He stops, lungs bellowing, legs burning. He hasn’t paced himself. Ahead, the last streetlight out of town is swarmed by swirling drizzle. He struts to it on stiff legs. He’s never really noticed it before, beyond being a three kilometre marker. It’s old-style, Victorian, like in London Jack-the-Ripper days. The answer, he thinks, must come to me here, now. His breath bursts in clouds in the dirty light. Love, he thinks, the central tenet of all religions, the common thread that binds them. He pulls up his sleeve. ‘Definition,’ he puffs at his screen. ‘Love.’ The screen flashes, projects text and scrolls.
love
/l^v/ noun
1. an intense feeling of deep affection for a person.
‘parents feel intense love for their children’
He brings up synonyms: affection, attachment, fondness, tenderness, warmth—they blur before his eyes. What else?
2. a deep attraction based on sexual desire.
‘No.’
‘It was love at first sight.’
3. a great enthusiasm and pleasure in something.
‘His love for the sea.’
He scrolls down through affectionate greetings conveyed to someone on another’s behalf, to the salute at the end of a letter, to a friendly form of address: ‘Don’t fret, there’s a love.’
Scores in tennis and squash fill him with an increasing sense of terror. There’s no mention of what Leaf was on about, nothing about impartial love or disinterest. What can that mean to the common person if it’s not in the dictionary? If nothing else, the message must be simple for Sam to edit and the world to understand. He feels fatally out of his depth. ‘Fuck,’ he puffs, wiping rain drops off his screen. ‘Search,’ he commands, ‘quotes on love.’
The screen flares:
‘I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.’
—Marilyn Monroe
‘What?’ He checks the site. Yes, it’s ‘Quotes on Love’. But where’s the love? The Monroe quote has millions of likes. He scrolls to the next.
‘You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.’
—William W. Purkey
‘No, no, no.’ He looks skywards. Nothing comes to him. A vast darkness crowds the streetlight. Is there anyone, he wonders, or anything that could help me? He scrolls to the third most-popular quote.
‘You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.’
—Dr Seuss
‘What the fuck?’ Only the word ‘love’, it seems, has special exemption from a common workable definition.
All the way to the last streetlight Karen was in the back of his mind. In the early days, the fear of losing her would drive him out into filthy weather and he would run in the dark round and round the block, staying close to his house in Newlands for fear of being mugged. He would literally groan as he pounded the streets at the thought of losing her. And that was love, he was told. But that was pain as well. That hurt. That was living with the constant danger of having your heart ripped out. Yet deep anxiety could instantly explode into ecstasy after something as trivial as a two-minute phone call in which she agreed to see a movie. Despite the ache, he had been alive in a special way. He would whoop with joy and then bathe in gratitude and relief, like a cat sprawled in the sun.
He wipes his screen again. Karen could solve this. Shine a bright light. Love is a subject on which he knows she would be sensible and intuitive. At one stroke she could lift him out of this labyrinth and spirit him to the mountain top. He groans. He wants to ring her as badly as he once did, when it was dreadful love that drove him out into the rain, but knows he can’t because this is work and his cross to bear, not hers. He can’t let her words be syndicated and deconstructed and abused. It would crush her, especially while coming off meds again. She wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t be able to process it.
A chill is gathering. The streetlight’s promise of illumination is fading. The Jack the Ripper light has a dimmer, grim and pitiless nature now, as if foretelling his impending failure and ruin. The rain keeps coming, swarming and relentless. His opportunity to find something short and snappy about love which won’t hurt corporate or religious interests or alienate the poor is slipping away with every second. He’s a man hanging from a cliff by his fingers. By the fingertips of one hand. He gathers his strength for one titanic burst of inspiration. It must come or his life will be lost. I want to win, he tells himself. I’ve come too far to fail now. I want to live! He bounces on the spot, shakes out his loosening limbs and yells at the streetlight, ‘Come on, J-man! Think! The world is waiting!’
