Ogreness, Black Lake-book5

Chapter 8
~

By the heavy clunks at my office door, those were ogre knuckles. I looked up as it swung open, and Darshee and Wizper leaned in.

“Lunch?” Wizper asked.

My eyes jolted down to the bottom of my laptop for the time. Hadn’t I just gotten into the office? My stomach took that moment to grumble. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything in an ogre, since we can down a modest carcass between meals without dentin’ our real appetite, but the rumble was consistent with it being midday.

“Been a hard morning?” Darshee’s brown eyes softened. “Poor widdle ogreling.” The sizzle returned to her face.

Wizper growled. She has such a cute chuckle.

I stood, suggestin’ I should get the two hens to the cafeteria where they wouldn’t cause anyone any more grief. Sissy was eager to join us. We headed for the stairs.

Despite the grim discussions this morning, my eyes took in the sways of the two hens’ derrieres in front of me. They both wore traditional skirts of tan hues, a gazillion pleats, that fanned across their rumpuses as though darin’ a bull to overheat.

They are my best friends, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy their—uh, physical assets. Their long steps allowed their cute bare feet to peek out from under those flowin’ pleats.

Wizper asked how my calls had gone this morning. I summarized. Neither appeared very surprised, shook their heads, dreads swingin’. When I said I’d be headin’ for Black Lake Monday, both of them perked up.

Uh oh.

“Ridin’ or drivin’?” Darshee asked.

I guess flyin’ was out of the question. Why did I ever buy that little jet? Should take advantage of it now and then.

Wizper said, “Ridin’ of course, this time of year. Gorgeous weather. Perfect for two-wheelin’ it.”

They locked on to each other. “Road trip.”

“Uh—”

“We could use a vacation,” Wizper said. “When’d we last take any time off?”

“We’ve taken time off before?” Darshee asked. “Aren’t we slaves to OW?”

There was no fightin’ this. Not like I wouldn’t enjoy their company. So I shut my mouth and listened to them scheme. Or in their words, plan. Projects they had to get in line. People they had to smack around before Monday. Shoppin’. They had to shop. Gear. Snacks.

“Will the weekend be enough time to consolidate all of our requirements?” Wizper gushed. Why was she talkin’ like a lawyer? Stinkin’ lawyers. Have ruined the industry.

Darshee giggled, or what ogres call a giggle, though with our tusks, it doesn’t sound anything similar to what comes out of a human.

We worked our way down the food line, the hens still going blah, blah about their road trip, as I considered how good it is that most ogres are well to do, because the prices on the glass for everything was three times that listed for human-sized servings.

Mother Nature endowed us with big stomachs, bigger metabolisms. No arguin’ that. But I still found bites to subtly drop for Sissy. Of course they never hit the floor. There was just a sound, like a vacuum in space fallin’ in on itself in two notes.

I’ve never been much for cooked carrots, but Sissy loves ’em. So I always buy a servin’ that is usually empty before we get to the cashier. Marzzy the troll hen usually gives me an eye like I’m tryin’ to pull a fast one over her. A game we play.

We moseyed to a table, the hens still going blah, blah, and I actually got a bit excited about ridin’ south with them.

Wizper rides an enormous sport bike. Orange with a hint of yellow and red flames. More a troll paint job if ya ask me. Them trolls love their bright colors. But Wizper looks good on it in her black leathers.

Darshee is a little less garish, rides an OI tourer similar to mine, instead of midnight black, silver and pearl. Never know what kind of armor she’s gonna don. She prolly has more leathers than skirts. I think she rides to give herself an excuse to buy something new every month.

I met Wizper at an OI kick tire, where riders stand around with an alcohol-free beer in our fists talkin’ about bikes and bikin’, before I even knew she worked at OW. Think Kriz hired her.

Think Darshee believed Wizper’s interest gave her a notch up in the campaign to snag me, so she asked me to help her get into the biker lifestyle. And she never looked back.

If a bull is gonna have a side interest, it may as well be one his two best friends, who happen to be babes, are into as deeply. Gives us more to talk about than Ogreware issues. I mean, ya can’t talk software all day every day. Algorithms, systems, and the latest code level get boring after a while, even for me.

Be fun to see Mama’s eyes when I show up with ’em as a surprise. As though we could ride all the way into Black Lake without showin’ up at the condo. Mama would kill me if I didn’t drop by their hideaway in the hills. Whoever dreamed up retirement villages, with their cookie-cutter shacks bunched up one after another?

Mama loves Darshee and Wizper with equal abandon. She’d be happy, ecstatic, if I ended up with one of ’em. I’ve feared she’d knock one of ’em off just to leave only one candidate. I don’t keep close to the two as a process of decidin’ between ’em. I’m happy with the life I have.

Mama just doesn’t get me.

I was halfway through my beef stroganoff when I realized a nervous OW-er balanced, somewhat, in front of me, one hand wrenchin’ away at the other. Poor human wore a face of static terror, as though she’d drawn the short straw to come talk to one of the mean ogres.

“Hey,” I said as light-hearted as I could to smooth the edges for her.

“Sir. Sorry to interrupt your lunch—” Sissy gave her a poke in the crotch for her own style of hello, and the young woman gasped.

I swatted Sissy away, and she crawled back under the table.

“I need interruptin’,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t slow down soon enough and get a place settin’ stuck in my tusks.”

I thought I was being amusin’, but by her expression, maybe I missed the mark. Darshee whispered at me not to scare the poor thing. Really that’s easy to do, with humans who aren’t used to us. Our tusks make our expressions impossible for them to read and our gravelly voices seem to put them off too. With all the ogres wanderin’ around OW, she must be new here.

