Motel View

by Forbes Williams

  Tristan was a reporter for a weekly suburban newspaper. His father had got him the job through a friend. When Tristan had left school he'd tried to get into a journalism course for a couple of years without success. In the end he'd realised he was better off not working and making his living off the share market. It was easy, he said. But his father, maybe thinking he still wanted to be a journalist, had organised this job out of the blue. He'd wanted to stay cool with his father—his mother had died when he was young—so he'd promised himself he'd do the job for two years. There were six months left. He was sure he could jack up something for me if that's what I wanted, but he couldn't recommend it as an option. I'll show you the market, he said. I tell you, it's easy.

  He spoke with great contempt about the people he worked with. His immediate boss was Mr Mills, an elderly senior reporter who'd been with the newspaper longer than anyone else. Mr Mills was slowly dementing; he'd done one feature in two years. Everybody at the newspaper was scared of offending him, even those senior to him, so nobody had suggested to him that he should retire or take a break. Nobody took responsibility for his work, either, and it was left to Tristan to make up the shortfall.

  When I leave the place'll collapse, he said.

  Megan was my other flatmate. She was seventeen, same age as my sister, and she'd come down from Auckland to go to university and do law. She'd moved in three weeks before me.

  The flat was ideal. It was an upstairs flat; a young couple lived downstairs, although I don't remember ever hearing or seeing them at all. They were very quiet. I only had one bus to catch in the mornings now and there was a spare bedroom full of junk Tristan said I could use as a darkroom. He offered it as soon as I said I was a photographer. At first the room looked too full of stuff but when I cleared it out and threw away all the rubbish and put what was left back neatly stacked there was plenty of space available. My bedroom was at the back of the flat. It got afternoon sun and would itself have been large enough for me to build a darkroom if the other room hadn't been free. It looked out over a small yard and lying in bed I could see up to the motorway. At night the southbound headlights flickered by.

  The living-room was one of two front rooms. It was strangely bare, the way some people holding parties organise a special room for dancing. There was only one kitchen chair in there but the first few days I spent hours sitting on it staring out the big bay window. You could see out over the inner city across the harbour to Oriental Bay and Roseneath, with Eastbourne further in the distance. We were at about the same level as the top floors of many of the taller city buildings, and not too far away. Sometimes it felt like we were at the top of a tall building ourselves. It was an amazing view and the only reason our flat was cheap was because it was due for demolition. The landlord was just waiting for the right offer. That's why there was no lease, Tristan told me.

  Most of the living-room furniture was in Tristan's room, the other one at the front of the house. He had a double bed by the window facing out and he kept all his clothes on the floor on either side of the bed. The rest of his room was set up as a lounge with a couch and two armchairs, TV, stereo and a glass coffee table. There was a built-in heater where the fireplace once had been, and a large Turkish rug on the floor, mainly red. Tristan told me this was the proper flat living-room and I wasn't to feel inhibited about coming in; I was welcome any time of the day or night, he said. I'd never met anyone so reasonable. I couldn't believe my good luck.

  Tristan was tall and good-looking. He got drunk every night. On week nights he'd do this at home, but on weekend nights he'd go out with other friends to pubs and nightclubs and come home late, after I'd gone to bed. Sometimes he'd bring a woman home; you'd hear them giggling in the hall, but the women were always gone the next morning so I never met them.

  I never met any of his friends either; none of them ever came round. He'd still tell us all about them though, describing each one in colourful detail, what they did and what they were like, amazing things they'd done, and I felt as if I did almost know some of them: Pete, Gordon, Rick. Rick had nearly been killed on his first parachute jump; Pete had been on Mastermind. Another guy Simon was a future certainty for the All Blacks. Most of these people Tristan had met through the share market.

  Tristan himself had got into the share market through a friend about five years earlier. His father had been left some money and he hadn't really needed it, so he'd given it to Tristan to live on. Tristan had invested it all in shares on his friend's advice. He bought the ones his friend advised were cheap. Since then his money had multiplied in value more than twenty times; he'd lost count it was so much. The last two years had been especially good because he'd been able to live off his job so the fund could grow without interference.

  He had many theories on the market. It was a bubble, sport, an elaborate joke. It was like a good story. You simply imagined money to exist and it did. You could even buy things with your imaginary money; nobody else seemed to know the difference. He wanted to lend me a few thousand so I too could become incredibly wealthy. Give up your job, he told me constantly, I'll show you the market. It's easy.

  I had the desire, but not the courage. The market seemed to me to be a sleeping tiger. I would end up owing Tristan thousands of dollars.

  One Sunday morning all three of us were in Tristan's room. He'd bought some marijuana at a nightclub the night before and we were sitting on his bed passing a smoke of it round. I'd had a bit of dope at school but the stuff Tristan got hold of from time to time was much stronger, and the city out his window seemed new and full of good. It was like a toy city, too perfect to be real. We sat in silence, all three of us staring out the window.

  It was Megan who brought up the idea of secrets. She thought we should all tell each other a secret about ourselves. It was a good way for people to get to know each other, she said. It seemed a bit childish to me but Tristan thought it was a good idea and insisted I went first.

