He knew he was being harsh. Thinking in stereotypes was easy. He was the action man, hanging the pictures, a real man running a factory — not a pinstripe suit relying on other people’s anxieties to earn a living. It was, he realised, his own insecurities that promulgated this comforting stereotype. And distracted by this self-analysis, Adam struck his thumb, instead of the tack he was nailing into the wall. A stab of pain shot from thumb to shoulder and it required all of his focus not to swear or react. But he wasn’t about to blow his cover, having spent the last few minutes revelling in the image of himself as the altmuligmand.
Louise descended on him with a freshly brewed long black (two sugars) and a thank you. She always kept a professional distance from him in the office. He motioned to her to put the coffee down on the reception desk and, wanting to prove a point to himself, he straddled the picture he was rehanging and hoisted it up on to the newly hammered picture hook. For a nanosecond he was flattened up against the picture, arms akimbo, thumb burning and his knees faltering, but he managed to redistribute the weight from his knees to his abs (ah, the gym) and, as luck would have it, found the hook in one. Louise expected nothing less.
‘Catch you this evening — we’ve got a conference call happening … gotta go. Don’t forget the desk …’
He looked at Louise, actually her back, as she was now crossing the room. The suits were in tow, all four of them (one wore a skirt). And so that was that. The team vanished into the boardroom and Adam was alone with a desk that required at least two people to shift it.
He had options. Grab one of the suits from the meeting room and stuff up the conference call. Lift the desk by himself, risk a hernia and prove he really was Tarzan. Or sit here and contemplate the stunning view of the harbour out to the Hutt Valley and wait for the meeting to end. The last option seemed like the right one. When did he ever get time to just sit and look at a view like this, unless he was diving (but that was the underworld)? Wellington grew on you. He’d lived here now for almost twenty years, but still felt like a visitor. There were three stages in becoming a naturalised Wellingtonian. You arrived and couldn’t believe the weather. You got used to the weather. And then ten years down the track, you heard yourself defending the weather. Today, the harbour was tousled. Not-quite-waves rollicked and spat up friendly whitecaps. A sort of average, sort of ordinary, sort of Wellington water. Not the wild seas that people imagined (think Wahine storm): something much more ebullient and friendly.
The Listener was front-cover up on reception. Louise liked the Listener. She was a big fan of the new woman editor and always checked the poetry page, often scoffing and sometimes impressed. She particularly enjoyed the literary feuds that waxed and waned. Adam would have liked to go into print about proposed free-trade agreements with China. But who knew who on the council might be heading over for sister-city negotiations, or whatever, and there would go Louise’s Why Not Wellington? project — out the door before it had even got off the ground.
Louise, emerging, was surprised to see him still there. She looked annoyed, even. He grinned; put the Listener back on the reception desk, watched her. Annoyed suited Louise, adding an edge that he liked. He liked the idea that he ought to be annoyed and wasn’t, but she was and oughtn’t to be. It was this aspect of Louise that he found the most attractive. She took umbrage before he could. She took action, while he pretended to be her action man. She looked at her watch, frowned, and then shook her head.
‘I can come back another day, or you can loan me one of your “suits”.’
He said suits in a loud voice just to up the ante. He was enjoying himself. Feeling refreshed by the view of the sea and the time to read a magazine. Louise was all bristling with business and on the back foot when she realised why he was still there. She flinched just a tad when he threw suits into the mix, but raised only half an eyebrow to register disapproval. The suits themselves were far too busy communing with electronic gadgets to have heard. The one good thing about manufacturing was a tangible product. You suffered setbacks with fluctuations in the dollar, but you still had something solid to hold on to. He looked across at Louise accosting the youngest of her team to assist him. Sure, they had brochures and websites and flashing neon lights, and it was all about communication, but it was so flimsy … such flash-in-the-pan, here-today-and-gone-tomorrow stuff.
The brutal truth of course was that Louise got commission on every client she hosted on her main website and was raking in the money (in spite of dollar fluctuations). Meanwhile he was managing immigration applications, ructions from within between Martin and Sergio and, at the end of the day (how he hated that phrase), a bar stool or two or three that would soon be as outdated as Louise’s flippant philosophies.
An extremely obliging young man in an open-neck shirt minus a jacket (just to disprove Adam’s suit theory) volunteered to help move the desk. He turned out to be the new recruit poached from Colenso: Louise had raved about him and he in turn raved about Louise, praise for her as ebullient and foaming as the harbour, but less comforting. Adam did his silent beast trick and flexed his muscles and barely grunted as they moved the desk down the hallway. It pleased him to see a damp circle of sweat on either arm of the fresh white open-necked shirt, and to hear the raspy breathing — not to mention the oath when he backed the poor sod into the wall as they turned a tight corner.
