Opportunity

by Grimshaw, Charlotte

  In the morning we had walked around the boardwalk, from one end of town to the centre, where the Len Lye sculpture, the Wind Wand, stretched high up into the sky. It moved with the wind, it dipped and bobbed. I thought it was beautiful. The surf crashed against the rocky breakwater, spray rose, the light was silvery, the white foam so pure white and cold, rainbows in the spray. Alan took my arm. Two teenage girls watched us, him short and plump in his scarf and black jacket, me much taller in my anorak and jeans, my glasses blurred with sea drops. I wished he would let go of my arm but he was talking and happy and I didn't want to pull away.

  Alan said he'd expected a flat, dull, inland town. He never looked at maps. He talked about the sea — so strange, he said, coming from Auckland, to see surf crashing in at the edge of a city. We passed a shopping centre and went into a modern building called Puke Ariki. There was a trendy café where you could sit out on the balcony and watch the Wind Wand moving like a giant flower stalk over the sea. Alan drank wine; I had a Coke. He called it rot-gut: 'A glass of rot-gut for my friend.' When he liked a place, he needed to describe it, and he wasn't satisfied until he'd called attention to every feature and oddity, everything ugly and lovely. I sat and listened, and chimed in sometimes. He wanted to know that I'd registered all the impressions he'd had. If I hadn't, he would explain, describe, until he was sure. He shifted nervously on his seat. He waved his hands for emphasis. Then he sat back, smiling.

  We finished our drinks and walked back up the main street. He talked about the mountain, how it had been shrouded in cloud when we'd flown in and been driven from the airport, how it was stubbornly refusing to show itself now.

  'The guys in the minibus,' he said, laughing. 'What were all the names?'

  We'd been met at the airport by a woman with a hard, flat Australian accent. She was the liaison person for the Taranaki Festival, at which Alan was to perform. He was a pianist, a Bach specialist. In the minivan were another sort of musicians — Kiwi rap artists. The woman had taken out a clipboard and asked for names. Humourless and earnest, they came out with '9-Funk', 'Snoop Rag', 'D-Money'. I could feel Alan laughing. I sat up the front with the woman, and Alan delightedly climbed in the back. He said, 'Are you 9, or Funk, or Snoop?' They corrected him. 'I'm D. He's Rag.' They high-fived and whooped and said 'Yo' and 'Dude'. They invited us to their dance party, which was to start at midnight. Alan enjoyed himself. He liked their strong brown arms, their tattoos, their masculine bravado. He thought they were hunky and sexy. He was titillated.

  'See that big lump of cloud there?' the driver said to me. 'That's the mountain. It's beautiful when it comes out.'

  The sky was blue, apart from the seething mass of greyblack cloud ahead. I had the idea the cloud was moving around the thing it was hiding, the wisps writhing, rising, plunging. I thought of bees circling a hive.

  'Why do the clouds cling to it like that?'

  'Dunno,' she said. 'You can go up it.'

  In the back someone said, 'Yo, surf 's up.'

  'Yo,' Alan said.

  Funk, an Islander, handsome, massive-featured, said, 'I've got some random new lyrics, man.'

  'Oh yes?' Alan said, gaily, hilariously.

  Funk made a series of snorting sounds — drumbeats. The heads of his crew began to bob in time. He started to deliver a string of Americanisms about dreams, destiny, the 'hood. Alan looked innocently polite. The rap went on, a saga of urban deprivation, gun violence. The heads bobbed. We drove through the beautiful landscape, the sunlit fertile fields. Cows watched us go by.

  I asked the driver, 'Is it much further?' I liked her. She was good-looking, tough, at ease. The way she tossed comments back to the rappers, you could tell she would fit in anywhere.

  'Nearly there,' she said. I wished I could think of something to say. I spent more time wondering how to talk to people than actually talking. I didn't know how to make people like me. Usually they'd moved on before I'd thought of anything.

  We pulled up at the hotel. In the car park Funk put his arm around Alan and said, 'My man! Dude! You're coming to my party.'

  'Absolutely,' Alan said.

  'Thank you for the ride,' I said to the driver. It sounded formal, sycophantic. Her phone rang. She got in the van. She said something and I started forward with a protesting 'No!' She drove away.

