Honest Masks Read online

  HONEST MASKS

  Barbra Novac

  www.loose-id.com

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id® e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  Honest Masks

  Barbra Novac

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by

  Loose Id LLC

  870 Market St, Suite 1201

  San Francisco CA 94102-2907

  www.loose-id.com

  Copyright © February 2009 by Barbra Novac

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared in any form, including, but not limited to printing, photocopying, faxing, or emailing without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-59632-873-0

  Available in Adobe PDF, HTML, MobiPocket, and MS Reader

  Printed in the United States of America

  Editor: C. B. Calsing

  Cover Artist: Christine M. Griffin

  Chapter One

  The effectiveness of the mask Chloe Halliday wore to the office each day failed miserably, this being the key to its success. The thin veil of interest she took in her work, through which malaise lingered clearly visible, sat on her face fooling no one, just as all her colleagues’ masks didn’t fool her. One could be fooled into thinking these masks floated onto each face as part of a dress code each morning, becoming part of the daily appearance, as employees marched through the great glass doors preparing themselves for another day.

  In their way, the masks assisted the drones of Electricity Australia. The idle boredom lay behind a transparent veneer, comforting in its consistency, safe in its stability.

  Every day, sitting at their desks by nine, smiles plastered on their faces, lips spread evenly over white teeth, they shuffled the paperwork they’d left behind the night before. Every morning, they all wondered why they hadn’t completed that task yesterday before they left. Now they had to start the day with it, a mind-numbing chore, now overdue as well as excruciatingly dull.

  Each day, they shouted, “Mornin’, Bob. How was your night?” or “Tracie, you look nice! New dress?”

  The all-important debriefing of television shows or last night’s news, usually left till morning tea, could be bumped forward if something really exciting happened. In that case, people would break with convention, allow the energy to seep into the day, and begin the prattle about controversy as soon as they reached their desks.

  “Did you hear those Abos refused the fruit-picking job? It was on A Current Affair.”

  “Yeah, take away their benefits! That’ll learn ’em.”

  “My grandfather, Mum’s dad, is Samoan! He wouldn’t have come to this country if it wasn’t for the fruit pickin’ being available to Islanders. So the Abos don’t want to do it. Don’t make ’em, I say. We get more productive Islanders who do want to work in this country.”

  “Anyone watch Law and Order?”

  “Lawyers! They should bury the lot of ’em.”

  Thus flowed the conversation, each and every day; very little -- including the television shows -- changed.

  Chloe arrived ten minutes late, as per her routine. Also according to daily custom, Ross, sitting opposite, glanced at his watch and shouted “Good afternoon” as Chloe bent over the sign-in book. It was a way to make sure she signed in at nine ten a.m. and didn’t cheat the system by writing nine a.m.

  Secretly Chloe hankered for the day she’d write nine a.m. even though she arrived at nine ten. Just to buck the system. But Ross was always early, and no matter how many good intentions were made at five fifteen p.m. every day, by the next morning, she couldn’t do without those ten extra minutes in bed.

  “Morning, Ross. I’m going to get you a new watch. Yours seems to be broken again.”

  Ross grinned at her, shook his wrist, and moved his watch to his ear as if to check on it. “No, no, I think it works perfectly. Nine ten a.m., your check-in time every day.”

  Chloe smiled, letting him win this round, but like all victors, it wasn’t enough to satisfy his bloodlust.

  With excited eyes, he shouted across to her as she poured her coffee at the urn, “Your chair’s gone. Been nicked. I was here early, but it was gone when I got here. Must have happened last night.”

  Chloe looked over at her desk with irritation. “What? I’ve had it three days. This place is unbelievable. Has someone actually stolen it?”

  “Told you,” said Ross triumphantly.

  He had told her. If you went through the proper channels and got yourself assigned an ergonomic chair, it would get nicked by someone who couldn’t be bothered to go through the process. It was how things always were. A fresh, new chair with an interesting shape and that clean leather smell was too valuable a prize to leave around the desk at night, too tempting to the bored, artificially reduced minds at Electricity Australia. “And besides,” Ross had claimed at the time, “what are you going to do if it gets nicked? Call the cops? It’s a waste of time if you ask me.”

  Chloe looked at the plastic, hard-backed stool that sat at her desk. “I can’t believe someone stole my chair,” she said absently.

  “Waste of bloody time gettin’ that thing,” Ross murmured under his breath.

  Chloe drooped at her desk and started to reshuffle the papers she’d shuffled into their positions the night before. Mechanically, she turned on the computer and slumped her chin in her hands as she waited for the screen to warm up. Her eyes stung. She had to find a way to get to bed earlier. But then, she knew that was never going to happen. Not the way she filled her nights.

  Still wilting into her hand, Chloe let her eyes travel around the grey office. Her two years at Electricity Australia seemed nothing when compared with others in the room. Some of them, like Ross, had frittered away over twenty-five years.

