The Ice Shelf: An Eco-Comedy

by Anne Kennedy

After some more thoughtful drags on his cigarette, he revs up his eyebrows and asks my ear, ‘What’s on for tonight?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘So far.’

  At last, somewhere to spend the night.

  Before we leave the Matterhorn, however, I feel the familiar tingle of an edit coming on. I tell Eric to wait a mo and he chain-lights a cigarette and gazes up at the sky while I open my laptop bag and thumb through my printout until I come to the section in which the protagonist falls in love but realises quickly that it isn’t the real thing; in fact, it is a disappointment, it is absolute shit, and the love interest is a monster and probably she is a monster also and the two of them reside in a kind of hell. The Ice Shelf is much more riveting without it. For the second time, I pause for a moment, wondering if I am being too extravagant with my shedding. But I do have my digital file, and I also remember that I’d never had any trouble with ideas; of ideas, I am a renewable resource. I ball my edits. Eric follows as I uplift my fridge and we head out of the Matterhorn.

  Outside in the mall, the weather is even worse—colder and windier. I stuff the culled pages into the closest rubbish bin and zip up my jacket.

  Eric indicates my fridge. ‘Is that in case you want a drink of milk?’ He snorts, and as we meander he gives a quick, freefall homily about the dairy industry, farting cows, methane and fertilisers. He sounds as authoritative as if he had half a science degree, but I know it’s all just from the Dominion Post. Seeing as we are on the subject, I think I may as well ask directly, more or less, if he would babysit the fridge for a week or two.

  ‘Yeah, nah,’ he says.

  I breathe a sigh of relief.

  He tells me he lives up 246 steps, not counting Church Street Steps. We laugh. I remember I like him.

  Going up Church Street Steps with the fridge is a bit of toil. We probably should’ve gone down to Lambton Quay and taken one of the lifts to the Terrace, but after a few drinks, I guess our judgement is somewhat impaired but in a really excellent way. Halfway up Church Street Steps we sit down for a rest, breathing hard. The city twinkles below us like a virus. Eric laughs into his beard. I laugh. It is pretty hilarious. We kiss. His mouth, when I can get at it through the beard, has taken on the cold of the air, which makes the tobacco taste woody. He has to keep turning away to catch his breath. I’m not getting a whole lot out of the kiss, but I have bigger intentions.

  When we get to the top of the steps, I’m tired, but Eric is wheezing like he’s on life support. He leans against the tall wooden fence of one of the big villas on the Terrace and manages to rasp out, ‘Why don’t you ditch. The fridge?’

  I tell him I can’t possibly do that, and anyway, isn’t he going to look after it? He squeaks, ‘I was. I am.’ But he doesn’t sound convincing and I’m already beginning to wonder if Eric is the right person to look after my fridge.

  We continue up the Terrace and turn into the first loop of Salamanca Road. Eric stops again. ‘Why don’t you leave it behind there?’ I follow his gaze to a bus shelter cobbled to the hillside. He manages to add, ‘Who’s going to take it? At this hour of the night?’

  I have to concede, probably no one—except me, of course, and I laugh and Eric coughs. I am reluctant to kiss goodbye to my fridge, even temporarily, but can see the impossibility of lugging it up 246 steps without Eric needing triage. He manages to help me stow it behind the shelter and to break small branches from trees on the bank as cover. These slide off the fridge in a trice, but using gobs of Eric’s quickly-chewed gum, we assemble, hilariously, a military-style camouflage.

  Without the fridge, huffs Eric, we could cut through the cemetery. Do I mind a few dead bodies? His beard wobbles; he is quite a laugh. To be honest, I do mind, but it is ten o’clock-ish, the weather is awful, Eric is near death, and I am worried he’ll change his mind about our date night, so to speak. We double back across the road and start up the steepest bit of Mount Street. As we flatten off into Wai-te-ata Road, I look back and can just make out under the streetlight the leafy smudge that is my fridge. I feel a pang. But I am aware that I *can* leave it there. I *can* actually walk away.

  The cemetery is just a pocket and will take only a few minutes to get through. We climb the almost-vertical steps that soar up into the grave area. Eric seems to have recovered somewhat, and I’m experiencing that feeling you have if you push your arms hard against a door jamb then step outside the frame and your arms float up of their own accord, as if there’s no gravity. That’s how I feel *not* towing my fridge. Whether this is a letting go or a loss, I can’t tell. Something else has taken over.

