The Calgarian Reel

By Gordon M Burns

With a 1st in Mechanical Engineering, Asa has turned her back on Scotland for a successful career in Calgary. Leaving her friends to the prosaic life of Orkney, an undefined incident at Birsay with Roddy has appeared to sever her wish to ever return. Her close friends, Rosie and Julietta, have sent Cameron to tempt her back for at least to visit home. When Asa does recall Cameron, she is contemptuous of him and it looks as if he has failed. However, surprisingly, Asa finds she has offered him dinner before he leaves for Orkney.
At the restaurant, Asa’s is in a quandary with herself because of work, news from home and why the date with Cameron. Her boss, Austin, with whom she has recently finished a stormy relationship, and a colleague, Kinga, interrupts the dinner. Through both Kinga’s insight of Cameron and his dealing with Austin, Asa finds herself warming Cameron but in the end she feels he in being opportunistic.
Then, a few months later on a stop over visit to Orkney, Asa visits with her family and friends. She ignores past and present truths as she toughens up to contain her self-image. Asa, although floored by the revelation of a past abuse, feels she is intact. To move on for good there is still the island to revisit and in selecting Cameron, the centre of her abject past, as her allotted guide she take one last hard-edged look at what she is rejecting in Orkney.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gordon M Burns
• Release date: Jan 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310013362

Gordon M Burns

Writer living in Abernethy Perth Scotland. see my website for more details.

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THE CALGARIAN REEL

Gordon M Burns

©January 2015

Disclaimer : This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

©Cover design by G M Burns January 2015

Published by Gordon Moncrieff Burns at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support

THE CALGARIAN REEL

PART ONE ... CALGARY

1. Lunch

2. Dinner

3. Before Breakfast

PART TWO ... ORKNEY

1. Arrivals

2. Roddy and Inga Rensgar

3. Mum and Dad

4. Rosie and Matzie

5. Julietta and Jane

6. Cameron and Bu

7. Departures

Other works by the author.

PART ONE

CALGARY

1

LUNCH

‘Asa?’

Deep within her shell, her name reached to her, it drew her to the waves. If habitual reflex made her unravel, look up with haggard vision, the twisting from her spiraled hurt, hardened her shell, narrowed her eyes and kept her silent.

‘Asa, no?’ Said soft as a breeze stirring summer barley. ‘Aye, Asa.’

She studied him who displayed all signs of knowing her as fact to him, if not for her. He hovering by her table. He smiled as if waiting for - clear-blue indication to appear and recognise him for who he was and what he stood for. It appeared as if he was about to sit down and join her. At this she openly bristled because, although he seemed positive that he knew her, she had negative feelings about the drip. In her mind she called him that - the drip. She racked a log of insults in her head to find something pointedly to stick back at him. If he had any gumption at all, he’d have seen her expression lost nothing of the list found behind her eyes and move on to bother another one-in-a-hundred shot. However, he actually looked as if he was serious about connecting with her and she ached a wish that she could bark out - dork-off hoser! Unconsciously, her head sought her left hand as a cradle, but no comfort found she there as something in her right profile sparked him off like a hallelujah in the short strokes.

‘My, my, ya dancer!’ He chorused. ‘That really takes me back.’

Really? What with? Go on, and go - she struggled with the thought - just go .... just go and spin your reel elsewhere, you dorking drip.

‘Aye, its you Asa, whaa-else-eh?’ In an old-quaint accent he spoke this softly. Clear enough but crouched so low that only she could hear the self-conscious excitement in his voice. ‘I could tell you anywhere,’ he almost whispered in her ear. ‘Despite the hair-do, Miss Tait.’

‘And who might you be?’ Her voice a caustic cause for confusion as to whom she had spoken to. ‘Adam?’

A flare-up inside her or the rising room temperature about her - something - caused her hand to swipe her i-phone screen open. There was nothing there worth noting either. She detected side-glance-interest from the diners’ eyeing his gauche hankering to rub against her elegant reserve. It sprinkled spice into their meals. Although a part of it, it was not that, which caused her heat. As red lines can point out mistakes, the stranger’s edgy smile peppered her embarrassment made public Not that they did, but if crumbs could fall from her lips, she’d not ignore them but neither would she attribute them to herself. So, in her opinion he had read the menu incorrectly. No doubt, he might hunger to veer around her table and speculate on her selection: lunchtime food courts clutter and its transient people leave messes. These were two facts, alongside fleeting curiosity, blank anonymity and an outside within easy reach, which would soon divert them elsewhere. Unfortumately for Asa, this stranger implied face-to-face dining, previously established in his mind, required her running over her bill of fare. No signature dish of hers, she wished he’d just clear off.

