Star Sailors

by James McNaughton

  She drops her bags. The impact echoes in the high-vaulted space like a slamming cell door in the prison series Mabel. Last night she watched the Christmas special on demand. ‘Christmas special,’ she says, testing the room’s reverb. The prisoners were united in their single cells after lock-down by a solo harmonica playing ‘Silent Night’. The murderer, note-perfect. She’d been envious of their sense of community.

  The happy pills are lifting her further out of the black pit the relaxer dug at breakfast. Better to forget that dark place, she thinks. Better not to think too much. The hinge of elbow and roll of shoulder that usually go unnoticed feel good as she pulls off her wind-breaker. Sensuous.

  But the little pink box she dropped on the bench contains a problem that cannot be ignored. She avoids it.

  What does Jeremiah fear? What is he worried about right now? A silly thing for a strong man: that his superiors don’t regard him as a real Inner.

  She’s naked. Like movement, it feels good. The happy is continuing its good work. Her freed skin talks to the luxurious space, radiates under the high and peaceful ceiling, and receives a soft, rippling embrace from the expertly piped and regulated air. She rolls her shoulders. Closes her eyes, rolls her head. ‘I’m an ex-model.’ Every movement is gloriously well-oiled. To have nothing, wear nothing. ‘Luxury,’ she whispers.

  She hangs her clothes in a locker the size of a wardrobe at their flat on the Mount. She takes her time.

  This morning was a low point in their marriage. She sees Jeremiah stabbing his brown foot at her while seated on the toilet, insisting she clean off the runny cat poo he’d stood in. Blinky and her actions, he claimed, were Karen’s responsibility. His duties lie elsewhere, apparently. In a more rarefied realm.

  Resilient Families is at the heart of it. Venture Group’s Stone-Age gender roles dressed up as progressive policy. Having just woken up at the time, the thought hadn’t occurred to her—Jeremiah has started to believe in it. Law, he’s always believed in, which is bad enough. She wonders if he believes in Venture Group’s news now, as well as in the spin generated by their communications arm.

  From the taxi at the Mount’s main gate on Roxburgh Street to the elevated electric rail at Taranaki Street Station, he had gone on and on about nothing, and then continued his nervous pre-lunch blathering in Cloud Café at Newtown Station, partly to impress anyone unlucky enough to overhear and partly to build up his confidence. ‘Mr Peter’s forthcoming retirement should, in his case, given his knowledge fund, safely be categorised as a post-salary monetisation cycle. All kinds of synergistic opportunities exist outside of his gathering of low-hanging fruit. Simple leveraging and down-drilling would also be self-actualised, obviously. Nonetheless, he will require legal positionalisation and protectature; a tactical and legalistic paradigm. I’m considering offering some of these services pro bono as a way in to more lucrative aspects of this end game. At this juncture, indications are…’

  Through the café window she’d watched a carriage pull out from the station as he talked, painted black for some sports thing. She watched it head south, wishing she was on it alone. They would take the next one to Berhampore, together, after she’d bought a new swimsuit. The Inner lawyer and his stay-at-home wife. Dark clouds were hauled like endless black trains southwards towards the sea as Jeremiah talked. For what purpose? Where did all the world’s energy and motion lead to? For a moment Karen feared that the gale would never stop blowing and Jeremiah would never stop talking. Death would be preferable. The sun broke through for a blazing second, lighting up the solar panels on the roofs of the tightly packed apartments below, then abruptly faded as if blown out by the wind. The café windows rattled with a ferocious gust. As they stood to leave for the department store, as the eyes of the other patrons were turned by the wind’s power, she was struck by a desperate urge to break away, break something, anything—herself, even.

  ‘Welcome to Chaos, Karen,’ said a bow-bot in plummy tones at the entrance to Newtown Station’s Chaos department store, as it bowed in greeting. A screen above its top hat displayed specials that might interest her. ‘Swimsuits,’ Karen said, looking over its shoulder. The bow-bot rotated and extended a white-gloved pointing hand. ‘Against the wall there, Karen. We have a special on TS Stanaway’s Beach Comber range. You might be interested?’

