K Road

by Ted Dawe

  ‘Don’t be later than seven. Mandy wants to talk to me about Oliver.’

  ‘Poor Oliver,’ he thought. His drinking was going to be aired yet again by the garrulous Mandy. It was a wonder she didn’t take out a full-page ad in the Herald.

  All day at work he anticipated what he and Wentworth might talk about. How he would explain away the apparently mundane exterior that his life presented. Ways he might slip his poems into the conversation. Intimate he was still actively involved in the craft. As well he might be, if his head weren’t perpetually fogged with case law.

  Tony arrived at Cannibal Jack’s at ten past five. He had managed to give them the slip at work and leave five minutes early. He needn’t have hurried. Wentworth didn’t arrive until nearly half past. He strolled in looking around as if he was reading the place, drinking in the details. Tony had the chance to examine him in repose before he was spotted. Grey trousers, open white shirt, tweed jacket – the sort writers wore. But the face was sagging and florid, the stomach flowing over his belt, and his hair was now cut close to his head. What 15 years did to a person. He wondered if Wentworth would see him in the same light. Tony moved forward and grabbed his arm.

  ‘Tony Watts! You bugger. You sly old bastard.’ He engulfed him in a fierce embrace. Tony felt an immediate explosion of sweat at this embarrassing display. He tried not to let it show.

  They sat down at a table out on the footpath. Near them a hobo – long white hair, no shoes – picked carefully through a rubbish bin. Beside him a small black dog waited patiently. Further down the street, the fragments of a guitar solo competed with traffic noise.

  ‘What is this place?’ he asked pointing at the faux roman pillars. ‘Love the decor. Early homosexual. I can see Charlton Heston chained to those.’

  ‘It’s a place I come to occasionally. I like its ambience.’

  ‘Bugger ambience. Do they serve drinks here or is it just a coffee bar?’

  ‘Just coffees, I think.’

  Wentworth stood up. ‘Let’s find a bar. Christ knows, I need a drink.’

  They walked out onto the pavement and headed towards Ponsonby Road. Nearby was the source of the music, a busking guitarist and his beatific, teeny bopper girlfriend. He was belting out something Spanish and around him was a semi-circle of rough looking street kids transfixed by every note.

  ‘What a tableau,’ said Wentworth. ‘The Maori Orpheus and his half-caste Euridyce charming the birds and the beasts of K. Road.’

  Tony cringed at the loudness of his voice. He acted as if he was somehow separate from the scene. Detached and broadcasting.

  ‘How good it is to be back on Karangahape Road. This must be the nearest Auckland has to a New York street. God, I’ve only been away for three weeks and already I’m beginning to get withdrawal symptoms.’

  They peered into an old pub on the corner, empty except for a couple of construction workers playing pool. ‘What a dump! Nineteen-sixties time capsule. Keep going!’

  Further down, a transvestite mooched around outside a chemist. Her shoes caught Wentworth’s eye. Red stilettos: one platform, one normal.

  ‘Check that, Tony,’ he muttered. ‘A woman confected in the manner of grote.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Grotesque, man!’ and he threw his head back in his braying laugh.

  As they walked along, Wentworth told him about some of the people he had met or worked with in the States. Poets with Jewish or Polish names: branches of consonants dangling between strings of vowels. Unpronounceable, unspellable, completely unfamiliar to Tony. Talked about people who owned banks but loved literature. Said it was the Left Bank in Paris all over again. An atmosphere that demanded an adrenalin-driven psyche. ‘Go to sleep, when you wake up you discover you’ve been consigned to a reliquary. Tiny prospectors are chipping away the sub-stratum, leaving you high and dry. Exposed and lonely as a fossil, cast up in a different space and time.’

  The shops were thinning out as they drew level with the strip bars. There was one called TITS. They stopped. Tony waited for Wentworth to move on.

  ‘This will do,’ said Wentworth and darted through the door before Tony had a chance to raise an objection. Inside it was dark and full of people, with a stage at one end and a bar done out in the wild west theme. Above the bar hung a sign saying ‘The OK Corral.’ They stumbled through the smoke and noise to a table. Nearly all the tables had only one man at them: theirs became the exception. After sitting for a moment they realised that there was little chance of being served, so Wentworth picked his way up to the bar. Tony looked around, feeling a strange mixture of embarrassment and excitement. He had never been in a place like this before.