PART IV
19
Bill slings his rifle over his shoulder, unlocks the back door and steps out onto his porch. The fragrant rural morning air stops him in his tracks. He loves this time, when his land glows in the early light and the dew releases sweet and earthy scents. He takes a deep draught of the hearty mix. Knowing it will be too hot to move in three hours makes it taste all the sweeter. His land glows in the early light. A bird hopping on the tin roof bursts into vigorous song. He smiles and locks the door. As he steps down onto gravel his right knee twinges from when he thrust himself in the path of the car in New Hokitika two months ago. The scrunch underfoot becomes silence as he crosses the manicured lawn surrounding the farmhouse and heads up the gentle slope to the shed at the bottom of the vineyard. The dog is conspicuous by its absence, even though Bill hadn’t owned it long enough to name it. But mornings aren’t the same without its deliriously excited greeting. Later today he will venture out into the heat to look at a new guard dog. A less goofy one.
Bill’s seen a dozen vigorous rabbits by the time the big shed comes into view. The poison is evidently not working. After the policeman goes, he’ll pick off a few and lay the second type of poison. Then again, he thinks, not if a new dog is coming. It may come down to a choice between a dog and being overrun with vermin.
The policeman, clad in khaki, sits under a tree on a collapsible chair next to a gas-powered billy. A mug steams in his hands. His rifle leans against the tree behind him. Constable Tang has spent the night on a platform up the tree, keeping watch on the big shed from which many thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment was taken two nights ago when Bill’s unnamed dog was shot, presumably with a silencer. Bill didn’t hear a thing. The thieves cut the chain on the front gate and drove up with a trailer—a small trailer, according to the track marks, which was fortunate because they couldn’t clear the entire shed out. The police feel there is a strong possibility of a return visit. Constable Tang will spend one more night on the property, which will give Bill time to organise security. A night security guard is a given and settled on, but he’s unsure about hiring a day guard as well and having a stranger hang around all day watching him.
‘Morning, Mr Tang.’
The policeman stands respectfully. ‘Morning, Mr Peters.’ He nods towards the rifle on Bill’s shoulder. ‘Getting into good habits, I see.’
Bill doesn’t mind carrying the gun. It makes him feel all his problems are things that can be shot. ‘Sit down, please. You’ve been up all night?’
Constable Tang sits down. His eyes are puffy.
‘Ah, I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. Too hot. Even halfway up a tree under the stars. That’s half the problem, Mr Peters. People who can’t afford air conditioning go out at night and get into mischief. Winters are much quieter for us.’
Bill raises his eyebrows. It’s not new information but he pretends it is out of gratitude for Tang’s nocturnal defence of his remaining wine-making apparatus, farm tools and machinery.
‘I got some interesting news last night,’ he tells the policeman. ‘Th
e insurance company informed me that two padlocks and a dog constitute inadequate security. I’m not covered.’
‘Whew. That’s tough.’
‘As you suggested, I’ve stepped things up. The new gate goes in today and a digger is coming to moat the roadside sections of fence. There’ll be alarms rigged all along it as well.’
‘Excellent. I know you’ve organised night security, Mr Peters, but I recommend help during the day as well, for the first wee while anyway, until people get to know you.’ Tang’s eyes gleam. ‘Personally, I mean, in the community. You don’t have blood ties up here. And friends take a while. I mean friends you can trust. Neighbours would be nice, but that’s the way it is now with foreign owners.’ Tang nods in the direction of the nearest property, which remains unoccupied nine months of the year. ‘At least they have guards over there. This first little bit will be hard, Mr Peters, but…’ Tang looks over his teacup and raises his brows to the eastern sky, ‘it’s worth it.’
‘Absolutely.’
At midday Bill’s screen displays a caller named Wiz. It could be someone from one of the three security firms he’s in touch with, or the digger company, or someone from the kennel. Or a new problem, he thinks. Something else to pay for.
‘Hello?’
It’s a woman. ‘Wiz Couriers here at the gate with a parcel for a Mr Bill Peters.’
