by Pip Adam
Although Carla wasn’t like that. Surely. She hassled Duey to show she knew something about her, something intimate, something from way back, trying to find the path back to way back.
Duey understood everything. Tommy had made a crazy decision, a decision intended to make him look hard and confident, but one that implicated everyone – Carla, Sharona, the photographer. If it failed it would be on everyone else, because Tommy had made the decision, showing he was sure it could be done, so if it couldn’t it wasn’t his fault. It was Carla’s fault, or the photographer’s. By being so confident it was like he’d already done it. It had already been done. Duey understood and knew Carla would be angry, and angry that she had to rely on Duey. Duey would be able to hear it in her voice but a phone call made more sense than a text.
Her phone rang twice before Carla picked it up.
‘So, tomorrow,’ Duey said.
‘Argh,’ Carla said. She was at home. Duey could hear Doug barking and growling. ‘Don’t even start.’
‘Tell me.’
‘What do you think?’
‘He looked around and everyone was looking comfort-able?’ Duey asked.
‘Uh huh.’
‘Then a song came on, like, maybe the Miami Vice theme song?’
‘Yip.’
‘And he said, “I think we should shoot this fast. I think we should shoot it tomorrow.” And everyone went, “Say what, now?” and he called Sharona and she was like, “What the fuck? The samples you’re supposed to be shooting aren’t even here yet.” And Tommy was like, “Oh. Sharona, you’re right. Everyone, I made a mistake.”’
Carla groaned.
‘But not really, everyone just went, “Okay. Yeah. Good idea, Tommy. You are amazing. We can definitely do that.” No, wait. “We need to do that.”’
‘Pretty much.’
‘There’s chairs here you can use in, like’ – Duey looked at her watch and then around the salon – ‘an hour. And then for the rest of the day.’ She checked the booking page on the screen. ‘It empties out about four.’
‘Perfect,’ Carla said. Duey could hear her putting on a jacket.
‘Are you at home?’
‘Yeah.’ She was hopping slightly, now. Shoes?
‘What are you going to do with Doug?’ Duey promised herself she would always ask – because it was another living thing.
‘Lock her up.’
‘Do you want to bring her in?’ It was a ridiculous suggestion. Carla couldn’t control Doug anymore. Doug was going to kill someone.
‘Nah,’ Carla said. ‘I have to take the train, anyway.’
Duey could hear Doug snarling. She’d never been a nice dog but living with Carla had made her savage. Carla knew, but she didn’t seem to mind. Duey was sure, given the chance, that Doug would kill Carla – and Carla knew it too, but still she kept her. Never let her out, locked her in the bathroom. Which made her worse – angrier, and more likely to kill Carla.
Carla looked at her phone and tapped it to hang up. Duey never hung up first. Probably it said something about their friendship – about how Carla was the bad friend. She looked around her flat. ‘This is an unfurnished STUDIO,’ the listing had said, ‘not a one bedroom.’ It was an L-shaped room with a kitchen sink and a refrigerator below a small window, and a bathroom that came off the kitchen. Her double bed took up the rest; she had to angle it slightly to get the front door open. There was a wardrobe – but not really. The building had been a factory when she was a teenager. All the flats at the front had been offices. The whole street had been industrial. But hardly anyone was making anything in New Zealand anymore and real estate was booming. She had full access to the communal kitchen area, but it broke her heart. The walls were white, the carpet was grey, a single-element portable stovetop took up most of the bench in the kitchen. It was probably for camping.
Doug was standing in the tiny space between her bed and the wall, looking at her, watching her every move, eyes alert, lips pulled away slightly from one side of her jaw. Carla showed the dog her own teeth, gritted shut. It was always a war. Every inch of the flat was contested ground. Doug snarled and didn’t sit down. Carla looked away first, back at her phone, and holding it in both hands she worked her way down her Facebook feed. No one was on Facebook anymore. Not Tommy, certainly not Elodie. Everyone left looked happy and was outraged. It was automatic, she was looking at it before she knew she’d opened the application, she used it like she used to use cigarettes – to numb something with a feeling of nausea. To begin with she’d swipe through it casually, her mind wandering, not really paying attention. Then she would swipe faster and faster, the dull panic when she hit the posts she’d seen before. She’d exit and rake her way over to Tumblr. More dreadful news, lovely frocks, parties she wasn’t at. More people looking well and bright and still. She’d run out here as well, but not as fast. Then she could look at Instagram for a while. Tommy had posted a photo from months ago taken at a model casting – before they’d decided not to show the corporate line at Fashion Week. The girl had her hair up in a ponytail and no makeup on. ‘Shooting these tomorrow,’ he’d commented. Doug growled.
