Bird North and Other Stories Page 13

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Glen, looking into the back of the car. ‘What did you blow your nose on?’ As they’d left the pub Al had asked Glen if there were any tissues in the car. Glen had said there weren’t.

  Al sniffed. ‘Go and get your tea,’ he said.

  Glen got out of the car and slammed the door. He started towards the shop. Steve followed. Across from KFC there was a petrol station and above that a sickle of moon. Steve stared at the part under shadow. It was mysterious. It was the type of thing you could share with a girlfriend.

  ‘Oi!’ shouted Glen, holding the door to the Roast Canteen open. ‘C’mon!’

  Glen got pork and Steve got lamb. They waited in front of two drinks fridges for their orders to be filled. An Asian woman called out an order and a huge man who’d been sitting at the front of the shop got up. He had a tattoo on his neck and his shorts were like two Kleen-Saks stitched together. He walked out of the shop with a plastic bag filled with polystyrene containers.

  ‘He’s the sort of man the All Blacks need tonight,’ said Glen, gesturing at the door. ‘Someone with a bit of mongrel.’

  Steve nodded. The fridges were buzzing and the tube lighting on the ceiling was bright.

  At a table a man and woman were waiting. The man was leaning back in his seat and spinning an empty can. Each time it went around a little more liquid dribbled onto the table. The woman was going through the pages of a magazine like she was angry at something.

  ‘See?’ said Glen, ‘that’s what a relationship does to you.’

  Steve had known Glen since university. The previous night, once they were pissed, Steve told Glen about the trouble he was having with his ex. Glen had listened for a while then when Steve went quiet he’d said, ‘You know what you need? Sambuca!’

  Steve shifted from one foot to the other and patted at the corner of his mouth like there was lint there. Earlier in the week, on the bus home from work, something had happened to his breathing. It had started as a sensation around his mouth like something electrical was being held there. He’d looked around, wondering if anyone else had noticed. It was raining and the bus was attached to the wires, but none of the other passengers seemed to have noticed. His chest was shifting slightly and his stomach was going in and out. He put one of his hands over his heart and the other over his belly like he was blocking an attack. His breathing got shorter and shorter. The tingling spread back to his ears. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be bringing air in or taking air out. He pressed the button to stop the bus and went through the other passengers like they were bamboo. Excuse me, someone said. Outside he sat on a bench and counted the roofs of the houses. He watched a seagull land and take off. Whatever it was had passed.

  ‘They deep fry the potatoes, but the rest is fairly healthy,’ said Glen, nodding at the food.

  A man was at one end of the counter carving the different joints of meat. Next to him a woman was filling steel trays with potatoes and kumara. The peas and carrots were kept warm in trays of hot water and a woman, who also took orders, stirred the special gravy. The man started with your choice of meat and by the time the polystyrene container reached the gravy-lady it was full.

  Steve had the bag of food in his lap. He was looking in the rear-vision mirror as Glen reversed out of the carpark. Al was in the back corner with his pale face near the window. Steve was worried something would happen to his breathing while he was at Al’s flat. It was Glen’s car and he’d have to wait until Glen was ready before he could leave. If it gets bad, he thought, I’ll go into Al’s toilet and pretend to throw up. Then I’ll tell Glen and ask if he can get me home. But Glen would want to watch the All Blacks. He’d talked nonstop about the forward pack the night before. Maybe he’d refuse to help.

  When they stopped at a red light Al said he wanted beer.

  ‘Haven’t you got a cold?’ said Glen.

  ‘So?’ said Al. ‘Are you my mother now?’

  ‘Well I can’t drink,’ said Glen. ‘I have to drive. Are you going to drink?’ Glen looked at Steve. With his long face and the way his head was turned he looked like a wolf. Before Steve could answer, Glen wound both the back windows down using the control panel on the driver’s arm-rest.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ bellowed Al.

