Repco

 
        If you wanna understand Seth, you gotta know that the high point of his life was the time we did Repco. We woulda been about sixteen, seventeen. We’re sinkin piss, three of us, probably had around five or six CC’s apiece and Seth pulls out this tiny little hammer. You rip em from buses. And he goes, ‘Ay bro, you wanna do Repco?’ Starts swinging his hammer around, whacking our knees like he’s a bloody doctor. He goes, ‘Look man, you just go ting and there’s no noise, nothing. Window’s just gone bro.’
        And I’m like, ‘Yeah yeah bro yeah okay.’ We keep drinking.
        Get through another case of CC’s and Seth goes, ‘Yeah bro, but real. Let’s go.’ And so we’re like what the hell.
        So there’s Repco and it’s right on the main strip through Ashburton. Bloody terrible place for a break-in, bro. But the carpark and the front window are around the block going down this street with houses. So we rock up and Seth raps on the window with his little hammer. Nothing. Literally nothing.
        Our other mate goes, ‘Hang on.’ Comes back with a broken off hunka concrete from a carpark bumper and he’s gonna chuck it through the window. So he goes up, big block of concrete over his head, schwing! It rebounds, literally ten centimetres from his head.
        He picks it up to have another go, but Seth goes, ‘Nah nah move bro,’ and he tries again with the hammer. And the glass just shatters bro, massive crash.
        So we charge in and I go, ‘Bro bro! Get the case with the gauges!’ So he smashes that and starts loading me up. I got this backpack and he’s just piling shit in there. And then I take off quick cos the alarm’s going now wheowheowheo. So I’m tripping along with the backpack, and Seth comes out with two bloody bucket seats and goes along trying to carry them, seriously, that slow bro.
        And he says, ‘Go bro, go without me.’
        So I get in the car and, just ‘Go, go, go, leave him.’ We go home, drop off our load.
        And when we get back, Seth’s sitting out front and he starts waving us around the carpark wall to the driveway of somebody’s house, literally bro, and that’s where he’s stashed the seats. But now he’s got fucking six of them. Six bro! Just tottered across the yard with his bucket seats, probably some kid watching from the window, oh yeah bro, sweet as. And he goes back twice, alarm’s still going wheowheo since ten seconds after we broke the window. Bloody thick bro cos we’ve just got a Prelude and that shit’s not gonna fit. But we get one in the boot before we hear sirens. Dunno if they were even for us, but we fuckin hauled ass bro.
        We get home and turns out all I got is some racing vids. There was a shitload of choice gauges in that case, but Seth just swiped the DVDs off the bottom shelf. We got rid of em, twenty quid each, but Seth kept the seat.
        And he carts it out every time we get on the piss at his place, tells the story all over again. At first we felt like bloody legends, but now Seth’s still telling the story and it’s been like six years or something. Tells his mates, tells chicks, tells his boss and the lads at work, which is maybe not too clever, but, hell, he’d probably tell the goddamn cops just to get his fifteen minutes. Kinda depressing. Literally the high point of his life, bro. He’ll tell his grandkids on his deathbed about the night he nicked a bucket seat from Repco.
        But that’s not the story, that’s just Seth.
        The story is last summer, just about eight months now, both of our girls left us for good. My missus, Kayla, she did it like a bloody coward, taped a note to the front door of my flat saying she was taking her little girl to Melbourne to live with her family. Totally blindsided me, bro. I rang her and rang her. Sent her loads of texts. Must’ve blown fifty quid on prepay that month. Finally, some bloke picks up, warns me to leave her alone, stop ringing her, it’s making her upset. I say, ‘Fuck you, lemme talk to her.’ He just hangs up. I hand over another wad of cash to Vodafone, but nobody ever picks up again. Coulda been one of her cousins over in Oz. Coulda been she gave me up for some other bloke. I still don’t know. And not knowing sucks harder than anything. Thought about going over, but I wouldn’t know where to find her. Wouldn’t even know where to start.
        Fucks me off, man. And it’s not getting any better. I know cos, when I tore that note off the door, it left a little strip of sellotape, and now winter’s come, it’s frozen there and every day, I see it when I get home, and my stomach feels like it’s rotting and I know I gotta have a coupla smokes ready or it turns into me punching the door, and there’s already a bit of a dent there from the day I found the note.
        Seth’s girl had the balls to do it in person, at least. Took him to his favourite restaurant and told him she was worried. Not moving to bloody Australia, not shagging around behind his back, just worried. They’d been together for like five years or something. They were best mates, but she wasn’t in love anymore, that’s all. Seth’s brother had just got married and she was worried he was gonna propose, so she was leaving him before he did.
