by Greg McGee
That ended the conversation, until they’d said their goodbyes and left him there on the margins of happy hour, Den, suddenly old and unsure why they were going and not taking him with them. At a loss as to how to start walking away, Will asked if there was anything he needed.
‘Where’s Walter?’ asked Den.
Will looked at Ellie for guidance. She shrugged. ‘Who’s Walter, Dad? Is he a friend we don’t know? Does he live here?’
Den shook his electric mane again and changed the subject. ‘Where’s my roll-top? It has everything I need.’
‘Your desk was lost in the fire, Dad,’ Ellie explained. ‘But tell me what you need and we’ll get it for you if we can.’
Den shook his head. ‘You can’t.’
‘We might be able to.’
‘You can’t,’ said Den, emphatic.
***
ON the way back to the carpark, no one said anything. When they reached Yelena’s car, Ellie, who was clearly still fuming, opened the passenger door, but barred Will’s entrance. ‘You were the one with the motivation,’ she said.
‘Eh?’
‘The fire forced Dad out, released Mum’s share under the will.’
‘You are fucking kidding!’
She wasn’t. ‘There are still two people from Dad’s party who were unaccounted for when the fire started,’ she said, implacable. ‘You and Lila.’
‘I gave Lila a lift home,’ said Will. ‘It’s all on record with the fire investigator.’
‘She said she was staying the night.’
‘She changed her mind.’
‘Why would she change her mind? She was desperate for a place to stay. Where did she go?’
Will shrugged, suggested Ellie should ask Lila, knowing Ellie never would. He mentioned that it was Ellie who raised the topic of burning the house, when she talked about Carol’s fantasy.
‘You’re such a cunt,’ said Ellie, and turned and walked around to the rear door behind Yelena.
There’s a lot to be said for clarity, thought Will, sliding into the front passenger seat. The killer seat, they used to call it, before air bags. Still, safer to know where you stand, or sit.
IT’S DARK OUTSIDE, but worse in here. I don’t let them pull the blinds down or draw the curtains. I need to see the lights out there, the lights of the world, the one I remember. They keep me from slipping away into the black room. My memory of who I was is all I’ve got to help me claw onto the edge and hold fast. The trouble is, I seem to be able to remember my father’s memories more than my own. His name was Lance, I remember that. He was in Colditz, I remember that. He’d been captured in early ’43, I think it was, and for three years before that he’d been living in a tent, through Greece and Crete and North Africa. When we were kids we’d go over the hill to Nelson for the holidays. We had a campsite in the family part of the Tāhuna Beach motor camp, where we pitched our tent in the same spot every summer, and where our father made us sweep the grass floor every morning. Sweep the bloody grass! He was that kind of soldier, but not the kind who thought he had a duty to escape. So he wasn’t one of those who escaped from Colditz. Charlie Upham, double VC, was there with him, and he never escaped either. Dad thought Charlie was a problematic bugger. He said you didn’t want to be too close to Charlie on the battlefield because he had a death wish, and you didn’t want to be his mate in Colditz either, because he was so contemptuous of the Germans that they hated him. Respected him, but hated him. Dad didn’t hate the Germans, reckoned most of them were probably as reluctant to go to war as he was. Not Charlie. Dad got to know him better after the war, when he farmed near us, but he was always an odd bird, according to Dad.
I remember meeting him once when I was a boy, this crusty old bastard sitting on a horse during a communal DOC muster of some foothills near the Kaikōuras, up the Clarence River. He looked like a hawk, sitting on that horse, eyes glinting from under the shade of his hat, burning. But later I saw him walking about during smoko, and he was a small man, short, wiry. Dad said you didn’t have to be a Charles Atlas to be a hero, you could be a Charles Upham. It was a joke, but I realised much later, he might have intended it as a salve or an inspiration: Dad knew I wasn’t going to grow tall. If that’s what he meant, it was probably the kindest thing he ever did or said. The thing my father knew in Colditz, he said, was that he didn’t have to escape, he didn’t have to risk being shot or electrified on the perimeter fence or falling from one of the high stone walls onto cobbles. He’d been picked up by the Afrika Korps after El Alamein, where they’d given Rommel a good root up the jaxie. That’s how he described it. You don’t hear that much any more. But he knew before he got to Colditz that we would win the war. Sooner or later, we would win, and he’d be free. It was more than hope, he said, it was certainty. But that was then. Here, there is no hope. There’s no one coming to save me. When Ellie and my son and Branko’s daughter walked away today, I knew I was lost. There’s no way out. Unless I can find one myself. I’m sure I had a plan. Where is Walter? He was in my roll-top, under W. Or M. Why would I have filed Walter under M? It was part of a plan . . .