  The liquor store was a drive-thru. There were long orange poles holding a high roof. Lots of cars were parked and people kept going in and out. Steve was waiting in the car. He could see Al and Glen standing in front of a pyramid of beer boxes. Two women came out of the store. The first was wearing a white cardigan and had shimmering earrings. The box of alcohol she was carrying clinked. The woman beside her was jagged looking with prominent bones in her face. The first woman, heavier and set low like a tractor tyre sunk into the ground, was looking straight at Steve. She came closer. She was swaying. There was a glistening ring through her nose. He looked at the bag in his lap and then glanced back. She blinked slowly and put the box on the ground. He imagined them dragging him out of the car and, like in the cartoons, walloping him on top of the head so that his feet disappeared into the concrete. But nothing happened. They’d put their alcohol down to light cigarettes.

  Glen and Al appeared. They were each carrying a box of beer. Al was laughing and he’d tilted his box and was ripping at its back end. They got into the car. ‘Al said that if we want to get pissed we can sleep at his place.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know ...’ said Steve.

  ‘Remember mate,’ interrupted Glen, ‘you owe me after taking off last night.’

  They were at the exit to the liquor store. They needed to cross the busy main road to get to the street Al lived on. Steve bunched and un-bunched his hands. It was one car after another. Glen edged forward. Steve could hear the beer in the neck of the bottle Al was drinking. A car turned off the main road and went around them. There were three men inside. The man in the passenger seat stared at Steve.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Glen, edging the car further onto the road.

  But the cars were endless: paced one after the other like each one was attached to the spokes of a wheel buried in the earth’s core. Meanwhile, in Al’s dark lounge, dominating the room with its size and splendour, and marking time with its blinking orange standby button, Al’s 50-inch flat-screen TV waited.

  Pontoon

  The university year had been finished for a fortnight, but unlike his flatmates, who’d gone home after their last exams, Scott – who was two thirds of the way through an Arts degree – had walked into the city and signed on with a recruitment agency. ‘I’ll be a graduate soon,’ he’d said, when he talked on the phone to his worried parents. ‘I have to get a feel for the job market.’

  Emptied of flatmates the large house seemed hollow and fragile. A cold wind blew for days on end: windows wobbled in their frames and down the long hallway doors sucked open and shut. One night, fearing an invasion, Scott patrolled from room to room with a cricket stump held down and away from his body like a loaded rifle. Other than a few posters being lifted off their pins there was nothing to report, but lying next to the stump that night he wondered if his decision to stay had been the wrong one.

  The next day, though, the storm had passed. Sun shone through the tall windows and the house felt light and airy. He shook his head and laughed at the cricket wicket in the bed, then, with a towel, walked the short distance to the harbour. It was so calm that the surrounding hills, the white mass of a ferry and even the city’s dark buildings were perfectly duplicated. He put the towel on the sand and went in. He did front crawl and backstroke. Then he started swimming underwater. He’d take three long breaths and, going off landmarks on the shore, see how far he could get. It was quiet, except if there was something like a truck or an unmufflered car on the harbour road, and between the surface and the sea-floor the blue curtain was cool and endless.

  After that, with summer arriving early, he got into a rhythm. He would wake late, go to the harbour and practice his swimming and then walk slowly back to the flat, w
atching the pohutukawa for their first red blaze. The rest of the day, as the cicadas played, he’d bathe in the sun and read either from a text on nineteenth century Europe or from the tomato box full of women’s magazines he’d found under his flatmate’s bed.

  Then one afternoon a consultant from the recruitment agency called.

  ‘Scott, would you say you’re the sort of person who likes to help people?’

  It seemed an important question, but before Scott could think through a response she continued, ‘We’re running a two day testing seminar to find candidates suitable to man the phones at the Emergency Services’ 111 call centre. I have to tell you Scott, your name leapt off the page.’

