by Pip Adam
‘Doug,’ she whisper-called through the bottom of the door. ‘Doug, we need to go.’ Doug ran at the door again, hitting it hard.
‘Doug,’ she said, assertively, standing. ‘Doug, I’m opening the door, now.’ She turned the handle so the latch bolt would free itself, but she kept all her weight on the door. ‘Doug,’ she said. Doug growled. ‘I’m going to open the door a little bit.’ She eased the door ajar and it flew with Doug behind it. Elodie grabbed Doug’s collar as she flew past and was dragged hard to her knees, then further, one hand slamming the floor but the other never letting go of the collar. Doug snapped and shouted and tried to bite Elodie’s arm. But she really wanted her face.
Elodie scrambled fast to her knees. She pulled Doug and Doug snarled, but Elodie pulled the dog closer, taking its large head in both hands and pulling it close to her own face. Doug struggled but Elodie pulled the dog’s face back each time it tried to get free, tried to pull away so it could get a charge at Elodie’s face. Elodie whispered and reassured as she pulled the dog again and again so they were face to face, nose to nose, teeth to teeth. But Doug wouldn’t listen. Biting at Elodie, hitting fresh air, missing each time. Doug lunged, biting the sleeve of Elodie’s top, then the neck. Elodie was silent, and then, judging the moment perfectly, she struck, biting deep into Doug’s battle-cropped ear, almost ripping what was left of it clean off.
Carla would never tell Elodie how to get there, how to leave. Elodie had tried. She thought she was going to have to talk to Duey, had sounded that out tonight, at East Street with Carla, but in the quiet that came while she was sitting in the farewelling streets, Elodie realised it was Doug. It had always been Doug who could take her where she needed to go. Carla never would, neither would Duey, but Elodie remembered now, the first time she saw the dog. As she watched Carla drag Doug to the bathroom, through the crack of the front door where Carla had made her wait, it had struck her that a dog like Doug could run. Run and hunt and kill. Elodie needed a dog like Doug. And now she saw that she needed exactly Doug; no other dog would do because Doug could show her the way. Elodie wiped the blood from her mouth while Doug whimpered and licked and wept. ‘I’m sorry,’ Elodie said. ‘I’m sorry Doug but I need you to come with me.’
She attached the spring hook of the leash onto the ring of the collar. Carla would be pleased the dog was gone, but that didn’t matter. Elodie was looking after some bigger part of everyone now. Now that Elodie had Doug, her small acts of kindness were giving way to the largeness of what she would give to everyone. Everything she’d done for any of them was inconsequential. All those things had led her to Doug, so she had no further use for that sort of kindness. She stood and pulled at the leash.
‘We’re going now,’ Elodie said, and she walked Doug out the door and down the stairs. Despite the struggle, the dog had been waiting. Elodie could tell. Waiting for someone to take it away. The dog had recognised Elodie the first time she saw her. That much was clear to Elodie, even from behind the front door. Even through the bathroom door. That first time when she had come to sleep with Carla, the dog knew who she was and knew she’d be back and knew she would bite her ear off so she could put on a leash, so they could walk.
They started walking up the street. It was quiet and empty. There were lights on at the roofing factory, maybe people were still working. There was a makeup factory behind them, further towards Glen Innes, but it was only for distribution. The company maimed animals. So people could look more tanned. So everyone could look younger, or at least look the agreed version of younger. Elodie thought about telling Doug so that she didn’t feel so bad about the ear. Doug pulled heavily, but Elodie didn’t give her an inch. She’d seen people moving other people around like this – tethered. All the other animals were slaves. People just wanted to own everything. But now Elodie had stolen the dog. The dog looked up at her. ‘We’ll be happy now,’ Elodie said. ‘All the time.’ Doug’s hackles were raised. ‘There’s nothing but happiness ahead for us. That’s how you’ll remember the way, Doug, follow what makes you happy and we’ll be there.’ She looked away from Doug and looked at the sky, which was suggesting more rain.
