‘It’s Jez’s girlfriend …’
‘She’s not his girlfriend.’ Stone Cold says it so strongly that Jez and I just look at her.
‘Are you?’
Stone Cold blushes. ‘No.’
‘You even struck out with a ginge? Fuuuuuck.’
You can see the muscles in Jez’s jaw ripple. If he’s actually biting his tongue it will be ripped in two by that pressure.
I say, ‘Hey,’ because I don’t know what else to say.
Jez moves his hand towards my arm, but stops short of touching it. We don’t know where our boundaries are any more. ‘I was gonna call you …’
‘There’s your problem there,’ the Cock says. ‘You gotta treat them mean.’ He winks at Stone Cold. ‘Eh, sweetheart?’
Jez pushes us out of the room and closes the door behind him. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Please.’ Stone Cold rolls her eyes. ‘Like that guy could scare me.’
‘Are you OK, B?’ He moves his hand near my hip, and I move it away from him. It probably looks like we’re dancing a samba with a ghost between us.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Have you been looking after it? I don’t want it to get infected.’
Hand forward, hip back, cha cha cha!
Stone Cold stands between us. ‘Ew. What are you guys talking about?’
‘I gave Bugs a tat.’
‘Really? Can I see?’
Me and Jez both go red and look at the floor.
‘Ew. Where is it? I don’t want to know.’ Stone Cold flares her nostrils at me like I’ve gone off. ‘Are you coming with us? To the fireworks?’
‘Yeah, cool. I’ve just got to finish up in here. Just hang for a bit.’
‘How long will you be?’
‘I dunno. A bit.’ He looks back to the room. ‘Maybe an hour?’
‘Is that how you got it?’ I say. ‘You got it on tick from him?’ Jez nods. ‘So it won’t be just him then, eh Jez? It’s all those guys out there too.’
‘Nah, after this we’re even, we’re square.’
‘Jez …’
‘Just wait for me, OK? Just wait.’
Jez slips back into the room and the buzz of the gun starts up again. Stone Cold and I walk to the lounge, flop on the couch.
‘How long do you think he’ll be, Bugs?’
‘I don’t know. We’re on island time here.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’ll happen when it happens.’
One of the boys from outside comes in and looks in the fridge. We watch him from the couch as he pokes around. He takes a bottle of beer from the fridge and opens it – Wap! – with a fish slice. He sees us, looks back in the fridge and pulls out a carton of eggs. His face goes all crazy hard and googly-eyed and he shouts, ‘Cook me some fuckin’ eggs!’ right at us.
I’m cracking up because that shit’s funny, but Stone Cold goes whiter than I thought was even possible and legs it out the door. I follow after her and that fulla is going wooooo, wooooo, vibrating the sound through his lips, taking the piss out of that Māori instrument. I should give him shit for that, but I’ve got to go calm down Stone Cold. Poor chick probably thinks that he’d hit her. Like she matters to him, like she even registers.
Stone Cold is in her car. She flashes the light at me, like it’s some big secret where she’s hiding out. I get in, and she’s slouched down in her seat.
‘Did he follow you?’
I answer, ‘No,’ just as he walks out the door. Classic timing, bro, classic.
She makes a kind of eep noise and tries to get down further in her seat, but she’s too tall for that shit. ‘He’s there!’
He has the fish slice in his hands, and he makes the face again and then mimes Stone Cold’s escape. All the boys crack up.
‘It was a joke,’ I say. ‘Y’know, like the movie?’
She unfolds herself and hits the car horn: Beep! They all turn around and look at us, and then crack up.
‘See, they’re laughing.’
‘God, how embarrassing.’ Stone Cold’s laugh is light, unconvincing. ‘Do you think I should apologise?’
‘What for?’
‘Running out like that? It’s kinda … racist.’
‘I dare you to go out there and apologise for being a racist.’ We stare at them through the windshield like they’re dangerous animals behind glass at the zoo. ‘I’m sure that will go down really well.’
Stone Cold taps her fingers on the dash. ‘We’re missing the band.’
