by Paul Haines
33
I'm sitting in the car waiting.
The lights in her apartment are off. I made sure I left before she did. Maybe she's out, running chores, on a date, or giving some stranger a blowjob in the toilets.
The CD changes. Straitjacket Fits's Melt growls slowly from the speakers.
'That's more like it.' Baxter is in the back seat, his Doc-Martened-feet draped over the shoulders of the front seat.
'I hate this kiwi shit, just elitist varsity noise.' Little digs his knees into the back of my seat. 'Eh, Stevie?' He digs his knees harder. 'Eh?'
'I like it,' I say. 'Just shut up and listen.'
They light up joints and talk about the women they've fucked, the booze they've drunk, the drugs they've taken ...
Here she comes.
I can see her walking towards the door of her apartment in the last remnants of dusk. It looks like her. It has to be her.
Little whispers into my ear, his breath fetid, 'Go on.'
Baxter drops his switchblade into the lap of the front passenger seat. 'Been fucking her lately?'
I watch her go in. Lights turn on. I get out of the car. Suddenly, I'm at the door and pressing the buzzer to the number of her apartment. The sound is sharp and squat like a constipatory shit ripping a hemorrhoid. I shield my face from the camera.
'Who is it?' The voice is warbled and tinny through the crackling speaker. It could be her; the voice could be hers. I need her to speak more, so I can be sure.
'It's me.'
'Who?'
'It's me, Paul.'
'Have you got the right address?'
The accent is wrong, but it could be her. 'Amy, it's Paul. From uni.'
'You've got the wrong address.'
The speaker ceases crackling.
Shit. What am I going to do? I need to speak to her. I don't know why. Do we ever know why? My hands start to shake, and I feel faint.
Baxter and Little are leering from the car windows.
I run back to the car. A section of Little's skull, about the size of a saucer, is missing above his right temple. His brain pulses wetly. I jump into the car, slam the door, and grip the steering wheel. I breathe deeply and count the breaths, feeling the air flow in and out, in and out. The car is empty. I put the knife into the glovebox, start the car, and join the congestion leading west and home.
34
In my final year of varsity, I buy my first car. A 1978 Ford Falcon, red-orange. Baxter's old car. It costs me $1000, and I buy it mainly to fuck him off. He doesn't speak to me for two weeks.
35
I stand by the elevators on the third floor, unable to move, a paralysis seizing my mind. I hold a piece of paper in my hand, the prop for purpose, and I study it furiously, willing my legs to take the steps to circle the floor looking for Amy.
Eventually, I manage to connect with my legs and stumble into a slow walk, seeking out the name plates on the partitions, taking in the faces in stolen glances, recognising only a handful glimpsed in passing or in the canteen. I don't know these people I work with. I have no idea who they are or what they do. I spend my life with strangers, never getting closer than a nod or a polite, stifled hello in a corridor or an awkward silence crammed into an elevator.
The name reads Amy Salisto. The desk is empty. I scan the partition walls for photos, for clues to this woman's life, for confirmation of a link to my past, our past: a chubby-faced toddler grins blurrily; a greyhound wearing a Santa hat; a first aid certificate. There's nothing here I can relate to.
Her keyboard is covered in blood.
A young man with black gel for hair looks up and smiles. 'Amy's in the kitchen, mate. Spilt her tomato soup. She'll be back in a minute. Anything I can help you with?'
I shake my head and stare at the carpet as I make my way back to the elevator. I press the buttons and wait. In the distance, a fat elderly Italian woman rushes past with a handful of paper towels.
The bell dings. The doors open.
'Try the fifth floor, Stevie.'
Inside, Little leans against the wall, half of his face crushed, the skull open revealing the brain. Blood has sprayed over the walls, more pools around his feet.
I step in.
With an arm held together by pulped flesh and bone, he reaches out and presses the number five.
36
I stroke Isla's brow, soothing her sobs. It's 3am. Her hair is sweaty and tangled, and I run my fingers gently through it. The pillow is damp with sweat and tears
'It's okay, baby girl, it's okay. Daddy's here.'
Her sobs diminish, and she shudders with an intake of breath. Her skin is hot from crying, and soft, so soft. My heart fills to breaking; I lean into the cot and kiss her gently on the forehead. She sighs.
'Daddy's here, baby girl, don't worry. Daddy will always be here.'
When Isla's breathing settles, I creep from the room, slip back into bed, and nestle in against Jules's warm body. I kiss the back of her neck. She sighs.
I fall asleep within seconds, my wife held tight within my arms, our bodies pressed together.
37
The night is moonlit and restless. The house lies still. Gentle breathing rises and falls next to me. I slip out of bed and check Isla's room. I hear her snoring: a sound as gentle as a leaf thrummed on the palm of your hand. I listen to her sleeping for several minutes. I'm content, happy, my feet grounded.
I make my way along the darkened hallway to the kitchen to drink some water, hydrate myself, be good, be kind to myself. The room smells of gas, and beneath it, something more pungent.
I turn off the gas handle at the stove. Cigarette butts—B&H Gold—litter the bench.
I realise the other smell is that of burning hair.
38
We sit in a café together as tight as a newborn family can be on display in the inner suburbs, chic and trendy, still drinking our coffee. Oh yes, no change in lifestyle here.
