Astonished Dice

by Geoff Cochrane

  ‘Relax. It’s good to see you.’

  ‘You’re putting on the beef, McRae. Still playing footy?’

  ‘Packed that in years ago.’

  ‘I guess you did. We’re not getting any younger. It’s just that I remember you at college, thumping your chest and breaking pates.’

  ‘Only on the paddock.’

  ‘Only on the paddock. I never dreamed you’d become a cop. There wasn’t enough of the bully in you.’

  McRae smiled a bleak, defensive smile. He was probably unused to indulging civilians. ‘Nice of you to say so. What are you up to these days?’

  The question was brutally well meant. Policemen and priests: they never seemed quite ‘of the world’ to Ashley. ‘What am I up to? I’m drinking myself to death is what I’m up to.’

  ‘A slow process?’

  ‘A very slow process.’

  ‘Tried AA?’

  ‘I’ve tried everything.’

  ‘And you know about the warrant?’

  ‘What warrant’s that?’

  ‘There’s a warrant out for your arrest.’

  ‘But I’m on probation. My probie’s meant to orchestrate these things.’

  ‘Surrender yourself. Get yourself police bail. An hour in the cells, tops.’

  Pinch me here and now. Make a couple of phone calls and have me driven to a place of white walls and clean sheets and plaster saints on pedestals. And the right medication, of course: fat yellow caps of Hemineurin, the queen of sedatives. ‘Nice to catch up, Toby. Maybe I’ll do as you suggest. Just at the moment though, that bar’s looking pretty damned attractive.’

  ‘Enough said, Ashley.’

  To one side of the servery stood a young man in jeans, a builder’s tape-measure clipped to his belt. A regular, obviously. The coast being clear, Ashley fronted the barmaid. ‘A double gin with just a squirt of tonic. But no ice. Please.’

  The girl busied herself. With two or three doubles inside him, Ashley could begin to function. But as he waited for his life-saving drink, he felt bilious, faint, disorientated; his anxiety threatened to throw him to the floor in an epileptic fit, stop his heart and close him down for keeps.

  The barmaid slid a glass in his direction. ‘Cheers.’

  Ashley paid the cynical sum demanded. It was only when he’d picked up the glass that he saw the gelid rubble it contained. ‘You’ve put ice in this. I particularly asked you not to put ice in my drink.’

  ‘Oops. I’ll try and remember next time.’

  ‘Are you simply incapable of simply … ?’

  ‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’

  ‘Listen, you cloth-eared bint. Not everybody likes … garlic on their steak. Not everybody wants … lumps in their medicine.’

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ said the regular, the guy with the tape measure clipped to his belt.

  ‘But have I?’

  ‘Get over it. Grow up. You’re behaving like a big girl’s blouse.’

  Programmed Maintenance

  Angela gives blood, has her teeth cleaned by a dentist on The Terrace, likes to visit the High Court during dodgy murder trials. Every now and then, she travels to Kaikoura to watch the whales. (Those whales are something else: by means of ESP, they’re able to swap 3D images.)

  She’s tired of being mauled and prodded. She’s sick of being put to the pork sword. For the next little while, she’ll deny herself the privilege of being ejaculated into. (You guessed it: her last affair ended badly, in mutual contempt.)

  Her body remains trim and firm, touch wood. She’s always been proud of her breasts. Nor is she ashamed of her artistic bent. As a self-employed window-dresser, she services pharmacies on a programmed-maintenance basis. She always gives a window fizz and flavour, visiting upon it a Christmassy renaissance of tinsel and glitter and styrofoam pebbles, whatever the season. Working in stockinged feet, she revels in the scents of Coppertone and Ponds, Canoe and Imperial Leather.

  She owns a smallish house in Newtown. Relaxing after work, she’ll smoke a third of a number, sip at a bourbon and Coke with plenty of ice in it. She’ll put on West Side Story (the soundtrack of the film) and listen to Marni Nixon singing When love comes/ So strong/ There is no right or wrong/ Not a think I can do …

  Her mornings are subdued, even sorrowful. From the window of her front room, she can look across the road to a kiddies’ playground. Behind the still swings is a hill dense with trees and shrubs. Can it be a tui that Angela hears chiming? Her Pentax binoculars have a powdery, matt-grey finish. She focuses on the kowhai; a trio of wax-eyes is brought before her by the stealthy magnetism of strong lenses.

