by Pip Adam
Guy hadn’t heard from Tommy either, but Kurt had called him.
Carla messaged Kurt. ‘Are you sure you don’t have Dominic’s number?’
It only took a second for Kurt to reply. ‘No. Man. Carla. I wish I did. Have you tried Tommy again?’
That was it. Right there. She never knew where the line was until she was over it. She was nagging.
Duey came to the reception desk. Everyone was leaving. She looked at the screen, at her day tomorrow. ‘Where did Tommy say those guys came from,’ she asked, nodding towards the space Guy had left.
Carla shrugged, leaning on the other side of the reception desk, holding the headshots again. ‘They’re both supposed to be from 62 but no one knows Dominic and there’s no watermark on his prints.’
‘Friends,’ Duey said.
‘Friends.’
Duey laughed a bit to herself. This was why she never wanted to work in fashion again. She was finished for the day. Somewhere her wages and commission were being calculated and they would appear in her bank next Wednesday. Her ACC was taken care of, her tax. Her rent would come out automatically, and a bit would go into her savings account. Carla was looking at Dominic’s headshot like she could cut his hair from where she was, with her eyes and her frustration.
Duey looked at the booking screen again. Then out to the street, which was beginning to clog with cars and buses.
‘Does that look like a cowlick?’ Carla said, still looking at the photo.
Duey looked down the counter at the photo, hand still on the mouse. It did. It looked like the worst kind of growth pattern you could have for the haircut Carla needed to do. ‘Maybe.’
‘Fuck.’
‘What’s at the location?’
‘Not a basin.’ Carla held the print closer and closer.
‘Sharona said there was a basin.’ Duey clicked away.
‘She was only saying that to make me feel better.’
‘She’s odd like that.’ Duey didn’t really think it was odd but she didn’t want to get into a conversation about why Sharona would lie.
Duey could see Carla turning to her out of the corner of her eye. ‘Maybe you could come tomorrow?’
‘Where?’ Duey wouldn’t look up. Couldn’t look up. She knew things were tough. She knew things were awful. Tommy. The dog. The always wanting to go away again but not being able to. She understood all that, but she understood how things were tough for her, too. How she had worked long and hard for things to not be awful and how they could become awful again if she just took her eye off the ball for a moment. That was the price she paid for this – the calmness – constant vigilance. That was the price of her peace. Her tiny apartment, her car that drove, her safety.
‘You could come to the shoot.’ Carla was looking over Duey’s shoulder now, looking at her bookings for tomorrow. ‘Donella could do that colour.’ Carla was pointing at the screen. ‘You could pop in. You could drive us out there, help with the haircut, and drive back.’
Duey looked at the screen.
‘It would totally work.’ Carla was back, looking at the headshots. ‘Or I could bring him here.’
‘Would there be time?’ Duey asked.
‘No,’ Carla said, shaking her head. ‘No. Not at all. But, you know.’ She looked at her phone again.
Duey kept in mind that Carla had made the decision to go. She didn’t always tell it that way, but Duey had, and she’d helped her when she came back. More than Carla realised. She was pretty sure of that. Pretty sure she didn’t remember those first weeks.
Carla was waiting Duey out. She wouldn’t speak again. Duey knew the drill but she was afraid and she didn’t know what of. She knew Carla thought she’d let her down and maybe she had, but that was years ago. There was a lot of water under the bridge.
‘I have that cut as well,’ Duey said finally, pointing at the screen. ‘I can’t reschedule that. She’s only in town for a couple of days. And then she’s away.’
Carla nodded and they were friends again.
Duey took the headshot off her. ‘Why don’t you just, slick it back?’ she said. ‘Like really tight? Wouldn’t that work?’
‘I think they want it short.’
‘Yeah, but if they really wanted it short they would have made sure the model was here so it could be cut really short before the shoot.’
‘Elodie’s going to kill me.’ Carla looked out the window of the salon.
‘Elodie?’ Duey smiled like she’d said something ridiculous. ‘Elodie’s the nicest one out of all of you. Elodie’s dumb nice.’