  Unlike the size-and-deliver stores, with their skeleton selections, Chaos has long rows of repeat garments with fabric variations, some of which lit up as she passed, indicating similarity to past purchases or searches. She became aware of a song from her playlist, one evidently shared by one or both of the other two shoppers in the store. The shift of attention in her direction would normally be a balm, a reliable cure for almost any stress, but it felt mechanical and impersonal. Nothing but a reshuffle of ones and zeros. She had nothing in common with the other shoppers, working different aisles and stopping at different lights, because the song was not one she really liked. ‘Treat Me’: The Machine had chosen it for her and she went with it. I may as well not exist, she thought. It knows my taste better than I do. I’m superfluous. My taste exists without me. I’m a barrier to rational consumption. The whole thing felt brittle, random and mean. It worried her, the feeling of contempt she held for the end product of the industry she’d loved for so long. What was left if not fashion? Endless routine. Emptiness. Dust. What could she meet the world with? Nothing. It would grind her down. She feared this was her new reality. An awakening. A line of swimsuits lit up as she approached: the short shorts and cross-top designs she’d bought in the past. Unlit remained the styles she would never choose, should not choose, were wrong for her; the swimsuits her screen would urge her to reconsider because they made a statement outside the confines of her personal brand. She’d felt like screaming.

  As Jeremiah waits outside the Beach’s changing room, he transfers his towel from one hand to the other and flexes his pecs. He’d pretended to be angry for so long about the expense of a new swimsuit that he actually did get angry at Karen for losing her old one. She’d got angry in return and given him the silent treatment. Her pointy nose had lifted skywards as she came out of the department store at Newtown Station. He could tell she was secretly pleased with her purchase, though, hidden away in its pink box, by the way she swung the plastic bag as she walked and looked distractedly at the wall screens blinking her name and informing her of nearby specials.

  Now waiting in the dome’s humid heat for her to emerge, with the sound of breaking waves and echoing shrieks and the happy clatter of jandals on concrete as people come and go from the changing rooms, passing the screens promoting new medical and cosmetic procedures and smart beachwear, Jeremiah feels his anger dissipating into the eternally still blue sky.

  He doesn’t visit Beach franchises often, and it’s his first visit to the new Berhampore Beach, but he feels at home. A certain design standard has been achieved and the people, many of whom are international tourists, look like Inners on the Mount. Negligible Senescence Treatment has all but ended cellular deterioration and the diseases of old age. The age of the elite demographic has shifted a couple of steps to the right. Although most of the predominantly middle-aged (65–75) and elderly (75–100) crowd wear the egalitarian attire of togs, they are still obviously his people, not the fat and malnourished multitude succumbing to age, obesity, malnutrition and other poverty-related conditions outside the Wall.

  Jeremiah snorts at the thought of the Outers’ demonstration, their ludicrous demand that the Beach chain be nationalised and subsidised. Typical, always agitating for a free lunch. A big free lunch. If they were allowed in, the tone would plummet and the whole raison d’être of the Beach, for the people who built it and maintain it, would be undone at one fell swoop. Even in togs the Outers would be obvious a mile away: fat, loud and unhealthy, sniffing for valuables and vulnerabilities.

  Like Wellington in general and most of New Zealand outside of Auckland (which is significantly browner), the Beachgoers are about 65 per c
ent European in origin, with the balance being of Mäori, Pasifika and Asian descents. Muscle enhancement and implant procedures are common and only sometimes overstated, producing an effect right at the limit of realistic musculature or, in some rare cases in unregistered clinics overseas, far beyond it, but no one looks sloppy or carries much fat due to calorie mitigations. The women in particular lack the posture problems of the female lower classes, caused by degenerating bones, sedentary lives and despair. The few bright-faced kids and teenagers in the crowd wear braces on their teeth, don’t swear when screeching with excitement, and occasionally employ the elegant mannerisms and gestures of their good adult role models.

