Trix feels on the verge of a significant life experience. Something unforgettable will happen.
The slim young waitrons in attendance look actorly with their cheekbones, spotless complexions and masses of casually controlled hair. After landing at the airport in the 12-seater, New Hokitika unreeled outside the taxi window like a 3D set, a model town extolling the virtues of Venture Group and corporate values. It’s all about façade and appearance here, even more than usual in elite enclaves. That’s fine, but the alien’s presence feels sharply incongruous. Some kind of deeper truth is expected to be revealed in the meetings. Universal wisdom is to be unveiled, but it doesn’t feel like the right place for revelation. Something would have to give for that to happen. That’s exciting, too.
She orders coffees for Bill and Jeremiah, as well. They’re due any minute.
‘That’ll be $80 today.’
Trix allows her screen to be debited. She feels Karen’s eyes on her.
‘I’m not quite ready to talk about it, Karen.’
‘Oh.’ She’s concerned.
‘No, it was fine. Fun, actually. Don’t worry.’
‘Well, good. Good on you. Hey, did I tell you I was offered a hundred thousand for my meeting pass?’
‘No.’
‘Incredible, I know.’
‘Only a hundred?’
They both laugh.
‘Who,’ Trix asks, ‘had the temerity?’
‘One of our neighbours. The lawyer, O’Brien, who Jeremiah hates.’
‘He hates a Golden?’
‘It’s subtly expressed. Anyway, O’Brien finally admitted he just wanted to “on-sell” mine.’
‘Scalp it.’
‘A hundred thousand for a minute.’
‘Not a bad hourly rate.’
Karen smiles. ‘Someone rates you.’
‘Hm.’ That makes two things Trix doesn’t want to talk about right now.
Karen stands. ‘I’ve been nodded at.’
‘She wasn’t nodding off? The last thing we need now is a faux pas.’
‘No, she’s a firm acquaintance, with great taste in clothes.’
Karen heads for the Golden who has acknowledged her, a super-elderly woman in a blue TS Stanaway silk summer dress, gathered at the waist. Karen’s red-wine coloured T-shirt dress is short, sexy and, on Karen, elegant as well. It’s her own design and she carries it off wonderfully.
The afternoon meeting schedule had presented a problem. The gravity of the event suggested formalwear, but the time of day dictated something light and bright. In the end it was made official: summer smart-casual. Bare legs and arms. Skin.
She had been with a crowd of a dozen or so in the purple chamber. Most were strangers. Most were women. Youngish. Mainly Inners. There was the sense they’d found each other, of a special bond forged despite the anonymity of their masks. Champagne flowed. They drank to good company. After midnight, nude conversation was proposed. Why not? It was positively restrained compared to what was going on at the other end of the room.
The other group had formed a train. The men lay on their backs. The women, on their hands and knees, gave oral sex to the men in front and received it from the men behind. The masks came off. The person at the front would call out ‘Toot-toot!’ after a minute or so, and run around to the back. It wasn’t serious. Toot-toot. In a way, it wasn’t really sex. It was a game.
A lanky woman in Trix’s group, wearing a gold beaked mask and nothing else, lay on the floor. She spread her legs. Touched herself.
Trix felt a rush of sexual feeling.
The lanky woman laughed. Her back arched with it. She squeezed her breasts, rolled her nipples. ‘Someone! Quick! Sit on my face!’
A woman cried, ‘Oh, God. I can’t leave you hanging.’
When the lanky woman’s face was straddled, she removed her mask. She was still anonymous, concealed by the other’s body and the dim light. Another woman knelt between her legs and began to give her oral sex. A moan. The faces were hidden. Trix watched three, four, five women join the train, anonymously and in a spirit of fun. A man joined, oddly flaccid. Another woman. Her tongue roused the penis, made it crank up and look around.
‘All aboard!’
Trix backed in at the rear. Following the lanky woman’s example, for courage, she spread her legs wide and arched her back. As her tongue touched the clitoris above, a tongue tentatively touched hers. She laughed. It was ridiculous. Liberating.