Carla made a ticking noise with her teeth and said, ‘Aw. Elodie.’
Duey looked at her like, ‘Come on’, and they both stepped down.
‘Why don’t you do photographic work anymore, Duey?’ It was part of Carla’s routine. She thought it was funny but Duey didn’t.
‘Because of this’ – Duey indicated the photo on Carla’s phone – ‘because of the drama.’
‘We’d be an amazing team.’
Duey shook her head. ‘We’d kill each other in a day. Hate each other in a year.’
‘You say that,’ Carla said. ‘But I don’t know.’
Duey stood back from the desk. Arched her back slightly, looking at the ceiling.
‘You’re getting old, old man,’ Carla said. She was looking at her phone now. Never at Duey, it felt like, lately. Never at anyone. Carla was getting itchy again. This shit with Tommy, it got in her head and buried away in there. Duey could see her building a case. Reasons to leave again. There was never a ‘Cons’ list. Duey knew that. Carla had been back a long time but it felt like that meant she was closer to leaving again. Duey never could work out how she fitted into the list, but she was sure she did. They had been fine for years, almost a decade, but the last few weeks things had been weird.
‘I need to go home to Doug.’ Carla put her phone away, looked out the window at the street.
‘Now?’ Duey said.
‘Yeah.’ Carla started putting her coat on. ‘I shouldn’t have been away this long.’
Duey had known Carla longer than anyone else. Carla had never had a pet in her life. Doug had been a mistake. The story was a little bit legendary between the three of them. Sharona kept saying to Duey, ‘She should take it back. Say she just found it.’ But the minute the dog got in Carla’s car it was all over. Doug the anchor. Doug the thing to keep her here. Doug and Carla. Duey wondered if she’d wait until Doug was dead to leave. It was hard to tell. Most people would say yes but Duey had known her for longer than anyone else.
‘What about dinner?’ Duey asked. ‘We told Sharona we were having dinner.’
‘No time.’
‘I could come to yours,’ Duey said. ‘We can pick up some takeaways and wine.’
Carla shrugged.
‘Indian?’ Duey said.
‘The flat’s awful,’ Carla said.
‘The flat’s always been awful.’ Duey was shutting down the computer, nodding at the last hairdresser as they left the salon.
‘Yeah. But now it’s awful and there’s dog shit everywhere.’
‘It’d be an improvement,’ Duey said. ‘Anyway, I’ve been there during the period of dog shit. It’s fine.’
‘I’m not keeping quite as on top of it as I was.’
‘I’ll help,’ Duey said.
Carla looked at her phone again.
‘I’ll drive,’ Duey said. ‘Come on.’
‘Okay. But I’ll buy dinner.’
Duey left Carla at reception and went to turn everything off and check everything was locked. The staffroom was clean. The dishes done. The washing machine and dryer were off and there were plenty of new towels folded and ready for the morning. The colour bay was tidy and clean, everything stacked against the wall and on the shelves. The salon was quiet. Duey stood for a moment after she turned off the lights. The space of the salon always took her by surprise when it was empty. She and Carla used to joke that everything would stay
so much tidier without the clients. But it felt like such a beautiful, quiet space at this time of night. The flat, shiny floors, the mirrors still, without reflection. When it was full there was a rush to the place, no one ran around, that wasn’t allowed, but everyone was watching clients out of the corner of their eyes, calculating their next move. Working out where the next problem was going to be. Adding up basins and client and chairs. It was so quiet now. It didn’t even seem to have any possibility in it. It was without anything. Duey often thought about staying the night here. Her apartment was nice, much nicer than Carla’s and more secure but she often thought the salon felt like home. The owners wanted her to manage it but she didn’t want to. She just wanted to be a hairdresser and be in this place.
The sun was low by the time Tommy and his father left the office. They walked to Jerry’s car. Tommy didn’t like to drive. He could and he was a good driver, he’d been driving since he was 15, but he didn’t like to drive. He liked to look out the window at the people on the street, in the other cars. He liked to watch the sky go past and the houses. His father drove along Fanshawe Street under the motorway and then under it again. The sea was close but you couldn’t see it for the buildings and the motorway. Tommy imagined people running, some pushing strollers, some talking with people as they ran.