  Jeremiah has an eye for this because he grew up among the fat and the violent in the wind-ravaged northern hill suburb of Newlands. Lack of money meant he got his body the hard way (and still the best), with weights and exercise. And yes, a certain amount of genetic good fortune. He watches for a while the beautiful people on screens and passing by. If he were to change anything about himself, it would be the average brownness of his hair and eyes, and a certain blandness in the regularity of his features. Then again, things are going well as they are, so why change? His looks are respected at work but not resented, as Le Stratton’s sometimes are. Only for his fringe does Jeremiah have solid plans. Thick and long, it’s been a reliable part of his brand for years, but with the next promotion—yes, it will come—he will tint it reddish and comb it back with hair cream. Middle-management hair. Soon.

  He checks the time on his complimentary disposable waterproof OLED arm screen. It’s getting tight. His wife is notorious for taking a long time with clothes. On meds she can take just about forever, but it’ll be worth it. Definitely worth it.

  The changing room, Jeremiah imagines, is a chrysalis from which Karen will emerge like a beautiful new creature, glossy and clean-lined. After waiting among kids and the cobbled-together elderly, the vigour of her body will be a revelation. Like one of the models on the advertisements: tall, long-necked, slim, but also wide of shoulder and big-busted (is that actually her on a jet-ski in black and white, wearing massive sunglasses?), she will seem to have come to life and stepped off the screen. Karen considers her mouth too ordinary for editorial work, but Jeremiah thinks the only problem there is what comes out of it sometimes. She didn’t mind voicing her opinion when modelling, and that hurt her, and he knows that right at the end of her time modelling at Flux, just before they moved to the Mount, she burned a few bridges. It might be time, he thinks, for Karen to consider a new hobby. Something less fickle than fashion.

  The pink box.

  Time’s getting on. Jeremiah will be waiting outside, growing more agitated by the second. The lid flips off. Coiled on the bottom are three black strips of fabric, little wider than fettuccini, along with a complimentary razor.

  It’s an ultralight (‘only ten grams!’), the type worn at cut-rate midnight singles’ parties in Silver by heavily tattooed and pre-loaded Outers. She holds the ultralight at arm’s length as if it stinks. An hour ago, on the back of the relaxant unravelling her into despair, it had seemed the perfect way to express her dissatisfaction at the Inners’ obsession with appearances and possessions in a way that couldn’t be ignored. There were bonuses too. One was that it would ruin Jeremiah’s precious ‘casual’ lunch with the senior Comms manager from Venture Group. Scratch us and we’re trash, the ultralight was to announce—a nonverbal statement that he couldn’t overrule with reams of lawyer-speak spiked with clauses on Mandela’s future and their security requirements going forward.

  And yes, the Comms manager’s partner, the fashionista Trix Stanaway, if she was in any way real or worthwhile as a person and not just a CEO, would be so impressed by the ironic point about male designers that she would immediately offer Karen a job.

  Some perspective is needed, she thinks. Some distance on the situation. ‘My mood was black,’ she tells herself. ‘I overcorrected with happy pills.’

  The sound of a half-truth, she thinks. Quite convincing. In fact, the prospect of meeting Trix Stanaway has been almost too nerve-wracking to bear. Ever since Jeremiah told her, only yesterday, as if it hardly mattered, that Trix was the Comms manager’s partner, Karen has been a ball of nerves. TS Stanaway has long been her favourite label. Trix, in many ways, is her inspiration.

  She knots her brow. What would this unveiling achieve? This display of breast, buttock and… Her drugged ear demands that she says it: ‘Pudenda.’ Shame. The Latin word for shame. Ah, she thinks, the unfairness of it all.

  She takes a towel and wraps herself in it. Terrycloth. A treat. It feels nice. ‘I’m no good,’ she tells the changing room, ‘without a person,’ and sits down, hard. Flying too high. Babbling. Forgetting what really matters. My son! Mandela had woken up sick. His perfectly pale face comes to her, his head bumping on Jeremiah’s shoulder as he slept on the walk to the Plearn daycare centre, his eyelids slammed shut like gates against the world of light. Karen had felt that she couldn’t leave him, but knew she would. It was terrible. To abandon him like that—for what, a long shot at securing a job as a designer for TS Stanaway over lunch? A way back to life? Pure selfishness. She left him at Plearn. The guilt has come and gone in heart-constricting wrenches ever since. The feeling of her unworthiness burns; the certainty that her beautiful boy deserves better.