  Alan and Funk were marching into the foyer. I wondered whether Funk was gay. He was muscular, tattooed, powerful, but his face had a symmetrical beauty that might have communicated something to Alan. Now they were playing with Funk's mobile phone. Perhaps numbers were being exchanged. I followed, feeling awkward. I couldn't join in with the bobbing, chanting group crowding around the front desk, Alan in their midst. The receptionist, who was young and sweet, fluttered her slender fingers and pretended to be going to pieces, and charmed everyone. I stood out on the edge, smiling woodenly. It was like this at parties. You smiled, and yet your smile was contrived, rigged up to show willing, and you felt people sensed this and their own smiles faded and they edged away . . .

  Alan elbowed his way out of the group, holding up his room key. They called after him. 'Later, Al! See you tonight!'

  We took the stairs. Alan panted and puffed, flinging his scarf around his neck. I thought what a genius he had for friendship. He was generous, easy, flamboyant. People followed him. He made them laugh and feel good. I was proud of him; I liked the way he attracted people. I thought of the driver's words: 'I've just dropped off Alan Reece and his partner.' My protesting 'No!' lost in the abrupt roar of her acceleration. I wanted her to know I wasn't gay. Alan had been my music teacher since I was a boy. He was my gay friend. He was my only friend.

  All that day, as we walked around exploring, Alan's arm linked through mine, the mountain stayed hidden.

  ***

  My parents died in a car crash when I was nine. I moved in with my aunt and uncle. Their children had grown up and moved out, and they were happy to have me. My bedroom had a view of Mt Hobson. There were houses built up against the hillside and at night I couldn't see the houses, only their yellow windows against the mountain's black shape. I had a fantasy that the windows were set in the side of the hill; that it contained a whole city, blazing with light. I imagined people coming out of the mountain in the dark. I remember sitting alone in my room, late, looking across the black valley of the suburb, thinking about the hidden city — its heat, its bustle, its fires. I thought of energy building up in there. Some trigger would set it off, and then the mountain people would spill out. I imagined the people in the houses round about, sleeping, unaware, and then the sudden onslaught. Sometimes I imagined terrible scenes. Houses overrun, people screaming.

  When I turned ten my aunt decided I was too old to have her tuck me in any more. Sent to bed each night I went upstairs, switched on the light, put my drink of water on the chest of drawers, then sat on the bed, looking at the walls. No one would come to my room until next morning. Before, my childhood had been a blur of unconscious action. But in the bedroom at my aunt's house every move I made felt deliberate and willed. The hanging of my clothes, the angling of the lamp, the opening of the book.

  Here in New Plymouth, in the hotel, I had that old sense of dislocation, where everything was unfamiliar, nothing automatic. I remembered the loneliness of childhood. As an adult, you can look for someone to go to bed with. When you're a child, you've got no choice. You go to bed alone.

  I always enjoyed my piano lessons with Alan. After my parents died they were one thing that stayed the same. He lived in a big wooden villa with a terraced garden. The interior was quirky and camp, full of old movie posters and strange objects he'd collected. He had a taste for the grotesque and the weird — he had a stuffed bird and other curios, but he had beautiful things, too: vases and lamps and rugs, hundreds of books, and a large collection of music. It was always dim and quiet and peaceful in Alan's house. I sat at the piano and outside the rain fell and birds hopped on the wet lawn and the garden glowed in the afternoon light. Alan sat
among his treasures, in his black velvet jacket and his bright scarf, listening. He sat very still while I played, his eyes unseeing.

  He said, 'When I was little I had two aunts who used to take me to horror movies. I was too young to see the films and they terrified me. As soon as I'd recovered from one, they would take me to another.' He laughed.

  I thought about this. It seemed like a subtle form of feminine violence. Were the aunts sadistic, or just neglectful? Why didn't his mother intervene? I saw little Alan, shivering between two young women in a dark cinema. Coming out into the light, freshly traumatised. He took refuge in music. He knew he was gay from the age of eight. He knew about loneliness and disorientation. But he had courage and a tough character. He was an optimist. He had gay friends, and I used to think gayness was like a club. If you belonged, you had a common language. I didn't like it when Alan's friends came over. It interrupted our talk, and I was shut out.

