Work in Progress

by Paul Thomas

  Now with each successive dream I come down to earth a little harder.

  The others are more difficult to categorise. In these jump-cut narratives, Emily is an enigmatic figure, prepared to acknowledge our blood tie but otherwise detached and unforthcoming. I can be going around in futile circles but she won’t intervene, even though she knows I’ve forgotten to pack my passport or back up my work in progress onto CDs.

  Fizzing with malice and eager to fuck me up in any way they can, the women in my life make guest appearances. Emily looks on impassively, occasionally shrugging her shoulders as if to say, ‘What did you expect? Forgiveness? Tenderness? Love?’

  Last night I rendezvoused with Samantha in a restaurant, presumably in Paris. She seemed keen to pick up where we left off but coming back from the toilet I overheard her talking on her cellphone in the corridor. She was calling someone mon cheri and laughing about me behind my back, saying I must have a screw loose to make such a big deal of a few sympathy fucks all those years ago.

  I went back to the table. Emily was sitting at the bar sipping a cocktail. She shrugged. I tried to read her expression but it kept shifting. After a while I realised she was feeling sorry for me but at the same time trying not to laugh.

  Stanley answers his cellphone. He’s a little tentative, which I assume means he’d like to laugh his head off but is restraining himself until he’s reasonably sure I’m not suicidal. I give him the go-ahead.

  ‘You’re telling me you don’t give a shit?’

  ‘I can’t change the past,’ I say, ‘and I can’t control what people think of me so there’s not much point stewing over it.’

  ‘What about that yesterday’s man stuff?’

  ‘It’s up to me to prove them wrong, isn’t it? And if I can’t, well, then you’d have to say they got it right.’

  ‘Jesus, we are philosophical this morning. Did you get laid last night?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a maybe,’ he says. ‘So when are you off to Gay Paree?’

  ‘Now seems a good time.’

  ‘So what are you waiting for?’

  ‘I need one more favour. Could you get your bloodhounds to track down someone else?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My daughter.’

  ‘You’ve got a daughter?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Fuck, Max, you never cease to amaze me. Where’s she at?’

  ‘Last I saw her — in fact, the only time I saw her — was in London. That was fifteen years ago; she was three at the time.’

  ‘Two birds with one stone, eh?’

  Someone else said that recently. That’s right, Chas, talking about the feminists narking us to the press.

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘Another way of looking at it is that you’re a glutton for punishment.’

  ‘There’s an encouraging thought.’

  ‘As you pointed out, Max, people change.’

  ‘I hope so in her case. It’d be a bit of a let-down if she’s still being pushed around in a stroller.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ he says, ‘you email me the details and any useful info and I’ll get the boys onto it. I’ve got to go now — my Eggs Benedict have arrived.’

  ‘Sorry, bad timing.’

  ‘No problemo. Hang on, I’m just trying to decipher what Brigit’s written on her napkin; oh, she says hi and keep your chin up.’

  Do you ever have that feeling of being watched? It’s hard to know what to make of it. If you glance around and someone’s looking at you, it’s tempting to chalk one up for your sixth sense. But it might just be coincidence: you happened to look up just as the other person’s gaze happened to alight on you. Because your eyes meet, their gaze lingers for a moment or two before continuing the search for someone worth looking at. On the other hand, it might appear as if no one in the vicinity is taking the slightest notice of you when in fact until a split second ago the woman in the corner pretending to do the crossword had you in her cross-hairs.

  Or not. When you start thinking this way, it’s a good idea to ask yourself, am I really that fascinating? If the answer’s yes, then your sixth sense is neither here nor there — fascinating people get stared at. I don’t have that problem but right now my sixth sense is picking up bad vibes. Either someone’s giving me the heavy eye or paranoia’s setting in.

  I’m at the café, down the back just out of hearing range of the toilet, minding my own business, nose in the Dellasandro. I’m not fascinating but my photo is in today’s paper, along with an incriminating article. If I am being stared at, it won’t be with fascination or heavy-lidded desire. Kate branded me a sleaze and I imagine most readers would agree. Perhaps Chas was right and I’d better get used to being Max Napier, pervert.

  The young man sitting against the opposite wall with his back to the door doesn’t look away; he’s not embarrassed or intimidated by my counter-stare. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking but I associate bony faces attached to necks you could snap over your knee with the persecution-complex loopiness of the bedsit.

  I raise my eyebrows inquiringly. He looks down at the newspaper spread out in front of him, looks back up and raises his eyebrows. I shrug and return to Dellasandro. Chair-legs scrape on the floorboards and I register movement in my peripheral vision. It looks like he’s coming over to give me a piece of his mind.

  He drops a hand on the unoccupied chair. ‘Well, if it isn’t the one and only Max Napier.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘You’re an anti-social sod, aren’t you?’ he says, sitting down. ‘Last time I tried to have a chinwag, you buggered off before I had a chance to introduce myself.’

  Yes, he looks like one of those threadbare psychotics who hang around writers’ festivals, their backpacks sagging under the weight of vast, concussive manuscripts.