‘It’ll be lame; it always is.’ I turn on her stereo and the tape deck clicks on. ‘You’re still listening to this?’
‘I can’t get it out, remember?’ She hums along to the song. ‘And I kinda like it now. It’s growing on me.’
‘Like a fungus?’
‘Whatever; you’re the one with the itchy crotch.’ She faces me. ‘Can I see?’
‘You want to see my crotch, lez?’
‘No, the tat.’
I look out my window, pretend to be into the music.
‘C’mon Bugs. I’d show you mine if I had one.’
‘Fine.’ I have to lean back in my seat to get to my waistband. I pop the button and have to tip my hips up to pull the top down …
‘WOOOOO! YEAH!’
Wolf whistles and whoops from our captive audience. I plonk my butt back down on the seat and pull my zipper back up before Stone Cold even has the chance to see it.
‘Fuckin’ pervs!’ Stone Cold yells, and then one of the boys winds his hand – asking her to open the window and say that again. She pretends she doesn’t see him, and then one of them waggles his tongue between the V of his fingers, and they all crack up.
‘Fuckin’ pervs,’ she says to her chest.
We get treated to a whole show of ‘masculinity’ – they pretend to fuck one another, their chairs, their drinks – before they get bored of us and get back to really drinking.
‘We should go,’ Stone Cold says.
‘Jez won’t be long.’
‘I don’t feel safe.’
‘It’s OK now. By the time it gets really messy we’ll be gone.’ They’re only one slab in. That’s just enough to take the edge off; it won’t have even touched the sides.
We listen to Mum’s mixtape. It’s kind of like we’re at the park, listening to dumb music, watching ‘kids’ play silly buggers. Finally, Jez walks out of the flat with a metal briefcase – he looks like he is Bond, Jez Bond, with that in his hand. He raises his eyebrows at the boys, slaps a few hands, accepts a beer but doesn’t linger.
He’s walking towards us, and if you didn’t know Jez you’d think he was just walking normally, but to us he’s practically running. He opens the back door and chucks in the case before he sits down. He’s closed the door and put his seat belt on before the Cock is on the lawn. He has a big, white dressing taped to his back.
Jez says, ‘You might want to turn your lights on, and turn her over.’
Stone Cold starts the car, lets it idle and turns her headlights on low. It is still bright enough for the boys to squint and put their hands up in front of their eyes.
The boys gather round the Cock, giving him shit. They tug at the tape that holds the dressing on his back. It is the perfect spotlight for an unveiling.
‘Just wait.’ Jez is leaning forward like someone waiting for their favourite part in a movie.
And the dressing comes off. And it is perfect.
COCK.
Written in big black letters between his shoulder blades. The boys crack up. The Cock turns, trying to see it.
‘He wanted his name,’ Jez says.
COCK.
Not just outlined, but bold. Puffing up and sticking out, as his body gets as angry as he is.
‘I think we should go.’ Jez says.
As his fist comes down on the bonnet of the car, Stone Cold yelps, and I jump.
‘We should go.’
Stone Cold grinds it into reverse and we’re
on the street, but he’s running after us, and I hope that she doesn’t stall, but the gear change is smooth, and she guns it, and we’re gone. I check the mirror and he’s still there on the street, just Hulking out. I turn around in my seat to get a better look, and there’s Jez with the biggest smile on his face. He takes his fingers and traces a square in the air, like he’s framing the Cock as art.
We’re even, we’re square.
And all I can say is, ‘Fuck, Jez. You’re a …’
COCK.
Because he is. He is. He is.
16
You know how sometimes a minute can feel like it stretches out; like hours have passed rather than seconds? Maybe it’s the adrenaline, making my heart pump faster, sharpening all the details around me, so I can observe everything in an instant, when normally it would take ages. It’s the theory of relativity again: time is dependent on how we experience it. So here we are in Stone Cold’s car, the clock seeming to come to a standstill as we speed away.
‘Ohmygodohmygodohmygod …’ Her words lose their meaning and just become shapes that bump around the car, smashing into the windows like a trapped bluebottle fly.
