Open Writing

Medium height, blonde hair, cutting blue eyes and a face just asking to be punched -- that's m'mate Biker Wylie. Maybe plastic surgery could adjust the lip line from its semi-permanent sneer. Perhaps the jutting, I dare you, chin as well. Basically, though, what's wrong with Biker is in his brain, plus a few additives.

I wish he'd hurry up. Sheep Dip Creek pub is hardly choice.
Biker has nowhere to live except in the back of his old car. His marriage is in tatters. Five years down the drain. His wife comes from Tamagulla way - and two kids, live in the house. Biker thinks she should move on now that they aren't a family any more. Too handy with his fists and boots.

His cousin from Shep. had him for a while, then the wife says to him one day, "Geoffrey! Him or Me!" The cousin's keeping his bike until he pays his board. Biker's pride and joy, that bike.
His new girlfriend, you know, Nina Murphy, from out the back of Chinamens Gully, well, she's ditched him. One day, he comes back and Nina and her two brothers are waiting for him.
"Get out and don't come back!"

This came from her heart, her swollen lips and the ice pack on her left eye. She didn't go to the cops though.
Last Saturday he met these two blokes at the TAB and he sleeps in his car parked in their back yard. You know, them two blokes working on the new bypass road. Anyway, while gazing at the stars through his windscreen he has a brain wave, or part of one. This was Sunday. Monday morning came early for Biker on the back seat of his car. Parked it facing east, silly bugger. He drives to that big truckies' stop over the river and spruces himself up with a shower and a shave. The two blokes from the TAB won't give him bathroom privileges, just the outside dunny and the old disused laundry. After his clean up he goes to the diner for breakfast. Only one truckie is in there drinking coffee and eating a hamburger with the lot at the same time. He asks Biker what he's bloody staring at, but luckily makes no move in his direction.

He drives back over the bridge into town and parks in that lot behind the supermarket. He waits there 'til nine o'clock then heads for old Murdoch's office round the corner. The usual garbage is going round and round in his head, about what a stupid old so and so his solicitor is, and not worth getting advice from anyway.

Outside the door Biker arranges his face into his charming-smile-look he keeps for times like this. Besides he fancies the receptionist. Used to go out with her for a bit at school. She ditched him when he told her he wanted to be a sheet metal worker and not a doctor like his father.

"Good morning Natalie," he says in his toffy voice, "I would like to see Mr. Murdoch please."

"I'm sorry Mr. Wylie, but Mr. Murdoch is busy with a client just now and will not be free for an hour."

The receptionist has him out-gunned in the toffy voice department.

"Well, I need the title to my house at Springer's Point, perhaps you could help me." The way he spoke you'd think he had houses all over the place.

"I'm sorry Mr Wylie, Mr. Murdoch is holding your title pending settlement of your account. I could, however, let you have a copy."

Biker tells her that that will be fine and watches her rear view with interest as she goes to a back room after the title. After a few minutes he starts shifting from foot to foot and saying rude things to himself about her slowness and how he'd like to light a fire under to make her move faster. After she has finished her chat to the staff out the back, she bounces back with her nose in the air and the title.

The photocopier is in the front of the reception area and near a window onto the street. The receptionist places the title under the cover, pats her hair using the window as a mirror, and pushes the start button. Nothing happens, so, after reading the fault message, she crosses the room for more paper before going back to her window gazing by the copier. Biker could be one of those Spanish dancers by now his foot is tapping so fast. He's wiped his smile off, as he knows it's being wasted.
Suddenly he has one of his sudden brain flashes. He darts round the front desk, lifts the lid on the copier, takes his title, and skims out the front door and out into the street. Natalie screams and screams, her image forgotten. Mr. Murdoch snaps open the door to his office where he had been reading the paper and sipping a café latte. He manages to get some sense out of the now blubbering receptionist and runs out into the street after Biker and the title.

The chase is on. The lawyer is shouting for Biker to bring that back. Biker is peppering the air with words not usually heard in the main street on a Monday morning. He is also gesticulating rudely, but an annoyed Sicilian could have done better. Old Murdoch gives up ’cause he knows he looks an idiot. When he gets back to the office he is in need of a shower and a clean shirt.

Biker is away free.

“Anyhow I can’t hang ‘round here any longer. Places to go, people to see. Tell Biker if he turns up.”