‘A parcel? From whom?’
‘Trix Stanaway.’
‘Have you come from Wellington?’
‘No, the depot in Napier. She requested personal delivery to your home rather than a drone.’
He looks out at the bright glare of his garden. The clematis is the only thing he can name with certainty among the Australian, Mediterranean and desert flora planted by the previous owner. Is this his home?
‘I’ll be right down.’
‘I’ll need chipped photo ID.’
‘Right.’
Who am I? he asks himself as he goes to his bedroom for the identification. A man with no local blood ties or friends, as Constable Tang said, an Inner from Wellington—meaning a rich old man receiving NST and with more than his fair share of resources. An old man, it should also be noted, he thinks, who has started taking testosterone ‘to keep ahead’, as the advertisements say. He takes the ID from his dresser and examines the expressionless photo. A photogenic old man who made up lies for the media to pay for his retirement. Just like everyone else then, in the end, a liar and a cheat intent on feathering his own nest. He takes the pistol from under the pillow on the other side of his king-size bed, the side of the bed Trix is yet to occupy, and holsters it in the pocket of his cargo shorts. He has a question for her absent form. ‘What have you sent me?’
The sun pounds his head as soon as he steps off the porch. It’s only a hundred metres down the drive to the gate but he goes back for a hat. He grabs his keys as well and locks the door on the way out this time, in case Wiz is a diversion, a trick.
Looking to make up lost time, he strides off the porch and jars his right knee. The pain stops him dead. It’s very bad. Red hot pincers dig in and the pain keeps coming. Is it the end of the rural idyll he’s dreamed of for so many years? He grits his teeth. No, he tells himself, I need this, and waits for the pain to have its fill. It’s nothing, he tells himself, nothing compared to the humiliation of a feeble elderly retreat to the Mount to tend a few roses and deteriorate. Mercifully, the pain subsides. He tests, very gently, his weight. It’s okay. He expels a deep breath of relief. He can even walk if he takes it easy. Yes. It was just a funny angle. But he returns inside for the walking stick the clinic gave him which he stopped using a fortnight ago. His heartbeat has restored itself to normal as he gingerly passes the cactus garden out the front. His faced is bathed in sweat.
He’s halfway down the curved drive, keeping close to the tall and fat hedge that borders it for the sliver of shadow it provides, when he sees the red-and-blue van at the gate, emblazoned with the word WIZ and an emblem of a box with wings. The gun becomes heavy in his pocket. It would be embarrassing should the courier see it, he thinks, and likely to go the rounds. First impressions are important. He stops and leaves the pistol under the hedge, taking note of the spot and straightening his leg with care as he rises.
He wonders what Trix could have sent him. She hasn’t visited yet because of the security issues. There is no doubt it’s too dangerous for her to stay at the moment—they both fully agree on that. Yet she could have visited during the day and stayed in Napier, or taken a chance for one night.
When he’d returned from New Hokitika with his swollen knee she asked him straight out if Sam’s coma messages were genuine, and he’d immediately and emphatically replied yes, because they essentially were genuine, the ones publicly released up until that point anyway—the ones he had been involved with—just resurrected from 1986. This partial truth hung over them for three days before he left for Napier.
Since then, three more messages from Sam have been released to the world’s media: the one about love and growth Jeremiah concocted out of a database; a similarly nebulous piece of materialistic fluff by persons unknown regarding neighbours; and then the last, released just after he’d moved up to Napier, the longer one about truth and communication, which had Leaf Garland’s fingerprints all over it and was effectively an advertisement for the Genius screen. Venture Group will have made hundreds of millions. Strangely enough, Trix hasn’t been moved to repeat her question about the veracity of the recent messages, the truly phony ones. Then again, she hasn’t asked him anything recently, not even about the weather. His knee flares. He slows. The red-and-blue van shimmers in the heatwaves rising up off the road. The driver is a dark shape alone in the front.