‘Everyone change carriages!’
More laughter.
A new, expert tongue. She laughed, then groaned. She came surprisingly quickly. The men did too.
‘Ah, I’m afraid this is my station, ladies.’
Trix stayed on. Anonymity went out the window. One of the women was her accounts manager. Her eyes were grateful and agonised by turns.
It became a kind of out-of-mind experience. The world was nothing but shared physical pleasure and sensation.
When it ended by mutual consent maybe 20 minutes later, after the train had shortened to three passengers, Trix was unable to find her mask or gown. Full of endorphins and dazed, she didn’t look too hard. She hugged her new girlfriends goodbye—all in a similar state of dreamy disarray—climbed the blue stairs wearing only her heels and crashed in the spare room Karen had arranged for her.
Karen greets the Golden warmly, kisses her doughy cheeks, works it. A few seconds later she sits. A spur-of-the moment invitation; they must trust her.
Trix feels a rush of pride for her protégé. Innate talent is one thing, she’s found, but the dedication needed to grow and fulfil potential is another. Not just professionally. To Trix, integrity and dedication have always been more important in close friends than sheer ability. She’s found that the very talented can be capricious and lazy about things that don’t interest them, such as basic manners.
Trix is noticed by Karen’s table across the room. She does her regal kindly finger-wave in reply. That’s enough. She doesn’t want to overdo it. A low profile feels in order.
The coffees arrive. Bill had wanted to lunch alone with her prior to the meeting but she declined, citing a time shortage. The pass had to be a free gift from him, with no strings attached, no expectations. Her own expectations might have got in the way, too—and prevented her from meeting the alien. It was better not to confuse things.
News breaks on the TV in front of her. Familiar footage of the current northern winter: waves surging over sea walls, houses knocked from their foundations and dragged out to sea like big boxes, flooded streets and motorways, and lines of vehicles buried to their roofs in snow.
She sees Bill’s white hair first, in the rock garden outside the café. Tall, lean and distinguished, he wields an antique walking stick with a silver handle. She likes it. It’s interesting and gentlemanly. Careful, she thinks.
World-famous. Like a little vortex, he creates a ripple among the super-rich in his wake.
She stands and avoids a question in his watery blue eyes by kissing his cheek. The soap and powder smell of him she resents for liking so much. She feels vulnerable.
‘The king of New Hokitika.’
‘Huh?’
‘Oh, just the little stir you created in here.’
‘I did? Right. How are you? How was the flight?’
‘Fine, good.’
One of Bill’s attractive features is his complete lack of interest in celebrity. It was bitchy to have called him the king of New Hokitika. She meant to suggest that he couldn’t walk around so grandly in Wellington because of his suspected involvement in the coma-messages. Although he probably could, now that Samuel’s awake. Easy, she tells herself. ‘And you?’ she asks. ‘How are you?’
Close-up, he looks tired. ‘Not too bad.’
He wants significant eye contact.
‘There’s your coffee.’
‘Thanks.’
‘How you like it, only a lot more expensive.’
He takes the cup. Takes a deep breath.
‘Can I tell you something strictly, strictly confidential?’
Looking down, she nods her assent. The timbre of his voice is doing stupid things to her. She fears she’ll like anything he tells her. Or dislike it merely because he said it.
‘Michael Klotch’s one-hour special—his one-on-one with Samuel, in which all the big questions about life and the universe are answered—has been downgraded to a three to five-minute discussion in which Klotch does most of the talking. Samuel’s revolving eye played havoc with creative editing, apparently. They couldn’t cut his answers to make them fit. They tried to recreate the eye, but it’s detectable with the right equipment. There are hours on the cutting room floor, apparently.’
‘He didn’t play by Klotch’s rules?’
Bill looks over his shoulder again before replying.
‘No. But you know, the corporate CEO with a public face went out with the dinosaurs. Faceless works better, right? It’s only Klotch’s vanity that provides any sense of human accountability with Venture Group and, by extension, all the big transnationals based here now. The board have been trying to get him to step back for years.’