  One of her neighbours is a scruff. A long-toed, gingery scruff. She catches him eating fish and chips on the steps between their houses. (These lichened, pitted steps have a dated grandeur. Though entirely hers by rights, all the students use them.) ‘Hi,’ she says, ‘my name is Angela.’

  ‘I’m Totally Slutted,’ she hears him reply.

  In the days that follow, she learns this much: his friends call him Tom. He works on his Cortina in bare feet. The vehicle is painted black and white in shabby imitation of an American police car (there’s even a bogus shield on the driver’s door). When Angela next thinks about ‘doing it’, she seems to be seeing ginger dreadlocks, legs lean and pale, denim shorts with ragged, wispy hems.

  The first week of December brings a warm and rainy night. Angela has put her rubbish out. Descending to the road, she rids herself of yet another bag of soup cans and eggshells and crushed milk cartons. The birds on the hill are silent. The lukewarm rain pelts down, as silvery as that in an old British film. And Angela pauses, glad of her umbrella, and sees what she has always been going to see.

  Like the ghost of some brave Spitfire pilot, Tom is standing a pace or two away. ‘I was going to doss in the car again tonight.’

  ‘Were you?’

  His face is very wet. ‘They’ve edged me out of the pad. I haven’t been paying my whack.’

  ‘You look like a drowned rat.’

  He explains that the Cortina doesn’t go, is likely to remain forever stationary. ‘I walk about till late. I’m just getting in, so to speak.’

  And so it comes about that Tom is brought inside, lies in a volume of hot green water, wraps himself in Angela’s bathrobe.

  He stands in her front room in a robe too short for him. She drapes his wet things across a clothes horse. The sodden jeans give off a sweetish, penile odour. ‘You should have washed your hair.’

  ‘Maybe,’ says Tom.

  ‘All those kinky braids. You’d have to unwind them, I expect.’

  ‘It’s a whole huge performance.’

  ‘Never mind. So what are you studying at polytech?’

  ‘Information technology.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what that’s all about.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  He sits on Angela’s sofa and eats morosely a cheese-and-chutney sandwich. He’s a no-hoper, clearly—but with long, sexy toes by Michelangelo. His knees of mauve and white look delicate, equine. A knee has two components, like an 8 or an egg-timer.

  Angela stands before him feeling all hot and bothered. ‘I don’t go in for kids half my age, and I certainly don’t go in for skinny redheads.’

  ‘Of course not,’ says Tom.

  ‘I haven’t been treated well by men. I haven’t been treated well!—incredibly.’

  Tom puts his plate aside. Rises from the sofa. Lets the bathrobe fall.

  His chest is wide and flat, as if drawn by Jean Cocteau. On the undersides of his forearms, the big veins are forked like bolts of lightning.

  Thinks Angela: What is a man’s body, if not a visual feast? Thinks Angela: His navel seems to dribble pubic hair, a trickle of wee Xs. Can this be the guy I’ll never forget and measure all others against?

  The Tenant

  I died in 1986 at the age of thirty-five. The clinical notes mention respiratory arrest, grand-mal convulsion, cardiac arrest. The clinical no
tes mention intravenous steroids, Aminophylline, nebulised Salbutamol, Augmentin. ‘The patient was deeply cyanosed and required intubation and paralysis.’ ‘His sputum grew haemophilus influenzae.’

  Cyanosed.

  The woman in the next flat along is an ideal neighbour. No music, no parties, no men. I never hear a peep, except when she’s using her spin-drier. She’s off to work at eight every morning, having slept the sleep of the just—the perfumed, pinkish sleep of the asexual. Nor is she unattractive.

  Charlie. If things were otherwise, I might take an interest myself. If things were otherwise, there’s much I might take an interest in. I’d like to learn to weld or drive a fire engine. I can’t very well continue as I am.

  Every now and then, some piffling wee emergency arises. Some time ago, Charlie’s electrics went haywire. All her lights were flashing: her flat resembled a Berlin discothèque. She herself looked haunted and thrown, confessed to feeling spooked and impotent. She wanted me to take charge and I did, summoning a lofty jeepish truck with orange beacons.