  It was early in the morning on day two of the seminar. Unable to sleep, Scott was in the bathroom shaving. At the end of the previous day the recruitment consultant – her long dark hair was styled in a way that suggested she’d travelled to the city in a convertible – stopped Scott outside the lifts and, playing her hands over her cheeks as if applying an exfoliant said, ‘Can you guess what I want you to do for me Scott?’

  Scott tilted his chin and looked in the mirror. There were spots of blood on his cheek and more on his long neck. It had been his first beard and the shaving had taken less time than he’d expected. Now all that was left was his moustache. He moved his top lip towards his nose and watched the hair bristle forward. After a swim he’d taken to sucking the seawater from it and spitting as he walked out of the water. He turned side on and considered his profile. With his hair damp and neat from the shower he looked like an actor from a pornographic movie.

  He shaved the moustache, dried his face and went into his bedroom. It was warm already, but still dark. The numbers on his clock-radio burned in their red, square way. He sat on the edge of the bed feeling his cheeks and chin. They were tight, sore, and as smooth as the belly of a fish. His trousers from the day before were slumped over a chair. Next to the chair, beside the huddled shape of yesterday’s shoes, were his swimming shorts.

  The previous morning, attending day one of the seminar, Scott had taken a lift to the seventh floor of a tall, grey building in the city. A woman looked up from a computer when he came out of the lift. He hadn’t talked to anyone for a few days and when he said his name and what he was there for his voice came out high and weird. The receptionist didn’t seem to notice, just made a mark on a piece of paper and then showed him into a room. There were a lot of people at a large table and only a few empty chairs. The table looked like it was set for dining. In front of every person or chair there was a white booklet. On either side of each booklet were a blue pen and a highlighter. At the right-hand corner of the booklet was a glass and in the middle of the table, jugs of water on a white cloth. Though thin, Scott had to get side-on to work down the corridor between the wall and the edge of the table. He sat beside an older man and looked closely at the highlighter. A clock was ticking. Someone sneezed. At the end of the table a policeman said something to a tired looking man. Sitting next to them was the glamorous woman with the dark hair.

  The door opened and a short, wide woman walked in. Her hair was gelled back. She started down the opposite side of the table. It was a tight squeeze for her and she became red in the face. ‘Excuse me,’ she said smiling sadly at the quiet people around the table. Then her handbag hooked on the back of a chair and she was straightened up and held for a moment. ‘For God’s sake,’ her red face shrank as she scrabbled at where the bag was attached. ‘Oh ... hell!’ she said, freeing the bag and staring around. The dark-haired woman had half stood up. She was smiling and gesturing with long hands towards an empty chair, but the woman with the fringe was retreating. She was more bullish this time and when she bunted the table a Polynesian man looked around at her and, holding up his glass as if it were in danger, directed a look at the policeman that said, ‘Should we arrest her?’

  She made it out of the room, but then suddenly returned, jamming her hot wet face around the door. ‘Thank you all for your lovely bloody welcome!’

  Scott felt the sweat in his underarms. Someone made a sound that could have been a laugh or a cough. The policeman had taken off his hat and was staring into it as if a complicated message were pinned there.

  A few minutes later the dark-haired woman stood up and welcomed them. She introduced herself and the men sitting with her, told the candidates about the toilets and what to do if there was an earthquake, then ran through the two-day timetable. After a moment of silence she leaned forward and told them they were about to embark on what could be a life-changing journey. Most of the candidates nodded and smiled. The Polynesian man rubbed his hands together.

  ‘Now,’ continued the dark-haired woman, ‘so we can get to know you all a little better, I want you to talk to the person next to you and find out three interesting things you can share with the rest of us.’ There was a good smell off her – citrus and leather. ‘You have five minutes,’ she said.

  Scott’s neighbour was Jeff. Jeff used all the time talking about the conspiracy that had cost him his last job. Scott was interested and was trying to think of a quote from Marx when the dark-haired woman clapped and said, ‘Time’s up! Let’s find out what makes you wonderful people tick.’