‘Ha-ha, Ah see what you did there, Adam, razor-smart, quick as ever, Asa.’ All said smiling. ‘Weel then, who would have thought o this then, eh? Bumping intae Asa Tait like this.’ All rendered with annoying familiarity. She enquired again if she knew him. It seemed she did; in his opinion. ‘Everybody said I should look you up when I was in Calgary. like, but, I felt, no better no - eh-no? - It’s no as like Asa gonae remember me. Mind you, kismet, us two meeting each other like this, what’s the chance o that? What’s the biggest odds you can think of?’

Her ears shut out the broken grammar. Fate drew her face its own bad luck. In her mind this had been a shoo-away-day lived only six wake-up hours and already crammed with options in which, the only one to have appeared within her control, this place to eat, led like all the rest to dubious outcomes. Not that choice had been fully under her influence. At least three factors interplayed to this misfortune. Firstly, the need to be out of the office and away from her boss, Austin, and his directives. Secondly, anywhere out of sight from Kinga who, possibly, enjoyed the predicament Austin had placed her in. Finally, this lunch-location, a food court five tower blocks of underpasses and purportedly far enough from the office, meant that she was accosted by a total stranger trying his luck. Her hand ducked beneath the table reacting as if her jacquard-weave skirt was too short. It so happened, tight-office-smart for second-glancing, under the table and out of sight, was revealing zilch-all other than she wanted to expose; golden-lady tights on smoothly shaped legs. Seamlessly she smoothed her lap but on returning, the hand decided to finger-tease her chin and take the easy pass - a line of symmetry down her frontage and onto the table surface slower than a cure for boredom. Immediately, she felt like breaking faith with her hand but where could she put it now? Instinct, that required no substantiation, told her that the impression her impulse hoisted in the newbie, was one more tick of ridicule to ratchet up the untold misery of today. Inside her head she screamed.

$

‘My expertise is in mechanical engineering, Austin.’ The sheirk of the voice a near miss from a shout, she levelled the next part an octave lower. ‘Since when was it my role to be a management executive? I can easily project manage the technical data from here and nearer the build time, on the ground in Alaska. You don’t require me there just to smooth it out with the natives.’

‘Indigenous peoples, Asa. First Nation Peoples or something like that, but the point is, Asa, your expertise is what we make of it. I thought you found that out in Fort McMurray, an’ ifin you aint praying Dixie, then ya oughta squat on a hymn sheet elsewhere.’ Outside, Calgary Tower shrank before the rise of steel and glass before it. In silence they stood so long that she imagined she could see the restaurant turning slowly round. She could stand upright and stone-rooted waiting for those diners to come back and spot her like a past experience, however, he could not wait that long and the longer she stood, the more she began to loose track on why she did.

‘Didhunhit, Asa, Houston asked for you. So I can’t as like send Kinga, can Ah?’ He saw her eyes glazing avoidance. ‘Hey, Asa, take a break already, blame yourself for the ever-willing take it on.’

‘Fine then - Alaska!’ She snapped blindly then lashed a rueful appeal towards Kinga for her raison d'être. There was a message there but Asa’s hurt pride and shame churned it into gall and she threw it back at Austin. And which insect repellent do you suggest I use this time?

‘Hah-hah, that’s my gal.’ He moved towards her. Asa lifted a warning hand into which, three fingers curled into the palm and tucked beneath her thumb. She left a finger levelled at him, through him and out from the room into a cloudless sky. ‘Yeah, okay.’ The all-saowth he waved his hands to show he wasn’t about to dare approach a girl with the icy of frozen passion melting in her eye. ‘I’ll email some details later. Okay, lunch, where yawl eatin? Did I tell you I like what you’ve done to your hair, Asa?’ Her eyes narrowed iceberg sharp. ‘Nice touch, Asie,’ he flicked his own short-cut hair line, ‘that red fringe.’