  Wentworth returned, carrying two large whiskies, high above his shoulders. ‘So tell me, how’s married life?’

  ‘Great. Helen and I have a daughter now. Kezia.’

  ‘Ah, Helen!’ he said. ‘What could she do … being what she was.

  Was there another Troy for her to burn?’

  ‘Yeats?’ asked Tony, tentatively.

  ‘Bang on,’ boomed Wentworth. ‘I still remember stumbling on you two, during one of your sweaty trysts in the eight-two-threes, upstairs in the uni library. How is she?’

  ‘Great. Struggling a bit at being a housewife, after teaching for ten years. The baby has brought a few changes.’

  ‘It’s a bit like suicide in slow motion, I imagine. Death of the self. Reincarnation in some lower life form. All of this is punishment for submitting to the tyrant gene. You are living proof of the effects of biological determinism.’

  Wentworth let off another explosive volley of laughter. Tony, who didn’t have a clue what he was on about, had his gaze drawn to a girl in bits of a cowboy outfit, swinging a lariat in the bright square at the end of the room that served as a stage. She was prancing around a phallic-shaped rubber cactus in some kind of fertility dance.

  It was hard to watch, so Tony tried to re-establish something approaching a normal conversation. ‘So what about you, Wentworth? No woman in your life. No little Wentworths tugging at your trousers?’

  ‘I’d prefer a woman tugging at my trousers,’ he said, watching the cowgirl, who now had a firm grip on the cactus and was sliding up and down on it, grimacing with mock pain. ‘Pole dancing with a cactus, now that’s my definition of tough.’

  Tony strived to hide his discomfort by sitting back and staring smugly. He felt that somehow he should appear more at home here, more impervious.

  ‘Have they made you a partner at the law firm? What are they called? Venal Uttering?’ Wenworth asked, looking away from the cowgirl for a moment.

  ‘Vernon, Utting and Co. No, I reckon that’ll be about a decade off. I don’t have the sort of daddy money you need to speed that up.’

  ‘Speaking of money, your shout,’ Wentworth said, pushing the glasses towards Tony and turning to the stage again.

  The cowgirl had begun shedding items of clothing and was calling men up to assist with the buttons and bows. The men sat eagerly, waiting to be chosen. Tony waited at the bar for refills. As each item was removed the dancer bent the round top of the rubber cactus over and let it straighten slowly until it was fully erect again. The patrons seemed to know what to do and called out encouragingly each time it made its way towards the ceiling. By the time he got back to their table, Wentworth was in a state of high excitement. The girl had shed a small suede waistcoat, a spangle-domed shirt, some woolly chaps, and assorted whips, guns and spurs. She was now wearing just a ten gallon hat and a tiny bejewelled G-string. This was the climax of her performance and the patrons were going mad, trying to be chosen for that last little bow. She approached the front of the stage, peering out into the audience looking for someone suitable. Then she did it. She pointed at them and Wentworth sprang to his feet and made his way forward. He was halfway to the stage before she held up her hand like a stop sign and sent him back amid roars of laughter. She wanted Tony.

  ‘Me?’ he mimed, touching his ch
est with both hands.

  She nodded and waved him up with a smile.

  As he passed Wentworth heading back he noticed a rather sour look on his face. The eager patrons, perhaps seeking closure, began to drum on the table tops in unison. Tony stood in the body of the hall slightly below the raised stage. For a while the cowgirl retreated to her cactus and left him standing there, exposed and ridiculous and then she dipped and swooped her way forward, hips at eye level, bow almost within reach. Then she froze, hip extended, waiting for him to pull the final string. He reached out but just as he drew near she whipped it away and danced back to the cactus. The room filled with whistles and roars of pleasure. Tony held his hand up feebly to acknowledge them, as if somehow he was pleased with this new twist.

  She released the cactus and approached again looking determined. Tony was determined too, determined that this would be it, he would yank that bow and head back into the anonymity of darkness, where Wentworth waited. As she was about to adopt her stance he leapt forward to grab the string. She was startled and grabbed his wrist, pulling him off his feet. The next thing he knew was that he was lying face down on the stage, G-string in hand, while she posed with her foot on his back, waving her hat triumphantly in the air. The hall erupted as the men recognised a performance that exceeded their expectations.