“How can I help ya?” I asked as cheerfully as I could.

“Management hasn’t put out, you know, any word on the recent, goings on. And you have to understand, everyone is a little—”

The extreme discomfort on her face sent a whole new recognition of the situation slicin’ between my ribs. This human, hundreds of miles from the center of the altercations up North, is terrified of the repercussions to her life and livelihood.

I suggested she sit. Her eyes flashed a moment, then took Darshee and Wizper in, before she nodded. The two hens scooted over a skoosh. It might have been cruel of me to invite the human to sit with us, considerin’ we were in one of the ogre-sized booths. She had to crawl up, knees on the seat, and twist around, feet ensconced in those spikes I don’t understand, danglin’ a couple feet above the floor. She looked like a youngling perched there lookin’ up at me.

She blinked.

She was waitin’ for me to belch out wisdom. As though that's possible. Darshee and Wizper’s eyes bore holes in my forehead too.

“Uh.” Had to start somewhere. “An adage I’ve lived by, durin’ times of doubt is, first visualize the worst possible outcome. Accept it with a heavy heart, then back away with scenarios that are more likely.”

She blinked again, no less worried.

“The races have prolly segregated themselves too much,” Darshee said. “Growin’ distrustful with the chasm between us.”

I was unsure how that fit in with my opening. I munched up on my right tusk. Besides, I live in a predominately human neighborhood, play basketball with humans. My closest facsimile to a male friend, not countin’ cousin Kriz, is human, known him since college. Though I call Dave a jerk more than I compliment him.

“The economy up North has been in a pickle for a long time,” I continued, not wantin’ to go where Darshee suggested. “A lot of folk haven’t seen the progress others have. Breeds resentment.”

“The simple minded have to find someone to blame,” Wizper said, which wasn’t the positive tone I had in mind. I wrenched her a look. She gave me a, well-shrug.

I cleared my throat. “We all have to be patient, until things improve on the economic front. The social stuff will follow.”

“I don’t think they’re gonna improve,” the human woman peeped.

Oh, child. “Maybe not tomorrow, or next week. But all things are forgotten when better times arrive.”

“You haven’t seen the news lately, have you, sir?”

Uh oh.

“Since the market opened this morning,” Darshee said, “it’s plunged. They’re callin’ it this generation’s Black Thursday.”

Oh boy. Think fast, Ike. “The punsters love to talk—uh, which they get paid to do. And they get paid a lot to do it, so they blab more than the average village idjit. They don’t have enough brain cells to weigh down a gnat, or they’d be in industry being productive. Eighty percent of everything ya see in the news is hogwash. Believe what ya see, first hand.”

“Wise words,” Darshee murmured.

“Here, here.” Wizper nodded hard, flippin’ shorter whips of dreads around her shoulders.

The human opened her mouth to speak, and froze. I imagined all the financial indicators she could cite. The last two quarters had been bad up North. Really bad. Consumer confidence. Jobs were down. Hirin’ down. Construction starts, the same. Home sales, ditto. In weeks they’d be callin’ it a true recession. Recent history weaved a three to seven-year cycle, and if we were on the leadin’ edge of a new cycle, it would be a long time before them sycophants in the North bode good tidings.

“Ma’am,” I said. “Nothing any of us can do about anything other than the decisions we make hour by hour. Ya smile and make the best, or ya stay home and cry, which don’t help nobody.”

“But, but—”

I waited.

“Be nice if management would crack open an email to us nobodies and give us some good words.”

“OW doesn’t employ nobodies,” I said. “The board is workin’ on a communique.” I hoped. Some of those thirty phone messages I haven’t listened to should be about that topic. Or the emails I haven’t opened yet. Stink. I prolly have hundreds in my inbox. I so need a guy.

“And he’s on the board, honey,” Darshee said. “So he knows.”

I should know. This stinkin’ clan business always takes up more time than there are rocks in my head. A guy with fewer rocks in their head than I got.

The human scooted to get away, dangled over the edge of the seat until a stiletto pump reached the floor. Thankin’ me, she scuttled away. A gaggle of females waited for her near the cafeteria exit.

“Ya certainly didn’t make her feel any better,” Wizper said. “Don’t go into politics. Or any social arts.”

What was I supposed to tell her? And what are social arts? Maybe a guy who knows what those are.

“Consider the worst,” Wizper quoted. “What kind of idjit are ya?”

That was cold.

“Maybe a little harsh, sweetie,” Darshee said to Wizper.

“People want to hear that things are gonna be great,” Wizper said. “That’s why the Chicken Littles are attached to the news stations by their frontal lobes. They can’t get enough doom and gloom.”

“Ya would have me lie to her?” I asked.

She snorted. We ogres love to snort. They echo well in our snouts. “Are ya a deity or something, all knowin’? It would only be a lie if ya are. Otherwise ya comfort the simple minded.”

“Definitely harsh,” Darshee said.

This wasn’t Wizper’s normal attitude. She usually preferred light topics and takin’ the high road. Darshee is usually the one to speak harsh realities. I peered at her for her take.

“That accept the worst stuff,” she said, “came from yar papa, huh?”

I nodded.

“That’s a patient ogreish attitude,” she said softly. “Humans like red cherries and cream toppin’.”

I think I understood what she meant. It dawned on me that we ogres are truly superior to humans, or only think we are. Neither helped the current situation.

~ Nuel ~

I hung up the phone, a bit of shock frilling through my shoulders. I’ve done a bit of volunteer work for the Northern Council, but I didn’t think anyone even knew my name. To get a call. That someone happened to have heard I was taking a vacation with a friend who just happened to live in the right neighborhood, struck me—more than a little freaky.

~