The Sandwich Board

I got the grease gun up under the axle of chute four and squeezed until the fitting took what it wanted. That's the job, mostly. Squeeze, wipe, listen, squeeze again. My hands were black to the wrist and I loved it, which is probably a character flaw, but there it is.

Regina, twenty-three, mechanic, outback rodeo lot, six days a week. That's me. I'd been at this lot since Monday and I already knew every bolt on the place better than I knew my own phone number.

"Regina! You alive under there?"

That was Dan, bull rider, twenty-nine, the kind of bloke who flirts with the barista, the priest, and the dog, in that order.

"Barely," I called back, sliding out on the creeper. "Chute four's axle was dry as a sermon. Somebody's been skipping Thursdays."

"Not me. I only skip showers."

I wiped my hands on a rag that was past saving and stood up, and that's when I saw her.

Brittney. Thirty-two, costume cutter, the woman who sews sequins onto chaps like it's brain surgery. She had a vest stretched over a rider's shoulders, pinching the seam at the armhole, muttering to herself. The fairy lights from the pub tent caught the sequins and threw little sparks across her forearms.

And the shoulders. Look, I've dated a few men since I turned twenty-one, nothing serious, nothing that stuck. Nobody had ever made me stare at shoulders before. Brittney had shoulders like a doorframe, tan and freckled, and she moved like she owned every centimetre of the space she stood in. I catalogued them the way I'd catalogue engine parts. Trapezius, good. Deltoid, excellent. Posture, could cut glass.

"Oi, Regina, your ears are going red," Dan said.

"It's the sun."

"It's nine at night."

"The sun remembers."

Brittney looked over then, caught me, and grinned. She had a grin like a flick-knife, all quick and shiny. "You need a vest altered, love? Or are you just admiring the workmanship?"

"The workmanship," I said, dead honest, and she laughed and went back to her pins, and I stood there like a spanner someone had left in the rain.

* * *

The pub tent is a tent, a bar made of pallets and plywood, hay bales for seats, fairy lights strung up like somebody's nan did the decorating after three wines. Thursday nights are quiz night, run by Roy, forty-one, rodeo lot supervisor and self-appointed keeper of all knowledge. Roy's been married since he was twenty-eight and he wears the ring like a stopwatch, checking it's still ticking.

Our team was me, Brittney, and Dan, because Dan can't hold his beer and we needed the entertainment. The team name, which Brittney chose, was Sequins and Spanners. Dan wanted The Bucking Disasters. He was outvoted.

We were actually winning, which was the first surprise of the night. The second came around ten, when Roy stood up with his little bell.

"Right, folks!" he bellowed. "We have a tie! Two teams, dead level on forty-one points. Tiebreaker question. Closest answer wins."

The tent went quiet except for someone's esky lid clacking shut.

"Here we go," Brittney murmured, and she leaned her elbow on the table, and I lost a full six seconds of my life to her forearm before I recovered.

Roy read it out. "In what year was the first recorded rodeo competition held in Australia?"

Now. This is what you need to know about me. I can rebuild an engine blindfolded. I can tell you the torque spec on a Kenworth wheel nut off the top of my head. My brain, however, stores nothing about history, and under pressure it does something worse than nothing. It invents.

"1892," I blurted, loud, confident, absolutely wrong.

The other team said 1833, which is apparently right, or right enough for Roy, who checked his little card and rang his little bell, and just like that we lost.

Brittney lasted about four seconds. Then she folded forward over the table, shoulders shaking, wheezing with laughter. Dan patted my back like I'd been stung by a bee.

"1892," she got out, wiping her eyes. "Love, you said it like it was the combination to a safe. Full confidence. You pointed at Roy."

"I stand by my confidence."

"You invented a year. You just made up a year and said it to a man with a bell."

"That's leadership," Dan said. "That's what that is."

Roy wandered past collecting score sheets. "For the record, Regina, it was 1833, at a place called Hexham, in New South Wales. You're good with engines, love. Stay in your lane."

"Rude," I said. "Accurate, but rude."

Brittney was still chuckling as the tent started to thin out. Dan got collected by some fence-riggers who wanted a fourth for cards, and the bar crowd melted off to their trailers and swags. The fairy lights stayed on, buzzing gently, doing their best. The light caught the sequins on Brittney's sleeve when she stacked our score sheet.

"1892," she said again, soft, like tasting it.

"Are you going to bring that up every day?"

"Oh, absolutely. Daily. Anniversaries of it, even."

I looked at her. She looked back. Somewhere behind her a bloke dropped a glass and swore, and neither of us turned around.

* * *

Here's where I did something stupid, and I want it noted that I knew it was stupid while I was doing it, which I think shows growth.

There was a sandwich board leaning against the tent pole. It advertised tomorrow's events, the barrel race and the bull riding, painted on it in wobbly white letters by somebody who clearly had a few at the time. I grabbed it, hauled it over, and propped it up against our folding table like it was a lectern.

"Right," I said. "Rematch."

Brittney raised an eyebrow. "A rematch of what, exactly? The quiz? Against whom?"

"Against each other. You and me. Head to head. Roy's busy but I remember half his questions, and I'm owed a redemption arc."

"You lost by one invented year."

"Redemption arc, Brittney. It's a whole thing. There's usually a montage."

She laughed again, that quick bright laugh, and looked at the sandwich board, then at me. "What's the sign for?"

"Atmosphere. It's a prop. Every good quiz needs a lectern."

"It's advertising a barrel race."

"History is history."