  The walk back to his table seemed a very long way. He could feel the heat radiating from his glowing face and he was in no mood to acknowledge the cheers and shoulder slaps of the men who wished it could have been them. Wentworth seemed to be over his pique and wanted to stay on – but Tony knew he had had enough. There was a new act on stage and Wentworth waved him off, barely looking in his direction.

  ‘We must do this again, Tony. It’s been fun.’

  By the time he had picked up his car and got home it was nearly 7 o’clock. He could hear Kezia crying even before he got the door open. Helen came out of the front room and nearly threw her into his arms.

  ‘Good one, Tony!’ She disappeared upstairs to get ready.

  He went through into the front room and sat in the rocking chair trying to subdue the gasps and wails from the hot little bundle. His head was fuzzy from the whiskies and he struggled to make sense of what had happened. After ten minutes he saw Helen flash down the hall and go out the front door without a word. He held up the baby and looked at her face. Her eyes rounded and she puked a tablespoon of milky liquid onto his suit trousers. He frowned. She smiled.

  He stood up and walked over to the bookshelf. For a while he looked in vain among the books about renovation, decor and art, and then there it was. His book, Leaves of Flax. His poetic celebration of what it was to be a New Zealander: to have a history largely unwritten; to be living in a land soaked with possibility. On the cover was a lino cut of a flax flower done by an art student he had fancied. Now what was her name? Laurel or Lauren? Maybe Lola.

  Such a long time ago.

  Such a humble little book.

  22 BLASTS FROM THE PAST

  Flash saw Jake first. He looked very different from their last meeting. Black jacket. Black trousers. Shiny shirt. He could have come straight from his job as bouncer on the door at one of those glitzy clubs. He and Rabbit had both opted for low-key. Clean jeans. Hawaiian shirts. Decent trainers. They looked like the token surfers.

  The chapel was already full so they had to stand amongst the latecomers. The funeral was being held in a sort of auditorium at the back of a funeral director’s business. The flower-splattered coffin was on a raised bit in front of an altar. The only other thing was a lectern, waiting for someone to come forward and take charge.

  It was surprising how many of the old crowd had turned up. There was Buzz McGee, the dux of their year. He and Jamie had hung out together at primary school. The parting of the ways happened at sixth form, when Jamie had found his niche with the Goths. There were a number of guys from the first fifteen. All so different now. Flash had last seen them in blazers, shirt and tie, all aged 17, all waiting to bust out of the school hall on that final day of school.

  Nicky Henderson. Everyone thought he would make the All Blacks, but the Auckland B team was as far as he got. Rabbit said he was too soft, but then Rabbit said that about most people. Then there had been the much publicised car crash that had put paid to his rugby career. Flash remembered reading how about a year ago, after some big post-game bash in the city, he had driven the complimentary Falcon straight through the front of the BNZ at a T-junction. The papers had done a big write up. The cops thought at first that it had been an attempted ram raid. Dragged him off to the pen. By the time everything was sorted out he was greeted by a press welcoming party.

  Bryce Martin. The captain. He looked ultra-respectable. Done law, they said. Now there he was, girlfriend in tow, or wifey, an extra 15 kilos clinging to his hips and arse. Flash had never liked him. He was a good player and a good captain but he had been a suck up. Not many people knew that. He still remembered walking into the changing rooms and overhearing him and Donkey talking about Jake. How he was a psycho, couldn’t trust him. It wasn’t even what they said so much, it was the way they said it. That special tone of voice, the one that signalled intimacy … showing some sort of in-crowd arrangement which explained why he had been made captain in the first place.