  If Jeremiah felt any guilt, he buried it effortlessly. Why the free pass for him?

  At Berhampore Station they’d got off the elevated rail and descended to street level. The next stop was the Beach. She’d simmered blackly in the back seat of the taxi next to Jeremiah, who’d had the good sense to fall silent at last. Doubts about her purchase had begun to set in, as her screen told her they would. It was all bullshit, she told herself—everything—so to fail intentionally was to succeed. Something hit the taxi roof. The driver swore and swerved. Outers were standing on the road, milling around. The driver beeped his horn and they moved begrudgingly.

  ‘What?’ Jeremiah said. ‘Did that guy back there slap the roof?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Is it a street party?’

  ‘It’s no party,’ replied the driver as he took manual control to prevent the car from automatically stopping. ‘Looks like a flash demonstration. I’m not stopping.’

  Karen was struck by the size of some of the Outers on the road. A few months on the Mount among the rich and scrupulously slim, along with brief visits to aspirational Outer areas, had altered her sense of average human dimension and movement. There was something exotic and individual about them as they moved with such deliberate ponderousness. Care and consideration informed the simplest movements. Even the act of looking at the taxi seemed considered, as if an internal process of proposition, seconding and voting had occurred before clearance could be given for the head to track the vehicle’s progress.

  ‘Like a herd of well-dressed elephants,’ Jeremiah said.

  ‘I think there’s a nice kind of peacefulness about them. They’re not chasing some weird agenda all the time. I miss that.’

  ‘Chewing their cud is what it is. Look at that.’ Jeremiah pointed towards a morbidly obese man in a suit grown tight. ‘Linen sausage. You know, it’s true what they say now: BMI maketh the man.’

  ‘Clothes never did make the man and neither does body mass. You’re becoming the grossest kind of materialist. Part of that “if it looks right, it is right” brigade. It doesn’t matter how rotten the content is, as long as it looks nice.’

  He raised his hands in surrender.

  ‘There’s more to life than looking like an Inner, Jeremiah. Remember that. That man’s got the courage to get out and face this crappy world. He’s trying. I think he looks nice. Better to talk to than a Venture Group lawyer.’

  ‘Well, you’d prefer being eaten alive by rats to talking to my colleagues, wouldn’t you?’

  A fat, unshaven man with bloodshot eyes bent over and peered in the window at Jeremiah as the taxi crawled along, walking to
keep up. He looked startlingly, intimately familiar to her. Her heart constricted. It was Oliver, she realised, her first love at high school. His linen suit was stained yellow at the collar, his hair dry and messy. He stared in, insolently, not recognising her behind her dark glasses and under her new bob haircut. His unseeing eyes swept over her again. She felt his aggression fade. His natural curiosity was winning out. She felt like calling his name. Saving him. Her first kiss: of all the boys in the world it had been him. His plans to become a doctor had evidently failed.

  Examination over, Oliver straightened up and slapped the top of the taxi. ‘Inners!’ he announced. His voice. A voice of the past, left behind. He hadn’t made it. Why not? He was the best of them.

  ‘Don’t look at them,’ Jeremiah said.

  A clamour of distant shouting organised into a chant. The metallic crackle and echo of a megaphone caught and amplified it: ‘One, two, three, four—there are no beaches for the poor!’

  ‘Shit. It’s a demonstration against the Beach.’

  ‘Turn back, driver,’ said Jeremiah. The sharpness in his voice worried her. Seeing Karen’s concern, he took her hand.

  ‘Don’t squeeze too hard,’ she told him.

  He grinned. A little too merrily.

  The driver made a fractional adjustment to his rearview mirror. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir. There’s a big bunch coming up behind us.’

  They turned to look out the rear window. The main body of the demonstration was sweeping up the road behind them. Images of drowned Outers flickered and solidified above the front rank in two-metre-tall hologram displays: smiling children, watchful young men, laughing brides, an elderly couple pressed cheek to cheek. Like spirits leading the demonstration. Every few seconds the heads changed. So many had drowned. Other projectors displayed images of the rich in their pristine domed beaches which segued into images of the working poor scrambling over rocks outside seawalls; images of funerals and the recovery of bodies.