She’s been glancing at Bill, keeping things light. Now she makes eye contact.
‘I’d love to see that lost file.’
He nods eagerly. ‘A lot of people would.’
‘Are you promising me something?’
He looks over his shoulder.
She sees that Jeremiah has arrived, looking sharp in desert boots, a slim-fitting white shirt and a vivid green Humanoid tie. He pulls Karen away from her table and begins talking to a super-elderly man who, judging by his furious stare into the distance, has clearly not invited contact. Jeremiah gestures towards the man’s hair, slicked back in the same style as his own. An attempt to bond over hair, Trix thinks. The old man turns to Jeremiah and cocks an interested eyebrow. Karen’s mouth opens and her eyes widen in surprise. Or hot gossip? Trix wonders.
Bill’s slow scan of the room is complete. He leans in. She looks down. ‘What if I told you I’ll do everything I can to get the file.’
If not you, she thinks, then someone else must. They must. But she wants it to be Bill. If he fails, it will only be through a failure to act, by muddling on being the vindicated and entitled icon who was there from the start: Bill Peters. Not acting constitutes an active decision to end their relationship. And not only that but a relationship with reality. To do nothing will be a decision to lie to himself through all the long years of his retirement. To drown his conscience with wine until death. ‘How much is “everything”?’ she asks him. ‘How much do you really want to get the file?’
‘There’s nothing I want more.’
‘Me too.’
‘Well,’ Bill says. ‘Maybe one thing.’
She can’t look at him. Over his shoulder, she sees that Jeremiah, Karen and the super-elderly man have joined forces and spontaneously approached another Golden couple. The man also has slicked-back hair. Their approach is tolerated. She turns to Bill. ‘What could possibly be more important than the file?’
He blinks his watery blue eyes. She lets him take her hand.
She feels her own eyes well up. ‘The coma messages, Bill. What were you thinking?’
‘I thought Samuel was dead.’ He places his other big warm hands on hers. There’s something in it. A pin drive. ‘But he’s not dead.’
‘This is the file?’
‘Can you forgive me?’ Tears roll down his face. He is as desperate as she feels.
She nods dumbly. He shoves the table away, pulls his chair close and embraces her. They cry into each other’s shoulders.
Epilogue
Thirty years later. Bill’s farm,
Rifle Range Road, Rural Napier
Karen leans into her patch of mirror. ‘Fine women’s eyes.’ His scholarly compliment. To be made finer, she thinks. The bathroom is hot and crowded, and it’s essential to work fast to avoid perspiration. Elbows tucked in, she runs the brush along her lashes. No clumps, thankfully. Not the mascara of old but it’s definitely getting there. Definition and volume are excellent. She straightens and blinks. Maybe not mere flattery.
‘Time, ladies!’
Cries of woe.
‘Come on,’ Karen tells them, ‘minimal will work. We segue from the golden hour into darkness.’
‘And then oblivion—’ Inni straightens up and puckers her lips, ‘—with any luck.’
‘As long as you remove your dress for that phase,’ Karen tells her.
‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’
Karen leads the TS Stanaway crew through the fly-screen and off the porch. Swing and thump herald release. Soft shoes on gravel, sighs of pleasure. The day’s heat is already retreating. The news of the attack on a Taranaki community with which Manny has been in ham radio contact (he heard gunfire in the background as their radio operator said her goodbyes—there has been no contact since) felt more oppressive while in the house, but the mood remains muted as the six of them pass under the fruitless peach trees and make their way up past the big shed. The men, bringing up the rear, lug a bamboo hamper between them.
Karen stops in the veggie garden and looks back. They’re all rocking white linen. Short, sleeveless, tight and elegant dresses for the women; light and airy linen trousers for the men, with slim-fit shirts rolled up at the sleeves and flax panama hats. It’s odd to see such finery in the garden. The linen looks whiter, their skin browner.
‘Looking good,’ Karen says.
Smiles under sunglasses in reply.
‘Thanks, boss.’
‘You too.’
