you out of there.” She turned on the stereo and opened a playlist called SEXEE! OLDSKOOL! “Amanda the actress waits at the station…” sang The Angels. I wished she would turn it off and call Bryn. Mum. Anybody.

  “Why don’t you listen?” His voice was calmer than I’d ever heard it. “I don’t love you, Ash. I was never gonna settle down with an Aussie, you were never even in the running.”

  She let out a high-pitched laugh. “I’m the best thing that’s happened to you and if you don’t move home with me Luke, I swear I’m going to the media. You wait ’til they find out our military planes are maintained by serial rapists. Foreign workers preying on “Aussie” girls on the taxpayer’s dollar, that’s A Current Affair right there.”

  Luke veered Kitty into the secluded park beside the old paddle steamer and turned off the lights. The river whispered garbled secrets about Dads and death and drownings. I didn’t know, I didn’t want to know. He strode around to the passenger door and I saw the Mistress’s eyes widen.

  “Leave me alone!” She hit the emergency lock button. She held iVy close to her face, dialling with shaking hands. I grabbed the police call and put it through.

  Luke held out the remote key and unlocked the doors. He opened the passenger door and leaned over the Mistress, reaching across to my screen and hitting END CALL as she pushed him and hit out at him.

  She screamed for help. He seized the phone, grabbed her blue thigh-highs off the floor and pushed them into her mouth. Then, oh, then it was just too awful for my circuits to stand.

  ***

  Wallacia was on our Favourites list. The Mistress often brought friends out here on Sunday drives, telling them about the time she and Dad searched the streets around Bullen’s Animal World and African Lion Safari (not on current maps, no data available) for “the lion that got away.” The Mistress saw the frightened cat crawl under a red brick house and Dad, although he didn’t see it, believed her without question. (Wikipedia says the lioness ran free for an afternoon and mauled a dog before being captured and ‘put down’.) In the milk bar afterwards Dad shared memories of feeding leopards and tigers from the car windows and riding on hay-wagons inside the enclosures. Kitty and I agreed the African Lion Safari was best left to history. Boys in hooded sweatshirts were bad enough.