  When Chloe had first moved from the States and taken the job there, it had surprised her when her colleagues had treated her like a celebrity. People had commented on her accent, asked her questions about the exotic location she’d come from (San Francisco), and generally treated her like Paris Hilton’s first cousin. Chloe had thought it rather provincial and nice. But soon, she’d discovered the boredom; sheer boredom had driven their interest in her. The curiosity in her hometown had given way to the daily grind. No longer a novelty, she’d blended in hiding behind her own version of the mask, although they still considered her an expert on all things in the United States.

  “Why doesn’t the US get that Steve Jobs from Apple to run the country, Chloe? He’s doing damn fine work at Apple.”

  “When are they going to bring out the next series of The Simpsons DVDs, Chloe?”

  “How’s the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina going, Chloe?”

  Chloe had warmed fast to her work colleagues. The bond of ennui connecting them had created ties almost familial. Despite the fact that they all thought Chloe odd (she didn’t watch television), they’d embraced her and made her feel welcome. Chloe had come initially seeking this kind of modest, unemotional warmth, so the mind-numbing surroundings suited her well.

  Opening her top drawer, she ignored the photograph of her mother she’d carefully placed there to keep her in check.
She took out the computer keyboard and plonked it on the desk, ready for the day’s work.

  Chloe turned toward her screen and glanced down at the Internet Explorer icon. Peeking behind her shoulder to be sure no one was watching her screen, she typed “Eva Peron” into the search engine. Narrowing the search to “images,” Chloe sifted through a number of photographs of the iconic politician, searching for the one she wanted.

  Soon, an image caught her breath, indicating the end of her search. Eva Peron in a dress made of cotton, lying back in the sun, the exhilaration on her face natural and the softness of her hair wind tousled. The dress clung at the bodice: crisp, sharp, and young. Black-and-white striped in a halter style, the embodiment of Peron as a young woman.

  Chloe stared at the image, a familiar thrill working its way around her insides. She forgot the smallness of Electricity Australia and imagined the verve of the woman in the picture. Eva’s life was such a strange mixture of confined feminine conformity and a wild, untamed lust for life.

  Transported by her reverie, Chloe studied the dress, thinking how she could copy the pattern, her environment slipping away from her. She’d need some cotton, the finest, in white and then black. She’d need to draft the pattern from the picture on this Web site. But that was no problem. She’d done that many times.

  “Chloe! Good news! I have the chair!”

  Chloe jumped. Hearing her name thrust her uncomfortably into the real world. In a well-practised move, she made the site disappear, leaving the blank desktop suspicious in its emptiness. Looking up, without yet fully comprehending where she was, Chloe gazed into the eyes of Gary, a work colleague, who had stopped, rather foolishly holding her chair while looking down at her.

  “What are you looking at on the Net? Was that Evita?”

  Chloe laughed nervously. “Of course not! What the hell would I be looking at Evita for?”

  “Maybe to get us double tickets to say thanks for making sure your chair was safe?”

  Gary made the kind of joke that sounded like a joke, but if you actually laughed at it, you risked causing deep offence. Chloe knew Gary had a mild crush on her, which would explain why he stood by her desk at this moment, looking ridiculous behind a large chair that he’d pushed all the way from his floor.

  “Huh?” she answered unglamorously. She glanced at Ross who stared at Gary, openmouthed. She let her gaze drift around the office, to see most of the people on her floor staring at Gary. As an act of generosity that went above and beyond the call of duty, this must have looked conspicuous. Feeling embarrassed and awkward, Chloe didn’t know what to say.

  “I saved your chair. You know the one you applied for? I saw someone here eyeing it when I was on my way home last night. Worried you’d lose it, I interrupted, and then when he left, I took care of it for you.”

  This fooled no one. Gary’s floor was two below Chloe’s, and she felt pretty sure the part about the guy wanting to take it was a lie or Gary misreading a situation.

  “Um, that’s so wonderful. Thanks, Gary.”

  “We thought it had been stolen,” mumbled Ross as his wide eyes travelled up and down the full length of Gary’s frame.

  “I was worried about that too, so I took it and locked it in our store cupboard for the night. I wanted to get it back to your desk before you arrived, but damn Harrison had us all into a meeting at eight thirty today.”

  “Umm…thanks so much. That’s one hell of an interest you’re taking there. I really appreciate the generosity.”

  “Enough to have a drink with me tonight?”

  Through her peripheral vision, Chloe noticed everyone disappear behind their screens, behind the watercooler, or behind a work magazine. This situation would have to be diffused fast if she could get her head together.

  “Um, sure. That was real nice of you, Gary, but I think you’d better get back to work.”

  Gary looked around the room. Chloe wondered if he was sensitive enough to notice that he’d made a spectacle of himself.

  “Hey, it’s just that it’s a special chair to you,” Gary said. “I remember you asking me to take it if I saw it here and thought it might be vulnerable.”