$

As her neck raised her head up on a gristle-click of bone, which brought her attention to the stranger smirking as she had missed an occurrence of his, she grimaced. That smile, his interloping grin still there making her slip inside herself and factorising how to address this inconvenience. For her to ask him his name would indicate interest on her part. That might open up dialogue between the pair of them, developing into chitty-chat, then a chat-up minus the date shield that might lead to a gash of misunderstanding that was never going happen ... no matter how he smiled at her. The young man might have detected her dilemma via the series of ear-sharp ripples made by her blue nails on the tabletop, which, considering she was not listening to music, should have told him not to, at the very least, keep smiling. Yeah, but he did. So, she looked at her nails and maybe the shade of blue didn’t suit her skin tone and perhaps she should have stuck with downtown, but a red fringe with red nails, what image did that create? It was worth investigating and as Research and Development was her line (oil pipe-lines, drills etc.) she glanced and saw - yes - with his hands below the table, he was studying her like an instagram. This made her sink deeper into herself. If that was the impression she gave out, when had it come about?. Rudeness, outright verbal slashing was not her scene and if he could not sense her attitude, then he’d need the old man-to-man. Unfortunately, Austin was not here. Therefore, in her head, she scripted it out:

So, Asa, think now, how would it go? Ah, yes. Smug-git-help-himself, Austin-boy the boss, would come swanking right in and shove Mr Interloper right off his place. Austin could do that because he’s done it to me, which was fair, given his positional hold over me. And how would it go, Asa? Oh, yes, a bit like this.

Oil-walk Lone Star, a carbon-foot of choke and no case of misunderstanding, Mr Austin Gannon, would pass through the food court, and ask. ‘Say Asa-honey, who’s the dorking photo-bomber bonding with his selfies down below the table?’ It might work but then Austin, the boss, would feel he’d need to check a look. Then what’s he gonna see and comment on? "Yah nice short skirt, Asa-honey. Is that a metallic thread slipped through the weave? Iridescent yet subtle? What statement are your tryna make there? Asa, as my wife tells me, stick with the A-line, always a route-one hit.’

Phimph! Yeah. Yeah, like phumph! Asa, that might be all a bit of a hit and a miss. Bosses tend to be so in the end. I should do it for my self as usual because it (said Dork not Austin) would sit through it all smiling and saying nada. However, there was a question in there for Dork - who is he? - and Austin’s asked him so he’ll be wanting an answer on his desk like quicker than a stumped-tailed bull in action in the fly season.

Yeah, stump-tailing, or something along those lines. And how, given the fact that Dork claims he knows me, does Dork reply? Now then, as sure as Austin can strut it right up whilst sitting down, Dork would reply - ‘You tell me, sir, is Asa still content tae follow mum doun the street wi mum carrying her coat, sae Asa can skip behind?’

Then, Austin Gannon, lip-shooter would sort him out a bit like this. ‘Get real, Dorkney, ain’t it? You don’t mind if Ah call you Dork? Why Asa did with that all when she untied her pigtails’. Good ole Austin, I can rely on Austin to set him well right. ‘Bud, she’d jump yar hopscotch pattern quicker than you can skip a pavement slab to upright but, hey, not with ya.’

Aye and take the bleeding fall; tell him Austin; remember Fort McMurray?

So, interloper-dork, am I twisted? Do I appear to be wound up? Tell me this - am I the brave girl, always trusting, watery-smiling it away and after, relieved, taking courage from the fact it was nothing worse? Look at you, staring me up and down. You know me? What do you know? Rosie and Jules don’t know about it. Some things you keep in the dark even from Rosie. Why talk about a near miss, a lucky escape?

Asa felt fine and back in control, only here in Calgary, ask for tea and they bring hot water cooling and leave you to dunk your own teabag. So, in the meantime, waiting to catch the right moment, her right index finger became impatient. It tapped an app on her mobile, scrolled about a bit and on came a tinny Havana-beat, jazzing a salsa into a situation that she regarded as nearly in her grip. She swiped that off straightaway. Then gave it a second thought. She had a name for him, a tack to take, and why not a backing track? Placing a plug in her left ear, she commenced scrolling through her options.

The last few month had been taxing. The project in Fort McMurray, Austin leaving her with all that to sort out by herself by taking himself back to Houston and then returning to Calgary with Kinga. Aye, and while we’re at that - what’s that, eh, Kinga? What’s that all about, contrasting mirror images or what? Give it a back seat, Austin. Is that the reason for the Alaskan project? Indigenous peoples need our concern? Since when? Humpback whales need protection my ... ah there you are. She found her earplugs and was about to place the right earpiece in her ear when a rift, electric-pulsing, went through her head. Sweet Child O’ Mine. She had no Gun at hand and Dork better not be about handing her out Roses. Then it hit Asa like a screeching zing of feedback - Mind you, Asa, if Dork does know Rosie, is Dork, sitting there, smiling knowing about Birsay. Heavens, now there’s a thought!