  I told them that just about everything I owned had been shoplifted. I couldn't help it, I just had to steal, I said. Fortunately I'd never been caught. When I'd finished my short and intense confession Tristan whistled.

  It's true, I said.

  Megan's secret was that she'd fallen in love with a friend of hers, but she didn't have the courage to tell him. Tristan wanted to know who, and winked at me. She wouldn't say. I felt positive it was Tristan.

  Tristan's secret took the longest. It was about his job. When he'd first got it and found himself doing Mr Mills' job as well as his own he'd had to work up to fifty hours a week just to keep up, he told us. Mainly it was the hassle of having to meet people all the time. They were always late or failed to turn up or turned out to be no help. Most of the rest of the time was spent on the phone, or trying to research annoying background details. After a while he'd realised that since he wasn't being supervised he might as well save time by making up some of the more irritating facts. At first he was careful, experimenting with the possibilities: changing scores in sports results and details in the births and deaths and real estate ads, swapping replies to correspondents and the venues of public meetings. When these went without detection he began to invent his articles and finally even his features. This meant all he had to do was dream up stories sitting around at home and then type them up at work, making himself friendly and visible. That's why he was home so much these days. Occasionally he had to organise a few friends for a photograph, like the one of Noose Music. In fact, he said, he'd been thinking of getting me involved, he just hadn't been sure how I'd take the idea.

  He waited to be caught out but he only found favourable feedback increasing. The editor told him he had a good nose for news. The newspaper was receiving congratulations for its international flavour; the mayor had applauded its coverage of community events. A few whingers complained about the odd minor typesetting error now and then but advertising was up and a few stories had even been syndicated. He told Tristan that he too had made his contribution to this succes
s; they would see him right. You didn't change a winning team, he'd said.

  Neither Megan nor I said anything when Tristan finished. It was too incredible to contemplate.

  Have any of these stories been on TV then? said Megan finally.

  Tristan paused. No, he said.

  Well let's do it, she said. Let's get a story on the network news.

  Tristan looked at me. His eyes were red and half-closed from the dope, as if he were allergic to something in his own room. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  I looked out the window. I suddenly noticed the cranes, how many there were. It was as if a whole flock of them had arrived to colonise the city. I tried to imagine them flying away.

  Okay, said Tristan at last. We will. We'll probably get into shit, but we'll do it. I tell you, it can be done.

  At first I'd felt wary of Megan. She was nice enough to me but the only other girl I'd ever lived with had been Sarah, and I'd avoided the girls at school. Basically I just didn't know how to behave in front of her. I was embarrassed that we shared the same bathroom and always knocked loudly before going in. After three months of living there I still hadn't been in her bedroom. Gradually, though, I'd become more relaxed, and a friendship had begun to develop.

  It was Megan who kept up the pressure on Tristan to get a story onto the news. Tristan himself was lukewarm about the idea; it was evident he had less faith in our chances than he'd said. It was obviously he who stood to lose the most if we were caught. At first I didn't care either way; it seemed an absurd notion, but over the following weeks I began to see the wonder of it: inventing the news. In our house Sarah and I had been banned from the living-room during the news; my father demanded total silence while it was on. I imagined him in his chair, solemnly absorbing the fiction his own son had helped create. I began to support Megan and finally Tristan agreed we would give it a proper go.

  Our first attempt was the Khmer Air air disaster. Tristan faxed the story from his work to a London newspaper along with the photograph I'd prepared. I took it from an old National Geographic I bought in an op shop. It was taken from the air: a ravine in mountainous rain-forest in Bolivia. The roof of a house made a slash of white in the middle of the picture that easily looked like a bit of fuselage once the quality had been sufficiently diminished.

  It was on the news that night. There was a still of my photograph up behind the newsreader while she read the story; they'd added a white arrow to point out the wreckage. We celebrated wildly till well after midnight. Tristan had several bottles of champagne he'd bought specially and lots of beer and dope as well. We moved a speaker into the hall and played the stereo louder than I'd ever heard it. We danced madly around the living-room with our arms round each other in a ring. The story was repeated on the mid-evening news and then the late news as well. We shrieked for joy each time it came on. The people downstairs must have been out, otherwise I'm sure they'd have complained.

  The next morning there were the newspapers. The story was in every daily we could get our hands on, sometimes on the front, sometimes featuring on the international page, all with my photograph. Always there was the added white arrow. I sat on my bed most of the afternoon, staring at it. I couldn't believe it had really happened.

  Two days later the story was gone, forgotten. We felt deflated. For a day we'd felt like the whole world was ours to re-invent. Now we'd come down to earth we could see: air disasters were a dime a dozen; the whole thing had been far too easy and unimaginative. We wanted something more sustained, more controversial, something nearer the hearts of the people.

  Our next story developed more slowly over many intense arguments. It was Tristan who finally made the quantum leap and recognised that in fact we shouldn't distribute a story at all; we should simply set it moving. We should send out scraps of a story only, jigsaw pieces the media themselves could play with. That way the story could grow, become something many people had helped create.

