by Pip Adam
He got out his phone and made a note as he walked up the gangplank. Some people carried notebooks. He liked his phone better. He saved everything to the Cloud. He liked that he was part of the global conversation. Talking and talking and talking, not just with words but through the clothes, through photos, through advertising – they were speaking with the world. They were doing that.
He liked to get on the boat with the other people – there were only five of them. It was late. That’s where Carla had him wrong. He liked the way they all moved with purpose, he liked to look at what everyone was wearing. He liked to watch people younger than him. To see what they were doing. He liked how the gangplank meant that when it was busy everyone had to wait or get close. He felt like it said something really good about the future, about how humans really were kind, at the core, in their animal selves. Deep inside. He liked the way they communicated with one another, the way a touch or just the heat that came off someone when you got close enough acted like a kind of energy that told you where you ended and the other person began.
The feeling of certainty returned. Tommy decided he’d sit outside. Normally only tourists did that, but he wanted to see the city come into view. The Sky Tower was lit in the royalest of blues, so blue it was almost purple. The collection was really something. It summoned their coming of age. Everyone thought Cal, Kurt and he wouldn’t last. Everyone hoped they wouldn’t, but here they were with suits and shirts, all so fine and crisp. He and Cal and Kurt had gone to India for the cotton. It was magnificent. In his heart he knew the boxes wouldn’t arrive, not in time, but he knew Sharona would fix it. Knew she’d been around him long enough for some of his drive to have washed off on her. She’d be there now. She would have been there all night. She never contacted him when she was there, but he knew she was there.
He didn’t get Carla at all, but he felt like he got Sharona. Cal and Kurt used to hassle him. Say he had a crush on her. Blame some sort of Electra complex. He would love to be close to her. He knew that. He didn’t mind them saying it. But it probably wouldn’t happen. His mother looked badly on men who went out with older women and she’d be disappointed. He had so much potential. That’s what she’d say, but it was more about how it would look. How she thought he needed a good-looking woman on his arm. She was the only person who ever used a phrase like that. She’d liked it when he’d gone out with boys. She really had. He was sure she thought it said something about her and her liberalism and her youth. She’d never liked Elodie. It had been a hard time for her, a mother saying goodbye to her rainbow parent status. She was still on the Trust, though. She still thought of him as queer. Far more than he did himself.
He felt like a failure. People were very disappointed. People said dreadful things. Cal and Kurt were fine with it. They understood, but other people were very disappointed and all of them blamed Elodie. Of course, it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. He’d tried to explain to his mother as if he was explaining it to everyone. It was just one of those things. He wondered if Duey would be there. Probably Carla had just done Guy’s hair at Duey’s and probably they’d gone for dinner and probably Duey would have driven her back into town.
Tommy loved the way Duey looked – everyone did. She was stunning – slim, tall, tattooed. If only Tommy could go out with someone like Duey. Everyone would be happy. Except Tommy. She would have been perfect for the corporate line. He’d talked to her about it. It was one of the first conversations he’d had with her without Carla being there. Duey had laughed. Two women had come outside to where Tommy was sitting. They were wrapped up in coats and scarves and taking photos of the lights. Tommy looked at the water as it lapped at the side of the boat, like a road. He’d never liked swimming but he liked being up here because it felt like there was nothing underneath. Motoring on it like this negated what was underneath, and that was what he was scared of. He’d lived by the beach his whole life and never liked the sea, being in it, under it, with all that was on top of him, the pressure, the water, the fish. He liked the ferry. This was a good idea. He could walk up from the ferry building. Queen Street was more interesting than it had been for years. It was alive. It had died so hard, but now people lived in it, ate in it, worked in it, and it was alive again. He always thought about Carla, Duey and Sharona, and how they had killed Queen Street for so long. They left it and went underground into small clubs and places to drink, so that by the time he and Kurt and Cal were ready to hang out there was nowhere to go except each other’s houses. Elodie was younger, reaping the rewards of what Tommy and his friends had done. That’s why their parents needed such big houses. Because there was nowhere for their kids to go and the kids wanted to be at home as well. Not like all that bullshit rebellion that seemed to propel Carla, Duey and Sharona. Tommy, Cal and Kurt respected their parents – they didn’t feel threatened. They listened.
That was why Tommy’s generation looked back to the 90s now – to inject some kind of joy into them. To cleanse them of all that sadness and doom and blame. The fashion was so fun. Look at Kurt Cobain. Look at him. It was fun and they just wore it down and down until it was serious and suicidal. They were children. That was the real problem.
He got off the ferry. Walked under the brick of the ferry building. Stood for a moment at the lights. He could wait. Carla, Duey and Sharona, they were kids – narcissists. Sharona even had a kid that she’d never looked after. They all just ran away and away. His generation was expected to fix everything that Carla, Duey and Sharona had fucked up. The square was gone. There were still builders working on the new buildings that stood in the hole where Downtown used to be. On the step of the train station, a man had his sweatshirt laid out on the ground with a small, handwritten cardboard sign. Yeah, it was up to him, and Cal and Kurt and Elodie, they had to fix all this. New Zealand was falling behind. New Zealand needed to work harder. They all knew it. Everyone his age knew the responsibility that was on them. The planet was dying, there was poverty. This was what they’d left them. These 45-year-old hairdressers and pattern cutters. None of them had ever grown up. They were too busy whining and revolting. It was up to him and his friends.
