Chapter Two
August 5th 2166
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"Is it time for dinner, Ray? Is it salmon again? It's salmon, right?"
Shepard finally puts down her little wrench and leaves it on her oil rag next to the allen key. She hasn't really been doing anything for nearly an hour. Just humming to herself and feeling hungry.
"Salmon tonight? Ray? I'm thinking you oughtta put some pastry over it. Salmon… y'know… pie."
Ray is still behind the motorcycle. He is small, not much bigger than Shepard herself and she can barely see him behind it.
"Hey Ray! Salmon? Hey! Heeeeeeeey!"
There is an audible grunt, which she suspects has nothing to do with his work on the bike.
"We are having pork and beans." It's hard to make out from his voice if he is amused or just irritated by the long-running salmon joke.
"What did you say? I can't hear you behind that thing. Salmon and beans? What kind of beans do you have with salmon? Butterbeans?"
"Kid, it's pork and beans. I don't like salmon. I will never serve you salmon again. Maybe if you finish your work for today I'll give you some money and you can buy some salmon of your own."
Shepard stays silent. There isn't much to say to this. Clearly Ray doesn't want to play. She scrapes her greasy hair behind her and ties it off, then wipes her hand on the oil rag. She hums for a moment. She really doesn't want to finish this work. She's been doing it all day and it's nearly there. She just doesn't feel like work anymore.
"Ray, my hair is all covered in stuff. Can I get a shower and then we'll have the salmon? I'll help you peel the vegetables."
Ray still doesn't look up. He isn't in a good mood today. "Enough with the salmon. That wasn't funny when you came up with it. No you can't get a damn shower. You're on the clock, so earn your room and board. Have you got the new pads in there?"
Shepard pouts at the shiny, black bike. "Yeah. It was hard."
"Well then put the bolts back, stick the wheel on there and you're done. The hell are you complaining about?"
Furrowing her eyebrows, the girl gets angry. She picks up the wrench and deliberately strikes the wheel with it so that Ray thinks she is working. It isn't right that she should be working a full day job. She's twelve years old, for God's sake. Why did she have do install brake pads on a Sunday? Why did it have to be pork and beans every other night?
Sometimes she wishes that Ray had never taken her out of the Landing. There were other kids there and they didn't have to work for their bed. It was fun. But the place got too crowded, so the older kids had to leave. Ray arrived and just took her in, took her all the way to this place here in the middle of Illinois and made her fix old-time cars all day. Gave her a bed and stuff.
There is a sound of rough hands on overalls as Ray stands up. He flicks on the radio, as he calls it, and a typically sweet Billie Holiday song plays into the garage. Shepard immediately starts tightening the bolts in front of her, hoping he didn't see her pouting at the bike.
She feels a hot hand on her shoulder, and she knows there is grease on it now.
"It is a weekend. You go make yourself, you know, relatively pretty and I'll finish up here."
Shepard doesn't look at him. "I can do it. It won't take me long. Just gotta put the wheel back now."
The hand pats her and it feels good. He didn't pat her often and that made it better. She just wishes he were more like a dad than a boss to her, that's all. Suddenly she is unhappy again and she decides to shut it out. She works hard until she's done. Finally the wheel is reattached and secure. Ray can check to make sure everything is done right later. It is, so she doesn't have to worry about it.
The clock says it's two minutes to five PM. That will do. She knows there won't be any complaints if she goes to shower a couple of minutes early. She says it's done and hastily puts the tools on the wall. Sure would be nice if they had an omni-tool in this place. It would cut their work in half. Well, it wouldn't help replacing brake pads, but with the fancier jobs.
As she puts her foot on the first of the stairs she hears his voice just barely louder than Holiday's. He says "Atta girl." She loves it when he does that.
When she gets upstairs she pulls off the dirty t-shirt and heads straight to the shower. Her hair is all over the place and keeps sticking to her face. So she showers and hums the song from the radio.