Tommy did CrossFit four times a week. He was strong, getting stronger, always getting stronger. He went in the middle of the day, met his personal trainer and lugged things around. Is that how Cal put it? Cal did boxing and ran for miles and miles and miles. He’d never stop if he didn’t need to be somewhere else. Once he’d called Tommy to come and pick him up. He’d run a long way in one direction and wasn’t sure how to get back as a pedestrian. ‘I’m on one side of the motorway,’ Cal said, cars roaring past him. ‘But I’m not sure how to get to the other side of the motorway and I need to be on the other side of the motorway.’ Tommy was pretty sure Cal was sleeping with Elodie. Neither of them would admit it. Cal wouldn’t admit it. Tommy was pretty sure they were sleeping together though. ‘What’s your deal with her?’ Cal had said when Tommy asked him after the meeting.
Tommy just wanted her to be happy. He hadn’t meant to dump her the way he had. He thought he was sure but he wasn’t and she’d done nothing wrong. He wanted to keep working with her because she was great to work with but he thought it would be weird. When he talked about it with the others after he’d broken up with her a couple of months ago, they’d all agreed it would be weird. Was it already three months? So they decided to ask Carla to contact her. It seemed fairest to Elodie. But Elodie didn’t seem to mind at all. She was just the same old Elodie, like nothing had happened. So Tommy figured there must be someone else and, today, he was pretty sure it was Cal. Cal knew she’d lost her phone. ‘Nothing,’ Tommy had said. Then, ‘There’s no deal with me and her.’ So that Cal would know there was no problem, there would be no problem. Tommy had smiled when he said it, he’d laughed, patted Cal on the arm. Tommy was pretty sure he’d laughed, snorted at least. ‘I just wanted to know. I like to know.’ And he did. He liked to know.
Newstalk ZB was on in Tommy’s father’s car. The rail tunnel was going to cost billions more than it was supposed to. Phil Goff pointed out why he should be mayor. David Seymour said he believed very strongly in conservation, but fish could swim and the Kermadec Sanctuary affected fishing, so the ACT Party couldn’t support it. It was green-washing, he said, showboating. And everyone was angry that a young rich man wasn’t going to jail for punching a police officer. ‘Female police officer,’ Tommy’s father reminded him as they slowed behind a line of traffic climbing the Harbour Bridge.
Three years ago, Tommy was in Jerry’s car while people on the radio argued about rape and drunk women and the police, and whether they deserved it. Tommy thought at first they meant whether the women deserved it, but then he wondered if they might be talking about the police or maybe even the rapists. ‘Alleged rapists,’ his father reminded him. One of them was a boy Tommy used to hang around with. He was younger than Tommy. Into other music. But they had gone to the same private school and their parents were friends. Tommy still wasn’t sure how it made him feel. Or rather he knew how it made him feel but he didn’t want to feel that way so he feigned confusion. People talked about it at the time and even now, sometimes, people wanted to talk to him about it. When it first came out, he’d felt like people could tell the taint on him, as if the story had left traces on him. So if anyone asked, he found it easy to say he wasn’t sure how to feel. When it came up now he got the sense he was less implicated, because the story was older and everyone had grown up and got on with their lives. That made some people angry. It would have made Carla angry. But Elodie? He suspected Elodie wouldn’t give a shit. She would have just listened and nodded and smiled and listened. But Carla would have had something to say about knowing your own mind. She always had a fucking opinion.
Tommy stopped. He went through every current event – the tunnel, the fish, the rich kid – and tried to imagine how Carla would feel, and he had no idea. He realised he had absolutely no evidence to back his claim. That was what he hated about her. He realised it now. She never stood up on either side, she never had an opinion on anything but at the same time she gave an impression she had opinions that were important and made her important. ‘Should we shoot it from here, Carla?’ ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ ‘How about here?’ ‘Yeah. Yeah.’ She only looked invested. Elodie was always watching her. He saw it now – she was learning. He wished she wouldn’t, didn’t want Elodie to turn into Carla. Carla knew all the ways out. He’d have a word with the others tomorrow. They liked Carla. They all had. She did amazing work – but really, did she?