  Further up into the cemetery are big gnarly pōhutukawa, so it suddenly goes darker and we are showered randomly in fists of water shaken off the trees in the gale. Eric squelches ahead on the muddy path, and I bring up the rear, grazing my fingers on the rough headstones. As my eyes become accustomed to the light, I see that we are surrounded by chipped Victorian graves and weedy patches mosaicked together. I’m the teensiest bit nervous. At one point I think I see a ghost rising up from a grave, but I soon realise it is a couple fucking against a tombstone, fused together like flies. Their doleful moans mix with the sighing of the trees. Further on, a little cluster of Goth-looking types have lit a bonfire on a grave and are roasting sausages. Against the fire, their gesticulating limbs are like Kali, and as we pass I see their tongues glow red in the firelight as they talk about their Film Festival picks. But actually, the Mount Street Cemetery isn’t too bad, for a cemetery, and before long the wan light of the exit appears at the top of the hill.

  We are nearly there when a voice screeches Eric’s name. ‘E-ric! E-e-ric!’ A dreadlocked woman with a lanky frame emerges from the gloom.

  Eric looks around. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ yells the woman. Up close she has wide, mad eyes. Her dreads are straw-coloured and a lattice of complicated black bra-straps pokes out the top of her tattered op-shop dress.

  ‘Well, Holly,’ says Eric with a tired, ironic air, ‘we’re just on our way home.’

  Holly looks from Eric to me and back again and her face scrunches questioningly.

  ‘This is Janice,’ says Eric.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  Holly’s face scrunches tighter. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’ Eric looks up mock-soulfully at the sky as if pleading for mercy.

  Holly falls into step behind Eric, and I follow them both up the muddy last few metres to the road. The notion of sex is fading fast, but I am still hoping I can stay the night.

  ‘Are you a student?’ I ask Holly’s back, to make conversation.

  ‘Yeah!’ says Holly to Eric in a tone that indicates she isn’t ever likely to be.

  The entrance to the flat is via a thicket of wet foliage which Eric fights his way through, seemingly letting each frond slap in Holly’s face because periodically she says, ‘Ouch! Thanks a lot. Ow! Thanks again.’ I guess Eric is too out of breath to care. When we finally reach his rotten back verandah, we have to wait for Eric to negotiate the door and I hope we don’t fall through the splintery gaps into another world.

  Inside, the place smells acridly of borer bomb. The kitchen is dark and slopes downhill. The flat has all the known tropes of the urban scavenger, such as the milk crate over the light and the stolen traffic sign. As we traipse down, a woman sitting at the table gets up and follows us as if she’d been waiting for us to collect her. ‘Rose,’ calls Eric over his shoulder, by way of introduction. Rose is skinny and twitchy like a fox. She mumbles something and even in the dark her teeth look bad for a twenty-something. We troop down the steep passage and upset a curtain of beads as we go through into the bedroom.

  Rose and Holly fling themselves on a couch in the bay window, and Eric disappears out another door to a sort of sunroom. I perch on the huge rolled arm of the couch and take in the vast, purplish room, the open suitcases that seem to serve as drawers, the lamp with a cloth over it. On the floor is an amalgam of several mattresses hea
ped with blankets. A head pokes up from among them.

  ‘Is it night-time?’ comes a blurry voice.

  ‘No,’ says Holly. ‘It’s the crack of fucking dawn.’

  ‘Don’t be a witch,’ says Rose, then adds kindly to the person in bed, ‘It’s fucking night-time.’

  The person staggers up from the bed clutching a blanket around her, hurtles over and flings herself onto the couch. Holly pulls in her feet as if they’ve been splashed by the juice of a recycling bin and looks reproachful. We all look out the window at the wild trees.

  ‘That’s Phlox,’ says Holly.

  ‘Janice,’ I supply, but Phlox seems none the wiser.

  ‘I know!’ says Rose. She kneels up on the couch and furrows down behind it, messing with the thick curtains. She holds up a bottle of vodka like a trophy. ‘Let’s make cocktails!’ Rose and Holly touch knuckles and even Phlox raises a smile. I’m not complaining either.

  We all slog back uphill to the kitchen.