        Poor bastard actually hurled pasta through his nose. Hasn’t been back to that restaurant since. The girl’s still around Ashburton, just started up with some other bloke. Seth sees them together sometimes. One time at a crosswalk and they all stood there waiting for the light for like three minutes, awkward as hell. At least I don’t gotta deal with that shit.
        We both pretended it was sweet as, just what we wanted, to be rid of those bitches. I got him to come up to Christchurch a coupla weekends and we picked up chicks at the clubs, had heaps of really average sex. Tried to feel like hot shit, even though half the girls gave us that overeager puppy love that means they woulda fucked anything with a pulse and a penis.
        Seth kept telling the guys it was his lucky boxers, just ordinary Bonds he wore all the time with his jeans hanging halfway down his ass. But I know for a fact his ex gave him those at Christmas right before she left him, and that’s why he wouldn’t take them off. Same time, I wore trainers all summer and wouldn’t cut my toenails for ages cos my ex’s little girl painted them sparkly gold the day before I found the note. I’d planned to get it off straight away, but after they left me, it woulda been like accepting that it was all over. If the paint was still there, everything was just a little ways in the past and there couldn’t be that much to undo to get it back.
        So, long story short, everything was not sweet as. But we carried on drinking and hooking up with random girls for months until Seth decided he’d fallen in love.
        See, I got this stack of car magazines in the toilet: NZ Performance Car, NZV8, Wheels, Motor, heaps of em. Kayla’s little girl used to go through and circle her favourite cars and make me promise to build them for her. After she’d picked out her cars, I was never allowed to biff them. So, one night, Seth comes wandering out of the toilet, magazine in hand, and chucks it on top of the beer fridge. ‘Check out this girl, bro!’
        I look and she’s tan, nice tits, bikini, cowgirl hat, hair so bleached it’s practically white-grey. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect for those magazines. I go, ‘Yeah, mate, she’s hot.’
        ‘Nah, she’s not hot. She’s gorgeous, bro. Fuckin smoking. I gotta have this woman. I love her already.’
        ‘Alright,’ I say, ‘then go get her.’ And I point to the caption. Says her name’s Emily and she’ll be at the Samsung Miss Hamilton comp at the V8 supercars in April. ‘You can have this woman, bro. You just gotta go to the Hamilton V8s and find her.’
        Seth looked at me like I’d proposed a trip to the bloody moon. ‘Nah bro, it doesn’t work like that.’
        ‘Why not bro? Anyplace else in the world, you see a beautiful girl in a magazine, you’d never have a chance of finding her, never get to talk to her. But in this glorious country of ours, they come right out and tell you where she’ll be, and afterward, she’ll be wanting blokes like us to buy her drinks. It’s brilliant.’
        I know it sounds totally dodge. But I was just stoked to see Seth excited about something. No way in hell I thought we’d actually find her. There were gonna be thirty thousand people there. No way in hell. I was just using the chick as an excuse to go to the V8s.
        Anyway, Seth didn’t think it was so brilliant either. Not cos he thought it was dodge, and not cos he wasn’t confident either. More just couldn’t be bothered. That’s how it was with his ex, too, heaps of sitting round watching telly and eating takeaways. Anything else was too much effort.
        But I’ve got a bit more ambition for him than he’s got for himself, especially when there’s gonna be fast cars and half naked chicks, so eventually I got him onside.
        He couldn’t flag work Friday, so we missed out on the practice sessions, but we got an early flight Saturday in time for the Supercar qualifying rounds. And we got a choice view from the Mill St grandstand, both the cars and the women.
        We hadn’t set eyes on any of the Samsung girls yet, but there were heaps of grid girls. A small army of stunning women with perfectly round breasts and smooth brown stomachs. They wandered around in swarms of matching outfits for Big Ben, Jim Beam, Lion Red, LG, Citizen, all the different sponsors.
        My favourite were the girls advertising for the city of Hamilton, even though they had them in tight black trousers instead of skirts or short shorts like the other girls. They wore these green and black crop tops with a zip between their boobs that most of the girls pulled right down for maximum cleavage. Best part was these tops were so tight, and their tits were so massive that most of them had a gap the size of my hand between the lower edge of their tops and their skin. Every time I had a look at one of those girls, I got to imagining what it would be like to slide my hand under there.
        And because of blokes like me having thoughts like that, no, actually because of all the families and little kids around, we heard a few Armourguard assholes hassling some of the promo girls to get some more clothes on, even though it was literally their job to be dressed like that.
        And all this family-friendly bullshit even got into the Samsung Miss Hamilton comp, which was ridiculous cos it overlapped with the Toyota and NZV8 races, so I only saw like four kids out of the stands anyway. But just in case, they dressed the girls like shiny blue air hostesses with those old-time waitress collars. At least they looked like slutty air hostesses, the kind that suck off the frequent flyers in pornos, but it was still a bloody one-piece. Every other promo girl had gorgeous abs, but the Samsung girls just had weird zip bulges.