  Over the next few weeks Tristan randomly faxed to newspapers around the country the impressive times expatriate Stanley Malone was making in middle-distance runs at unofficial race meets overseas. Some of the faxes mentioned that Malone was hoping to represent his country of birth in the upcoming Olympics, while others alluded to disparaging remarks he'd made about some of the members of the New Zealand Board of Amateur Athletics. Yet others included queries about his amateur status. Usually these faxes included a blurred photograph of me in a wig Megan had brought down for fancy-dress parties. Malone's times were sometimes mentioned in brief in the small-print sports results columns, but no more than that. We thought we'd fizzed.

  Then, when the Olympic Games team was announced and Malone's name was not included, there was an immediate outcry from some newspapers. Where was Stan Malone's name? He was one of our best chances for Gold. Others joined in the chorus, wondering if it wasn't just that the BAA were miffed at the comments Malone had made about some of them. Wasn't this rather petty? The BAA president seemed uncertain when interviewed. Malone had simply been overlooked. When pressed on the issue of Malone's remarks and the board's feeling about these the president became flustered and finally angry, claiming Malone was not an amateur anyway and storming out of the press conference.

  Tristan got a friend who was overseas to mail back to an Auckland newspaper a hotly worded denial from Malone that he had ever raced professionally, with a threat of legal action if the comments were repeated. By now all the newspapers had taken up his case and the BAA held an emergency meeting and unanimously passed a motion of no confidence in their president, also ensuring Malone's name was added to the team list.

  Already it was a hot topic on radio talkback shows and it was clear the public were interested. Media interest also continued to escalate. Not only was Malone a strong medal prospect but he was also controversial. Journalists were dispatched overseas to find him and bring home the first-hand story, but we'd anticipated this and once more organised for an open letter to be sent back to the Auckland newspaper. We thought their pride at being chosen as his mouthpiece would overcome any doubts they had about the sentiments. In the letter Malone pleaded with the media and the public to leave him alone. He was exceptionally shy, he said, and his performance could be drastically hindered if he were harassed. Could they please just get off his back so he could get on with what he was good at. There were a few muted editorials about freedom of the press and a few sports writers tried to portray Malone as a wimp, but they themselves had helped solidify public opinion the other way and people in their hundreds wrote letters to the editor expressing their outrage at the behaviour of these New Zealand journalists who were damaging their own country's chances for victory.

  The stories began to multiply. We read of Malone's life story: he'd been born and raised on a farm near Thames; his father had once served on the local council. He'd been a gifted rugby player in his youth but a serious shoulder injury had ended what seemed a certain international career. His childhood sweetheart was now his fiancée, and by his side overseas as the Olympics approached. It was reported Malone had said he would never run in New Zealand until a proper stadium with a truly world-class surface was available. Sensing the need for diplomacy where such a hero was concerned the Ministry of Sport and Recreation established a steering committee to look into the construction of a stadium and track that would enable him to race triumphantly in front of a home crowd. Not to be outdone the BAA announced they'd chosen Malone as flag-bearer for the New Zealand team at the Games opening ceremony. By the time the team left you heard it everywhere—buses, shops, the street: Malone, our grand hope for Gold. Advertisements for everything seemed to somehow include his name.

  The plan was that since Malone was already overseas he would make his own way to the Games. When at first he didn't show it was assumed that he was simply a bit late. A new flag-bearer was chosen for the opening ceremony and little comment was made. It was thought that his shyness probably prevented him from arriving too long before
his races. As the days passed, however, and Malone still failed to show, panic began to set in. Where was he? Had something gone wrong? Was he all right? Why hadn't the BAA organised his travel plans for him? Opinion in the street seemed to be evenly divided between those who thought he'd been kidnapped (his main threat in the 1500 metres was a Frenchman) and those who retained a deeply held conviction that still somehow he would magically appear on the track in time to run in and win his heat. The nation held its breath.

  The heat came and went. No Malone. A few optimists thought he might still make it for his later events but they were soon proven wrong. The media conducted a brief, frantic, rather aimless survey of the world in the hope of uncovering even one clue that might indicate what had happened to him but as this was both fruitless and expensive they turned their attention inward and focused once more on the Board of Amateur Athletics. What did the board take the New Zealand public for? What the hell were they playing at? The board—most members only just back from the Games themselves—held another emergency meeting but didn't get beyond appointing yet another new president. Calls were made for an official governmental inquiry but the Minister of Sport and Recreation said such an inquiry would be too expensive, offering his personal opinion that Malone had failed to show simply because he was a coward. This remark was possibly uppermost in the Prime Minister's mind several weeks later when in a portfolio reshuffle the Minister for Sport and Recreation lost his cabinet post. The Prime Minister had made it clear all along he was a Malone man.

  Summer came like a dream. We could hardly believe ourselves what had happened. It was too great a triumph to be real. For months it had gone on, endlessly growing, and when they covered the major news of the past year in a programme on Christmas Day they spent more time on Malone than anything else. And there behind the presenter, for the thousandth time, me in Megan's wig.