What did Trix send?
The imperious height and solidity of his new top-of-the-line Portcullis Gate is satisfying. He punches in the combination, his eldest son’s birthdate, and the pedestrian door swings open. The uniformed courier jumps out of the van and slides open the side door. She’s about 35, Mäori, short. Her lack of height and excess weight, he thinks, may be signs of generational poverty. Neighbours, he tells himself. Tang said I have to make connections.
She finds the parcel, a small box, and turns to face him. Her sunglasses are large and black. She has a Wiz cap on. She wears baggy blue shorts and jandals. Her teeth surprise him, yellower and longer than he’s seen for years. She’s smiling. ‘Thought the name was familiar. You’re the Sailor Sam reporter.’
He holds up his hands in mock surrender and returns her smile. ‘Got me.’
‘You’re staying up here?’
‘Yep, I’ve retired up here.’
She looks over the new gate, up the curved and hedged drive. The house itself is out of view.
‘When did you arrive?’
‘About a month ago.’
‘You bought it?’
‘Yep. My slice of paradise.’
Her silence seems to say ‘Lucky for some’ as she gives him the box and takes his signature. The need for ID is apparently circumvented by his fame. How quaintly rural.
‘You know my name. What’s yours?’
‘Samantha.’ The teeth again.
‘Nice name.’
‘I was named after you-know-who.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s quite weird to meet you. I thought I’d talk your ears off if I ever did.’
‘Well, Samantha, if you ever do feel like a chat, you know where to find me.’ The invitation has come out wrong and she looks uncertain. ‘I could use some company.’
‘You’re alone up there?’
‘No. But, you know.’ He can see she doesn’t know. ‘It’d be good to get to know my neighbours.’
‘I live in town.’
‘Oh, okay.’
She checks his signature, examines it. ‘Sam II said something about neighbours, eh?’
‘Sam II,’ he echoes woodenly. It’s the first time he’s heard the name. It has an authority about it that carries th
e weight of popular democratic judgement. The sequel, as they say, is never as good as the original. He wants to be out of the sun now, in his cool dark lounge with Trix’s parcel. Away from the big black sunglasses. ‘Yeah, he did.’
‘You think it’s the same Sam?’
‘No.’
‘Yeah, well it’d be nice if you came out said something. Sorry, but, you know.’
He doesn’t exactly know.
‘You know why I’m driving around in 40-degree heat today? Because this is my second job and I need it to buy those bloody Genius screens for my three kids. For school. Pardon my French, but that’s bullshit.’
‘It’s compulsory? You have to buy them?’
‘Yeah, that’s the way it’s been “interpreted” by the school board.’ She slams the side door violently. ‘Don’t you keep up with the news?’
‘I’m having a break, to be honest. I’ve retired.’
‘Well, yeah.’ He can see she’s biting her tongue as she gets in the van and slams the door. He stands lamely, awaiting her parting judgement as the window winds down. It comes. ‘Don’t stand in the sun too long, mate.’
20
To delay the pleasure of opening Trix’s special hand-delivered parcel, Bill selects a cool bottle of the local Sunny Hill weissburgunder from his wine fridge. He unscrews the top and selects a glass, which proves itself pristine against the light. He is about to remove both glass and bottle to the lounge, when he reconsiders, pours himself a very generous measure and recaps and refrigerates the bottle. In the lounge, on the old stuffed leather couch he had shipped up from Wellington, he presents the wine to the window. Pale straw and clear. Too clear. Sulphites. He swirls, places his nose in the centre of the tilted glass and sniffs. And again. More acid than fruit, which is to be expected with a weissburgunder, but possibly overdone. Holding the first sip of lightly chilled wine in his mouth, he draws in some air. No, the acid is beyond refreshing. The fruits are too delicate. As expected, the finish is short and tart. Another sip. It could be from anywhere. Characterless, high-volume fare to be served cold and drunk quickly. I can do better, he thinks, tabling the glass.
Star Sailors Page 23