        We’d made our way over to the Miss Hamilton competition stage after the Top 10 Shootout so we could have a feed and suss out a good place to stand. We wanted to be close enough to get some ogling in, obviously, but not so close that we might get noticed up the front and look like wankers when we tried to talk to Emily later. Seth’d brought the page from the magazine so he could safely identify her, even if they didn’t say her name. And it’s a good job he did cos easily three-quarters of the girls were tall skinny blondes and the identical air hostess getups didn’t help. One at a time, they strutted out to the corner of the stage and posed, hands on their hips, for a mob of horny blokes taking as many photos as they could before their women pulled them away to join the Subway queue.
        Emily turned up near the end of the babe parade. I’d already picked out two chicks I reckoned were her, which Seth rated as maybes, before she stepped forward and he screamed his bloody lungs out, ‘That’s her! AJ! That’s her!’ and started jabbing at the magazine photo.
        And lemme tell you, bro, even in that god-awful outfit, this girl was a perfect bloody ten. So much hotter than in the photo. She was still slightly tan, with the same flawless tits, but this time, I could make out the muscles in her upper arms when she struck the ‘you’ve been naughty’ pose and her gorgeous legs that had to be permanently flexed to stay vertical in those heels.
        Most of the girls had tried to look sexy with the pouty lips, eyes half-closed. But Emily seemed to think it was all a bit of fun. When she got to the corner of the stage, she tossed back her hair and just busted out laughing. Dimples, eye crinkles, and the first and only teeth we saw in the whole competition. Any man there woulda gladly given the whole V8s a miss if he coulda had her alone for five minutes and made her laugh like that for him.
        But there was only one man who’d come all the way from Ashburton just to find this girl. And he was still nattering on about it being her, with a mix of pride that he’d fancied her first and alarm that so many other blokes were suddenly peeling off her Air Samsung dress in their minds. Emily gave one final hair toss and strolled off with the clingy blue material hugging her ass.
        I was keen to stay and have a look at the last few girls, but Seth was already traipsing back toward the grandstand, so I followed him. When we got back to our seats, he muttered something just as Scott and Fogg went roaring past on their last lap, and I had to get him to repeat it. He practically had to shout, ‘Just having a think, bro!’
        So I let him think. He sat there with his fingers massaging his head while the NZV8 race finished up and all the fat blokes with empty plastic beer cups squeezed by him on their way to get refills. He sat that way for the entire Porsche GT3 Cup race, only looking up once, when Vincent’s car came down hard off the chicane and the crowd went off.
        Finally, in the gap between the Porsche race and the big Supercar race, I asked him how he was going.
        ‘I gotta have that girl, bro.’
        I asked him what the plan was, and the plan was very high school. He reckoned it would be damn near impossible to find Emily in a crowd of thirty or forty thousand people. But there was a fair chance we could find one outta the thirty or so blue Samsung girls somewhere around Himenoa Park and get her to pass along a message.
        So I rooted out a clean serviette from our lunch rubbish and he scrawled out his ‘I think you’re cute’ preteen valentine, asking her to text him that evening.
        With that ready to go for later, we settled in for the main event of the day, racing-wise: the V8 Supercars. Seth was finally sitting up and paying attention, even though I did catch him looking around the grandstands and pits for shiny blue every once in awhile. But, to be fair, even I started to get bored half an hour into it. There were a few collisions to liven things up, but my boy Murph crashed out early on, and Whincup held the lead from the second lap all the way through, with hardly any challenge from Winterbottom. Fifty-nine laps led by two bloody Fords is a bit of a waste if you ask me.
        After the podium presentations, us and forty thousand other people all around the track stood up, stretched, and turned to their mates with their arms in the air and their bellies sticking out. We followed the slow drain of the Mill St grandstand til we were on the ground and being swept behind the grandstand, away from the park.
        Fortunately, Seth’s a bloody giant. He’s like six foot five, so once he’d got his bearings, he just stood there and people went around while he had a hunt over the masses for stray Samsung girls. A minute later, he yelled out, ‘I see one!’ and pointed toward a row of red and white port-a-loos. We manoeuvred back through the race fans to where the toilet queues clumped up against the stinking plastic booths.
        The Samsung chick did not look amused to be waiting for a port-a-loo. I woulda thought they’d have special facilities somewhere for those girls, but maybe she just really had to go. She was next in line, so Seth got in quick. She looked at him like ‘who the fuck are you?’ but took the serviette and stuffed it in the top of her dress before the door opened and she joined the mess inside.
        ‘So?’ I asked him.
        ‘I reckon she’ll give it to her.’