  Rose flicks on the light and screws herself into a low cupboard. When she reappears, her blond dreads are cobwebby, like a cat that’s been under the house, and she’s holding a blender. Its crazed plastic jug twinkles beautifully. Holly, Phlox and I stand about with our arms folded while Rose rampages through the top cupboards and assembles a forest of bottles and old fruit and things in packets. While she opens and bangs cupboards, Holly tells the complicated story of her evening before she encountered Eric and *her* (jerking her head at me and soliciting looks from the other two) in the cemetery, which includes a series of drunken encounters with people she half knew. I can’t keep track, but the story causes Rose to abandon her cocktail-making at one point and explode, and she and Holly have a brief, vicious spat, but it seems to blow over. Periodically, Rose tells Holly to shut the fuck up, and Phlox agrees.

  Eric appears again, very stoned, and is informed of the cocktail decision. Without hesitation but with a fair bit of grunting he hefts himself up on the bench. The countertop creaks as he wobbles along it, strangely light on his feet, opening all the high cupboards, saying, ‘This could go in a cocktail, now this could definitely go in a cocktail.’ He tells everyone to watch out, and we stand aside respectfully as cans rain down and make gouges in the floor.

  I think I should probably leave, but I need a place to sleep. I think about my fridge, on its own down behind the bus shelter, and I hope it’s okay. I’ve worked out that there’s no way Eric will be taking it on board.

  It seems Eric might fall from the bench, and because of his hefty frame, a tumble probably won’t do him any good, not to mention the floorboards. I start to bleat at him, ‘Be careful, Eric, don’t fall.’ Rose and Holly join in, and we all chorus, ‘Be careful, Eric, don’t fall, Eric!’ I’m bonding with Rose and Holly over jointly entreating Eric not to fall. Phlox draws intensely on a cigarette and says, ‘I don’t give a fuck, let him fall if he wants to.’

  ‘Be careful, Eric, don’t fall, Eric!’ Rose and Holly and I chant, laughing our heads off together. But after we’ve done this a few times, I catch both Rose and Holly exchanging rolling glances, as if they’ve just that moment *seen* something in me. My last ‘Don’t fall, Eric!’ is solo, and Rose follows up with a blatantly mocking, ‘Ooh, don’t fall Eric!’ It seems that our friendship, which had blossomed to something lovely in a minute or so, has now dwindled, like a flower unfolding and dying on time-lapse photography.

  Eric jumps down from the bench with a few bottles under his arms. The bottles have dregs in them, vodka and tequila and such, and Rose and Holly poke out their necks accusingly. ‘How long have those been up there?’ Eric doesn’t even bother shrugging. Somehow his body weight makes up for everything. They plough on with the cocktails, Rose stations herself at the bench to cram bananas, raisins, crackers and a can of peaches into the blender. Boxes of allspice are passed round and sniffed like a drug. The first sounds from the blender are a shocking gravelly rattle. Rose cuts the power and snatches up the jug to inspect it. And suddenly she screams. ‘The lid! The middle of the lid!’ The lid is apparently in the blender, shredded to a pulp. The girls scream. ‘Rose, you fucking idiot!’ And from somewhere in Eric’s belly comes the rumbling edge of hysteria.

  Not to waste the alcohol already in the blender (I suppose), Rose adds more to the cocktail from the assortment of ingredients. A thick grey concoction materialises within. Soon we are sipping the porridgey findings from old Marmite jars. It isn’t too bad. ‘Cheers,’ we all say, ‘cheers.’ Rose and Holly both curl their lips when they clink my jar. Phlox sits on the bench next to the kitchen window, looking out on the desolate night and swallowing.

  For the next batch, Holly has a go on the blender, and we all encourage her like soccer hooligans, even me—‘Go Hol-ly! Go Hol-ly!’ Holly reaches willy-nilly for bottles and packets, and pours them all into the blender. When she turns it on, there is an almighty eruption and grey matter sprays powerfully all over the kitchen.

  After the shrieking and cowering, Holly dangles the power plug in her hand and informs us in careful drunk-talk that this is the consequence of having no lid on the blender. Her observation is greeted with silence and then more hysterics. It is Phlox’s idea that we waste not want not, and she leans over and attaches her mouth to the window.

  Eric says, to all and sundry, ‘Would you care to join me for a cocktail?’

  The girls yahoo.

  ‘Who am I quoting?’ asks Eric.

  ‘Don’t give a fuck,’ says Rose.

  ‘No, go on, who am I quoting? “Would you care to join me for a cocktail?”’

  Eric eyes me while licking his coat sleeve in an intimate way, for some reason. I know sex is off the menu, but I don’t give a fuck.