  We were close. I was one of his best friends, maybe because I was so available. No one else would have come down to New Plymouth with him, just for the fun of the trip. I was studying music at university, didn't have to go to work.

  I had flatmates, a few mates at university. I was good at getting on with women, but women tended to be disappointed when I only wanted to be friends. The more time I spent with Alan, the less I had to make other connections. People assumed I was gay when I was with him, and sometimes I thought he exploited that, to keep me to himself. He was always saying how good-looking I was. We got on well because we both loved music. Every now and then I had an uneasy feeling. I wanted a girlfriend. I wasn't part of his world, not properly. And I hadn't made a world of my own.

  ***

  We went out. On the main street we found a café called the Ultralounge.

  Alan was drinking and in a good mood. It was Saturday night. He didn't have to perform until Sunday afternoon. We shared a bottle of wine. After the meal we walked down the town. There were posters advertising a band called Sticky Filth. Taranaki's favourite sons, they were called. Alan was amused by the name and wanted to see them for a laugh, but at the Convention Centre we were told they were sold out. I suggested a quiet bar across the road but Alan rolled his eyes, looking restless and bored. He nosed around the corner, eyeing the entrance to a basement pub, guarded by burly bouncers.

  He pointed. 'Let's go in there.'

  'Oh God,' I said, but there was no stopping him. I followed him down into a dark, deafening, smelly bar, full of drunk hoons and staggering women. People were setting up instruments on the stage. It was rough: you could sense violence, in the women as well as the men. Alan looked around, pleased and interested. A hefty man with long dreadlocks veered into me threateningly; behind him a woman was dancing and falling. I ordered a couple of strong drinks. The band came out on the stage. Alan nudged me sharply.

  The band were young and white — three of them, just boys. They had dreadlocks, but the sides of their heads were shaved. The bass player's face was painted completely black. The lead singer had delicate pixie features and black makeup: smeared eyes, black lips. All three wore clothes cut into rags and spraypainted with words: Hate Fuck Death Kill. The bass player took his place, putting on, as a final touch, an oxygen mask, from which dangled a plastic bag. You got the idea: they were horror men, post-Holocaust men; they were creatures who'd crept out of the rubble after the end of the world. They let loose a roar of sound and the singer began to rasp out the words of a song in a voice so deep and flat and violent you could hardly believe it came out of his slight teenage body.

  The audience had changed. The women had retreated to the edges of the room. Now, in front of the stage, the crowd was only male, and they were all doing the same thing, leaning forward and shaking their heads in time, and chanting bits of the chorus, roaring it. I looked across the rows of heads. It was a war dance, a dance of rage. It was atavistic, barbaric, primitive. I felt it vibrating through me — the rasping voice, the answer of the crowd, the rhythmically juddering bodies. I was outside it, appalled by the sound, but it was in me too, filling every part of me. And then it finished and the crowd broke ranks, surged forward, roared, raised fists, then there was another explosion of sound and the rhythmic headshaking began again. 'Zombie, zombie,' they were chanting. I thought of an ancient scene, smeared warriors in flickering light, weapons splattered with blood. The teenage shaman in his warpaint, calling his people to war.

  Alan was pulling my arm, shouting and pointing at the door.

  Outside he fanned himself and laughed. My ears were ringing. A man with a shaven head and tattoos on his face came close, looked intently at Alan, and said, 'Hello, sweetie.'

  'Hello!' Alan said. The man snarled and lurched away.

  ***

  Before Alan's performance the next day I sat at a café table drinking coffee. I had half an hour to wait in the Sunday afternoon sunshine. The sky was blue but the mountain was still hidden behind a shroud of mist, the clouds boiling around it, rising, falling. A man came along the street. His hair was tied in a ponytail and he was wearing a dark blue coat. He walked closer, stopped and said, 'Andrew Newgate!'

  'Andrew!' I said in surprise.

  He sat down, lit a roll-your-own cigarette, inhaled and leaned back, looking at me as if it wasn't at all strange to meet me in New Plymouth after all this time. His eyes were flat blue, expressionless. His hands were grimy, his nails black. His face was grey, unhealthy, finely lined. He looked no different from the time when I'd lived in a flat in Auckland and he, a friend of the landlord, had occupied the spare room out the back, a strange, cold, enigmatic character, talkative but self-enclosed — Andrew. Smith? Smythe? He was a shadow, a no man. The same first name was about all we had in common.

