'I've forgotten why we came,' announced Spike, with a sense of that same amnesia that causes people to forget which film they're about to watch during the short gap between the end of the coming attractions and the start of the main feature.
No answer was offered. Spike was about to ask the question again in a more straightforward form, when he saw why neither of his companions had responded. They were engaged in what Spike had, in one of his more poetic moods, described as 'deep facial probing', or in a less poetic mood, snogging. Spike waited patiently, meanwhile pretending to be terribly interested in the toecaps of his shoes.
After a full minute, Monica Smith finally pulled herself away from Laurie Arthur and turned to Spike.
'We're waiting for Skye,' she said, as if Spike had only just asked his question.
'Sky?' Spike looked up above the seats they were waiting on. He saw a foyer ceiling, but no sky.
Smith sighed. She'd known Spike for most of the seventeen years she'd been alive, and was constantly finding that he didn't improve with age. 'Not the big blue thing, Spike - your friend Skye. Remember? Purple hair, Welsh accent, dresses like she's robbed a New Age store with her eyes shut?'
'Oh aye - her job,' replied Spike in his accent which covered more regions of Britain than ITN.
Skye Jones was a mutual friend of Spike, Smith and Laurie, whom she had met in that order. Over the past few weeks she had passed through a series of job interviews for one of the best employment positions possible for someone of her age, class and education and experience. The original number of applicants had been two hundred and three (one of who had been Laurie) - Skye's current interview was to select either her or the other one of two remaining.
'Russell will probably hire the other bloke,' Laurie told them.
Smith turned to him. 'Who's Russell?'
'Gustav Russell. He's the guy in charge of hiring and firing.'
''e's the guv'nor?' asked Spike.
Laurie shook his head. 'No. But it's still him that decides whether it's Skye or the other bloke.'
Smith's imminent question to Spike as to who he thought would get it was pre-answered by the 'other bloke' emerging from the door to the inner offices, looking dejected.
Skye followed a few seconds later, looking much different. Not only from the dejected specimen she followed, but from her usual self at all. Her hair was still purple, but instead of hanging all over the place in crimped and curling tassels and braids of varying thickness, it was all pulled back into a sharp bun. Gone were the madly donned products of incontinent silkworms and the jewellery in, on and around more parts of her body than one would have thought imaginable; in their place were a severe black suit, a single pearl necklace, and small stud earrings. And to wrap all this off, she was about ten centimetres taller than usual, thanks to the heels she had chosen for the occasion.
'Hey,' called Spike, 'it's the career dyke!'
Laurie winced: He had only known Spike three years, since just before he'd become Smith's boyfriend, and he wasn't quite as good at anticipating Spike as she was. Fact was, however, that this particular action wasn't completely down to the young bohemian. Skye was very proud of the fact that she had a different sexual preference to 97% of the rest of the world's female population, and revelled in lots of other people knowing about it. It just happened that if you wanted deliberate indiscretion, Spike was the person to see.
Laurie got up. 'Did you get it, then?' he asked unnecessarily.
'Yes,' trilled Skye, somehow managing to twirl on a ten-centimetre heel, 'I did!' She finished her spin to five Smith and Spike. You had to admit that: the girl had class.
A man who looked like a weasel in Country Road passed through the foyer, giving a curt nod to Skye, and a brief look of deliberate non-recognition to Laurie. From the look they directed at this back, Smith could guess who he was.
'Was that Russell?' she checked with Skye.
Skye nodded. 'Absoluuutely, annwyl. And I must say, the man is a complete twll penôl.
'Now - I really have to put my own clothes back on. I just have to get out of this bra, see - it's the only one I own, and the scorch marks are just getting so irritating.'

'That isn't fair, man. That just isn't fair.'
'What isn't fair?' asked Smith. Back at her house, some time later: Smith and Laurie were slumped with half their weight on her bed and half on each other, and Spike had resorted to alphabetizing Smith's CDs by Artist's Middle Name.
'Skye getting a job, just like that.'
Spike looked up from wondering if John Cougar Mellencamp qualified to go under C. 'It was hardly "just like that", guy. It took two months of bleedin' interviews, dinnit?'
'True,' nodded Smith.
'But she's only done four years of high school, dudes. Four. We've done an extra one-and-a-half years at lang College, but she went straight onto making more money than the barkeep at a failed Alcoholics Anonymous's bar.'
'She just chose better at school than you did,' replied Smith.
'And,' added Spike, filing Use Your Illusion II under N, 'she did that Open University thing on the telly. Another thing you didn't.'
'Big hairy deal, Spike. Like she toppled it with a French in Action unit. Anyway, how come it's all on me all of a sudden?'
'Because you're only whingeing about you not getting a job,' Smith told him. 'Not everyone else who went.'
'I am not whinging,' said Laurie, turning his head to face hers, his voice losing a great deal of its indignation.
'Are.' She was teasing him now.
'Aren't,' he managed, and that was it. Lips locked and tongues tangled.
Spike moaned and returned to Smith's CDs.
'Oh,' he added, suddenly remembering something. 'In case either of you are interested, Carla's back around this manor.' Carla was a local contemporary of theirs with often low moral standards. She didn't often prove that popular, either.
Spike waited the customary minute-and-a-half for the reply to his remark. 'Carla?' commented Laurie at last. 'Stupid big-nosed tart.' Actually, Laurie secretly held a fear of Carla appearing and telling him that he was the father of her child. There was no basis for this fear - their brief relationship over three years ago hadn't gone so far, a miracle for one of Carla's - but it was sufficiently horrifying a concept to induce fear in him nonetheless.
Smith didn't know about Laurie's inner fears, but she did know that he insulted Carla at every opportunity - all the ones when she wasn't actually there, naturally. 'You always pick on her,' she laughed.
'Aye,' piped up Spike, shoving a Simon and Garfunkel disc in at A. 'And you really should stop it, man. I mean, who knows what could 'appen if I forgot myself and went and told my friend Monica about that thing you did with Carla? Doubt I'll be able to even walk near a dairy section again, y'know'at I mean?'
Laurie shut up.

