Heller’s Decision (2 page)

“
Show me evidence my
lovely monkey’s not happy,” he
demanded.

Seamus
snorted again. He had an amazing collection of snorts. “Why
don’t we ask
her
? Oh, that’s
right, we
can’t
because
she’s an animal, unable to speak up when she’s being
mistreated.”

“
I do
not
mistreat my animals!”

“
Animals?” Seamus
appealed to Trent. “You heard him. He’s not
content with confining just one wild animal; apparently he has a
whole bloody menagerie in his house! All of them trapped in an
unnatural environment, forced to wear stupid, demeaning
outfits.”

“
Pei Pei’s outfit is not demeaning – it’s
extremely tasteful! My wife made it herself.”

“
Then your wife is as big a fool as
you
are, and an even
bigger fashion disaster.”

Julian half-rose from his seat, clutching
Pei Pei.
“Don’t you dare
bring my wife into this, you self-important walrus.”

“
Gentlemen . . .
” Trent tried again. Julian lowered his butt,
still glowering at Seamus.

S
ensing the tension in the room, Pei Pei’s own agitation
skyrocketed. She stood in Julian’s lap and climbed up his torso to
sit on his shoulder. It was only then that he gave her his full
attention.

He patted his lap. “
Come sit down, Pei Pei.”

She ignored him, climbing on
to his head, pulling at strands
of his hair. Impatience flickered across his face. He reached up to
pat her a couple of times and then patted his lap again. “Sit down,
Pei Pei. Be a good girl.”

She screeched at him and leapt across to
land on Trent, clawing onto his suit jacket. He screeched himself,
startled
by her sudden
move and trying to recoil from the clingy monkey. But Pei Pei had
other ideas, scampering up onto his head. She rested there, eyes
darting around the studio, blinking in the bright
lights.

Trent laughed nervously and
shot Julian a significant
glance that clearly messaged,
get this frigging monkey off my
head
. He threw a fake
smile at the TV camera and gave an even faker chuckle. “Never work
with animals, folks. Always unpredictable.”

But when Pei Pei began to comb her fingers
through his hair, thoroughly messing up his carefully coiffed
locks, Trent’s fake smile faded into an unimpressed
frown.

“
Can someone
please
remove the monkey?” he demanded in a low voice, gritting
his teeth together. “And we’re going to edit this out,
right?”

Horribly embarrassed, his face
flush
ing, Julian jumped
up to retrieve her. He called her name in a soothing tone. Pei Pei
barked at him like a dog. He reeled back in shock. “Pei
Pei!”

“
What’s
that mean?” asked Trent, desperately trying to keep his
head still while the little monkey twisted and turned on it,
scrutinising everyone, her hands firmly tangled in his
hair.

“
It’s a defensive noise,” Julian explained,
concern puckering his brows. His voice became sterner. “Pei Pei,
come here now. You’re being a very naughty girl.”

Pei Pei barked at him twice, her voice
rising.

“
I don’t know what’s got into her
today,” Julian fretted. “It’s
not like her. She’s usually so well-behaved.”

“
She’s probably sick of
having to wear those ridiculous clothes,”
sniffed Seamus.

“
Will you just shut up?” snapped Julian,
clearly stressed and at the end of his tether by the whole
situation.

“
Can you get it off my head?” Trent
repeated, hissing tersely.

“
She’s a she, not an it,” huffed
Julian
again, holding
his arms out for Pei Pei. She refused to go to him, clamping her
fingers further into Trent’s hair, and pulling back on it as if she
was reining in a horse. His grimace and small yelp suggested it
hurt more than a little.

Trent started to lose it.
“Get this fucking creature off
my head now!”

Maybe offended
at being called that, Pei Pei leaned down so that
she was looking at Trent upside down. She stuck her fingers up his
nostrils. Surprised, Trent pushed his wheeled seat backwards
causing it to spin. The sudden movement excited Pei Pei and she
danced on Trent’s head, her fingers jammed into his nostrils like a
bowling ball, rummaging around inside.

With Trent shrieking in pain and
n
ot knowing what to do,
I glanced around, catching Brady’s eye. He glared at me balefully,
working the gum in his mouth, as though I was somehow responsible
for the mayhem. Pushing aside the guilty thought that I
was
a teeny bit responsible, I
fumed. Just because a few little, minor, unimportant, uninteresting
‘incidents’ had occurred since I’d started working with Trent,
Brady now blamed me for everything.

After all, I
hadn’t
meant
to set off the fire alarm in the middle of a live broadcast
on one of the rare evenings we had a studio audience, creating a
mass panicked stampede to the exit. And I hadn’t
planned
on being caught on camera on my
knees in front of Trent, my head bobbing towards and obscuring his
groin as I desperately tried to fix the zip on his trousers before
the show started. It had been an entirely innocent situation and I
couldn’t help it if some people had dirty minds – particularly
those three hundred and thirty-seven outraged people who’d
immediately rung the station to complain. Trent had laughed off
that particular occasion, but I hadn’t missed the slight frown of
worry creasing his forehead.

Avoiding
Brady’s accusing eyes, I spotted the near-empty
energy drink can sitting abandoned on a chair like a beacon of
guilt.
Oh
shit!
I had to get rid
of that evidence before anyone noticed, especially him.

I edged over to the chair
just as Julian edged closer to
Pei Pei, intending to snatch her off Trent’s head, where she
continued to cling tightly.

“
Keep your head still,”
Julian instructed Trent as he reached his
hands over at a snail’s pace, ready to grasp Pei Pei around her
tiny body.