The houses near the factories had all been converted into flats. Elodie and Doug passed one that Elodie’s friend lived in. He was a video editor. They’d worked on a film together and then he’d gone back to making reality TV. She’d worked on reality TV too, but they never saw each other, what with her in production and him in post-production. Sometimes she did the makeup and thought it was like a letter to him. Like when people write ‘HELP’ on the sand of a desert island. But she didn’t think it much. Not really. The flat the editor lived in was in a place built as a big house for a family of four. Now it was four flats. Four rooms. Tiny rooms. There was a small portable stovetop that sat on the bench over the basin where you washed your dishes and brushed your teeth. There was a shared bathroom with several showers in it. When Elodie’s aunt left home in the 90s she’d moved to a place in Ponsonby. Four of them lived in a villa, paying $60 a week each. Then Ponsonby had got too expensive and they’d moved to Grey Lynn. Now no one could afford to live in Grey Lynn.
‘This is nice,’ Elodie said to Doug, smiling down at her. ‘Isn’t this nice? A brisk walk in the early morning.’ Doug jackknifed, trying to bite her hand, but Elodie pulled it away and then brought it down hard on the dog’s head between her ears. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ she said through the grit of her jaw that she’d needed to gather the force to hit the dog hard enough.
There were airing frames and shoes at the doors of the flats. Everything she saw made her feel she needed some space. As she walked up the hill, away from the factories, the houses got flasher. Several were for sale. She’d been in a jewellery shop a couple of weeks ago, picking up some pieces for a shoot. The owner made eyes at Elodie that said, ‘Just a minute.’ She was closing a sale. A $4000 necklace. ‘Oh, I’ll take it,’ the woman said, turning herself this way and that in front of the mirror. ‘I’ve just sold my house.’ Everyone in the shop laughed. Elodie didn’t get it until she was walking back to the studio. Everything was going up. That was the only strategy anyone had. There were blocks of homes empty in Albany, waiting to be ‘flicked off’.
Elodie came up over the top of the hill and then she could see the Sky Tower and the city and everything looked wrong. She could hardly breathe. She was in the wrong place. She didn’t recognise any of it anymore. She’d always come the other way, up from the bays through Glendowie. It was like she’d walked up the hill and through some strange door and now she was here. She stopped, but Doug didn’t. She couldn’t recognise anything except the pull from Doug to turn right. So she did. They crossed the road to where the horse paddocks were and walked northeast down St Johns Road.
The road was quiet. The odd car drove past but this was as quiet as it got. It was the lull between the end of the day and the beginning of the next one. Elodie and Doug kept walking. As she walked past Stone Direct, the Sky Tower disappeared, or she stopped noticing it. It would be back. There was nothing surer. Carla had been alive before the tower arrived but when Elodie asked she couldn’t remember what the view had looked like. She couldn’t even remember when it went up. Whether it was exciting or not. She was probably away. Carla was probably away when it went up. That was how she answered anything about Auckland – she was probably away.
Carla had never gone anywhere after she got back. Never. Not of her own accord. She’d been to Sydney once for a shoot Tommy had organised. She hadn’t wanted to go. She’d tried everything to get out of it, but it got ridiculous, so she just went. It was late when she finally committed. Elodie had been on board at the meeting, that’s how late it had got. When Cal finally asked Carla straight, Carla was sitting looking down at the table, rubbing something off it with her hand, and she’d said it was complicated. Cal asked her again, using the same words, and she’d looked at him and realised and said, yes, she’d go.
Once they got clear of the stone place and the
motel and some more horses, there were just houses and it was Kohimarama Road. One thing was very clear in Elodie’s mind. If she went away. If tonight was the night she went away and it was looking increasingly like it was. When she went away. She would never come back.
‘You don’t buy new fashion because it runs out or wears out, you buy new fashion because fashion changes – on a whim.’ She said it to Doug now, in a low voice through smiling lips, so it sounded like a growl. ‘That’s why it’s the worst. Everything goes to the sea or into the ground – it doesn’t just finish. Especially the plastic clothes.’ They were bleeding dye into the waterways. Most of the clothes that came over were stored in formaldehyde. ‘That’s poison,’ Elodie growled. ‘We fucking poison our children.’ She didn’t want to howl at the moon. She dragged Doug closer, but Doug won the tug-of- war. Elodie didn’t frighten Doug. ‘Nothing frightens Doug,’ Elodie said, scruffling at her neck in a smoochie cutie voice. In one movement she unhooked the leash from Doug’s collar and the dog sprang into a fast run, the stumps of her ears high. I’ll have all the dogs, Elodie thought.