  'What are you doing here?'

  'I live here,' he told me. 'It's my home town.'

  I said I was down for the festival with my friend, the pianist Alan Reece. I came up with a few bits of small talk. Andrew looked at me with his unreadable eyes.

  I said, 'Remember the landlord, what a miser he was?'

  'I still hear from him.' His tone was hostile.

  'Tell him from me he was cheap bastard,' I said, laughing.

  He got up. 'Fight your own battles,' he said.

  I blinked.

  'Good luck to your boyfriend.'

  I was angry. 'He's not . . .' But he was walking away.

  He looked back once, without expression, a phantom fading back to the other side. He went around a corner, gone.

  I thought about the underground bar, the boys screaming 'Zombie, zombie.'

  Waiting for Alan I daydreamed: New Plymouth was a place of goblins, of ghouls.

  Alan played brilliantly. There was a big audience. Afterwards he was elated. He held my arm as we moved through the noisy crowd. We had drinks at the bar and he overdid it, with relief and cheerfulness. In the toilets he told me, 'I've gone and got drunk.' We came out into the milling foyer and he grabbed me and kissed me on the cheek. 'They're talking about you because you're so handsome,' he whispered. I pulled away but he held my arm tight, held on.

  The driver came for us. We drove through the green fields. Alan nodded and snored, his cheeks flushed, his clothes rumpled. I looked at him sleeping.

  The driver said, 'Finally.'

  Out the window I saw the mountain. The mist had lifted. Draped with the last wisps of cloud, rising against the blue sky, white and pure, cold and sharp, it appeared to me like an idea once obscured now become clear, something ancient, savage, unforgiving.

  terrorism

  Peter and I had been seeing each other for a year, spending one week at his place and the next at mine, although lately we'd spent more time at my apartment, mine being spacious with a deck we could sit out on and drink wine in the evenings and look over the sea, the harbour still and glassy through the long, hot summer and the evenings full of golden light turning to soft black shadows, and the voices in the street below, the drowsy summer street. I liked to walk along the ma
rina in the evening and look at the water, the rainbows of oil smearing the surface, the light dancing zigzags on the sides of the boats. Peter strolled, listening to me with his customary expression. He had an air of sweet, hastily assumed politeness, as if you'd startled him out of some dreamy reflection and he was gathering his thoughts, waiting to see what came next. He blinked, widened his blue eyes, smiled, and 'Really?' he would say, turning his head on one side while I laughed and explained myself, refining some statement that his manner had made seem clumsy or too forceful. The laugh always there behind his curved mouth, ready to break out. I felt I was the solid one. I was the solid one.

  Sometimes I woke in the night and saw him standing out on the deck, looking at the calm sea, the curtains moving around the open door, his cigarette a little point of fire spiralling into the dark as he threw it away. He was a light sleeper. His night prowling disturbed me; it made me think he was looking for something outside and beyond ourselves. I didn't like to think he wanted freedom. I pretended I didn't know how he drifted about in the night, walked through the rooms, played with his mobile phone, how he lay awake, his arms folded behind his head, his eyes open and unseeing.

  At the end of summer we started looking at houses. We'd talked about it on and off. I was eager to share a house but didn't want to seem so. I would have liked to stay in my flat and for Peter to move in — I didn't fancy moving into his cramped bachelor lair — but my landlord had given me notice he wanted to sell my place. Soon the sign would go up and I would have to find somewhere new to live. The sentence hanging over the place gave every evening out on the deck a poignant flavour, and already we were talking about the flat with a sense of nostalgia.

  Now I was lying on the bed, the real estate section open in front of me, circling possibilities: the small houses for first-home buyers, the inner-city ones.

  Neither of us had owned a house before; we agreed, jokingly, that it was about time. Or was I the one who said those things? Perhaps Peter only listened, then slid away from the subject. 'We can afford it!' I said. I was a senior manager; he was a journalist. Neither of us felt very grown up; secretly we couldn't believe how old we were, and the idea of buying a house made us anxious: was it capitulation, would it tie us too stiflingly together? I could imagine Peter asking himself these questions. I thought about them myself, and I hid how much I wanted it, how desperately I wanted it.