He walked past the Deloitte building. It was so high, he liked to look up at it to remind himself. There were lots of people on the street. Going places. Tommy and his friends were up to it. That was the biggest joke of all, the biggest surprise, the thing that seemed to fuck Carla off more than anything. They were doing it.
Her and her age had burnt everything to rubble and then cried and handed it to the Tommys and they hadn’t missed a beat. Instead they had picked it up and started putting it in order. And it fucked all the older ones off. Which was crazy. Not his father or mother, the older ones like Carla – the ones that never grew up. If anyone younger than them was happy and blasé, like Elodie, they would gravitate to them, like metal sand, saying, ‘Yeah, totally, relax. It’ll all work out,’ misunderstanding Elodie’s conscious, hard-won ambiguity for something closer to their own slackness. But if they worked hard like he did, like Kurt and Cal, if they were careful and realistic and thought about one step at a time and had fundraisers, they got angry and acted like it was a personal affront. Like he and Cal and Kurt were somehow going to destroy a world that was already fucking ruined. And then they would send an invoice. That was the kicker. They would bitch and moan about the way they ran things and where did they go to get paid? Not to each other. Never to each other. Duey wasn’t paying Carla. Carla wasn’t paying Sharona. He paid them. That was his final thought as he opened the white door at 12 East Street – the building that held his workroom, he reminded himself, and his apartment. This was where he lived. Not in Glenn Innes, not miles down south – here, in Auckland city, the heart of it all.
‘Hold on.’ Carla stopped, and so did Duey. ‘I really couldn’t.’
They’d parked in Galatos Street and now they were hiding in the shadows of the church, watching Tommy go through the door of the building. They waited a beat. He looked like
he was muttering to himself. Carla suspected he did self-improvement. Like affirmations and tapes that told him he was loved by the universe. But everyone had moved on. That was the sort of thing you did in the 90s. She knew that. Now everyone was mindful.
‘He doesn’t look good, does he?’ said Duey. Tommy had come back out of the building and was pacing slightly. Maybe it wasn’t pacing, maybe it was just walking slowly in circles. Then he looked at the sky, his hands on his hips. Then went in again.
After a minute Duey said, ‘Is he coming back?’ They both laughed a bit. Couldn’t help themselves. Duey was probably laughing at Tommy but Carla was laughing at how ridiculously shallow the whole venture was. For fuck’s sake, you’d think they were flying a heart in from Guatemala. But she had to catch herself because, in a lot of ways, it was that important. If she didn’t do the right thing, if she wasn’t easy and proficient, she wouldn’t get paid and if she didn’t get paid she couldn’t pay rent for the flat that kept Doug safely inside, for now, and even if she did get paid, Tommy would talk and talk and before she knew it her phone would go quiet and she would be out of work and despite what Duey said, she wasn’t sure she could work in a salon again. Wasn’t sure that anyone would have her. Duey had forgotten about all of that. ‘Yeah, I reckon we’re right,’ Carla said, still laughing, but it had become a jerky kind of hiccup which she tried to calm.
They took the stairs. Carla went first. They could have walked side by side but Carla knew exactly the distance away from her that Duey was comfortable at, and the width of stairs didn’t allow it. They both took the stairs slowly. Carla’s body was developing new kinds of aches. With each one she was reminded that she’d gone away. It was as if that time revisited her. Like the going away had lain in wait inside her joints and muscles, for the day when she – almost at home again here – was walking up a flight of stairs like this one, built when people’s legs were shorter, their gaits were shorter. They were all changing, getting bigger, taking up the space the things they wiped out used to – giant rats, koala lemurs, moa. She walked ahead of Duey because she knew the way better than her, or because they were there on her business, not Duey’s, and she opened the door.
Carla was carrying everything. When they walked in everyone turned and almost in perfect time looked from her to Duey. They looked like a nest of something.
They looked at her, then Duey. If they caught themselves in that moment they would think they all did it out of basic interest – to see who was with Carla. Then, having seen Duey, being intrigued, let their glance wait on her for a bit, because she was pleasant to look at. But Kurt had led the action by a split second and from some part of their peripheral vision that they couldn’t even comprehend they saw him move, and they moved too, to see what he was looking at. Following him like a round, like a wave, Carla thought, and laughed to herself. All of them thought they had free will, that they were really walking for themselves, stepping out, but Carla knew. Everyone was just responding to stimulus, even Kurt was. Kurt hadn’t seen Duey. At first he’d seen a dark shadow next to Carla, but he wasn’t afraid of it because Carla wasn’t afraid of it. Tommy didn’t figure in it.