  Our landlord was born in Bulgaria. Charlie thinks he’s like a lovely little bull. Rich and smartly dressed, he’s resourceful and handy, the boot of his BMW packed with expensive tools. ‘My brother and I were gymnasts in our youth.’ ‘To make an end to everything requires a syringe full of air only.’

  Have I mentioned yet the road, the prangs and skittled tots? Night and day they rumble by, the cars buses rigs refrigerated vans, Bluebird Coca-Cola Memphis Meltdown.

  Which brings me to the matter of diet, healthy eating. I seem to live on chocolate-fudge muffins. I’m meant to be watching my LDL and triglycerides. I should stop smoking, begin to take a statin. I’ve never owned a car and walk everywhere, but I end up with angina, nonetheless.

  Is the story of last Christmas worth recording? It can be told in a few brief paragraphs.

  Levin. My mother, fully clothed, was sitting on the rim of the bath, her face in her hands. ‘If being here with me is such a damned hardship, perhaps you’d better go.’

  I flung my bits and pieces into my sports bag. I quit the house in a resolute fury.

  The taxi bloke agreed to drive me south to Paekak. In the coolness of a summer evening, we motored down the island. ‘The highway’s quiet, the cops lying low.’

  ‘Do they bother much with you guys?’

  ‘Not really. We’re their eyes and ears, us cabbies.’

  Could he sense my shamed emptiness? Only thirty minutes ago, I’d been having dinner with my mother.

  A brassy sunset oranged the world. It sounded mighty chords—soothingly. Its otherwise grave harmonics bred flaky notes of rose and chartreuse.

  When last he was here, the landlord gave me a small khaki torch he’d bought at the $2 Shop.

  I’m not without my fantasies. Sometimes I imagine joining a monastery, feeding chooks and pigs, imitating Christ, being of use, of use. It would have to be a monastery for non-believers, of course.

  Pulling up at the stop across the road, the Big Reds screech like dinosaurs being slaughtered.

  The rim of a bath is no place to sit.

  Hospital

  PARCELLED ENERGIES

  It’s a Saturday evening. Jones and his wife will soon be going out. He closes his library book and pours himself a second Scotch and soda.

  Emanations permeate the home. Frilly microwaves waft through tables, chairs. Jervis too absorbs invisible streams of quanta (Jervis is the easily wounded dog).

  ‘Snap out of it,’ says Shura.

  ‘I’m thinking neutrinos and stuff.’

  ‘And I’m thinking stir, there’s a taxi on the way.’

  ‘Quark quark quark,’ says Jones.

  ‘You’re not a bit funny. And take your feet off that.’

  THAI CHICKEN

  And so to the Bradshaws’. Sue and Colin live in what used to be a foundry. Their apartment consists not of rooms but shelves. These lofty platforms are sustained by wires—albeit ones as thick as bicycle spokes. Girders and bricks and gloomy voids abound.

  Dinner is excellent. Concluding it, the friends linger at table. A bottle of cognac gleams; issuing from small cuboidal speakers, Vivaldi toots and chimes. ‘And where are the kids these days?’ Colin asks.

  ‘Simone’s at Scott Base still.’ This from Shura.

  ‘And Cory?’

  ‘Cody’s in India—or was.’

  ‘He forgets his own kids’ names.’ This from Sue Bradshaw. ‘More cognac, David?’

  The Bradshaws tend to knock it right along. The Bradshaws have smoky histories, bohemian credentials riskily acquired. Jones however is not without credentials of his own. ‘Bring it on,’ he tells his hostess.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ says Shura.

  ‘I hear you, hon,’ says Jones.

  Colin is rolling up some bhang. With his shaggy moustache and smudged bifocals, he looks like a certain German novelist. In fact, he directs a popular soap—not bad for a guy who once spent time in an infamous Peruvian jail.

  ‘Come clean, Jones. Just what egregious stunts are going down in the courts this week?’

  ‘I’m defending an elderly party who smothered her husband.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Good for her,’ says Sue.

  ‘For myself, I’m at war with my producer. The bitch has got it in for half my cast.’

  ‘Selwyn Grove. Who needs it?’

  ‘We do, Sue,’ says Colin.

  The joint has been lit. The joint is passed to Jones. Resinously, sweetly, it pops and flares like a thatch hut afire.

  ‘I dare you.’ This from Shura.

