Rose laughed. ‘You have no idea what I do, do you?’
‘Yeah, well, you have no idea what I do!’ Behind Nicola a Japanese man ran past, shouting.
‘Is everything okay?’ Rose said.
‘It’s fine,’ Nicola said, glancing briefly behind her. ‘The love robot tests didn’t go quite as well as we’d hoped.’ Smoke started billowing out behind her. ‘No big deal.’ The shouting man ran back into view, now holding a fire extinguisher.
Off screen someone shouted, ‘Tetsuooooooooooooooo!’
‘I’d better go,’ Nicola said.
‘Good luck,’ Rose said.
‘You too. Sounds like we’ll both need it.’
Getting out of her ute at the docks at lunchtime on Sunday, Rose knew the funk she was in would pass. Probably not today, though. She felt a little foolish that she’d ever hoped something would come of her job at The Dock. So why couldn’t she shake this sense of vague disappointment?
She’d quit Old Steve’s because he was never going to let her take charge of her skills and make things from start to finish. And while the conditions were better on The Dock, Rose was still doing the same kind of piecework. Of course, she understood that this was what working on a renovation show meant. The contestants would always get to do the fun stuff – and get the credit for it. But this job was never going to lead where Rose wanted to go.
It was dawning on Rose how naive she’d been. Without even really admitting it to herself, she’d been thinking of The Dock as a stepping stone to a new kind of career. Something more challenging, more exciting, than a regular cabinetmaking gig. She’d been lured in by the same TV dream that reality shows always sold – the magic of transformation. But now she was realising what DIY really meant: that if she ever wanted to run her own business, she’d have to make it herself.
The boatshed looked suspiciously empty. ‘Where are the tradies?’ Rose asked a passing runner.
He shrugged. ‘It’s elimination day. We only keep one tradie on for emergencies.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘Guess you’re it. You might see the others later at the barbecue.’
‘Great. Thanks.’ The runner hurried off, leaving Rose looking for someone to report to. Over by the whiteboard, Bernie was going over the day’s shot list with a couple of the camera crew, and Rose hovered on the fringes of the conversation until the producer looked up.
‘Emergency tradie, reporting for duty,’ Rose said.
‘Okay, great,’ Bernie said, already bored. ‘Wait over by your station. We’ll let you know if there’s anything that we need done.’ He turned back to the camera crew, not bothering to wait for Rose’s reply.
Always good to know where you stand in the scheme of things, Rose thought, dragging a chair back with her across the shed’s concrete floor to where a stack of lumber was piled. Was every new job going to be like this forever? Being kept in the dark and doing all the shit jobs until someone new came along and she could dump all the boring work onto them?
She checked her watch; it was barely 1 p.m. She couldn’t really complain about sitting around doing nothing. If she’d stayed at home she’d be doing basically the same thing: sitting in silence, not wanting to wake up her sleeping parents and brother. At least at home she could play on her phone; she didn’t really think anyone here would care, but it was still her first week on the job and she wanted to give the impression she was paying attention. So she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
By three she could hear people gathering outside the shed, and figured it was safe to crack open a door and peer out into the afternoon sun to see what was going on. A smallish crowd had gathered on the other side of the chain-link fence that cut the dock off from the foreshore, clawing at the fence and rattling it like a horde of zombie football hooligans.
‘They’re angry today,’ one of the production staff said, seeing Rose’s expression of horror. ‘If we don’t get them some fresh meat, who knows what they’ll do.’
‘Fresh meat?’ Rose said. Surely he was joking. But no. ‘Fire up the barbecue!’ Bernie shouted.
A pair of grips walked towards the fence, carrying a hotplate; another grip trailed behind, wheeling the gas bottles to heat it up. A fourth grip had an entire fridge on a trolley. It was so stuffed with meat the door didn’t shut properly; plastic-wrapped packs of sausages and hamburgers spilled out as he dragged the fridge along behind the others. A lighting technician followed, paying out coils of extension cord from inside the shed to power the whole setup.
No sooner had they set up the barbecue by the fence – the crowd was stamping their feet and chanting now – than Thor Thorsson appeared, wearing a striped butcher’s apron over his usual seafaring gear. ‘I am here to give these sausages a Viking funeral!’ he bellowed as the crowd roared their encouragement. ‘May they find Odin’s grace in your bellies!’
Behind the barbecue Rose saw a couple of grips setting up a viewing platform. Presumably once the crowd had been lured in by the smell of fresh meat, they’d be herded onto the platform to become the audience for the sinking. Her gaze moved past them to take in the boats bobbing gently at their moorings; they all looked pretty much the same to her, though a couple of them were definitely dodgy when she’d seen them up close. If there’d been any gossip about who’d be going home today, it hadn’t reached her ears.
She knew that in later weeks there’d be themed challenges to complete – the decking challenge, or the seaworthy challenge. But as this was the first week that the boats were in the water, they were being judged on everything from style to seaworthiness to general maintenance. The boat that was at the bottom of the rankings when it came to those factors today would be the boat that was at the bottom of the harbour by tonight.
If it were up to Rose, she’d say goodbye to Beverley. A middle-aged woman with no evident sailing experience, Beverley was clearly trying her best and she had some good ideas – though maybe not the giant decorative polystyrene starfish lining her boat’s cabin walls. But she also spent half her time chasing around the little dog Rose had patted in the boatshed, which, bizarrely, was her partner on the show. Rose had to admit that Snuggles was very cute, but if Beverley’s boat was coming last, not even a cute dog would save her.
By the fence, Thor let out a wild cry. Rose turned in time to see the gates flung open and the crowd … well, actually, the crowd wandered through in an orderly fashion before lining up for what rapidly become just an average sausage sizzle. If Bernie had needed her for anything serious, he’d have said so by now, Rose reasoned, and walked out onto the dock to get a free sausage herself.
It was glorious barbecue weather: clear, and not too blustery. The crowd was a mix of young families happy to have a reason to get out of the house, and scary hardcore fans of The Dock wearing slogan T-shirts and carrying homemade banners saying things like I GET WET and THOR FLOATS MY BOAT. Rose wasn’t sure how they managed to stuff sausages into their faces while keeping those banners aloft, but the meat was disappearing from the hotplate at an alarming rate. She pushed forward hurriedly to claim one of the last hamburgers.
‘Here you go, fair maiden,’ said Thor, ‘would you like some more mustard with yon burger?’
‘No, I think you’ve already laid it on a bit thick,’ she said.
‘Well, you can just fuck off then,’ Thor said, his accent falling away.
‘No, I meant the mustard, honestly,’ Rose stammered, backing away quickly. Was nothing real in reality TV?
‘Hey, Rose!’ Startled, she turned. Standing towards the back of the queue for the barbecue was Dan, waving at her. Glad to finally see