The orange and mandarin trees were netted and heavy with fruit last time Karen saw them. How luxurious they looked. Biblical. Dangerous. The high time and water investment was noted by the Garden Committee all summer. It was a risky venture. Meetings got fiery, according to Mandela. Being one of the pro-luxury camp on the Garden Committee, he was under pressure. Arguments continued outside the meeting house on more than one occasion.
Karen’s relieved that the water and hours dedicated to keeping pests, disease and birds—not to mention people—at bay paid off. She sees that most of the other crop plants have been stripped and mulched and the mesh and nets put away. A trace of earthy perfume threads the air. How wonderfully still it is. The rows of cherry tomatoes have gone. The bean trellises are bare. There are still a few netted cabbages and peppers under the shade trees. Shadows lengthen over the long rows of potato and onion that make up their staple crop. Soon the yellow flowers of soursob will bloom between the rows. The garden seems to exhale with relief at the coming of evening, the orange trees sighing at the lightening of their load and the end of the Garden Committee’s arguments.
Karen has tried not to notice Solangia’s take on smart-casual. Her thick black hair is teased hugely and her make-up verges on Cleopatran. But the hand-beaten metal feather pendant that she made herself is brilliant. All in all, Karen has to admit, the look works.
‘Sing something, Sol.’
She launches into ‘Royals’. The men take the backing parts in falsetto, prompting smiles all around as the crew make way out of the veggie garden and up into the hot and weedy top paddock, where their passage arouses a thick wake of high-springing grasshoppers. Singing is briefly interrupted. It’s worse for those in dresses. On the up-side, a soft intermittent breeze has sprung up. Full of rural scents, it ruffles the waist-high weeds and the singers’ hair and brings a touch of relief.
Beyond the end of the weed-choked paddock, only the very top of an unlit torch indicates the amphitheatre’s existence. Trix had the natural grassy bowl terraced with a free bulldozer and some hugely expensive diesel nearly 30 years ago. Visionary. When everyone else was battened down in survival mode Trix was planning ahead for ‘fashion and other shows’. As the singing crew draw closer to the amphitheatre, Karen expects to hear the crowd that must surely have gathered. Is something wrong? The murders in Taranaki come to mind. They break off singi
ng. The hubbub of the unseen crowd wells up before them.
A spring of sound, she thinks. Life!
The crowd voice their approval as the crew step over the amphitheatre’s lip. The noise goes on. Karen basks in it. The regard of some means more than others. She can feel, she’s sure, the most important eyes on her. Everyone’s come. She turns her head. Her killer accessory is a new pair of onyx pendant earrings. Her hair, still as black as the onyx, is piled up to show them off. Karen’s often taken to be 20 years younger than she is; in the updraught of noise, she feels it. The tight white linen is a hit.
She leads her crew along the sunlit top terrace, and down one flight of steps to a spot from which the lowering sun has only just departed. It’s the best place to be seen by those in the comfort of the deep shade opposite.
Expensive seats. She once watched a late-afternoon bullfight in Madrid from the expensive seats in the shade. More than 40 years ago. She frowns and shakes the memory off.
A patchwork of blankets softens the amphitheatre’s formal lines. The audience wear basic hemp summerwear made distinctive with dyes, jewellery, belts and hats. For Karen, the clothes that her friends and relatives in the community wear are an expression of spirit more than fashion, individualised in modest but telling ways, like the school uniforms of old were.
She sees bananas and oranges plucked from hampers and flourished with pride. Sweet cider is poured. Laughter peals with elastic vigour around the space. At least 200 high-spirited adults have come, and 50 or so children run riot in front of the stage, their heads shorn due to an outbreak of headlice in the school.
She’s known most of the children since birth, and they’ve all had nits and shaved heads before, but their lack of hair disguises them to a surprising degree. It takes a while for Karen to pick out Biko, her own grandson, among the slightly unsettling androgynous and anonymous interlocking mass down below. All brown and deeply suntanned, without their distinguishing blond, black and red hair, they’ve become raceless and genderless.
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