  ‘I must’ve been caught short.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?’ he says. ‘It was right here, a couple of months ago.’

  Oh, Christ, it’s the wanker. ‘You’ve had a haircut.’

  ‘Yeah, ponytails are so yesterday, don’t you think?’ He grins; the makeover didn’t extend to his teeth. ‘Not the only thing, eh?’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘You’re also a fibber, Max — you said you’d never tried your hand at porn.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve read the article, you’ll understand why I kept it to myself.’

  ‘Yeah, but didn’t I tell you I was a porn freak? Shit, I would’ve asked for your autograph. When was the last time that happened?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘There you go.’ He grins again, this time with such lavish warmth that I’d reciprocate if he wasn’t so obviously a disturbed individual. ‘So how do I get hold of your books? I can’t wait to read them. Man, what a buzz, reading porn when you’ve met the author.’

  ‘You can’t get them here,’ I say. ‘They were only published in the States.’

  ‘Bummer. Well, how about lending them to me?’ He actually places his hand on his heart. ‘Promise I’ll return them.’

  ‘I used to have a few copies hidden away but I think my ex-wife distributed them among our friends, to show them what a degenerate I was.’

  He groans.

  ‘Look, I’ll have a hunt at home; if I’ve got any, they’re yours. What’s your name?’

  ‘Bevan.’

  ‘Okay, Bevan. If I find any, I’ll leave them with Luciana, the manager here, you know who I mean?’

  He nods.

  ‘I’m off overseas in a couple of days so check with her at the end of the week.’

  ‘Will you sign them? You know, to Bevan from Max Napier.’

  ‘You bet.’ I stand up. ‘I’m not walking out on you, I’ve just go to go.’

  ‘That’s okay. How long are you away for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you’re coming back, right?’

>   ‘Yeah, I’m coming back.’

  ‘So I might see you around?’

  ‘Well, I’m a regular here.’

  He treats me to another sunny grin. ‘I can’t wait to tell my girlfriend I’ve been hanging out with Max Napier.’

  ‘You’ve got a girlfriend?’

  He nods shyly. ‘My first. She wouldn’t go out with me until I lost the ponytail.’

  ‘Well, good luck to you both.’

  ‘You too, dude. Keep up the good work.’

  In my study there’s a carton containing old notebooks and abandoned manuscripts and, I hope, at least one of my porn novels. I’ll have to write a covering note explaining that Woody Bleek was my nom de porn. I hope Bevan believes me.

  twenty-one

  The lunch club meets at a venue of Sally’s choosing, a new place in Remuera where young mothers exuding serene indifference to the world outside their antiseptic bubbles discuss birthday parties and renovations over Salade Niçoise and Italian mineral water. As they split the bill and weigh up the tip, the second sitting arrives: older women inclined to overkill in their grooming who eat and drink and gossip robustly to take their minds off creeping obsolescence and futures measured out in meandering rounds of golf and weekends at beach-houses flicking through last year’s glossy magazines.

  This stainless steel salon where suburban aspiration mingles with middle-aged ennui is an appropriate setting for our last lunch. Rick and Sally are moving to Sydney, joining the great relocation. Although Rick’s plan was to work out his management contract and wind down to consultancy work, the people who bought his business offered him a fat package to get hands on Sydneyside.

  It’s rush-hour in the fast lane: Rick’s already there living out of a suitcase and Sally heads over tomorrow to house-hunt. It hasn’t taken her long to get used to the idea; suddenly Auckland’s shortcomings are barely tolerable and to stay here would be to sell themselves short. They belong in Sydney, that sun-blinded powerhouse of energy and ambition where high achievers and style queens can revel in their success without a placatory nod to the tall-poppy syndrome.

  I used to go on about Sydney but there’s a limit to how long you can wish you were elsewhere. After a while the place you’ve left stops tugging at you and the place you’re at starts growing on you. In fact, this wanderer is coming to terms with the realisation that his rambling days are done. I won’t be hitting the road again. I no longer believe that a change of scene will make a difference and no longer have what it takes to go somewhere new and cobble together an existence of sorts.

  What used to bug me about Auckland — mainly that it wasn’t London or Paris or Sydney — doesn’t bug me any more. I’ve adjusted to the chilly nights and the fact you can’t get magret de canard or kipfler potatoes, and my friends put on as good a dinner party as the people who entertained me in those other places. There were some fine hosts among them but few took me to their hearts. I was always someone’s boyfriend or husband or a friend of a friend, an extra who might or might not add value to the evening. Some found me good company, others didn’t. Some found me hard to talk to; some didn’t like the way I talked to their wives or girlfriends. Some probably wouldn’t mind seeing me again and others would look straight through me. Very few have kept in touch and many wouldn’t give me a thought from one year to the next.

  Old friends don’t always age as you expect them to. Some become less interesting. They might become active Rotarians or local body politicians or succumb to new-age silliness, living on green tea and seaweed and worshipping a shard of coloured crystal or believing Republicans are the new Nazis. Some stagnate. Some get bitter because they haven’t become notable, as was widely predicted when they were young and tidy and overly respectful of their elders. Some let their children take over their lives. Some become bores who divert all conversation to their pet subjects. And some stay exactly the same, which doesn’t necessarily work for them or you.

