by Pip Adam
He often thought he’d been born with more want than other people. He suspected that was what made him so good at business. He wanted things more than other people. Other people would give up. Look at Duey. Duey had given up. Why would Duey work for someone else? And then Carla, who was nowhere near as talented, kept going. It wasn’t about talent. Talent helped, but it wasn’t about the most talented, it was about who wanted it most. And then, out of the people who wanted it most, it was about who had positioned themselves best to get it.
‘I’ve got a meeting,’ he said to his parents.
‘Oh Thomas, that’s a shame.’ His mother looked around like there was something hiding that would make it not so.
‘Yeah.’
‘No rest for the hungry,’ Jerry said, and got up to walk him to the door. ‘Do you want a lift?’ he said as an afterthought.
Tommy thought about it. He hadn’t really thought it through, not really, now that he traced it back. Now that he was forced to think about exactly how he was going to get to the workroom, he could see he’d just wanted to see Elodie. Would everyone else be able to tell that? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think even Elodie would be able to see it. Not really. And if she could see it, she’d forgive him. She was kind. All the way through. She always had been. His father said they’d all hung around together as kids. She was younger, seven, eight, maybe ten years younger. But Tommy couldn’t remember it. Jerry and her father went on holiday together.
Tommy was always surprised by how little he knew about Elodie. She’d left school early, become a hairdresser, then her hands had erupted and she went to New York to retrain as a makeup artist. He knew that. Kurt didn’t. Tommy knew it because he’d heard Carla talking to her, a year or so ago. It didn’t seem to matter that no one knew much about her. Everything she was was always on display – if you wanted to know anything about Elodie it was all there, all the time. When they were out, people would sometimes say to her, ‘Hey, don’t I know you?’ And she’d get a quizzical look on her face, like she was desperately trying to accommodate their belief, and say, ‘Do you?’ But they very rarely placed her. No.
He’d done the right thing. They’d all get together, look at it all in the workroom. Walk the models up and down a bit. Really think about what they had. He knew what they had, but he needed to show the others. He’d done the right thing. They were shooting in less than 12 hours. It would take him 23 minutes to walk to the ferry terminal and then he’d have to walk up Queen Street.
‘Yeah, actually,’ Tommy said, looking round the room, ‘a lift would be good.’
‘I’ll see if Bryce is available,’ his mother said, getting up.
‘Don’t forget these,’ Jerry said, passing a folder of accounts he wanted Tommy to look at.
Bryce lived in the flat above the garage and did the garden and kept the house clean. He wasn’t from anywhere exotic. That’s what Tommy knew. Bryce was from Blockhouse Bay. He was about the same age as Tommy’s parents. They’d advertised and got a lot of replies, but Bryce seemed like the right fit. Tommy had been over the night they discussed it and he’d agreed. It worked well for Bryce, too. His kids had all left home. He lived at Tommy’s parents’ house during the week and then stayed with his wife during the weekend. He often drove people around. That worked for Tommy, too. His parents drank quite a lot and the limits had been lowered. ‘God only knows why,’ was what his father said. But Bryce was free and Tommy started gathering his things together and said goodbye and that he’d be back soon and he’d look at the accounts, and they wished him all the luck for the shoot.
‘Oh,’ his mother said. ‘When is it?’
‘Later,’ Tommy said.
‘Can’t wait to see,’ his father said.
Sharona didn’t know why they were all coming to the workroom. No one would know, but she in particular didn’t understand why Tommy wouldn’t invite them up to the apartment. They didn’t have to come through the workroom. Most people came that way, but everyone coming to the meeting knew they could bypass the workroom by carrying on up the stairs and knocking on the other door. She looked around the deep, open space. The boxes weren’t there. She’d come out of a porn-induced haze to Tommy’s text. Looking around like a stunned animal, for the boxes, for the clothes, all pressed under plastic and on a rack. Not sure where she was, but absolutely sure, really, where she was. She looked at the text again. Tommy hadn’t asked if the boxes were there. They weren’t. She’d rehearsed it. But she didn’t need to rehearse it because everyone would be here in an hour or so and they would see it. It would be the first thing they’d see. She walked over to the rack at the back wall and pulled garment after garment off the hangers, laying them down on the high table and rotating them, pulling them, going over to the computer and checking the records and the emails she’d sent the factory, then she walked with purpose over to where the fabric was. There wasn’t enough of anything. She was moving assertively but with every step she said, ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ She checked her hands were clean, then started pulling one top around the table.