‘Exactly,’ Carla said, and looked at the dog. Looked her back into the corner, then scrolled through more and more. Eventually it would run out and she’d go back to Facebook and start again. This time she’d follow links, because the timeline had become shorter. She watched and watched, thumb flicking the small heads up and up, feeling her eyes fugue over, feeling her stomach sink and pitch. Feeling her head fill with things she didn’t know she should worry about.
Carla had made poor life choices. The dog would kill something and be destroyed or it would kill Carla. She had no business getting a dog. But no one else would take it. She looked around the flat. It had been a bad afternoon. There was shit everywhere when she’d come home from the meeting with Tommy. Doug had eaten away at the front door some more, clawed at the frame. Carla hadn’t walked her for days, weeks. Carla looked out the window at the street, across at the roofing factory. A walk wasn’t exercise, anyway. Doug needed to run. Carla couldn’t control her off the leash, she couldn’t control her on the leash. Doug hadn’t taken her eyes off Carla. She was in the corner and plotting.
Seeing Doug made Carla angry. That she couldn’t take Doug for a run, that Tommy had made the dick move about shooting tomorrow which no one else had said anything about – like maybe, no. Not Kurt, not Cal, not the photographer, not Sharona. What could Carla do? She was the fucking hairdresser. Who was going to listen to her? She’d been cutting hair for nearly 30 years, all she could do was hair, which was important if it was done badly but pretty much invisible if it was done well. What could she have said? A child shouted outside and Doug barked and ran to the door, almost knocking Carla over. The dog jumped and jumped and jumped at the door, like she’d knock it down. Carla watched, then banged on the door, too, shouted at the street and the child. Shouted like she could get the attention of the child and escape with them.
She’d had no business getting a dog, but no one else would take her. The stylist got the dog from someone under false pretenses, promising a forever home, so they couldn’t take it back there. The client was an idiot. The photographer didn’t say no, and no one asked Carla and she had no place to speak out, so she sat back and listened to them in the meeting, making notes in her notebook. The dog’s ears were battle-cropped. ‘The dog has no ears and the model has no hips,’ the client said, when they both came onto the set.
Could Carla not do something with the dog? The photographer, this time, from behind the camera, not even looking up from the viewfinder.
What? – Carla. Finally getting a word in. What?
The dog wasn’t very shiny. It looked bad next to the shiny dress.
It’s got mange – the stylist now, arms folded, head to one side, but not unsure, completely sure. It was the only one without ears.
Could Carla not spray something on the dog’s mange? Carla didn’t think so. S
he didn’t know anything about dog hair, only human hair. But she’d gone over just the same, rubbing a soft waxy product between her hands as she walked, smoothing down the hair, over the mange, but being careful of the mange. She looked in its eyes then, and on her way back, when she got to the stylist, said, ‘What are you going to do with the dog?’
‘They won’t take it back.’ The stylist was already packing up, putting a pair of thousand-dollar shoes in a box, in a bag. Then they took some photos. Then everyone was packing up. Lights, reflectors, and the dog was lying down and looking up every time someone came near.