  This lie Gary told irritated Chloe, and she felt manipulated into rescuing him now. But he seemed to mean well and had tried a few times to have a simple drink with her. This might have been a way to answer his cry for help, and who knows, he could be happy with friendship if she made her position clear from the outset.

  “Yeah. I just didn’t think you’d have to quite this fast.”

  Gary looked satisfied. “Okay then. A drink tonight? Our usual place?”

  Chloe had no idea where this was and felt manipulated by him again. The desire to rescue Gary still drove her, and self-conscious that he had caught her looking at clothes worn by Eva Peron, she said, “Of course! Right after work.”

  Gary placed the chair down next to Chloe’s desk and made his way out of the room without another word. Chloe watched until she was sure he was out of earshot. Turning to Ross, she said, “I guess I didn’t lose that chair after all.”

  Ross glanced up briefly from the paperwork he was filling in. “No,” he said and looked back down. “You just have to have a drink with Gary.”

  Chapter Two

  Looking out the window, the green lawn stretching right to the edge of the scrubby bush, Maximilian Sebat allowed his gaze to travel to the Three Sisters. The local, indigenous legend named the three unusual piles of rock after the tale of a father who turned his daughters to stone to save them from the Bunyip -- a giant, mythological land creature -- who pounded through the woods looking for food.

  When the Bunyip crushed their father so that he was never able to undo his spell, his three daughters remained as rock, jutting out into the gaping canyon. That the formations were three stories high each never damped the romance of the story, and Max thought of it every time he looked out of his bedroom window, across the blue-grey beauty of the valley.

  The choices parents make -- that can’t be undone -- stay with their children as masks they can’t remove.

  Hearing a car horn, Max moved to the window at the other side of his bedroom. He looked down at the front gate of Genius Loci. Max’s great-great-grandfather had named the handsome house and its surrounding gardens Genius Loci, Latin for “spirit of the place.” His vision passed down through the blood and the land to Max who, even today, upheld all its traditions and practises.

  Max treasured this house and the world created within it, just as his father had loved it and his father before him. Max cherished the small generations of brilliant scholars cared for and represented here by the sprit imbued in the earth and air of the place.

  But the car in the driveway heralded the arrival of another council inspection. Again, small-minded locals made petty complaints, and again, Max had to deal with them. These were the same complaints these folks’ parents had made against Max’s parents, and in years past, all the parents before them. The complaints were all effectively the same one.

  Max sighed. The misunderstanding from the locals for his small community would never pass away. Just as his community would survive, so would its detractors, and this foolish battle would be going on through the generations to follow.

  Max met the inspector with warmth as he stepped out of his car and switched on a special kind of charm passed down through the genes of Max’s family. All the men through Max’s bloodline were beautiful, charismatic, and very brilliant. This showed in the way they projected themselves. When Max saw the apologetic expression on this man’s face, he knew the inspection would be no problem.

  “Mr. Sebat, I’m sorry to have to bother you like this. My name’s Harrison.”

  “Welcome, Mr. Harrison. Not at all, not at all. We understand our commune is unusual and can arouse suspicions in the broader neighbourhood. We always welcome an opportunity to clear our name, even if it’s only for a while.”

  Mr. Harrison had a pained expression on his face that gav
e Max all the information needed to play his cards perfectly. As if to get it all over with, Harrison said, “Let’s start with the main house, and then we’ll go to the factory.”

  Harrison carried a clipboard with the usual twenty-pages-or-so questionnaire that Max had seen so many times, he felt he knew it well. Max envisaged this would take about two hours. However, by law, there couldn’t be another one for at least six months, no matter how loudly the community complained about what they imagined went on there.

  “Certainly. Let’s start with the ground floor. The libraries, studios, and science labs are down here. Upstairs is mostly private, but there is a research room you should see as well as a design room.”

  Max led the way into the main entry hall of his magnificent family home. A large stone mansion built over two hundred years ago, as solid today as the day it was put together by Max’s ancestors. Max noticed Harrison’s eyes round as he looked up at the mosaic on the entry hall roof.

  Taking advantage of the moment, Max said, “Lovely, isn’t it? The house was built in 1795, but in the early 1800s, the family’s talent did the mosaic as a project. It’s been promised to the Tate Gallery in London if we ever disband here and close down, but I doubt that will happen. Assuming we pass inspection, of course.” Max laughed with jovial camaraderie, but the inspector’s mind seemed to be elsewhere.

  “My…my God. I’d heard rumours about the beauty of this ceiling, and God knows I’m no art lover, but this is magnificent.”

  They paused so that the inspector could catch his breath, the usual response to the first view. Max glanced at his watch and realised he’d have to keep the tour moving.

  “You’re welcome back here another time when we are able to have some visitors through, but at the moment, sir, you are on official business, and I still have work to do this afternoon. Do you mind if we press on?”