She pulled a hay bale over and sat down on it, elbows on the table, chin on her fists, watching me like I was a cow she wasn't sure about. "Alright. But I get to write the questions, because we've established your relationship with facts."

"Deal. Best of five. Winner picks the stakes."

"And what are the stakes, love?"

I hadn't thought that far. That's a lie, I'd thought that far the whole evening, from the moment she'd leaned on that table, but saying it out loud was another matter. I'm brash about engines and shy about everything else, which is a stupid way to be built.

"Loser buys drinks tomorrow," I said, and wussed out completely, and I could tell from her face she'd clocked the wuss-out, and that she was filing it for later, and that the filing gave her, God help me, pleasure.

"Drinks it is," she said. "Question one. What colour are the sequins on the vest I altered for Al today?"

"That's not trivia, that's your job."

"It's my quiz. Answer or forfeit."

"Red. No, silver. Red and silver?"

"Half marks for hedging. It's red with silver trim. My turn's done, your turn, and make it a proper one."

I asked her what size socket fits a thirty-millimetre nut, because I panicked, and she got it wrong on purpose and then got it right immediately after, laughing at herself, and I realised I'd happily sit in this tent all night watching her laugh at her own wrong answers.

Somewhere around question four I stopped keeping score. I don't think she was keeping score either. The tent was down to us and Roy stacking chairs at the far end, humming something tuneless. The fairy lights buzzed. A dingo, or possibly a dog with ambition, howled somewhere out past the pens.

"Loser of the real rematch buys drinks," Brittney said, "but winner gets to ask one question the other has to answer honestly. Any question."

"That's dangerous."

"Life's dangerous, love. You work with bulls."

I looked at her across the sandwich board, which was doing a very poor job as a lectern and an excellent job as a piece of furniture between us that neither of us had moved closer to, yet.

"Deal," I said. "But I warn you, I'm very good at pretending I'm not nervous."

"Are you nervous?"

"Ask me after you win."

She smiled and reached over and turned the sandwich board around so the painted barrel racer faced us, like the horse was judging us too.

"Alright," she said. "Your question. You said you remember half Roy's questions. Prove it. What was the very first question he asked tonight?"

"Trick question," I said. "Roy's first question tonight was the 1833 one."

"Was it? Or are you lying to win a rematch nobody's keeping score on?"

"Both. Possibly." She laughed and stood, stretching, and I watched her shoulders move under that shirt like machinery working properly, which is the highest compliment I've got. "I'm getting another beer," she said. "These ones are warm and I refuse to drink them alone. Come on."

"It's my shout."

"You already lost tonight, love. Sit down and accept charity gracefully." So I sat, which for me is a full-body challenge, and she went up to the bar made of pallets and plywood and came back with two bottles so warm the condensation was a lie. She handed me one and dropped back onto the hay bale, closer this time. Not by much. By exactly enough that I noticed.

"To 1892," she said, clinking her bottle against mine.

"To Hexham, 1833," I said, "the only fact I'll ever get right in this tent."

"Drink up, then, champion." We drank. The beer was awful. Warm beer in the outback is a special kind of punishment, the kind where you keep drinking it anyway because it's there and it's wet and the alternative is nothing.

"So," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Tell me something about engines that'll impress me. You've been holding back all night, I can feel it."

Oh, she had no idea what she'd just unleashed. "Right," I said, sitting up. "Did you know a modern diesel injector fires something like five times per power stroke? Five. Staged. It's not one bang, it's a little conversation."

"That is, and I mean this sincerely, the least sexy thing anyone's ever said to me."

"You haven't heard about torque wrenches yet."

"I genuinely have not."

"There's a click," I said. "When it reaches spec. One click. You feel it in your wrist, not your ears. Best feeling in the world. Better than music."

"Better than music, she says."

"Name something better."

She thought about it, bottle against her lip. "Sequins," she said finally. "A whole line of them, sewn straight, catching light all at once when the rider turns. There's a click in that too, sort of. A visual click."

I stared at her. "That's the same feeling."

"I know it's the same feeling. That's why I said it. We're not so different, you and me, except you think about nut sizes in your spare time and I think about thread tension."

"What's thread tension?"

"It's how tight the thread is in a stitch, love. If it's wrong the seam puckers or the thread snaps. Honestly, do you know anything about cloth?"

"I know cloth has a thread count?"

"Oh my God." She was laughing again, head back, and I felt that cracking feeling in my chest, the one where your defenses just give up their post and walk off the job. "There are two kinds of people," she said. "People who know a stitch from a seam, and people who think cloth has a thread count. And yet here I am, drinking warm beer with the second kind."

"You came and sat down voluntarily."

"I did. I keep making that mistake."

"Is it a mistake?" I asked, and it came out quieter than I meant it to. She looked at me over her bottle. The fairy lights did that thing where they catch everything gold. "No," she said. "It's not. Now, quick, another engine fact before I get sentimental."

"Turbo lag," I blurted. "It's the delay between you putting your foot down and the turbo spooling up, and there's nothing you can do about it except anticipate, which is basically a life lesson."

"That one was almost romantic."

"Thank you."

"It wasn't, really. But it had structure." She finished her beer and set the bottle down on the table with a little clonk, and then there was a silence, and in the silence she asked the question. Not the honest-question stakes question, I don't think either of us was playing the game anymore. Just, plainly, watching my face:

"Regina. Have you ever been with a woman?"

And there it was. I want to tell you I was smooth. I had a whole half-second where I could have been smooth. What came out instead was, "Why, what have you heard?" which is the worst possible answer to any question ever asked.