‘Is that you all right, Asa? Is it the shock of us meeting after so long? Couldna hae been Rezando. Personally, I like a touch o the Clitura myself. ’

‘Sorry, what did you just say?’

‘Aye, sorry, only you’ve got me bit nervous here, what with your sitting quiet for the the last minute giving me the once over like you meant it, eh? No I meant Cultura. Havanna Cultura Band.

‘Eh? No not that, the other. You said, you knew Rosie?’ Every aspect of her above table surface questioned that full-on but below she tucked her legs back and crossed her ankles.

‘Did I? When? Who’s it you’re on about? Rosie? Rosie Moodie?’ He seemed incapable of rounding it into the one question. She nodded patiently. ‘Weel. as you mention it, as a matter of fact, aye, very well. And what dae ye ken? You two are friends, no?’

‘Yeah-yeah.’ She head-waggled to rid him out of her life but he sat directly across from her as if enough fact in agreement now implied, everything else meant fair-dos.

‘Look, Asa, hang about. I’m hungry. I’ll go and get something to eat and be back. Any suggestions?’

Her chief recommendation got twisted within a grimace of a get-lost smile that happened to have too much acceptance that, like it or not, he like her with choice was as free as any to make one - and could he make the right one, please? However, off he puddled happy as feet in wellies and as if she’d be there when he came back to show them where to take them off. Only, when he did return, she knew, his timbre would be hunky-dory to a straw-chewing with the old nostalgic sugary-slurp to last draining slurry-slop. She snapped her laptop shut. Except, thinking about it, there had been that reference to Rosie. A quick scour round found her searching for where Dork had got himself. If it were possible without leaving the food court to disappear, he had.

Once more taking control of the situation her hand lifted the laptop and revealled an email from Austin. It was all too much to take in at once, a series of sniffs and phiffs ended at her plate where the blog-worthy salad suddenly lost any flavour worth a mention. With a swift exit and a cryptic message to Rosie (which she’d probably would read as miss you, kiss, kiss) being the better option all round, she shut the laptop lid, handbagged her mobile and with the clutter sorted, made to move.

Asa never thought to admit to herself - ever - that she could be flustered. With all decisions usually enacted coolly, today inanimate clothing, a cardigan, chose to ruffle her. The right arm had found a sleeve first and this was wrong for it snagged on her shoulder and by the time the left fitted through its sleeve, the right hand reached for the i-phone as if it thought it had to trend on Twitter this neat-sweet, sniff test. Then, before she knew it, he had returned and sat back down. He grinned, gluing her to her seat. Crossing her legs, his hands took her eye. Right leg crossed over left did not feel correct but she could not alter now because, encasing a greasy roll and coke, his hands prised her mouth open on a heart-lick memory. She flinched and then felt nauseated. Transfixed on that which still appalled - fisted hands of earth-crafted clods - she stared horrified as if they rubbed at an adhesion slicked on the toilet pan. She felt disbelief that after all she had done to delete all links those hands, if not the same pair, were basically the same type as swiped the labour of her day-dress choice once apon a best-forgotten time.

‘I see you managed to find a cardiac arrest in here. Why not use it?’ Left leg over right and comfort returned to Asa; pert-pretty sitting; relaxed for drinkies; interview or formal; suited for any mode to show where the boundaries stood and who controlled; Asa.

‘Ha-ha, very droll, Asa, over there if you want to get yourself one.’ He flicking his head on a mouthful of encouraging sounds, leaving her hanging on the issue; had that been a watering appreciation of the taste; an offer to her to get one; a suggestion that she should get her lips around his? She watched as he chomped questioningly on. ‘No?’ As he had swallowed as he spoke, a pause followed to let that go down. ‘They called it a ground meat sandwich, would you believe, but ah ken it’s really mince on a roll and between you and me, Asa, best no hae one, the gravy’s the only thing wi taste and christ-kens whaat’s the chemicaals in the hale-hantle.’

This much she knew about him, he was Orcadian. He flattened vowels, as had she once, into a grannie-quaint, soft-lagging reminiscent of slow-drawn net curtains. The‘hale-hantle’ of which he spoke was no secret from her but where he fitted into all that past that was still unclear. A fact she