No one would do this. No one. Anywhere she had ever worked. Anywhere in this city, any city. No one would do this. Tommy was insane. Kurt and Cal wouldn’t say a word. They really did just hang around. They had some ideas, but Tommy was like the funnel the ideas had to fit through. It was Tommy’s label. They had let it go on for too long. She had. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ She opened up a seam, pulling with just the right measure of force and restraint. She hadn’t even seen the models. Were the models coming? Was that what this was about?
She had three pins in her mouth and her scissors were open wide above the fabric. ‘Fuck.’ This was about Elodie. Poor Elodie. ‘Fuck. Fuck,’ she shouted, but it came out all wrong because she had the pins in her mouth.
She wanted to vomit but she couldn’t because all the pieces were white and there was no more fabric. They were supposed to be tailored pieces and she was whipping them up on a table at 9.30 on the night before they were going to photograph them for market. She went over to the cubbyholes and found the sketchbooks. They were her sketches. Tommy could talk about concept and muse and story, but the others needed to see what the armhole would look like, the collar, the fucking hem. Fuck. The way her life had turned out. The times she thought about how her life had turned out came closer and closer together as she got older. Like the walls were coming in, like being forced more and more onto a side road she didn’t want to do down. Squash, she thought as she flicked through the sketchbook, trying to find the pictures that corresponded to the shirt she was pulling apart to try to make it fall the way they’d decided it needed to a month ago when they made the other samples. The ones in Indonesia. Fuck. She’d never been able to work fast, but it was like she forgot every time and she spiralled and accelerated on the inside.
That’s probably what it came down to. Confidence. Everyone tells you that. ‘Just look.’ She was talking to herself now. ‘Just look. You had all night. You could have started this hours ago. Instead of living in the imaginary future you’d created. The boxes arriving. You unpacking them.’ She always talked to herself like this. It was constant. So constant that sometimes it was unnoticeable. Hum. Hum. Hum. Dumb. Stupid. But really – all of the kind, self-nurturing talk aside, the ‘don’t pay any attention to it’ talk, she really should have started hours ago. She was lazy. Really. That’s what it always came down to. Too lazy to succeed, really. In any real way.
There was some fabric left on the bolt. She held a small piece of it between her fingers. The hand of it had gone completely. It felt like shit. Who had chosen this fucking shit? It had been her. Of course it was Sharona. She didn’t even have the dignity to change her name. Who the fuck? Was there any of the rayon left? It needed to be crisper than this.
She flicked through the sketchbook again, scissors in her other hand, and that hand held up to her brow. Scissors open, like a bird. She moved the mouse around on the computer. What had been wrong with that collar? She looked
at it. There was something wrong with it, but she couldn’t remember. Her mind was all in the leather and the fucking lace. She was all in next season, when she really should be thinking about this. She had no drive. If she didn’t have this job she’d still be in bed, probably wanking.
The world needed people like Tommy. People who got shit done. She looked at the sketch, the shirt, then back at the sketch, then at the notes on the screen. It was the break line. It was too high. Things were lower this season. Things at this place were lower. It had nothing really to do with the collar. Maybe she should wait for Tommy. Then she thought, no, this is a chance to show the new me. To not be lazy. She looked at the bolt of fabric. There was less than a couple of metres left. She laid the collar out, marked the break line and pulled the trousers off the hanger. She pulled out all the dress forms. There was one upstairs in Tommy’s apartment but they could get that later. She started dressing them up in possibles – what they had left, what hadn’t gone away. It wasn’t much, but realistically they didn’t need much. Not really. Not if Tommy was as sure as he’d sounded yesterday. He’d sounded really sure about what he needed. When he’d called her he hadn’t said much, but what he said sounded good, when they’d talked about it later. After Carla went, it sounded fine. Maybe this was going to be her hour. Maybe she would see this through in a way that would make a difference.
‘I’ll drive you,’ Duey said.
‘Could you?’ Carla said, putting combs and sectioning clips in her bag. ‘That would be amazing. Sorry.’
