This is a story of seven chapters set in a small city in New Zealand. The hero has an odd name, the reason for which is explained as Dio takes his less than a smooth journey into adulthood. He falls into an usual occupation that connects him to an assortment of offbeat characters and the reader will learn that Dio enjoys a life richer in many ways than most people around him. It is hinted but only hinted when he's between girlfriends two married females from schooldays are 'available' and a couple of brief encounters with other women are described. Dio is between girlfriends when he meets a damsel in distress on the roadside; her mother's car has a puncture. Dio helps out and the twenty year old Carra and Dio gradually come together in every way, merging two different life-styles. Before too long they will marry
.
*
Dio Wellington's mother Nancy operated her small business from her home and died while receiving conventional medical treatment in hospital. For a while it was rumored that she had poisoned herself experimenting with a home-made remedy.
"Your mother was just unfortunate," Dio was told at the hospital when retrieving his mother's possessions. "Surgeons sometimes have a bad day on Mondays."
Dio was relieved the cause of death was medical misadventure rather than cancer; his mother had feared dying of cancer. Unfortunately she wasn't around to enjoy hearing that explanation.
Nancy was buried after a small service at the cemetery chapel attended by six people but not her long estranged husband. An hour after sadly returning home to an empty house Dio answered a knock on the door to two serious-faced police constables who asked if they could enter and talk to him.
After confirming Dio's identity, the woman constable, identified herself as Eve Burgess and gently advised him that his father had died. She reported that Owen Stanley Wellington had fallen down some steps when leaving a building near his home in Dunedin, dying instantly from head inquiries. There were no suspicious circumstances as there had been four witnesses, two of them passers-by.
So Dio traveled south to Dunedin to attend the burial of his second parent in the same week, giving deep meaning to the expression, "I'm having a bad week." He coped stoically.
Death certificates show that Mrs Nancy Lydia Wellington died during surgery of uncontrollable hemorrhaging while Mr Owen Wellington died after accidentally falling down concrete steps (of a brothel, the funeral director told Dio) headlong into a concrete street pole.
When the affairs of his parents settled, Dio was left in possession of his mom's modest home and $3212.00 as well as the need to clear debts against his father's estate totaling $1203.07.
Dio's run a bad luck continued when later the next month he was made redundant for the third time in four years, a rather depressing outcome for a thirty-two year old. But when you're down like that, the only way forward is upwards, and so it came to be.
"These are depressing times," he sighed aloud, watching birds in the overhanging tree. He was lounging outdoors at sunset on the terrace at the rear of his house – which he would continue calling his mother's house.
He decided to play some lively music to chase away his blues, choosing one of his mother's favorite CDs, 'The Beach Boys' Greatest Hits'.
A telephone call ended his loneliness. It was a girlfriend Louise, who said Frank was about to cook a barbecue and they would like him to join them. "Come on Dio," Louise pleaded. "If you stay by yourself you'll start moping."
"Who me? Get away with you, I'm fine," he lied.
"I'm cooking a roast on so I'll just scoff that, watch a bit of TV and have an early night. I'll call to see you at the restaurant later in the week. Bye." He disconnected before Louise began telling him she wouldn't take no for an answer; Louise was a bit like that.
Dio pulled out a pizza from the freezer and turned the oven to fan-bake. So, there was no roast; had he lied again?
"It's a roast pizza," he grinned.
Dio, who'd entered employment with a bank as a trainee in IT (information technology), loved the work but hated the establishment. The bank branch was structured and operated somewhat like a high school for adults. So after two years he left to join the IT department of the town's biggest insurance office and three years later moved to an accountant's office to run the partnership's IT system. That activity and the work environment proved to be as boring as the bank so he moved to similar positions, yielding to two to three year migratory urges. This placed him with a trucking firm, a rural veterinarian practice then his old high school.
This cycle of drifting appeared to break when he was head-hunted to set up a Helpdesk for a huge retail discount warehouse that had decided to sell computers and peripherals. Setting up the desk and helping to educated staff to handle computer sales enquiries were new challenges, but then once the personnel were all trained the Helpdesk calls dwindled. At that point Dio realized that his role in that company had run its course so his 'termination' notice did not come as a surprise.
Something will turn up, thought Dio, entering the bank where he used to work to deposit his redundancy check. Perhaps he should reconsider his career path? He had no idea where to start.
Two minutes later his mind had worked it out for him: To avoid the disheartening frequency of redundancies in the dog-eat-dog unstable computer industry, he'd set up in the business himself. He would specialize in home visits rather than compete head-on with company computer telephone support operators.
Two blocks down Main Street Dio turned into the inaptly named Cathedral Street (the town never had possessed such a lofty place of worship) and entered the offices of the
Town & Country Messenger
. He lodged an advertisement to run under Work Wanted section:
Require help with your home computer? Phone Dio Helpdesk, 22 7251
.
A week went by, with no calls for help. He checked the phone number in the advertisement; it was correct. So he reworded his advertisement:
Expert technician will solve your home computing problems. Phone Dio Helpdesk, 22 7251
.
Again no calls, not even unproductive enquiries.
Experiencing a sag in confidence, he looked up newspaper advertisements for companies wanting Helpdesk technicians. The only company advertising was the company that had taken over one of the businesses he'd formerly worked for and then had declared him and his team-mates redundant. It was unlikely the company would re-employ a worker it had made redundant, so he was at a dead-end. The only thing to do was to go out and have a good time.
* * *
Dio was a good looking, square-shouldered and even-tempered man standing six-one tall. Just the kind of young man for a girl to bring home to mother to appraise, but surprisingly that simply had not happened because of the insidious reputation of Dio's mum.
As an herbalist, Dio's mother Nancy had specialized in consulting with male patients. She named her only child after the Greek herbalist Pedanius Dioscorides (circa 40-90 AD) – the father of pharmacy. The youngster was unable to pronounce his own name Dioscorides so Nancy shortened it, much to the relief of everyone including herself and her wayward husband.
"My Dio will make an ideal husband," his mother often said. To her regret, in her time no woman came to that same conclusion. Yet the rather handsome bachelor had little trouble finding dates. Mostly they were married women around his age or females of various ages who either had difficulty finding dates or, alternatively, while being attractively sunny and well-featured were between dates with 'real men'.
On this particular evening on his dead-end day he was buying gin and tonics for Sarisha Sharma, a lovely woman of part-Indian descent who was a taxi owner-driver. She possesses an incredible smile. During the evening Sarisha's smile transformed into a frown as she complained about the amount of 'filth' that was coming on to her home computer as unsolicited e-mails.
"Why would I want to extend my penis by up to four inches?" she complained.
Dio had no idea.
"And why are people on the web so keen to sell me Viagra? I don't want it and sure as hell my husband doesn't need it – no way!"
Again he had no idea and switched the conversation to the old days when they used to go skinny dipping.