  ‘Watch me.’ This from Jones.

  CONCERTINA

  Antarctica is melting. India is riven by earthquakes. Shura remains handsome, provocative, delicious. Jones feels replete with comedic resources.

  Colin breaks out his squeezebox. ‘I’ll sing you a shanty Arlo Guthrie taught me.’

  ‘Whatever happened to Arlo?’ Shura wonders aloud.

  And Colin’s words are shapes, it seems to Jones. Fridge-sized glyphs in a range of pastel hues. ‘My song concerns the good ship Vancouver and a young tar as sweet as a barrel of apples.’

  PARTICOLOURED HEADWEAR

  Shortly after two on the Sunday morning, Jones and his wife leave the Bradshaws’ apartment intending to walk to a taxi rank nearby. As they’re swaying arm in arm down Foundry Lane, our plot achieves a somewhat dismaying spike.

  ‘What are you toffs doing in my alley?’

  ‘We go where we like,’ says Jones, ‘at any hour.’

  ‘You’d better give your riches over here.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  The kid limps forward orthopaedically. He brings the clean reek of strong adhesives. ‘I think you should surrender up your cards. Your cards and pin numbers.’

  ‘Here’s ten bucks. Now move aside.’

  The miscreant is wearing a leather coat like Rommel’s, a tall woollen hat created by Dr Seuss. His sawn-off shotgun points at the ground. ‘You’re going to have to make … a less insulting offer, hombre.’

  Shura’s holding one of her stilettos. ‘For two pins, my lad, I’d fetch you such a crack.’

  ‘I’ll handle him,’ says Jones. ‘I’m used to dealing with troubled types like Junior here.’

  ‘Yeah. Right. Then handle this, you fucker.’

  The gun goes off with much pneumatic force. A narrow blast of air is what Jones feels. A narrow blast of air is what destroys his shoe.

  HOSPITAL

  ‘I hopped about a bit? Before falling over?’’

  ‘You hopped. The villain fled.’

  ‘And what did you do then?’

  ‘I remembered my powder-blue cellphone. Summoned the appropriate services. Counselled my fretful spouse to lie where he had fallen.’

  ‘I married a lion,’ says Jones.

  ‘You married a lioness,’ says Shura.

  Some tiny bones in his foot have been splintered. Morphine’s icy jui
ce tinkles through his veins. The hours pass in dreamy alienation from pain. Toward dawn, Shura goes outside to smoke a cigarette and watch the sun come up. In his wife’s absence, Jones is visited by a chap in saffron robes.

  The monk’s head is shaven, his specs purple-lensed. ‘I hope you like barley sugars. I myself am partial to them.’

  ‘You have the advantage, sir.’

  ‘Forgive me. Some many years ago, you saved me from incarceration.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘No matter. I sensed you to be an enemy of hatred and delusion. And I think you remain a friend to the four virtues, the Palaces of Brahma.’

  ‘Tell me, worthy one—Is it wise to believe that all actions are symbolic?’

  ‘To shine one’s shoes or drive one’s car or frame one’s closing argument in a spirit of prayerful optimism—This is wisdom indeed.’

  ‘And my daughter? Safe at last? Persuaded to forsake the frozen sterility of the South Pole?’

  ‘Even as we speak, Simone is flying home aboard an RNZAF Hercules.’

  ‘Did you know, arhat, that Ice Station Zebra was Howard Hughes’s favourite movie?’

  ‘It kinda figures, Dave.’

  Authorship

  Jeep lives alone. Has given up on women. Has never appeared on television.

  Jeep is a writer of cowboy books. His two published novels are Tyler’s Forge and Reaching Laramie. They have never made him any real money.

  Jeep keeps a scrapbook. Into his scrapbook go cuttings and tip-ins, quotations he’s typed up on slips of paper. ‘One has two duties—to be worried and not to be worried.’ That from E.M. Forster.

  10:06 a.m. Seated at his portable, Jeep tries to work. The mare snorted. Fulgencio stood his ground. ‘What brings you to these parts, Traven?’

  The killer dismounted lithely enough. ‘Nothin’ to fuss a yellow-bellied Injun lover.’

  As slim as Shane, as dark as a cigar, Fulgencio considered …

  Considered what? Changing his name? There were too many syllables in Fulgencio.