  The Te Pania twins looked freaky, that was for sure. He always thought they would go different directions. It was like the denial of the fact that they looked so identical. Geronimo had been the defiant one. He held the record for the number of suspensions at school. Was notorious for that, and the fact that on returning, he invariably said to the teacher who had canned him, ‘Thanks. I needed that.’ And Cheyenne. Man, what a contrast. Young Maori Achiever prize. A Bursary. Cups for this and that. Always trying to bail his brother out. To stop him from being booted. Flash remembered them on the first day in the third form. How neat and tidy they looked. (Just like Jake, plucked from some South Auckland Intermediate and given a scholarship.) The understanding was that all three would repay the school on the rugby field. Cheyenne and Geronimo. Such cool names. Quickly clipped back to Chey and Ronnie. Now they were both huge and Ronnie had this partial moko that said nothing but gang.

  Rabbit had made them late, so they were forced to stand at the back of the chapel. It gave Flash a good view though. He was able to spot most of the old crowd. In their new scrubbed-up guises.

  After a while the preacher got up and moved towards the pulpit. A thin man in a saggy suit, he stared out into the body of the chapel, as though trying to make eye contact with everyone there. Then he launched into a sermon that was delivered in this flat, fake-respectful tone that you could tell he had trucked out so many times before. He talked about Jamie’s talents, his love of science, his musical interests, his close and loving family. It was a formula. One that covered all the bases but reduced the person he was talking about to a featureless product. It was a fill-the-spaces exercise.

  Flash turned away. He couldn’t stand fakes. As if it was that easy to gift wrap ‘the departed’. To make him sound like the perfect son, brother, friend. It was all the things Mr Preacher Man didn’t say, didn’t know, that made Jamie real.

  Flash’s gaze wandered the auditorium again. Caught on this sizeable nest of spiky, black-haired dudes. They must have been Jamie’s latest set of friends. There were other people from school too, whom he recognised, though he couldn’t remember their names.

  After the preacher had finished, the organist played the old Nick Cave song about Death’s smiling face of welcome. One of the Goths sang the lyrics from the front. The guy had black hair, white face, black eyeliner. Swathed in black except for a shimmering image of Ian Curtis glaring from his T-shirt. He stared unblinkingly at the audience, his face showing no emotion.

  Flash knew him, too, by sight. He was in one of those culty bands that played at the university. The sort of dances where everyone was so cool they should have worn badges that said ‘fuck off’. It was some voice, though. Low, gravelly, hypn
otic. Anyone could tell why they had done well.

  After the song it was tribute time.

  Jamie’s mother got up first and stood at the lectern crying. She tried to speak but nothing came. After a number of attempts her husband came to her rescue. He said a few words, throat choked with grief, and then they both sat down. The brother and the sister each said something about him. How he had gone his own way. How smart he was. How sad they were. The usual.

  Then there was this middle-aged guy. Some sort of family friend. He was the dry-eyed one, put there to give the official view. Fancied himself as a speaker. He stood at the lectern, smoothed out his notes and then waited for dramatic effect.

  ‘We’ve all got questions, you, me, everyone. Heads so full of questions there’s not much room for anything else. Some of these, we’ll never know the answers to; others, I may be able to answer today.’

  He was one of those old rugby dudes, 100 kilos now, goatee beard, shaved head. Looked like he coached the under nines for St Heliers. Flash felt an immediate dislike for him.

  ‘About how Jamie died? You don’t go there. About who Jamie was? That’s why I’m here…’ He then proceeded to talk about how long he’d known Jamie’s parents, what good people they were, about the med student sister, the golfer brother, about nearly everything except Jamie. It was soon clear that he knew nothing about him.

  After this someone walked up who Flash hadn’t thought of for years. It was Brett Delauney. He had been one of those really sharp kids who always had some racket operating. Smart but never did more school work than was required. He remembered him saying once, with a sneer, that 51 per cent in a test, meant one per cent too much effort. Brett and Jamie had teamed up, and in the sixth form, they had topped the school in Chemistry. It didn’t make sense.

  Brett stood for a while as if trying to think of a way to start and then launched in.

  ‘I don’t know most of you people, but I know the guy here in the box. He was a friend of mine.’ He stopped and stared at the coffin for some time, then looked back into the auditorium. ‘When we were kids I envied him because he had a family that seemed to work. Seemed to have it all. He envied me because I had one that didn’t. He thought I could do what I wanted. We were both wrong. Later we both found a place in the black questions that everyone else ignored. I reckon if Jamie had been living a few centuries ago he would have been an alchemist, turning lead into gold. Banging his head against the limits.’