I ordered a coffee and watched all the clean and shiny people walk by. I idly reached into my pocket and pulled out the receipt for the jeans I had just bought. Fifty dollars was a lot of money when you no longer had a job. I wondered how long it would be before Workman's Comp kicked in. I was pretty sure I didn't have enough weeks for unemployment benefits yet.
But then my coffee arrived and a girl smiled at me as she walked by and it just didn't seem to matter anymore.
Brendan spotted Lucy, Amber, and Kathy sitting at the cache and rode over on his quad. The girls had broken down their boxes and were lying back in the sun. Kathy had rested her head on her water jug and had her feet up on a log by the cache. She wore orange rubber boots and two pairs of thick cotton tights with a torn flouncy mini skirt that had once been bright ladybug red.
"...looking for the love getaway..." she sang.
Lucy and Amber lay on the pile of flattened boxes with their knees up. Amber got to her feet as Brendan pulled up on the quad.
"You lovely ladies done?" he asked. He looked around the cache. Trees had been planted exactly the minimum distance apart all around the edges of the cache and up and down the road. "I'm guessing you managed to bag out all right."
"Lucy helped us out," she said. "We never would have bagged out if it wasn't for her." Lucy smiled.
Kathy waved her arms back and forth above her chest "...the love shack is a little old place where we can get to-gether..." she sang.
Brendan got off the quad and pulled their three shovels from the ground and lay them on the back rack of the quad. He picked up Kathy's plantings bags from beside her. He put them on the back on top of the shovels, then added Lucy and Amber's bags. He piled their water bottles on top of them and strapped the unwieldy pile down with three bungee cords. When he grabbed Kathy's water bottle, she raised her head up and then let it fall on the ground behind her.
Lucy stood up. She walked over to the front of the quad and put her day pack on the front rack. Amber did the same. Kathy turned her head to the side and watched all this from the ground. She reached beside her and grabbed her day pack with one hand. She threw it awkwardly to Amber. Amber caught it and put it on the front rack and strapped it down. "Where are we off to?" she asked.
"Not far," said Brendan. "Two or three bends."
"It's too bad you don't have a Chrysler as big as a whale," said Kathy. She got to her feet as Brendan pulled a map out of the inside left pocket of his vest. He unfolded the map on the seat of the quad. The girls crowded around him.
"Just walk down this road." He pointed back the way he had come. "go straight through the next two blocks and stop at the second cache. I'll meet you there and set you up. Lucy you're going a bit further. I'm going to put you in with Alistair and Cameron."
Lucy nodded and started walking. Amber and Kathy followed. Brendan rode past them on the quad and pulled up beside Lucy.
"Actually, I might as well run you down now and double back to meet the girls. Do you want a ride?" he asked.
"Thanks." Brendan stood up and leaned forward over the handlebars. Lucy stepped on one of the pegs, grabbed the armpit of his vest with one hand and stepped between Brendan and the pile of bags and water bottles to sit on the quad.
Brendan turned around to Amber and Kathy. "Sorry girls," he said, "I've only got room for one."
"Should have got a Chrysler," said Kathy.
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