  Jeff didn’t have anything on Scott so when it came to his turn he said, ‘This is Scott, he likes ...’ He looked at Scott and put his hands over the table as if waiting to be given a bowl of soup.

  ‘Swimming,’ said Scott, ‘in the sea.’

  The dark-haired woman made a doggy-paddle motion and said, ‘Swimming?’

  The policeman marked a piece of paper.

  ‘A mermaid with a beard,’ said the Polynesian man. He’d brought his own pens and instead of introducing his neighbour had introduced himself, talking passionately about his time in the Territorials. The other candidates liked his mermaid joke. It got about the same amount of laughter as when a woman named Shona introduced her partner. ‘This is Lisa. She’s an Australian, but she’s in love with Dan Carter. So she can’t be too bad.’

  Before morning tea the policeman spoke to a slide show. There were pictures of an ambulance leaving a yellow building, of people wearing head-sets staring intently at computer screens, and a flow-chart describing how the right decision is made. The room had been darkened for the presentation and after the last slide the policeman stood in front of the blue square the projector made on the wall, and, as a white cursor blinked just above his head, told them there was no point in him pussy-footing around, the call centre was a high pressure environment. ‘In the next few days we’ll be finding out whether you do or don’t have the right stuff.’

  The room was quiet. Shona said something in a worried voice to the woman beside her.

  ‘Would it be fair to say,’ said the dark-haired woman, turning on the lights and looking at the policeman with her hand in a fist under her chin, ‘the call centre is a work hard/play hard sort of environment?’

  The policeman blinked in a surprised way as if he’d forgotten where he was. ‘That might be one way of putting it,’ he said after a pause. ‘Gary ...’ he tilted his head at the tired looking man.

  ‘We do know how to party,’ said Gary, filling his cheeks with breath then shaking his head and releasing the air as if he couldn’t begin to start telling them how much and how hard they liked to party. Gary worked at the call centre. After morning tea he talked to them about what he called the nuts and bolts of the job. He told them about the rates of pay, the team leaders, last year’s Christmas party, about how there was always a sworn police officer on duty in case things got ‘sticky’. And how, as non-sworn police, they had access to affordable holiday homes in Picton and the central North Island.

  ‘Rotovegas,’ drawled the Territorial.

  On cue everyone, including Scott, looked around at each other and nodding into the middle of the table and at the Territorial, laughed.

  Gary smiled and shrugged. ‘As far as call centre jobs go,’ he said, ‘this isn’t the worst.’
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  ‘Just as far as call centre jobs, Gary?’ interrupted the dark-haired woman. ‘Or jobs in general?’ Then she sat forward as if Gary’s answer would determine the fate of the world.

  Before the first task of the day they were given time to get a drink and go to the toilet.

  ‘Do we have time for a smoke?’ asked a woman wearing a white cardigan.

  ‘I should say no ...’ said the dark-haired woman, looking at the policeman.

  ‘Nicotine slaves,’ said the policeman, tugging at his cuffs in a pleased sort of way. ‘I gave up last year. Now I run marathons.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ said the dark-haired woman.

  Scott went with Jeff into the staffroom and filled a plastic cup at the water cooler. Jeff made a hot drink and they sat on a couch and watched a television where men and women were holding metal rings and doing abdominal exercises.

  ‘You know what we should do?’ whispered Jeff, peering suspiciously at some of the other candidates who were hovering around the tea and coffee. ‘We should form an alliance.’

  Scott hadn’t known what to say. He’d shaken Jeff’s dry old hand.

  ‘A giant meteor is plummeting towards the Earth. There’s only time for one spaceship to get to the space station. The spaceship seats eight people. Everyone else on Earth will die. As a group decide which six people from the list will be on the spaceship.’ The dark-haired woman raised a pretty finger. ‘There are two other spaces you need to fill ... Select two people from this group to travel into space. The future of the human race is in your hands so choose carefully.’

  Using two pens and noises from his mouth the Territorial drummed out the Mission Impossible soundtrack.