They were going downhill now and as she looked to the right Elodie saw Rangitoto rise up over the roofs of the houses, then the water, the sea. All of them a different depth of dark, the island interrupting the brownish, cloudy sky. The sky. ‘Who cares about the sky,’ said Elodie, knowing she would soon, when she was alone. But for now, who gives a fuck about the sky. Elodie looked at all the houses, the streetlights. It was rubbish night and there were hundreds of wheelie bins lining the footpath, each loaded with thousands of pieces of rubbish. Just look at all this, this fucking shambles. It was possible that every planet had this, a tiny window of opportunity where a race like hers blossomed and demised and this was just the latest. So a view of the sky just didn’t matter much.
Elodie’s mother had one doll as a child. Now Elodie could have whatever she wanted. Everyone could. Even Carla. Carla wasn’t rich. Carla was poor but she could get anything she wanted. From anywhere she wanted. She never needed to do anything she didn’t want to again. Doug ran ahead and Elodie marched on, looking as the sea went away again.
It was only a matter of this. She’d been waiting for quiet. Ever since Carla told her about the water and the way in and the way out and the way back in again.
Carla had been fuckstruck, whispering into Elodie’s hair, holding her so the warmth didn’t get out. Talking like she was in a trance. The ocean and the island and the only way there. Elodie wanted it so badly. As soon as she met Carla she knew she had the way, locked up inside. She recognised it in Carla’s eyes, squinty and tight behind her glasses, and the way her feet never quite sat flat when she was sitting – how Carla was slightly taller than she should be. But Elodie had misunderstood. Carla made it sound like something you came to in a rage, but it gave too much of your hand away. No one can be angry and a pioneer. Now, though, as they passed the school that just got bigger and bigger, and the shops at Kepa Road, Elodie watched Doug lead the way. As she and Carla fucked in Carla’s awful flat, Doug had banged at the bathroom door. Banging out the coordinates. The sound of the men working in the doorway tonight had reminded Elodie of the knocking noise Doug had made. Carla was successfully trying to forget, but Doug never would. Doug knew and hadn’t forgotten and would tell Elodie, even when Carla wouldn’t. It was Doug she needed, even though she’d thought it was Carla. Doug had found Carla and Carla had told Doug, or Doug had overheard it – maybe Elodie was right, maybe Carla talked to Duey about it, maybe she talked to everyone about it. Elodie wasn’t special and that might be her saving grace – that she meant nothing to Carla and even if she’d got more out of Carla she would never tell Elodie all the truth and Elodie would have wasted more time. But Doug had heard it so many times and dreamed of going there, like Elodie did. Doug had been plotting her escape and now Elodie had helped her she would take her the whole way. All the way to the island.
Doug charged ahead, barking, looking back only occasionally, running back even less often, only to make sure Elodie was still there. Elodie laughed at Doug every time she turned back. Doug’s held-back lips looked like she was smiling, huffing them both to the water. None of them – not Duey or Tommy or Carla – could get Doug there in such joy. This new joy would get them there. Carla tried to say it was rage but it was joy. As the dog ran back and jumped at her throat, Elodie laughed and batted the dog away with her forearm.
They passed Thatcher Street, and Elodie wondered about the weather and reached for her phone. But it was gone. She’d left it on Queen Street. She faltered. She could go back. But she couldn’t, didn’t want to. She couldn’t seem to turn from where she was walking – it held such promise, she would be the first one there and there would be a small piece of space that would always be above the hightide line, that she could get ready for everyone. A small place of their own. It was the New Zealand dream.
Where was she walking? All these houses. Elodie knew there was sea to their right, but Doug kept heading straight ahead, past Eastridge, past more horse paddocks. Why were there so many horse paddocks? They could have built high and buoyant on a horse paddock, but there was no wrenching the paddocks from the horse owners’ hands. Past the grass in the middle of the road that the cars went round. They could have built an island on a traffic island – but no one was giving up an inch. It was like she was vacationing in a part of town she’d never been to. Everything looked different, walking. She never came here. Never. Why would she? Everyone she knew was rich. She wished she had a battering ram that she could break into every house she passed – she’d piss on the floor, make it hers. She thought of Sharona. Of Sharona’s daughter. Sharona’s daughter was not a nice person. Doug had been a good dog. Doug hadn’t done a thing wrong. Sharona, Carla, Duey, they just ruined things. They would all end up in the sea. Elodie was just an early adopter. Carla even earlier. She began to smell the sea, and on her left was the lagoon – she could hear roosters. People dumped them here and they lived in the poplars, in between the feet of the horses. Doug was coming back more and more often, sometimes walking metres behind Elodie, then in front. There was one more hill – it was further than it felt. She worried for a moment there would be people there, but Doug knew the way. She was sure Carla had told Doug the way, and now Elodie had Doug. She would be the first into the water.