Eventually she reappears, scrubbed clean and wearing a new, white t-shirt and blue pants. She is grinning to nobody as she heads into her small bedroom and lays on the bed. The window is shut and it's hot, so she opens it and enjoys the breeze completely.
She has to admit, no matter how much she misses the Landing, it is nice having her own bedroom. The room is small but she has a big wardrobe and a desk with a mirror. She has a little make-up too, but lately she doesn't see the point in wearing it. She tells herself this is because she's getting older. She's growing up.
Come to think of it, Ray isn't so bad. He does the cooking most nights, even if he is unnaturally fixated on pork and beans these days. But he's like that, and she finds it kind of sweet. Ray Dolphus is the kind of person who gets stuck on little obsessions and won't let them go for months, until he just quits them and moves on to something else. Shepard likes that about him. Every now and again he surprises her with something crazy, like the time he decided he was going to learn piano and he just bought this big keyboard and set it up in the garage. He played it pretty well until he got bored and sold it. Shepard is like that too sometimes. Her jokes about the salmon incident are currently the big thing in conversation, but soon she will tire of it and find another little catchphrase.
The other great thing about Ray is his stories. He has led so many different lives and has an anecdote for every one. Her favourite is the story where he met the Citadel ambassador and slept with his wife, but he also has a lot of stories about the year he spent serving in the armed forces. The middle-aged mechanic is a quiet, man, but hilarious when he wants to be. He has total confidence in himself and he can bring about any reaction he wants in his young lodger. She isn't sure she prefers him to her old life, but she admires him a lot.
Interrupting her train of thought, Ray's uniquely rough and yet squeaky voice calls her first name from the bottom of the stairs. The garage is directly underneath. There is a kitchen attached to the back but everything else is built on top. She hears him wait for a reply for a couple of seconds then he gives up and wanders back to the kitchen.
When she finds the energy to drag her relaxed body from the bed, Shepard is starting to get excited about dinner. She can't smell anything, so she lets her imagination have a little fun. Maybe just this once, he really has cooked salmon.
No, that would be ridiculous. He hates salmon. They had it once after that big payday and he made such a fuss out of how much he didn't like it. She had both pieces with ketchup and loved it. Never again, he said. When the girl arrives at the dinner table she has convinced herself that Ray has made tuna fish as an awkward, extremely male way of thanking her for working all weekend without fully capitulating to the salmon demands.
"Dinner's up," he says, looking behind him.
"Do I smell salmon?" she asks, grinning ridiculously to annoy him.
He groans, opens the oven and pulls out a pan. It's pork and beans.
She is sad for a moment, then pours a drink of apple juice and sits down. She likes pork and beans. They begin to eat in almost silence, because they are both tired. It gets boring, so Shepard wonders if she can convince the boss to talk a bit. One of his stories would go well with dinner and get him to lighten up a little. After trying to think of a suitable question, she remembers what she was going to ask him the other day.
"Hey Ray, you know your last name?"
"Yes, I do."
"It's kind of weird, isn't it? How did your family come by that name?"
Ray looks up from his food and smiles a smile he has been trying to conceal.
"Let's be straight with each other here, my nosy little friend. You're asking if the name Dolphus is turian."
She feels her cheeks heat up. "It sounds like an alien name. I didn't mean to…"
"You didn't. It's fine. As a matter fact I've been wondering when you'd get around to asking me about that. You shouldn't say alien, by the way. It's common. I like to say non-human."
Shepard wonders about this. She didn't mean the word offensively. She has never heard it used to disparage the alien species, not even on the extranet. There are much worse words if one intends offence. Come to think of it, everyone calls them aliens, even the people on the news. She considers telling him so, but decides against it. He didn't make it sound like it was a big deal so she forgets it for now.
As she eats her pork and beans Ray gets an impish look on his face and tells her one of the best stories he's ever told. It concerns a friendship with a female turian when he lived in Ireland. He says young Shepard reminds him of her.
It's strange to imagine meeting a non-human, let alone having the kind of adventures with one that Ray is describing. Shepard can't decide if she really believes any of it, but the story cheers them both up while they eat.