Homo sapiens' insistent hatred for each other has taken the form of many dreadful weapons. Swords. Guns. The Bomb. Hospital food.
But none is so hateful a thing as the little demon in some people called bigotry. It was humanity's most often justified tool against itself, and it was in blatant contradiction to the fact that God had only made people so different in these sorts of ways so that Her creation would have something to talk about.
Gustav Russell was an ardent practiser at the dying art of this blatant contradiction. He even relished it somewhat. And being in charge of hiring and firing at the Canberra branch of Silver Scorpion Productions gave him every chance to exercise his fantasies. He loved his own smooth delivery of 'We just don't seem to have any openings for...your kind of person,' even if the person in question was just a suspected tea-drinker. He revelled in his 'doomed from the start' look he could pass at any non-whites that came through the door. But the thing that gave him the ultimate orgasmic unmatchable high was what he called the 'double-out' - discovering a homosexual and then firing them. He was vaguely aware that the big boss of the local branch wouldn't approve of him - but who cared? He'd been here three months and he hadn't even seen the local boss yet.
He was in his element, and here to stay.

Thursday afternoon - Skye had been on the job four days now, and had so far had no problems. Except for the minor one right now, she reminded herself as she switched between rummaging in her Pandora's Handbag, and looking around on the carpeted foyer floor.
'Did you lose something?' asked Gloria, the receptionist.
'Hmm? Oh, it's nothing, annwyl. Just an earring. Red, shaped like a...'
'...a double Venus?' Gustav Russell appeared from the inner door, clutching an earring in the shape of two linked circles with crosses at their bottoms. He tossed it to Skye and she caught it expertly.
Russell snorted, reminding Gloria and Skye of a stomping bull, or at least, a stomping weasel. His ultimate orgasmic unmatchable high was returning. 'It doesn't take Albert Einstein to work out what the symbols of two females linked together means, Skye. Clear your desk, you're out on your ear.'
'Cach.'

'They what?' Spike baulked when Skye informed Smith, Laurie and himself of the news, back once more at Smith's house. 'They fired yer just 'cos you're gay?! Och, that's low, that is! It's well low! It's lower than a snake in the grass. No, worse - it's lower than David Boon's toilet seat.' He shook his head, and slumped onto a stool. Unfortunately, a stool isn't the sort of thing one can easily slump onto, and he fell straight to the floor.
'Too gwaedôl right, it is!' spat Skye.
'Isn't there a board you can take it to?' asked Laurie.
'I'd like to take a board to Russell's head,' she growled.
Smith got up. 'Well, I,' she announced, 'am not standing for it.'
'Well, actually you are standing for it,' said Spike from the floor, 'because you just got up, and...shutting up.'
'I've got an idea,' she made for the door, 'Come on, Spike.'
'You need me?' he asked.
'Well, no actually,' Smith told him. 'But if you're going to say something tactless, I'd rather you said it out here with me, rather than down there with your eye so close to Skye's very angry heels.'
Spike assessed this. 'Right,' he said, and followed her out.

'So what's your idea?' he asked once they were out in the hall, next to her telephone.
'From what Skye and Laurie told me, I'd say that the big boss doesn't know about Russell's little problem.'
'Oh,' said Spike. 'So you're gonna have words with Silver Scorpion's guv'nor. Well crafty.'
'No, not really,' said Smith as she picked up the phone's receiver and began to dial.
'Eh?'
'I'm not,' Smith continued. 'Carla is.'
'Oh.' It dawned on Spike. Then it dawned on him fully. 'Oh, 'eck.'

The next Monday, Smith and Spike were back at her hall telephone, this time joined by Laurie. Smith was nodding and 'uh-huh'-ing a lot, an action that annoyed Spike because it meant he could hear virtually none of the conversation.
Smith finally put the phone down. 'Well, Skye's got her old job back,' she announced.
Spike and Laurie fived each other. 'And,' continued Smith, 'Russell's lost his.'
Laurie sniggered. 'He'll have a nice CV.'
Smith continued. 'And since he did, a good few people have come out of some closets.'
Laurie and Spike exchanged glances and shrugged. That was life for you.
'She's even gotten together with Gloria. She was that receptionist,' she explained.
'Wicked,' appraised Spike.
'So Carla did it then?' asked Laurie.
'Talking to the boss really worked?' added Spike.
Smith shook her head.
'No,' she said, 'but French-kissing her did.'

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