When a door opens and shadows walk into a room from behind this door, and no one knows who’s inside the shadows, this flock of people take their lead from Kurt. Kurt is who they follow. Kurt is who will fight or fly. He was sleeping with Elodie. Tommy didn’t figure. Tommy was leading from behind, where Kurt could keep an eye on him. It was that fickle, Carla thought. If Kurt changes his mind about Tommy, that will be the end of Tommy. She looked down, and laughed.
Then, Tommy was talking. Then, everyone was talking. Carla was talking, waving, saying hi. She hugged Sharona, who was still working at a bench, away from where the action was. Dominic was there, of course he was – you could always tell the model in a room. He was talking to Tommy. Cal slapped him on the back. He had no idea who Carla was, that she’d been calling him all day. He knew who Tommy was though and had probably been with Cal all night. Things were a blur of colour and bridled voices, even though everyone was shouting. What Carla really watched, as she went through the paces of it all, what she noticed was Duey. Cal offered Duey a beer and she took it. And she sat in the corner just outside the circle of people who were talking about the work they had to do in the morning. Then the door opened again and Elodie came in. Carla watched Duey. She was looking up and then she was looking back at her phone. Days ago this would have worried Carla, that she’d misread how uninterested Duey was in Elodie but now, as if it had all sunk in and split new cracks, she wondered if she’d overstepped a boundary by asking Duey to be here. It was like their friendship was being inundated. Things floated that used to be stable. It had probably been happening for months but now it was hitting some high-water line. She shouldn’t have let Duey see Doug, see her with Doug.
She was in a different part of the room now, putting a cape round Dominic’s neck. Duey was beside her, talking about how to cut the hair. They were talking to each other, and she occasionally talked to Dominic, to keep him relaxed, make him feel good, make it easier, less likely he would make a fuss. Don’t make a fuss. A fuss was not what she wanted. It was late. Duey handed her the clippers and then walked to the wall with the cord to plug them in. Duey might have been angry. For months, Carla thought she could do something differently but this really was just the end. The petering out. It happened all the time. It had happened to them both all the time. People came and went. They weren’t as close with Sharona as they had been. What made it different was the way they were both holding on to it for grim life.
One night back when neither of them had any money, when they were young, before Carla had gone away, she and Duey had found a small door beside the toilet in a bar on the second floor of a building in High Street. Duey had rattled the handle and it opened onto a flight of stairs. It looked like a fire exit. Duey looked at Carla, Carla looked at Duey, and they both smiled, looked behind themselves and climbed the stairs, closing the door behind them, not checking if it would open again from the inside. They climbed and climbed, bumping into each other and misstepping, coming up short or falling again onto the step they’d just left. Finally Duey hit her head on another door. It was unlocked as well and they found themselves on the roof. They looked at the view and Carla got out a cigarette. They walked round the roof and eventually found a place they both wanted to sit and watch the sky.
‘It’s going faster than it looks,’ Duey had said. Carla knew what she meant. If you just looked at the sky and really concentrated hard you could tell it was faster than it seemed.
Neither of them had a watch and cellphones hadn’t been invented yet, but when they talked about it, over the 25 years that followed, or even now, 25 years later, they both agreed they were up there for about an hour, talking, smoking, being kind to each other. ‘We were up there for about an hour,’ one of them would say, and nothing else.
Eventually, they decided to go back down. Carla always said it was Duey who’d said they should go. Duey would nod and say, ‘Probably, that sounds like me,’ but before they left, they looked out over the city and instead of looking ordered and fine, it was terrifying. Deep, deep below them, from that roof and only on this one night, the city looked like the worst and most violent assault.
Carla said, ‘Excuse me,’ to the model and walked over to where Duey was.
‘Remember that night?’
Duey had her phone out but she was looking at the socket in the wall where she’d plugged the clippers in. She nodded.
‘I can never see it like that again,’ she said.
Duey nodded.
‘I’ve been up to the exact same building and it just won’t shift. I know it in my heart, I understand, but I just can’t seem to see it again.’
They didn’t look at each other.
Duey switched the plug on and the clippers in Carla’s hand vibrated softly into life.
‘That should do you,’ Duey said, and looked at her. Carl
a suspected it was a form of politeness, a visual cue to let her know she had finished the sentence, but they were both looking at each other now.
Carla dropped her comb and as she leant down to pick it up she whispered, close at Duey’s ear, ‘I think Doug’s going to kill me.’ Then she stood up and looked at the clippers, winding the lever that adjusted the blades up and down. From horizontal to vertical and back again.
‘I have to cut this hair.’ She pointed the clippers behind her shoulder towards Dominic.
‘Yip,’ Duey said, but Carla wasn’t sure to which statement. They were back here again. It wasn’t a conversation. It was noises. It wasn’t even noise anymore. It was the way they touched each other, now. She walked over to Dominic. In one hand she held her comb, in the other the clippers. She took his head in both hands and bent it on the hinge of his neck. She ran the back of the hand with the comb in it over the back of the model’s head, felt his scalp and down to the bones, wiped down, once, twice, then laid the comb flat on his neck. She was fine now. Duey had told her, and now she was fine.