‘Sweet as.’ Duey started tidying up the plastic containers and putting food in the rubbish. As she did so, she saw Carla look at the bathroom door where Doug was. She was pretty sure Doug would be gone soon. Hoped she’d be gone soon. They’d been great friends, Doug and Carla, she thought, in a lot of ways better friends than she and Carla were now. But that wasn’t fair. They were trying so fucking hard. The two of them. Duey could see how hard Carla was trying and she could feel how hard it was from inside. How hard it had been for years. So many times, after they’d been with each other for a day, after they’d looked at each other in that way like neither of them really knew what the next right thing to do was, she thought about how crazy it was. They had nothing in common. Hadn’t had, since she came back. Carla had left when they were on their best terms. Duey was sure they were only keeping this up now out of fear.
Actually she had no idea why they were keeping it up. She suspected it wasn’t good for either of them. They bit at each other so politely. Doug had been a kind of reprieve for them. In the beginning they took Doug for walks together. Then it got hard and they went back to their corners for a bit and by the time they were back in each other’s houses, Doug was mean. Before, when they’d sat together and Doug had sat with them, their conversation would fall to her, their focus shifted to what Doug needed, what Doug looked like, what Doug might think about things. And now? What would they do without Doug? That was the worst thing Duey had thought could happen – ‘without Doug’. Duey wasn’t sure she could cope with it going back to the way it was. But then Doug had turned, Carla had turned her, and now ‘without Doug’ seemed like an easier option. The terrible Doug. The Doug who terrified Duey and she wasn’t able to say anything about. The Doug she had to pretend was the same.
‘Shall we take Doug?’ Duey asked.
Carla looked at her. That look. She was always so surprised by Duey. Are you still here? Duey was sure it wasn’t good for either of them.
‘I can drop you off after.’
Carla shook her head. ‘You don’t need to drop me off after, but I could do with your eye on that model.’ She was packing her hairdressing case. Squinting out of her glasses, exhaling so her cheeks puffed out.
‘I could do that.’ It was always like this. They both would give and give and then get fucked off. It was like they had seen a friendship once and had been impersonating it ever since Carla got back.
‘That’d be great.’ Carla checked the bathroom door was really shut. She stood in the middle of the flat again and checked her case and then closed it.
‘Fuck,’ Duey said.
‘Hate this job,’ Carla said.
‘It’s a shocker,’ said Duey. Carla should just come back to the salon. Duey had no idea what she was trying to prove. She watched Carla checking her bag. Squinting, limping, scratching at the blotchy skin on her arms that were always covered any time they weren’t in the flat. Duey was the only one who ever saw her arms. It was a weird tic of intimacy that didn’t fit anymore, that stuck out like a circus come to town. She could see Carla trying to work out what the next thing to do was. She was always reading everything. It was like she didn’t think anymore – she only felt. She wasn’t even checking in with a memory, or a thought; she just kind of sniffed the air. That drove Duey the craziest of all.
‘Did you talk to Tommy?’ Duey asked.
‘Just Elodie.’
‘Had Elodie talked to Tommy?’
Carla huffed a bit, like Duey was fucking her off. ‘Elodie’s with Kurt. Tommy rang Kurt.’
‘These people.’ Duey hadn’t meant to say it. She had to concentrate on so much around Carla. Not mentioning this. Mentioning that. Duey looked at the bathroom door. ‘This is not the best way for you to make a living.’
Carla was like an animal. A dumb animal. Always moving forward unless it was time to go back. Duey and Carla were meant to have been on equal footing, sharing everything, laughing in cafés on Sunday mornings. Maybe one of them would have kids.
‘Sure ain’t,’ Carla said, and sniff-laughed.
Even this – this pretend communicating. Carla knew all the motions but there wasn’t ever anything meaningful. She was responding to sensors, not to people. Duey was giving up. She needed to. Why were they doing this? Duey had other friends, plenty of them, she had Sharona. She was well liked. There were people who wanted to spend time with her. Long afternoons, evenings. With Carla it was some stupid game of numbers. Time.