He didn’t wait to say goodbye to Louise, but slipped into the lift, satisfied, having out-muscled at least one of her ardent fans. It was pretty dumb and he knew it. But Louise made him want to flex his authority. When it came to words, the suits would out-muscle him any day. She thrived on words (carefully chosen ones) and used them sparingly, while he bumbled his way through life swearing when a word failed to fit and swearing anyway even if it did fit, because sometimes only swearing worked. But he didn’t need excuses. Louise had found his swearing funny when she’d first met him. She just didn’t expect him to do it so often, and it was definitely banned in front of Frankie and Vanessa. Sometimes she even looked embarrassed by it. That was something else. And only recent. But there was no point in worrying about whether he embarrassed Louise. It was far too late for that. If he was an embarrassment, she’d just have to wear it. After all, she had started all of this. Well, that was the view he had now … a retrospective really. And like all retrospectives: faulty, but useful.
Driving out to the factory, Adam thought about how he and Louise had got together. In the public arena it was one thing, and in reality it was another. It was difficult to pin down the moment he stopped loving Judy and loved Louise. Lust of course had a big part to play, as did something less sordid: he’d sought refuge in Louise’s laughter. By that stage, he and Judy had stopped laughing.
Uncomplicated, hearty laughter had been his downfall. Louise was new at the dive school. She’d put her wetsuit on back to front and couldn’t work out why the shoulders didn’t sit properly. He’d been happy to suggest she try it on the other way around. When she realised her gaffe, instead of being embarrassed, she’d been unabashedly amused at herself. He’d liked that. He’d even zipped up her wetsuit once she’d rearranged it, because now that the zipper was at the back, she couldn’t reach it. On replay scene by scene, with a freeze-frame now and then, he could reinhabit the moments when his emotional antennae began receiving signals. The way she laughed — loudly but not shrilly. The way her shoulders moved slightly forward so that her arse moved slightly outward (that was when he volunteered to zip her up). His other antenna, encumbered in blue rubber within ‘receiving signal’ distance (actually, once this antenna was alert, distance had nothing to do with it).
Paris was midway through creating a very impressive blue bubble that stretched across her mauve mouth and almost touched her nose. When she saw Adam, she stopped blowing. For a moment, the bubble remained unaided, and then it collapsed like a used condom and sprawled across her mouth. She gripped her mouth with thumb and forefinger, pulling at the remnants of gum — now shredded, stretched a
nd stuck.
‘Morning, Paris.’
He used his very best let’s both pretend you’re not blowing bubbles voice and scooped up mail that Heather should already have delivered to his desk. It was tedious but true. If he phoned in to say he was running late it was tantamount to telling them to slacken off. If he didn’t advise them and still came in late, it looked like he was trying to trick them. In the last fifteen years he’d found that reception was the place you were least likely to find a reception. The worst thing he could do was to draw the receptionist’s attention to her lack of receptivity. This would mean weeks of overkill and kindness tantamount to interrogation, or weeks of chilled civility. Either way, and even though it was his very own company (he often had to remind himself), he would feel like a complete stranger or a difficult customer.
He turned back to check on a courier packet that caught his eye (not for him) and noticed Paris was peeling off and eating the shreds of blue gum that were stuck to her mouth. Adam thought of his own obsession with gum as a boy. The chewing and sticking of gum on the back side of his bedhead. His secret stash, a pale hardened lump of gum that grew and grew until one year in a spring fever his mother had decided to rearrange his bedroom. The boulder-sized lump of gum had dislodged and fallen; landing (his mother said) with a knock like a rock when it hit the floor. Why, she’d wanted to know. But he didn’t know. He’d just enjoyed watching it grow.
And now he tripped. The floors between reception and the production office were uneven. A metal strip ran across the doorway between the two. He often stubbed his shoe, but he’d never fallen until now. Distracted by his boyhood bedroom and a rock of gum, he fell headfirst into the production room. He managed to stall his fall with outstretched arms but ended up on his knees. Martin, who had been warning Adam for some months now about the OSH implications of the exposed metal strip, leaned down and offered him a hand up, his face a mask of polite concern, his eyes mirroring mirth. At that moment, Adam’s phone rang. He sat on the floor, reached into his jacket and felt a stab of pain in his right wrist where he had taken the main impact. He activated the answer button with his left hand and swore, simultaneously.
‘Shit.’
Shit indeed.
It was Sergio who lent him a hand to stand. Ah, so Sergio was back. Well, thank goodness for that.
Martin fingered the back of his tie (tucked it into a gap between his shirt buttons and pulled it out again — fussy little bastard) and resumed his place in front of the whiteboard, explaining how they could increase production without increasing the workforce, as if Adam flying in was neither here nor there and they could manage with or without him. Then Louise’s cross voice interrupted.
‘Don’t say shit to me.’
He was well and truly in it now.
His wrist felt a bit dodgy and his temper was frayed. He needed a cigarette. Heather joined him in the broom cupboard and they smoked up a storm. She rarely smoked. But she was upset about her Zeus, who was at the vet for exploratory surgery following an upset stomach (Adam didn’t require the details as he’d had to insist Heather take the chinchilla to the vet when the stench became unbearable). He opened the louvre window and they both blew illicit smoke into a mild southerly wind that was eager to snatch at anything. Up close, Heather’s complexion was a mass of tiny red broken veins on either cheek and her nose was beginning to sprawl. Her heavy chest heaved as she breathed. For a moment (he forgave himself: it was only a moment), he imagined the heavy chest undressed.