Bad career choices. Bad money choices. A year later, the dog was impossible. Carla brought out the worst in it. At least the dog didn’t have mange anymore. Carla had worked hard to get her coat back in condition. She still had no ears. She was brindle with a vicious face. At first Carla walked her before sunrise so they wouldn’t meet any other dogs. Doug would jump up on Carla’s bed, sniff at her, breathe, lick her. Carla would roll out of bed and they’d be off, down the street in the orange of the street lamps. Across the road into the park – the cricket fields in summer, rugby fields in winter, to where they could both look out over the quarry that was a suburb now, over the school, the apartments, the town houses, soccer fields that would be astro-turfed, and the netball courts. Carla usually wore a beanie. It fell back on her head, under the weight of her hair under it. She’d sit with Doug and they’d look out over all of it, the city in its orange glow like a Gregory Crewdson photograph. Still. Sometimes Carla’s eyes would blur in the cold and it would look to her like she could dive deep into it. They’d start the walk back before the sun rose. But then Doug had killed a cat, and Carla didn’t know her anymore. Doug had looked up over the animal’s body at Carla like she was recognising the situation for the first time. Who was in charge, and which one of them could kill the other. Pulling away, Doug panted in a way that made her look like she was smiling. Then she’d turned to walk away because it was time to go. Carla hadn’t walked her the next day. Or the next.
Carla thought about the photographer, the stylist and the client, thought how all of them were awful but how Doug was the worst one. Carla had seen the stylist a few times since she’d taken Doug home.
Everyone had finished packing up and the dog was still there. ‘Are you just going to leave him?’ Carla asked. The stylist shrugged. They were in an alley beside some state houses in Henderson. The stylist had the thousand-dollar shoe bag tucked under her arm. Then her phone rang and she looked at the screen. ‘I’ve got to take this,’ she said and walked away. It was just Carla and the dog, then. Everyone had been calling it Doug.
She took Doug to see the vet on the way home, to get some food and to see about the mange and the ears. They’d been taken off when she was a puppy, the vet thought, not by a vet. ‘It’s a girl.’ Carla had already filled out the form. She’d been calling the dog ‘Doug’ in an attempt to make it feel comfortable about the strange car and the stranger. To make herself feel comfortable about how big Doug was, how loud her bark was when they passed other dogs outside the car, on the footpath. ‘She’s a pit bull,’ the vet said. ‘You’ll need to keep her inside. People steal them all the time.’
The stylist never asked about Doug. Wouldn’t. The owners of the cat put up posters.
Doug was in charge of the house, now. Carla looked down. Doug was still barking at the door, then circling back and growling. Carla had to get into town in an hour. Doug looked up at her. She was a high jumper and when she got very angry at Carla she would go for her face and her neck. Carla wasn’t sure how much longer the door could hold the dog. It wasn’t safe to leave her, but Carla had to be in town or the job wouldn’t get done and the rent wouldn’t get paid and she had no idea how she would move the dog if she had to move. She thought about a gun. She was too weak to kill Doug with her bare hands. The dog knew that. The dog sat and looked at the door.
‘I have to go.’ The dog didn’t care. Doug was big but still so much shorter than Carla that she always had to look up.
Duey had said it, when they’d been in the park on Ponsonby Road once. Doug had run around a bit, chasing a ball Duey casually threw. People were giving them a wide berth. ‘Dogs always look so angry.’ Duey was scratching Doug, massaging her face and the top of her head where her ears would have been. ‘But I think it’s the angle they’re on.’ Duey held Doug’s face up to her own. ‘See? She looks fine from here.’ Doug had been a different dog before Carla saw her kill the cat.
Carla looked down at the dog looking up at her, now. ‘I own you,’ she said. Then she looked back at her phone just as it rang. It was Elodie.
‘Hi, um, just’ – a laugh – ‘is this true?’ Elodie’s high-rising terminal, her smile forcing the words up as well. Everything in her was so light it floated up and away.
‘About tomorrow?’
‘Yeah. Yeah.’
‘Is it a problem?’
‘No. No. I just wanted to check, because’ – through a grit-toothed smile, her mock frustration; it was always mock with Elodie, nothing made her angry – ‘it all seemed a bit sudden.’ Carla could almost hear Elodie’s head nodding back and forward, tick-tick, never still. Moving like a dancer. Like there was music in her always. ‘Are the clothes there?’
‘I’m unsure, but I suspect not.’
‘Cool. Cool.’ There was so much energy around Elodie, like she was sparking. ‘Maybe Sharona would know?’ Everything was tentative, always asked into Elodie’s body – pulling the words back into her head like she could still take them back if they caused offence. Everyone else’s feelings always at the front of her mind.