  We all proceed to lick the mixture from the table, the chairs, the floor. Eric climbs back up on to the bench and licks the ceiling, saying periodically, ‘Can I interest you in a cocktail?’ I feel myself getting fairly drunk as my tongue rasps over rough surfaces. Eventually we’ve finished the kitchen and are drinking cocktails from our Marmite jars again, and I knock back a couple partly because they are quite substantial with their bananas and canned beans, and I am hungry.

  Rose and Holly have embarked on an argument, something about a boy they’ve both had sex with, comparing their orgasms, of which Rose had six, but Holly says they would’ve been small ones. Rose says no, big, enormous ones. Holly says she is a liar. Rose says Holly is a liar. Their yelling escalates until I can’t get the gist of it anymore. They tug almost playfully at each other’s clothes and hair, but soon this turns less friendly.

  Phlox unfolds herself from the window and stands over them. ‘Hey!’ They follow each other round the kitchen, skidding a bit, screaming invective, their gums peeled back redly like burst cheerios, but breaking off to lick up the odd forgotten dollop of mixture when they encounter it. For quite a while they scream and cry uncontrollably. I don’t really know what to do. Eric watches passively from a kitchen chair, blinking and turning his thumbs like rotisserie chickens. I look up at the lightshade. After what seems like a long time, the girls start to gulp and calm down, their faces pulsing like shellfish each time they sniff. Finally, Eric says to all and sundry, ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  Like the end of the visit to Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins, when they have to stop laughing and come down from the ceiling, nothing is funny anymore. The kitchen, trashed from the cocktails, feels suddenly sober, and sober now seems terrible because everything was hysterical before. It makes you wonder whether it’s worth being happy.

  Eric has left the kitchen. I go into the bedroom and there he is, lying in the middle of the mattresses. He cranes up, pats beside him. A puff of dust rises up as he sinks back. I lie down gingerly in my clothes. The bed is a bit smelly, but it is a bed. Eric is snoring at the ceiling before I’ve even pulled up a blanket. A few moments later Rose appears naked, walking through the room as if it were water. She clambers on top of Eric momentarily, but he calls out something from his sleep and
shrugs her off like an earthquake. I can hear Rose saying, ‘Fuck you then, fuck you,’ into the blankets. I touch Eric’s face for some reason; it’s dry and leathery, and I smoosh his cheek up and down. In his sleep, Eric turns away to spoon Rose, the action causing his snoring to skip a beat and then recover itself shudderingly. In the dark, Holly gets in next to Rose. A while later, Phlox gets in next to me. She is all cold and poky, and falls asleep in seconds.

  I stare up at the streetlight flickering on the ceiling as the trees gesticulate in the gale. Squashed between Eric and Phlox, I am strangely comfortable. I feel I know these people really well, like I’ve spent weeks with them, or at least several intense days, like the days I am to spend with the artists with whom I will go to Antarctica. We’ve shared something—the sloping flat, the cocktails, the laughing and, what’s more, the laughing’s aftermath, the loss. I think, if the world is going to end now, we would hold hands, all five of us, and it would feel right, almost as right as being with people you were related to, had grown up with, had spent years of your life with. We would build on our forged bond and slip from this world together, feeling comforted by our association as humans.

  I listen to Eric, Rose, Holly and Phlox snoring like a small orchestra tuning up, then I make another attempt to wake Eric, turning to pinch his earlobe, I don’t know why. I suppose I want someone to talk to. As I do, something quite major gives way on the red dress in the vicinity of the waist. Eric stirs but bats me away and returns to his woodwind instrument. I could just sleep here, but suddenly I can’t bear the thought of my fridge on its own down behind the bus shelter. And also I am getting unbearably hot, despite the cold night. I get up and collect my stuff. I have to say, I feel like shit as I plough up the wooden hill of the passage to the back door, let myself out and descend the 246 steps onto Kelburn Parade, and the cold wind. As I go, I remember that it was Holden Caulfield—the ‘would you care to join me for a cocktail’ quote.

  I would like to take the opportunity here to thank Eric for leading me up the garden path (literally), and my thanks also go out to Holly, Rose and Phlox for pretending to be friendly and suddenly withdrawing it all with no warning, because without these clobberings to the ego, what does a writer have to go on? ‘Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it’ (Horace). Not that I think of myself a genius, I hasten to add, but I’ve had a lot of help from people. I thank every last one of them from the bottom of my heart.