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Thoughts and Thin Kings - by JaneJane

Thoughts and Thin Kings - May 2007

I guess one of my greatest failings is that I tend to be an optimist in situations that would best suit a pessimist.

Fifteen minutes after having my completely brilliant, but not worthy of repeating, idea to salvage the situation with our client my shoes were off again and we were on the run once more – across Hyde Park. Our client fired his gun into the air and yelled profanities that would give the impression that Clyde and I were bumbling, stupid idiots who had ruined his life and his business. Of course that was complete rubbish. He was the one who chose to go into the rag trade with little talent and no inspiration; he only had himself to blame. Hiding behind a tree to catch my breath I loudly conveyed the idea to him. He didn’t see the sense of it and fired the remainder of his bullets into my tree. A moment later, discovering his gun was useless, he wandered off muttering that he should have saved at least one bullet for himself.


“Psst,” said Clyde from behind a nearby rock formation. “Has he gone?”

“Yes,” I came out from my tree and gave him a hand up, “he’s gone.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Let’s go home.”

The way the night had progressed the probability of running again was high so I walked bare foot leading Clyde out of the park and up William Street back to The Cross. Our home, for the moment, was a reasonable sized room with a spectacular view of the city at The Holiday Inn.

Now you understand what I mean when I said we’re not really getting anywhere. We lived in the hotel, very glamorous, but we didn’t have a suite, the hotel was not 5 star and if we didn’t return with a small wad of cash to pay the bill for the last month and a considerable deposit for the next we would be kicked out first thing in the morning, without breakfast.


I am a 39 year old, statuesque and beautiful woman. I have two sons from my first marriage and I should be a person of means. I should be photographed for the social pages, I need to host lavish parties for charity and be invited on talk shows for my opinions of the latest society trends. I should not, at 4am on any Sunday morning, be walking up William Street asking the working girls for a light of what I swear will be the last cigarette I ever smoke. I should not be facing eviction; I should not be barefoot and blistered. I should not be sweaty and smelling.

Clyde, God love him, was not much help.

When he came here from America he had $100 000 dollars and was full of hope for the future and his new life in Australia. When bored he would go to the bank and withdraw $50 000 in cash, take it to a private room and count it then return to the teller and deposit it again.

That’s how I met him, as he carried the money back to the teller. I was waiting in the queue, ready to sweet talk some cute young boy behind the counter to give me a $500 overdraft on my savings account. It was probably going to be a difficult task as the balance of the account was currently less than $5. Looking to the front of the queue I felt my luck drain away and my charms diminish. There were only two tellers on duty – a couple of sour faced lesbians by the looks of them. I could charm anyone, but lesbians saw right through me.

Something fell from my purse and I bent to pick it up. Clyde didn’t notice me and took my place at the end of the queue.

Irritated, I waited behind him, bottling my frustrations. The queue progressed and Clyde stepped up to his lesbian and gave her his great wad of cash, the lesbian smiled at him and took a deep breath before beginning to count. I went to my lesbian, who sneered at me with instant contempt.

I didn’t get my overdraft but 15 minutes later Clyde was buying me coffee, lunch, dinner and so-on.

Within days we were in-love. Within weeks we were living together. We never really married, but Clyde insisted he call me his wife and I call him my husband. He said it was undignified to be boyfriend and girlfriend, pointless to be each other’s partners and meaningless to be de-facto.

His money only lasted months and thus began the illustrious careers the brought us to the morning, walking down William Street with hardly a cent to our names.
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The sound of sirens echoed through Castlereagh Street as I hitched up my dress and ran for my life. It was three in the morning and you can’t believe how much I appreciated my choice that night to wear the ball gown with the thigh high split.

I wasn’t so thankful of the three inch sequined man killers on my feet. I stopped for a moment to remove them as my husband, Clyde, flew past me screaming over his shoulder, “For God’s sake, keep moving!”

He was mostly deaf in one ear, there was no point yelling back at him. With my shoes detached I looked back to Market Street. Much to my surprise we were not being followed. A police car screamed through the intersection and headed off to the other side of the city. Silence followed it.

“Hey!” I called out to Clyde. He continued blundering down the middle of the road. “HEY!”

He stopped and turned, “What are you doing?”

“We’re not being…” that wasn’t going to work. “COME HERE!” He ran to me. I could see his chest heaving under his dinner suit. We were getting too old for this.

“Hey!” he said when he was closer. “We’re not being followed.”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“YES!” his hearing got worse during sex and other aerobic exercise. He could have used a hearing aid but he claimed he didn’t need one yet. That's what he said instead of saying they were too expensive.

We were good at our jobs, or at least we had been once. Tonight was to have been a very smooth and simple operation. I was to meet the owner of a very fashionable clothing store at a party in the ballroom of the Westin Hotel. I’ve been charming him for weeks. Clyde was to be there mingling with the crowd.

Fashion Store Man and I were to sneak out to have an exclusive peek at his latest shipment, direct from Italy, at his shop around the corner. The garments had arrived that afternoon; no one in the country had seen them yet. Using my womanly ways I was to keep him busy on the floor while Clyde snuck in behind us and photographed the collection then dashed out. The whole thing should have been done and dusted in under 10 minutes. Fashion Store Man would get little more than a quick kiss and a grope, then take me back to the party. Clyde would take the images to our client who would make them into patterns and have them on sale in his budget outlets by Monday morning. Clyde was to exchange the photos for a reasonable fifty thousand dollars in cash.

Instead, we were standing in the middle of the city, with no photos, out of breath and from the look on Clyde’s face - one of us was on the verge of a heart attack. Not to mention that there’d be no cash and a very pissed off client waiting for us at the Hyde Park Obelisk.

The plan had gone beautifully until Clyde was about to take the first photo. He thought he heard me cry for help. With the education of a gentleman Clyde could not ignore a woman in distress (there are so few like him left these days). As a result, Fashion Store Man got a punch in the nose that he didn’t deserve and we were forced to leg it out of the shop and up the road thinking we were being chased by sirens that didn’t apply to us.

I should introduce myself, my name is Raiiney. My husband Clyde and I are generally for hire to anyone with the right amount of money for almost any task. Espionage and blackmail are our specialties. I’m VERY pretty and Clyde’s an excellent photographer. For the last ten years we’ve managed to keep it together and earn some reasonably good money, but we’re not getting anywhere. We spend faster than we earn, we have no real-estate to our names, there’s no direction in our lives and we’re not getting any younger. Clyde’s put on a kilo or two and I’ve recently discovered my first major wrinkle that make-up cannot disguise.

“What do we do now?” Clyde asked.

“We’ve got a client to meet,” I leant on Clyde as I squeezed my feet back into my shoes.

“We can’t go see him without the photos!” he complained.

“Don’t worry, I have an idea. We can still turn this around to our advantage. Come on.”

“What?” he asked.

“Come ON!”

“Oh, OK.”
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Raiiney (by Rune Woodman)

May 20th 2007 08:56
Life is Raiiney!
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