‘Yeah. Look, Sharona probably won’t want a phone call.’
‘Right.’
‘If the samples aren’t there.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m pretty sure they’ll just call it off. No one can waste a whole day in ...’
‘Avondale,’ Elodie said.
‘Fucking Avondale.’ Carla tried to make a joke.
‘Right.’ Elodie laughed.
‘I can call her later. But not now. Now, the workroom looks, um ...’
‘Worried?’ Elodie asked.
‘Worried.’
‘So they’re not here.’ Elodie sounded sad, but it was concern for Sharona. Elodie was always fine, she didn’t need any of her concern for herself, she faced everything like she’d already done it.
‘Well. You see. I didn’t say that.’
‘No.’
Carla felt like Elodie didn’t need to know whether the samples were here or not, but hairdressers always thought that about makeup artists. And makeup artists thought that about hairdressers. Carla would shout out, ‘Don’t get makeup in my hair.’ To which Elodie would reply, ‘Don’t get hair in my makeup,’ which made them both laugh. Tommy, Cal and Kurt always considered makeup and hair last. Carla and Elodie didn’t get free clothes and neither of them got paid very well. It was like a race to be second worst. Second most irrelevant. All of this bugged Carla, but when she tried to talk to Elodie about it she said they were lucky that no one paid them much attention, and she’d smile and the conversation would be over and they’d talk about something else.
‘The boys look pretty straightforward,’ Carla offered.
‘Are you cutting them tonight?’ Elodie was doing something else now, washing her hands or something.
‘Um, yes. If I can get hold of them.’
‘You’ve talked to them, though, eh?’ Elodie was making an odd clicking noise now like she was walking back and forth in high heels.
‘No.’
‘But you’ve seen them?’
‘Um. No.’
‘Cool. Cool,’ Elodie chirped.
‘But the headshots.’
‘Right,’ Elodie said.
‘They make it look pretty straightforward.’
‘Totally.’
There was a silence. On the phone, Carla could never tell whether a conversation w
ith Elodie was over or not. She had so much trouble reading Elodie. When they first met, Carla thought she was passive aggressive but then she realised she was actively agreeable. There wasn’t a cell of irony in her. She couldn’t be drawn into anything nasty.
‘Okay, so I’ll –’ Carla began.
‘Carla,’ Elodie said. ‘It’d be so great if you could cut them tonight.’
‘Yup.’
‘If I don’t get to see them it would be amazing if I could have them first thing tomorrow and, you know, without bristle in the base.’
Carla didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t guarantee anything. Then Elodie laughed.
‘If you see either of them, can you check their skin for me? Oh, and this side and back bit.’ Elodie had her on speaker phone now so that she could look at the photo Carla had sent her. Carla could hear a mouse moving. Was she at a desk now? ‘How short is that? Is that like Bic-ed?’
‘Yip.’
‘Okay.’ Elodie put some food in her mouth, something crunchy and deep-fried. Carla was always on a diet and Elodie was always eating. She wasn’t small, wasn’t one of those ‘hollow-legged’ 20-year-olds. Elodie was bigger everywhere. Bigger than almost all of them, even the boys. The rest of them were skinny. Carla and Duey weren’t as skinny as they used to be but were still a size 10 and men’s small. Elodie crunched another mouthful of something.
‘So you’re good?’ Carla said.
‘Um, yeah. But, yeah. Wow.’
‘I know,’ Carla said. ‘We should ask for more cash.’
‘Huh?’ Elodie laughed and Carla realised that that wasn’t where she was going with the ‘wow’. The ‘wow’ must have simply meant ‘wow’.
‘We need more cash for this,’ Carla said. Now trying to make light of it, trying to turn it into a joke so it wouldn’t sit there naked. ‘An inconvenience bonus. For, you know, the radical advancement of the shooting date.’
Elodie laughed. ‘Okay, Carla,’ she said, feigning a businesslike tone. ‘You organise that.’
‘Okay, I’ll organise it with Tommy,’ Carla said, matching the fake officious tone, she hoped.