        ‘I reckon she’ll use it for toilet tissue, bro.’ I pointed to a port-a-loo where a little kid was just leaving. The only toilet tissue in there was in wet clods stuck to the ground. Seth looked worried, so I laughed and said I was only having him on. ‘Chicks are good about this shit, bro. Don’t worry.’
        Well he was worried, but we found a pub and had some burgers and beer and tried to pretend like we weren’t waiting on a text. At least we didn’t have to pretend for too long. Maybe eight or so, Seth gets a text that says ‘If you wanna buy me a drink, I’ll be at Outback in an hour. Emily.’
        Seth went mental. He tried to be chill at first, just handed me his mobile, but when I wasn’t scrolling down fast enough, he grabbed it off me and started yelling: ‘It’s Emily, bro! She’s really texting me. I don’t believe it, man. I’m gonna score with her tonight. I can feel it.’
        ‘Slow down mate. She hasn’t even met you yet.’ But Seth wasn’t listening.
        When we got to the Outback, I felt like we were still at the track. There were Lion Red race flags hanging from the ceiling and six or seven girls prancing about in bikinis getting ready for the pub’s Miss V8 comp. The rest of the crowd was uni blokes getting pissed on RTD’s.
        Emily wasn’t one of the togs girls, so Seth watched the door and I picked up the next round of piss. We baggsed a table near the front, and in a coupla minutes, Emily literally sauntered in, literally bro. She had on a long green singlet and dark skinny jeans that made her look skinny as, but she swayed like a woman with monster curves. The chick she was with, not one of the other Samsung girls, but this shorter, dark haired chick, she actually did have curves, and she was shakin her ass to the music and jiggling her tits all around.
        I reckoned I was being subtle, but between elbowing Seth and eying up the other girl’s tits, I guess I got Emily’s attention. She came over before we could even get up, and held out a single solitary serviette square. I busted out laughing. The other Samsung chick really had used the rest for toilet tissue.
        ‘Are you Seth?’ she asked me.
        ‘Nah, I’m AJ. That one’s Seth.’
        She introduced her mate as Ashley and the other chick gave us a smile and tried to twist her tiny little skirt back down around her hips.
        So Seth picked up four handles and we toasted the V8s. Then all four of us had a chat til it gradually split off into Seth and Emily, and me and Ashley.
        Turns out Ashley’s one of those chicks who can talk cars and drink you handle for handle even though she does honours at uni and could score some rich poncy wanker if she wanted. Emily’s the same. Does fourth year finance papers. Probably marry a bloody banker.
        Anyway, Ashley and me talked about our rides and generally bullshitted for an hour. A coupla times, I remembered I was meant to be Seth’s wingman, so I dropped these real obvious hints about him being into Emily. Pretty much everything short of saying we literally came up to Hamilton to find her.
        I was only catching bits of the other conversation, but it seemed to be going alright. Seth shouted us another round, and I saw him touch Emily’s hand a coupla times without any flinching or bitch-slapping, so I reckoned he was getting somewhere.
        But then I heard Seth ask, ‘So how long have you been a promo girl?’
        Emily said, ‘Just a coupla years. I started out as a Repco girl and then—’
        But before she could finish and before I could shut him up, Seth launched into his favourite story: ‘Aw real? Repco ay? I did Repco once. Me and AJ and another bloke…’ and so on. The whole bloody story, with heaps of exaggerations and himself as the shining hero, liberating half a dozen bucket seats. And meanwhile both of them are just sitting there picking their nails, real embarrassed.
        Seth got to the end and looked at Emily like he wanted her to pat him on the head and give him a medal or, better yet, her naked body and a condom.
        But she just went, ‘Oh yeah?’
        He nodded all eager beaver. ‘Pretty sweet ay?’
        Emily was like, ‘Oh yeah, definitely.’ Then she stood, picked up her handbag, and said, ‘Sorry, boys. I gotta use the toilet.’ And Ashley followed her, like chicks always do.
        Seth just sat there happy as pigs in shit. He had no idea they weren’t coming back. He chattered happily for like a half hour before he suddenly noticed the girls had been gone a bloody long time. He swivelled around in his chair and spotted them on the other side of the bar joking and flirting with a coupla smooth faced uni boys in golf shirts.
        ‘Fuck,’ he said.
        ‘Yeah bro. Not too clever going on about Repco. Chicks like that don’t usually get with criminals.’
        ‘Fuhhhhhck. I had her bro. She was into me.’
        ‘I know. Come on. Let’s just have another beer and go.’
        Next morning, Seth wouldn’t get outta bed, so I sold his V8s pass and went along by myself. Another win for Whincup and I skipped out the last round of the Miss Hamilton comp. Not too much to report back to Seth. Flew out Monday morning. He didn’t come up to Christchurch for a coupla weeks, but when he did, we went hard out at the pubs again. Heaps more girls and fucking just for company. Only difference is he didn’t tell that bloody Repco story anymore.