THE PERFECT SILENCE of Yelena’s electric BMW was mirrored by a mute truculence inside the car, as Will was spirited back across the harbour bridge. Will looked out longingly at the city lights, circling the harbour like fluorescent beads. When they took the Cook Street off-ramp and swung off Pitt Street onto K Road, he saw his opportunity. ‘Anywhere here would be brilliant, thanks Yelena.’
‘We’re having some kai.’
‘I’m not actually hungry.’
‘You need a feed. Doesn’t he need a feed, Ellie?’
‘That and a reality check.’
‘Thought I was keeping it real.’
‘Real? You’re a fucking fantasist!’ Ellie exclaimed.
‘Would you two mind not trying to put me off my tucker?’ said Yelena.
They sat in silence again for as long as it took to score a parallel park further along K Road, across from where the neon mermaid used to sparkle. Yelena pointed ahead to people and tables and light spilling out on the footpath, under a big sign, Kook A Chew. ‘That’s us,’ she said.
Thank Christ, thought Will, I’ll be able to get a drink.
Yelena walked them straight to a table just beyond the double doors that separated the serious diners inside from the party outside. It was a table for two and Ellie didn’t linger, waving to some people at a leaner further along the footpath. So this was part of the plan, thought Will. He was glad Ellie had taken her antagonism elsewhere. Yelena was going to get down and dirty with the rent, and he didn’t need Ellie wading in too. One more tap dance for the day, he told himself, steeling himself and catching sight of Ellie, hugging a lanky, balding guy. Ellie offered her face up to him. They kissed. A lovers’ kiss. Will looked at Yelena, who was looking too, smiling. ‘Who’s that guy?’ he asked.
‘The new man.’
Will couldn’t help himself. ‘What?’
‘You mean who? She’ll bring him over and introduce you if she wants to, I guess.’
A woman in her mid-thirties had arrived at the table and was kissing Yelena, the both cheeks thing. Yelena introduced her as Kath, one of the owners, then introduced Will to her as ‘my dear old mate’. Will shook Kath’s hand as she beamed a welcome at him. He felt suddenly emotional, tried to figure out why. He didn’t much like the ‘old’, but the ‘dear’ in front of it damn near choked him up.
‘Let me order you some drinks,’ said Kath. ‘The usual for you, darling?’
‘And the same for Will,’ said Yelena.
‘On the way,’ said Kath, disappearing into the restaurant.
‘Something strong?’ asked Will hopefully.
‘Bitters and lemon.’
‘Seriously?’
‘For me booze was a gateway to drugs, which was a gateway to all sort
s of betrayals and treacheries,’ said Yelena. ‘I lost someone I loved – she quite rightly decided that I was a flake and unworthy of her. That made it worse. I hated myself and the more I hated myself the more booze and drugs and sex I needed to make myself feel better. That’s the way it goes, isn’t it?’ Yelena was smiling at him, and maybe there was something tender in that smile, but Will had to look away. Everyone around them was having a ball, even on a fucking Monday night, and he had to sit there with bitters and lemons and deal with this shit. ‘They’re placebos, aren’t they, the booze and drugs?’ continued Yelena. ‘The pain doesn’t go away, does it, Will.’
It wasn’t a question, but Will felt he had to move the conversation away from this inquisition in the midst of the celebration going on all around them. He had to get it back on ground he knew, whatever the cost, so he could do the tap dance again. He never thought he’d be grateful to talk about the rent.