Judy called. She had received the redirected courier bag. It was all on for the reunion. Phillip wanted to come too — something about business contacts in Sydney and how it was all very convenient.
‘What was in your courier bag?’
He’d been dying to know.
‘An invitation to the reunion, plus a menu from a café in Dubrovnik … and, oddly enough, an old label from a bag of figs. Did you read your invitation, Adam? My invitation has your name on it, so perhaps you have mine?
Adam scrambled through his bottom drawer and retrieved the invitation. Judy was right — it had her name on it. And then it occurred to him, perhaps the kiwi was meant for Judy and the menu for him.
Who would have thought of keeping all these odds and sods to send them out twenty-odd years later? He thought about Ash, an Ocker with attitude. But Ash didn’t have the imagination for something like this.
So he had the kiwi and Judy had a menu and it looked like they were all going.
‘Yeah, Louise is keen too.’
He kept it light. Even after all these years (twelve at least — he always counted back using Frankie as a marker … she was fifteen going on sixteen, take away twelve, made her three when …) he still tip-toed around the Louise–Judy relationship. Even though they were friends. You couldn’t take some things for granted.
‘See you at Nakita’s.’
The pre-reunion, reunion dinner. Only Nakita could come up with something so strategic and personal. He moved the phone to his right hand to look at his watch and felt his wrist resist the shift in weight. It was bruised, more even than his dignity when he fell.
‘Yeah … see you at Nakita’s.’
Sometimes Adam felt his life was a movie trailer with flashbacks and highlights, the main theme constantly reappearing. Someone else was pushing play, pause and rewind — or was it him?
‘What was in yours, Adam?’
‘Oh, just … an invitation …’
Chapter Seven
Frankie was learning to drive as well as dive. When she wasn’t at dive school, she was pestering Adam to take her driving. Ness, who had her full licence, had offered but Louise thought it a much safer option to have Adam in the passenger seat. Why not Louise? Her Why Not Wellington? campaign was winding up and she just didn’t have time.
Teaching Frankie to drive rated right up there with watching her learn to dive. She was a natural. To Adam’s delight, she even showed an interest in rev counts and, miracle of miracles, she didn’t ride the clutch. Actually, she could have ridden it a bit more (fewer of the bumpy starts) but ‘she doesn’t ride the clutch’ was the highest praise Adam could bestow on a woman. In the company runabout, Heather had gone through two clutches in two years. And according to Hagen, Nakita had almost destroyed the clutch in her brand-new Subaru (Japanese import actually, but he didn’t like to quibble with Hagen as it looked brand-new).
The back of Seaview was the ideal spot for a learner driver. It was close to the factory and not far from the dive school. They could combine their schedules by Frankie catching the bus out to the Hutt and Adam giving her a ride home in the evenings. They usually waited until after peak traffic to start the lessons, or a Saturday morning after dive school.
This Saturday, Frankie was more pensive, less confident. She muffed two cold starts and then dissolved into tears. Frankie rarely used tears as a strategy and was more inclined to laughter. He watched the tears run their ragged little tour from her wide almond eyes, leaving snail-trail streaks across her cheeks. She sniffed, swallowed and glanced over at Adam. He looked back at her, wondering whether to crack a joke or wait. He waited, unfolding a tired blue handkerchief from his shirt pocket and offering it. She sniffed again, grinned, wiped her face and sighed. Not a little sigh through her nose, but a large and sad sigh emanating from somewhere deeper than a muffed cold start.
‘Want to talk about it?’
He was her joker Dam and so playing the confidant was something he was cautious about. The heavy stuff he left for Louise. He had no plans to impose unwanted advice on either Vanessa or Frankie. All he wanted was to be a good dad — there for them if they needed him, but in practical ways mostly.
Frankie tipped her head forward so that her hair covered her expression for a moment and then she tipped her head back so that he could see she was weighing up whether to talk or turn it into a joke. He waited. She handed back his handkerchief. It was damp and scrunched, her hands were warm and affectionate — she patted his h
and (top side up) as you might a pet dog, but he knew she intended reassurance. Then she sat up straight, took a visible deep breath and began.
‘Ness had a postcard from Dad — from Cairns …’
As if reminded all over again of how awful the news was, she cried again, except this time it wasn’t just tears but loud painful sobs. Her grief was like a rogue wave on a reef of coral — his heart. The layers he’d built up usually meant waves bounced back off and levelled out, but this one swamped him.
‘Cairns … what’s he up to in Cairns?’
It wasn’t the smartest question but all he could think of.
They rarely heard from George, though now and then he sent money. Louise seemed happy this way: she said the money didn’t matter and at least his unreliability had a sort of reliability about it. Obviously she had overlooked Frankie’s feelings on this matter.
In Louise’s version of events, George was ready to go and Adam only made it easier for him. Her affair with Adam, she said, had been an attempt to save her marriage to George. A pretty funny way to save your marriage, but now he lived with Louise, he understood her. An agricultural remedy. Adam had been the teaser; George the bull had pawed the ground but gone on to greener pastures. The rest was not only history but also right here and now, the present.
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