As his father drove and talked about the rail tunnel and the traffic, Tommy thought about it. Like, really. He hadn’t looked at his phone since he’d met his father today. If he could look at his phone he could have a look through the past few shoots. Did she really do good work? Or was that all Duey? Had Duey done those haircuts? What was up with Duey and Carla, anyway? He thought back. Maybe it was habit? Maybe that’s what was going on. Maybe it was all just too easy to keep calling Carla. There were other hairdressers. He’d talk to the others tomorrow. If they dumped her, would other people? Did he have power over her career? Quite possibly. It was a great responsibility but also, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it didn’t matter.
She was getting work everywhere. She was discreet but he suspected as much and he saw her name in a few places. She was probably working a lot more than she let on. That seemed like the sort of thing she’d do. It was becoming clear. Here. Now – in the front seat of his father’s car, without his phone. It was like his phone was keeping him fooled. He had been thinking about getting rid of it, for good. They used Instagram and Snapchat for work. But neither of those accounts was connected to his personal account. Kurt was popular on all that stuff. Maybe Tommy could just quietly opt out without anyone noticing. He was pretty sure no one took any notice, anyway. He laughed to himself, remembering his 5000 Instagram followers. People cared. They might not notice straight away, that was the nature of the thing, but they’d notice eventually, like in a few days, or a week or so. They’d try and tag him into something and he wouldn’t come up and they’d think he’d blocked them and would get angry for a minute and then they’d check and he wouldn’t be there and they’d think, ‘Wow. Bold move.’ Elodie didn’t have any social media accounts. He’d thought it was because she didn’t want anyone knowing anything about her, but then she’d said she preferred meeting people in real life. She didn’t even have Snapchat or Instagram for her work. She had an old-school website which was clean and had hardly any writing on it. She updated it regularly and people always talked about it.
‘Tommy?’
His father wanted an answer.
‘Maybe,’ Tommy said.
‘Excellent.’ His father looked so happy, Tommy worried for a minute what he’d just agreed to. He looked at himself in the wing mirror. He was m
ore complex than he looked. He worried about things, hoped-for things. Things were tough, sometimes. Sometimes he got down.
Carla and Duey stopped at the Krishna temple in Panmure. It was down a back street in Pleasant View Road. ‘Did it ever have a pleasant view?’ Duey asked, looking around as they got out of the car. Carla laughed. It was dark now and they were flanked by practical buildings for shopping, for living. Across the road from the temple there was a fire station with a concrete tower. Govinda’s was a large white room with plastic chairs and tables. Sometimes you could hear singing from the temple next door. Pavanah pavatam asmi ramah sastra-bhrtam aham jhasanam makaras casmi srotasam asmi jahnavi. But all the lights were off tonight. There was a bain-marie outside covered with a tarpaulin, and the door was locked. Carla put her hands up to the glass door and looked in. Duey rang the bell beside the door. Carla stepped back and tried the doors again. Surely they weren’t gone. Carla looked at her phone. It was the 14th. Sri Vamanadeva appearance day and Sri Jiva Goswami’s but there was no one there. She’d heard, through the grapevine, from the people who still talked to her when she saw them on the street, that Srila Narayana Maharaja’s father was ill, that he’d gone back to India to be with him – but she hadn’t expected this.
As they walked to the car Carla said, ‘Of the swift moving, I am the wind, of all the wielders of weapons, I am Rama, of fishes, the shark and of flowing rivers, the River Ganges.’ Duey looked at her and they laughed.
‘Don’t laugh,’ Carla said, laughing, covering her mouth. ‘It’s a fucking big fish. It can swallow a whale. You don’t want to fuck with a fish that big.’ They climbed in the car and drove towards St Johns.