‘I don’t give a shit about the rent,’ said Yelena. ‘That’s not what this is about.’
‘This? What the fuck is this then?’
‘The bullshit stops here, Will.’
‘All I owe you is the rent. I’ll have it covered, Yelena, this TVC I was telling you about for the new EV–’
‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, Will? I’m Branko’s daughter, f’chrissakes. Mum and I listened to that bullshit all our lives, till he upped and left us! You think I don’t know how truly fucked you are? You can delude yourself, but don’t fucking try to spin me. You know what we’re trying to do here, me and Ellie?’
‘No idea.’
‘This is a fucking intervention, Will, for an old friend, who we can barely remember! People who love you trying to pull you out of a death-roll.’
‘That’s a bit dramatic.’
‘Is it? You’re high.’
‘Jesus.’
‘You’re fucked up on meth and I don’t believe a word you say tonight.’ Yelena lowered her voice and leant across the table. ‘But Will, I’m hoping some of this sticks, and when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll ring me and ask me to sit down with you and find a way forward. Okay?’
Will could no longer hold her eyes. He looked down at the table, the gingham squares of the cloth, smudged and indistinct. Someone plonked a glass down in front of him. He drank it down and still couldn’t look at Yelena. She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘I’m fucked,’ he said, gulping. ‘Forty and fucked.’
‘You’re not alone. There’ve been legions of us through history. Started with Dante, but even when he was writing about losing his way in middle age, he struck a chord in readers, so the phenomenon was known way before him–’
Will’s tongue seemed suddenly swollen but he finally got it out. ‘Flame is fucked.’
‘Yes,’ said Yelena, ‘it is.’ She took his other hand in hers. ‘So give up on that dream. Find another.’
‘Just like that?’
‘You inherited that dream from Dad and Den . . . You know the stats on entrepreneurs your age who fall over?’
Will shook his head.
‘What I’m saying is, Flame’s demise could be seen as a rite of passage to something else, not an end.’
‘It’s all I know.’
Yelena released his hands, took her drink and sipped, her eyes gauging him, measuring. ‘You could apply some of those skills to something else,’ she said. ‘Another way of looking at producers is as project managers. I’m doing eco retro-fits on my commercial properties as they come up for renewal: insulation, thermal windows, solar panels, storage batteries, sometimes even rainwater capture. It’s time-consuming and distracting. I need someone to oversee that side of things.’
‘Commercial real estate?’
‘Why not? You can write budgets, you can read balance sheets, cost reports. You’re dealing with businessmen, property managers, big numbers, you’re not selling to Mum and Dad tyre-kickers and arguing over three dollars fifty. You could do a valuer’s course. When you finish the fit-out, your next job could be to find a new tenant for the Flame premises.’
‘Eh?’ Finally, the fucking rent!
‘I’ll help you put together an advertising campaign and shadow you through the meetings. It won’t be a production office any more, that’s dead. We might be looking at warehousing, plumbing supply, or an architect’s premises, or a boutique brewery. Or we could offer to fit it with glass doors and go for retail, a furniture outlet, say.’
‘Why would you do that for me?’
‘It’s not all altruism, Will. When you sell the new lease, I’ll deduct the Flame rent arrears from your commission. Win win.’
‘Zero sum says that for every winner there has to be a loser. Who would that be?’
Yelena smiled. ‘Do you have to practise to be such an arsehole, or does it just come naturally?’
‘I’m a ray of light wherever I go.’
Yelena, still smiling, shook her head slowly, almost wonderingly. ‘A deep, dark hole,’ she said. Then she stood up. ‘We’re finished here, Will. I’m going to join your sister and some real people. Ring me tomorrow. But only if you’re clean. I’m not working with a shithead.’