Doug wound around and around ahead of her now, scouting, hunting. Head up, eyes ahead, alert. It was dark and Doug was nowhere in sight but Elodie could hear her. Her padded feet, her claws and her breathing. Doug was panting. She barely looked back at all now. Elodie considered getting on all fours.
She imagined everyone she knew would ride it out. To the bitter end, but not her. She had youth on her side. She laughed out loud for all of them. She would get it ready for them, for when they were finally ready for the new world. Then suddenly Doug headed off the footpath and down through the trees to the lagoon. It wasn’t the way Elodie wanted to go, she’d imagined standing on the rock wall and leaping, a dramatic goodbye. She stopped and waited for Doug to come back, but then there was a bark from deep, deep inside the tangled bush. She waited a minute longer and there was a bark again and Elodie turned and bent under the barrier and into the scratch and tear of the bush. The ground was dry and it slipped under her, the branches cracked as she went down to the water. And when she was out of the bush there was Doug standing in the grey mud, looking for her. Waiting for her. Growling deeply. It was as dark as the night would get. Doug slopped her way back to Elodie and pulled at the fabric of her trousers. Elodie crouched beside Doug, her face close to the dog’s again. They were both panting now. She could feel everything she’d needed so far subsiding. Both she and Doug breathed themselves calm, but the adrenaline still ran through them. The fight with Doug at Carla’s flat had made Elodie light again. It had given her the chemicals for the next part. She’d come here with a wild dog, and now they were here. She and Doug looked at the lagoon that would take them. It slopped at the mud. Doug st
epped forward, she was unsure of herself, but she wanted to go forward. It was like everything behind them was gone.
There was wind. Elodie felt it for the first time that night – ever. She wondered if even as a child she’d felt it. Like this. This soft breeze playing at her cheeks. Running through the hair on them. She could feel all the hair on the exposed parts of her body. In all the places she thought it wasn’t. And then she took her hair out of its ponytail and let it fall. Doug watched her and then looked out again to the water. It was flat and limited and uneventful. Elodie had hoped for a bigger farewell, but the two of them walked forward, sinking further and further into the mud. Elodie giggled as she pulled her shoeless foot out from knee deep. ‘My shoe’s in there,’ she said to Doug, who growled at the sinking. Doug climbed Elodie when she was close, scraped at her legs, catching her claws every now and then in the thread of her clothes, and then they were in wetter and wetter mud until the water was its own, until it was separate from the mud, and they kept walking. Doug was swimming sooner than Elodie, but eventually Elodie pulled her foot from the suck of the land for the last time and fell forward into the hold of the water and for the strongest time felt the pull of the bigger sea. Elodie smiled and laughed as Doug swam around her, splashing the dog, and then dived under to get all of her wet. ‘We’re on our way,’ Elodie said to Doug as the dog gummed and snapped at her face on the way past. They swam towards the open water because the current wasn’t strong enough to get them there.
They were quite a distance from the sea, but the way the planet arced meant they could see the water lift and fall at eye level under the bridge an occasional car sped over. Doug barked out of the blue and Elodie jumped slightly and laughed again. Now they were swimming, the adrenaline from the walk and the excitement had nowhere to go. It just surged around and around her system – jumped her out of her skin almost. Elodie was happy. There was nowhere to go back to. They were on their way, finally, after all the looking and asking and listening and smiling and working – they were off. She was sure if she looked back there would be nothing, but she didn’t look back. Doug huffed and moved towards the bridge. Doug knew the way. There were rocks around the bridge. Rocks put there by men. Large flat-sided rocks. Everything was reclaimed. Pushed and piled. Empty, final, purposeful. Doug stopped for a while – trod water and watched Elodie for a moment, then looked back out to sea and made her way. Out to the wide, wide sea. The bridge framed the sea like a picture. Elodie couldn’t see Rangitoto and she knew they needed to pass it – maybe, maybe that was the way. She could see North Head a long way in the distance. They might be better leaving from North Head or Gulf Harbour. Elodie looked but couldn’t see past the bridge. They could have left from further north. But they didn’t. But it was fine, Doug knew the way.