‘What the fuck, Jez?’ He’s still smiling. Right now I want to slap it off his face.
‘It’s cool.’ His leg keeps on jiggling. Maybe it’s the only part of him that’s scared, because he’s smiling like a frickin’ idiot. ‘B! It’s cool!’ It’s like someone has tapped the top of his beer bottle – he’s fizzing over the top; he’s lost his head.
‘It is so far from cool.’ I turn back around and look at Stone Cold, who is in full-on freak mode. ‘Not cool, at all.’
We’re already over the bridge, up the hill, past the supermarket, waiting at the roundabout. The waiting is marked by the tick tick tick of the indicator. It makes me jumpy, like the last few seconds counting down before …
‘Where are we going?’ I ask Stone Cold. She has taken a left onto Spa Road and we’re climbing the hill towards school.
‘To the park.’ Her voice is shaky, but at least her words are understandable; no longer an indistinct moan of vowels. ‘It’s only just dark. We wouldn’t have missed the fireworks, right?’
‘Cool, cool.’ Jez sounds excited, talking in a loud voice like he’s at a party. ‘I like fireworks.’ It’s like he’s done nothing, like there’s nothing to worry about.
I laugh, not because it’s funny or I’m happy, but because it takes the pressure off my chest and I can fool myself into breathing again. ‘The fuck you do, Jez.’ As if the scene at his place wasn’t enough fireworks for the night. ‘Turn off here.’ I point to the road that goes down by the school field; the road that if you keep going down it takes you to the cemetery, or the sewage plant. I laugh again because that’s exactly where we’re headed: the shit.
‘B. It’s cool, OK? You don’t need to freak.’
‘Shut up, OK?’ Jez’s voice, him being here, him just even being, is fucking annoying me right now. I turn to Stone Cold. ‘I need some air. Please, pull up.’ Stone Cold nods and parks the car next to the field, and my door is open and I’m out as soon as that car has come to a standstill. I stride across the grass. Stone Cold and Jez are yelling at me from the car, telling me to get back in, but that just makes me walk faster.
In the middle of the field, the barren middle of the field, I lie down. Here, because there are no trees or buildings, it’s like it’s just me and the sky. The moon is turning away; it was full only a few days ago and now it can’t stand to look at us, at our foolish lives. Remember that story about Rona? How she was snatched away by the moon because she cursed it one night? I bet she’s up there now looking at us and thinking, Well, at least I didn’t piss off a wannabe gangsta. What was he thinking? At least Rona has the moon. Jez has nowhere to hide; not in this town. I look up to the stars; think of the civilisations that are working out how to cross the vast, empty space, doing something useful, not trying to commit suicide by tattoo.
Wheee!
CRACK!
A chemical reaction explodes above me: slivers of aluminium propelled and ignited by gunpowder shimmer hot in the air until they are totally consumed and they fall, their impressions on my retina and my eardrums lasting longer than their own existence. That’s the thing about fireworks. They’re nothing until you put a flame to them. They sit there with all that potential and finally, when their beauty is seen, it’s only for a moment before they’re gone. Destroyed.
Wheee!
CRACK!
A flower of fire, red, blooms and fades in a moment.
Crackle, hiss, crackle …
I prop myself up on my elbows. A roman candle has sprouted up about ten metres away, the sparks getting higher and brighter, and just before it dies, it sends seeds of fire into the sky – Pop! Pop! Pop!
‘What are you guys doing?’
‘Fireworks.’ Stone Cold sits down next to me with a packet of sparklers in one hand; in the other a lit one. She throws me the packet and I take one out. ‘Quick, quick, before it goes out!’ I touch my sparkler to the dying flame of hers and it fizzles and hisses into life. She takes the packet from me and takes out another one and touches it to my flame. When it is lit, she gets up and dances around me, making shapes out of light, giggling like an overgrown three-year-old.