***
WILL wandered along K Road, past other bars full of deceptively happy people, starring in their own selfies, preening Facebook fakes who were as fucked as he was. Yelena was right: many fall, even in early middle age or before, and not all can pick themselves up. He could remember some tragics. Coming through arrivals a few months ago after a fruitless pitch to a government agency in Wellingdog, he’d passed the chauffeurs in suits standing in a row holding signs. His eye had been drawn to one of the faces, fleshy, shadowed with a late-afternoon beard, whom he’d known quite well as a hot young creative, early thirties at most. Will could no longer remember his name. The guy had blanked him anyway, a blessing for them both.
The bars petered out as K Road became Great North, and the caryards began. They used to stretch almost unbroken along the ridge to the Grey Lynn shops, but lately they’d been dug out and filled with massive concrete pads, supporting pillars that soared into apartments with steepling views of the city. And there was a giant Bunnings and cafes and a real estate office. It was some comfort to him that everything changed, nothing stayed the same, even commercial real estate.
Was Yelena serious about her offer? Yelena was serious about everything. He was flattered. There was a way ahead if he ignored the chasm in front of him and concentrated on landing safely on the other side. He remembered back in the day when Flame was coining it and he’d been advised by one of Suzan of South Africa’s predecessors to buy a car he couldn’t afford as a tax deduction. He’d taken the Aston Martin to Pukekohe for an advanced driving course, and he remembered the instructor telling him that if he got into a skid, he shouldn’t look at the tree he was trying to avoid, but at the safe space he wanted to get to. ‘You’ll unconsciously steer towards where you’re looking,’ the guy had said, ‘so look at the soft landing.’ That’s what he had to do. Look for a soft landing.
The problem, he realised when he climbed through the rancid air to his flat, was that his mind was in an extended skid and couldn’t pull out. The late-afternoon half-tab at the office had put him out of sequence. He needed to come down, he needed to sleep. He needed to find some juice for Nick Preston tomorrow. He couldn’t give in to the extinction of hope without a fight.
He sluiced down two trammies with his last can of Panhead, peeled off his soaked shirt and then his shoes, socks and trou, pulled up the old sash window and stared out at the lights sprinkled across the valley, all the way to the dark bulk of the Waitākeres, while he waited for the pills to give him some peace.
***
HE didn’t sleep well. The meth and trammies fought for control well into the early hours, and by the time the trammies won, it was almost dawn. Maybe he’d slept: the only evidence he had
were the nightmares. That combine harvester, the sheaves of wheat. Where the fuck did that come from? The only farm he’d ever heard about in detail was Stan’s organic fucking wank, and there was no combine harvester there: they probably still used Clydesdales. He realised he’d left his car at the office, and it still had both his clean shirts in it. He showered and dressed the rest of him, then put on a T-shirt. It’d be wringing wet by the time he walked to Flame, which was mostly downhill, but he couldn’t afford an Uber and he could have a Pommy wash at the en-suite basin and grab a new shirt before Nick Preston could diary a sit-down. Nick could call at any time. According to rumour, probably started by Nick, he was a Les Mills junkie and did three classes before breakfast, the spectral git. Will pulled on his trou and found the last little helper sitting loose in his pocket. He broke it in half and swallowed one. At the sink, swilling it down with a glass of water, he looked at the remaining half-tab, then tipped it down the drain with the rest of the water.
***
Will was late getting in to Flame, but his mobile hadn’t rung; he had no reason to suspect he’d missed anything. But Trish had a slim courier parcel that had just been delivered, from LSQN, with a little card attached – Compliments, Nick.
Initially, Will couldn’t imagine why Nick would send him a parcel or what could possibly be in it, but the contact, and the thought behind it had to be encouraging – it was far more difficult to send a parcel than make a call. He began thinking it could be a draft contract, or an amended script or spreadsheet . . . He asked Trish to open it.
She scissored along the dotted line, and drew out the contents. A newspaper, the Herald. Trish inspected the parcel to see if there was anything else, then shrugged and handed it to Will.
Will shook it to see if anything had been hidden inside it, then stared at it, uncomprehendingly, trying to divine its message. The front-page headline was pretty standard, another immigration scam, and Will couldn’t for the life of him get the message. He was about to open the paper when he saw it, at the top beside the masthead banner. Will caught it like a blow. The date.