Checking over my shoulder to see if anyone
was watching me, in my haste to reach the drink can I tripped over
a power cord lying neatly coiled on the floor. I stumbled wildly
forward, hands out in panic, running headlong into a spare
spotlight. It crashed heavily to the floor, the loud noise
reverberating around the studio.

Pei Pei,
frightened by the sound, bolted from Trent’s head,
ripping at his nose on the way. She jumped hard on to Seamus’
stomach, an emphatic
oomph
gushing
from his mouth. He jerked back in his chair in horror and it tipped
over, spilling his large mass on to the floor.

“
Pei Pei!” shouted Julian, lurching over to
grab her. She evaded his grasp and shimmied up the nearest piece of
stage rigging. There she perched far above our heads on a steel
beam, barking down at us.

Trent sat dazed at his desk, his hair a
mess, blood dripping from his nostrils on
to his impeccably tailored white shirt. Seamus
floundered on the floor, trying to right himself. Julian stared up
in horror at his monkey.

Brady turned to me, still flat on the
ground tangled in the spotlight and power cord, his eyes cold. His
mouth twisted with dislike. “I just knew this would have something
to do with you.”

“
Pei Pei,” wailed Julian, wringing his
hands in despair
,
craning his head back so he could peer up at her. She nimbly
scampered back and forth across the beam, stopping at the end of
each run to stand up, bark and screech.

Viv
held a terse and brief conversation with Brady, ending with
that man’s curt, dismissive head shake. It appeared as if he
refused to cut the cameras, obviously smelling a ratings landslide,
even at the cost of Trent’s embarrassment. So poor Viv crept into
the line of the camera over to Trent, who sat staring at his
bloodied fingers in disbelief. She handed him a wad of tissues,
then went to the rescue of Seamus. That large man was slippery with
sweat under the hot lights and as she yanked on his arm, she
suddenly cried out with pain. “My back! Oh God! I’ve just done my
back in.”

“
Someone get up there and rescue Pei Pei,”
demanded a tearful Julian. “I would, but I’m afraid of
heights.”

Nobody rushed to volunteer.

“Don’t look at me,” snapped Trent, holding
the tissues to his nose.

“
Can’t. I have a dodgy knee,” said Brady,
totally uninterested.

Viv
clutched her back, agony imprinted on her face. She wasn’t
going to step forward. Neither was Seamus, who’d at least managed
to roll himself over and push himself up on to his hands and
knees.

One of the camera crew had his wrist in a
cast and the other
was
seven months pregnant.

I
glanced around the studio for the two firefighters, but
they’d wandered off at some stage, perhaps to get a coffee before
they were on. With doomed resignation, I struggled to my feet and
dusted myself off.

“
I
guess I’ll have to be the one to try,” I sighed, but I held
no particularly optimistic hopes about how all this was going to
end.

Chapter 2

I assessed the tiny iron ladder
situated to the side of the
permanent studio rigging with a heart not just sinking, but also
drowning. There was barely space for one foot on each rung. You’d
have to be a monkey reincarnated to human form to gain any
enjoyment from climbing that thing. I turned around to see if
anyone would dissuade me from this rather insane activity. Nope.
Nobody.

I placed my foot
on the first rung and tested my weight on it. It
creaked ominously.
Geez, maybe I
did
need to lay off the snacks a little
.

“
How old is this rigging?” I threw back
over my shoulder
to
anyone who’d listen.

Brady shrugged, his jaw moving languidly
from side to side. “The station’s been using this studio for
twenty-five years. Never had any issues with it before. I’m sure
it’s fine.”

“
G
et my Pei Pei down,” entreated Julian.

“
Okay. Geez,” I grumbled under my breath,
carefully placing my other foot on the second rung. “What do you
think I’m trying to do? I’m not doing this for fun, you know.” I
climbed higher. “In my opinion, people should look after their own
stupid monkeys and not send innocent young women up into the
stratosphere to imperil their lives.”

The ladder
made a strange squealing sound, which I echoed in
fear.

“
Put on the safety harness first, Tilly,”
advised Trent, the tissues muffling his voice. “And Brady, for
God’s sake, turn that fu– . . . that darn camera off.” Trent smiled
weakly into the camera, always the professional, even with a tissue
stuffed up each nostril.

“
I’m not missing this,” Brady
snapped back at him. “It’s
ratings gold.”

Trent shot him a glance loaded with
loathing, promising that the
debriefing session after the show was going to be particularly
fiery tonight. The two men had a reputation for not seeing eye to
eye on a lot of things such as . . . well, everything
really.

I searched
the studio fruitlessly. “Where’s this
harness?”

Trent pointed over to a tangle of nylon
straps hanging from a hook and connected by a wire to one of the
ceiling beams. After five minutes of puzzlement, and with Brady
growling out impatient directions, I managed to figure out how to
put it on. I slipped my legs into the lower loops and fixed the
other loops over my shoulders, clipping up the clasp across my
chest.

“
This isn’t very comfortable,” I whined,
not happy at how the crotch-hugging, butt-cupping straps forced my
short skirt to ride up my thighs. I squirmed around trying to
adjust it to a more modest length, a difficult task as it was a
rather teeny skirt and hadn’t been particularly modest to start
with. Let’s just say that I was showing off a whole lot of
leg.

“
Bet
ter to be safe than comfortable,” intoned Trent with
muffled piousness. “We wouldn’t want anything happening to
you.”

“
Well, don’t send me climbing up
some rigging chasing a frigging
monkey,” I muttered darkly under my breath again.

Securely fastened in the harness, I
recommenced my ascent up the dodgy ladder.

“
Pei Pei,” I coaxed in a singsong
voice
, stepping higher
and higher. “Come to Aunty Tilly. That’s a good girl.”