She looked around the flat. There was nothing there except Carla’s bed. Duey knew the bathroom was the same, that the things in it could be collected in a heartbeat – or left behind. She was pretty sure Carla never cooked here. Carla had the best wardrobe of any woman Duey knew. There were retrospectives now, now that New Zealand had a fashion history, and curators would contact her to ask if they could just borrow this, or just borrow that.
‘Where did you keep your clothes while you were away?’ Duey asked. Who was the animal now?
‘Are you sure you’re okay to drive me?’ Carla asked.
‘Yip.’
‘Could you come up and see the model?’ She was a bit whiny.
Duey laughed. ‘Does anyone else hear that voice?’
Carla laughed. ‘I’m fucked without you, Dew,’ she said.
They never touched anymore. But they sort of moved the air between each other. Duey suspected it had something to do with the memory of an intimacy neither of them could erase. Both knew so well what the other one felt like – like really, skin on skin. Maybe they had used up all their touching. They didn’t cut each other’s hair anymore. Duey’s was short, she’d get an apprentice to do it. It never looked good. Carla joked that Duey was so good-looking it didn’t matter. Her hair looked ironic, like she was wearing ugly as an accessory. ‘You should always get the hairdresser with the worst haircut in the salon to cut your hair,’ she’d say. ‘Because they’ve done everyone else’s.’ Carla was wearing hers long. Uncut. Every now and then Duey imagined that Carla would bend at the waist, leaning her head forward, and cut vertically into what fell. Her hair always looked good. It was long and dark and going grey a bit now. She didn’t dye it. ‘Who has time?’ she’d say if Duey mentioned it. ‘Who has time?’
Duey found herself driving them round the bays. The motorway would have been faster, especially this time of night. They hadn’t said a word since they left the flat, so it wasn’t that she was distracted. It was like she’d been pulled this way.
It wasn’t until she saw the sea wall that she realised which way she’d come.
‘I should have brought Doug to tear up the workroom,’ Carla said, staring out at the water, out at Rangitoto, out at the sky.
‘Are you asking, or promising?’ It was a horrible joke, it sounded like it came from a sitcom, but she’d gone near the sea without thinking and it was her responsibility to keep it light. There were people in the café at St Heliers. The fountain at Mission Bay was going, the water, the water, the water. Carla looked away from it and down at her phone. In Duey’s periphery it looked like she was diving into the sea. The horizon was playing tricks, and the streetlights, and Carla.
In the end Tommy decided to take the ferry. He got Bryce to drop him off at the movie theatre so he could walk down. The restaurants were all closing up and the ferry terminal mall was like an apocalypse – empty and long. He could be a little bit late, he decided. It was unlikely everyone would be there on time, but he wouldn’t get angry. As a leader you needed to choose your battles. His father had taught him that. The city always looked magical from Devonport. It was amazing what Auckland was. It was amazing what New Zealand had done. When Tommy’s parents were at high school, neither of them would have believed they could be a designer. But look at it now, New Zealand was making clothes, it was making films, it was making everything. His label was being sold in New York and London. The boys had been to Sydney, Singapore, they loved them in India and Japan. He thought about Cal and Kurt, how this had to be the best job in the world. How you got to work with your friends. He thought about a photo of them on the social pages of Metro a couple of months ago. Lined up in front of a sponsor’s board. Or was it a fundraiser? He’d have to check the press file, but they were hugging, caught mid-laugh, what had the joke been? Kurt had his sunglasses on. Kurt always had his sunglasses on – such great sunglasses too. Antique aviators. They had been his uncle’s. His uncle had been in Vietnam. He was an American. When he wrote back to tell his parents he was marrying a New Zealander, they went to a library and all they found were pictures of bush and mountains. Now look at us, Tommy thought, as the ferry arrived and people got off, with bikes, with briefcases, tailored suits. He looked at the hugeness of the city across the harbour from him. Now look at us. If they looked up New Zealand now, they’d find a picture from The Lord of the Rings or Flight of the Conchords, something global like that. Something they’d probably seen in a theatre down the road. It felt like Auckland had arrived. He’d say that, in the next interview. Maybe that would be the story of the next collection. ‘We have arrived.’ It was like the world was getting smaller, like oceans didn’t separate them anymore. Weightless export, he thought. Those clothes being made in Indonesia didn’t need to come back to Auckland. He, Kurt or Cal could go there to do quality checks.