  But old friends stay the course. They hold on to you even when you give them every reason not to. Primitives fear having their photographs taken because they believe their soul is stolen in the process. Old friends file away mental snapshots and assemble a portfolio that shows you in your best light.

  Old friends understand, rationalise, make excuses, find a way to forgive. Like these two. If any other writer had been exposed as a secret pornographer they wouldn’t have laughed it off. They would have blackballed him at the book club.

  So I speak up for those of us who are staying put, pitting Auckland’s melting-pot multiculturalism, temperate climate, uncrowded beaches and old friends against Sydney’s bushfires, lethal spiders, terrorism jitters and four million strangers.

  Sally seems to think this amounts to a betrayal. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing,’ she shrills. ‘Jesus, Max, when I think of the times I’ve listened to you crap on about how Sydney pisses all over Auckland … Well, I’m just gobsmacked.’

  ‘Much as I like hearing it from you, Max, I have to say Sally’s got a point,’ says Brigit with the cool smile she’s maintained from the outset. ‘Have you been converted or are you just being contrary?’

  ‘A bit of both,’ I say. ‘But then there was always an element of contrariness in my cheerleading for Sydney.’

  ‘Okay, now we’ve established you’re Mr Contrary,’ says Sally, ‘how about you tell us what you really think.’

  ‘Well, put it this way, if I wanted to, there’s nothing to stop me moving back to Sydney tomorrow.’

  That’s true, insofar as they’d allow me to enter the country.

  ‘So we shouldn’t expect a visit,’ says Sally. ‘I don’t know how we’ll cope.’

  The lunch doesn’t spark. God knows I’ve soured this sort of occasion often enough to know when I should have kept my opinions to myself or expressed them with less flamethrower intensity but I didn’t spoil this one because there was nothing to spoil. All Sally wants to talk about is Sydney house prices and family stuff and why should I have to take an interest in which schools her kids will go to? Last time Brigit was rolling her eyes at Sally’s salaciousness; now she’s suppressing a yawn.

  Privately Sally must squirm when she thinks about how she gambled with her emotional savings, perhaps to the point that if her lover had chosen his moment and pushed hard enough, she would have gone for broke. She seems to have concluded that she can’t risk even pretending to be a little bit sinful. Like a dry alcoholic who can never be a social drinker, one taste and the craving would come flooding back. So she’s gone good with a vengeance, making the rest of us suffer for her sins.

  Her cellphone rings as we browse the dessert menu. The real estate agent has a prospective buyer who wants a private viewing. Two minutes later Sally’s gone in a flurry of mild regret and fleeting embraces, rushing to catch up with her heart and mind, which have already left the country.

  Brigit’s in no hurry. In fact, the glass of dessert wine is her idea. So is talking about Stanley.

  ‘I hear he bailed out your sister.’

  ‘That was nice of him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Is that really how you see it?’

  ‘I’m reasonably sure.’

  ‘Well, you know him a lot better than I do …’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ I say. ‘You two must’ve clocked up a fair amount of face time by now.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she says. ‘That’s the Max Napier we know and love.’

  ‘A perfectly innocent observation.’

  ‘As my kids would say, yeah, right. Come on, Max, you know perfectly well Stanley doesn’t do anything, especially if it involves spending money, unless there’s something in it for him.’

  Seeing she’s raised the subject and I’m leaving the country tonight … ‘All right, you tell me: where’s the angle for Stanley in sinking a million bucks into a house he can’t rent out or move into?’

  ‘Felicity owes him, which means you owe him.’ She chuckles, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know
why I’m telling you this, Max — you’re the expert on the games people play. It must’ve taken you all of ten seconds to figure out.’

  ‘Bear with me. Why would Stanley want to put me under an obligation?’

  Breaking the habits of a lifetime, Brigit decides to finish what’s on her plate. She takes her time rounding up the remnants of her tiramisu, applying her napkin to an imaginary speck of cream and having a sip of Noble Riesling followed by a mouthful of mineral water. My scrutiny draws a slow, mysterious smile.

  ‘I’d say there are a few reasons, some of which go back to the London days, which he’s always talking about. He’s very fond of you, Max, but he knows you’re not an uncritical admirer. Part of him quite likes that but there’s another part that prefers unflagging esteem. With Stanley it all comes down to control: he likes to control relationships so they wax and wane and inevitably end according to his needs and his timetable.’

  ‘See, I told you,’ I say. ‘I don’t know him as well as you do.’

  Brigit laughs, tossing her head back. She’s particularly relaxed today — and particularly desirable. Despite the talking to I gave myself on the way here, I can’t help envying Stanley his opportunity and his ruthless exploitation of it.

  ‘Oh, Max, I doubt there’s anything I could say about Stanley that would surprise you. I mean, you know perfectly well what he’s up to with Felicity and you know perfectly well what he’s up to with me.’

  ‘I owe him, remember? I have to watch my step.’