Jez lights another roman candle and backs away as it spews sparks and flames of gold before it dies in a smouldering heap. Was there once a time when I got caught up in that magic? When that would have filled me with excitement? The dazzle, the sideshow; not the reality. The smoke of the sparklers and the candles makes my chest tight. My sparkler died ages ago, but I’m still holding it. I throw the wire away and stand up. I walk over to Jez as he’s looking in the box, using a lighter to see which firework is which. I close the lid with my foot and almost trap his hand in the box as it snaps shut.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Fireworks.’
‘Not the fireworks. Back at your place.’
‘Not my place any more.’
‘Whatever, Jez. You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t, B.’ He says it in a really sarcastic voice, and for a second he sounds like me. ‘Please lecture me in great detail about how I’ve fucked up my life.’
I have like a hundred intelligent arguments in my head, with sound reasoning and water-tight logical progression to back them up, but when I open my mouth it’s like they all want to come out at once, and all I can say is, ‘Gah!’ And he laughs at me, and that just makes me wild, man. So fuck me, if my words won’t work then my fists will. I give him a good hit in the stomach, and he doubles over, kind of out of breath but still laughing, so I go for his head, but he’s on the lookout now and dodges me. But I still try to connect, throwing my arms out at him, following him around as he tries to get behind me. Then he rushes me, puts his arms around me and pins them to my side. I could kick him; knee him in the balls. But we haven’t been this close, nose to nose, breathing in the same air, since forever. I relax, and just stand there, trying to find my Jez in the face of a stranger.
And then Stone Cold skips past with a sparkler like a fairy wand in her hand and says, ‘God, you guys. Get a room.’
We break apart like we’re guilty of something, and my anger must need oxygen to burn brightly because I remember that I’m pissed with him. ‘It’s not just some prank, Jez.’
‘I dunno. It was pretty funny to me.’
‘You think Havoc is gonna let that slide? You think he’s going to go “Ha ha ha, good one, Jez, you really got me that time.” No. He’s going to hunt you down and smash you.’
Jez just looks at me like I’m the dumbest chick in the world. ‘You think I don’t know that? You think I didn’t plan for that?’
‘You planned this?’
‘Tattooing doesn’t just happen by accident, eh?’ He rolls up his sleeve and touches the skin on his arm. ‘It takes practice. It takes preparation.’
I put my hand on my hip, like it’s him that
has kicked me in the guts, not the rabbit. I close my eyes and I am back there – the smell of the paint – I think we should save something – the flick of a felt-tip pen. It’s worth saving now. I open my eyes and look at him. ‘Did the landlord really give you notice?’
‘I gave notice.’
‘On what?’
‘This place, B. My “life” here.’
‘What did your mum say?’
‘Bye.’
We just stand there, the space between us a gulf, the minute that passes forever.
‘Shit, you guys.’ Stone Cold’s latest sparkler is racing down to burn her fingers. ‘We’ve got to bail; look.’
By the school, a couple of pools of torchlight swing. They must have hired security in case someone got carried away by their own gunpowder plot. The pools of light are getting bigger and bigger as they bounce towards us.
‘Shit, they’re running.’
And we run too – all the way to the car. Jez has taken the front, so I jump in the back, scrambling over Stone Cold’s bag.
‘We left the fireworks.’ Stone Cold sounds like she wants to go back and get them.
‘Fuck that,’ says Jez. ‘We’ve got to go!’
Stone Cold revs up her car and we go, the exhaust fumes mixing with the stink of spent gunpowder in the air.
‘Where are we going?’ Stone Cold says as we cruise up Spa Road, past the school, past the lookout, past where the ground falls away to a cliff with the Waikato below, where tourists are parted from the earth and their money with a bungee cord.
‘I don’t know,’ Jez says, and then he turns to me. ‘What do you think, B?’
And I’m thinking about us at Spa Park: running to the skate bowl, trying to be as staunch as the bigger kids but still wanting to crawl through the witch’s tunnel like the littlest kids. Trying to do the obstacle course, even though we were too little to make the jumps, to cross the bars, hand over hand. The flying fox and that feeling of freedom before we crashed and rebounded off the tree at the end, falling on the browning grass, laughing and laughing …
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