Asleep in her pram, Isla's a mess of dark hair sprouting from blankets pulled tight against a soft pouch of cheeks. Sitting opposite me, Jules sips her latte. She looks tired and beautiful. She smiles at me, happy and alive. I reach across the table and squeeze her hand.
A woman at the next table leans into the pram and coos. 'Oh, she's so beautiful.'
'Thank you,' we say, both proud and embarrassed.
Isla is the most beautiful thing in my world. I could stare at her for hours.
We sip our coffee. Jules yawns. We are too tired to talk to each other. We have nothing to say.
39
We're sitting in the Garden Bar on a Tuesday morning, Baxter, Little, and me. Little has had a win on the pokies and has shouted a few jugs of Speight's Draught and that means no lectures for us varsity boys. He's been down Balclutha way for a couple of weeks, doing a couple of odd jobs. I assume he's been drug-running weed. It's what he does.
The pub's empty except for the three of us, and we're sitting outside in the crisp autumn weather because we're smoking a joint. The barman doesn't say too much as long as we keep it discreet. Little also supplies him.
I'm feeling stoned, and the beer is bitingly cold as we ritually scull our first glass. Little is rambling on about some young chick fresh out of school he'd spent a couple of days fucking just outside of Balclutha, some dirty bitch who couldn't get enough. Baxter and I grin, casting a glance at each other. I've never seen Little spading a girl in any of the pubs we've been wasted in this year. Not once. Baxter says Little has never had a girlfriend. I haven't told Baxter about the night I had with Little blowing me while we played computer games. I'm not even sure it happened; at least, that's what I tell myself.
At some stage during the drinking, Little heads towards the bar to buy another round. Baxter yells out, pointing towards Little's red shoelaces. 'Just what the fuck were you doing down Balclutha, Little?'
Little grins, obviously proud it's been noticed, but then pulls on his hard face. 'Shut it, eh?' he says through clenched teeth and draws
his finger across his throat. Then he's at the bar, talking shit, and pushing the empty jugs towards the taps.
I turn to Baxter. 'So, what's with the red laces? You gonna tell me or what?'
Baxter's no longer laughing. He stares at the dregs in his glass, shaking his head. 'Nah, he's full of shit. I bet he just put them in himself.'
'What does it mean? Come on, man, tell me.'
Baxter looks up at me, his eyes cool blue in a pool of bloodshot veins. He laughs as if to convince himself things are cool. He glances towards the bar, placing Little. 'It means you've drawn blood.'
I snort. This is just more of their macho bullshit. The Invercargill talk, the tough man attitude they like to throw around when they feel the need for unity, some bond, some better-than-you-fucklander type shit that they try on me often. A fucklander being an aucklander, no capital letters thank you, sir. 'What, like a blood nose or something?'
'Bit harder than that, Stevie.'
Little plonks three more jugs down on the table. 'Bit harder than what?'
'Black laces.' Baxter and Little share a stare, then Baxter changes the subject back to the girl Little was fucking, but Little doesn't want to talk about that.
When Baxter goes for a piss, Little leans across the table and says quietly, 'Be careful of your missus around him, eh? He's going to cut your lunch.'
'He's my mate. Why you saying shit like this?'
His eyes are grey steel, boring into mine. I'm withering and cast my eyes away, too stoned, too paranoid ... the loser. The soft cunt.
'It's what he does.' Little sits back victorious.
Baxter comes back, and we sit in silence, gulping our beer.
40
Amy and I lie in her bed, legs entwined, me inside her, as we watch the TV, relaxed and satisfied. Our sweat mingles on our thighs, and I shift subtly to stay inside her. She presses her arse against my groin. I kiss her shoulder and tell her I love her. She squeezes her vaginal wall around me and says she loves me, too.
On the news is a bulletin for a schoolgirl, age 15, missing from Balclutha for over a week. Her schoolbag and purse have been found and police are currently treating her disappearance as suspicious.
'What's wrong, bubby?' Amy says.
I stare at the TV, my mind back in the Garden Bar. Red laces. Little.
'Nothing.'
She reaches between her legs and takes my suddenly flaccid cock in her hand.
'It certainly feels like nothing.'
I roll out of the bed and pull on my jeans, dressing quickly. My gut churns.
'What are you doing?'
'Nothing, gotta go, sorry, Amy.' I kiss her on the cheek.
I'm out the door, and she's yelling at me, not after me, but I don't hear the exact abuse.
I need to talk to Baxter.
41
Dozens of trucks block the roads, thick steel carcasses grinding the network to a standstill. The morning heat is climbing. As each minute ticks, a degree rises. The hot stench of the city creeps in through the air conditioning.
I sit in my car and increase the volume on the stereo until the bass vibrates through the doors.
Little sits in every truck cabin, the side of his skull crushed and partially missing. The truck horns blare, and somewhere in my past, I can hear him screaming.
42
Numbers fall away, meaningless. What are they to me? An interest rate I cannot control? A mortgage repayment I cannot meet? A deadline I don't care about? A speedometer reading. A speeding fine. A statistic.
A line of code. An input. An output.
A long way down and gravity is a constant. A statistic.
I'm looking for the wrong things. I'm concentrating on what I have no effect on. I need to look inside. To let go of everything I'm holding onto that was and will now never be. To be content with where I am now.
Of who I am now. A statistic.
I'm so confused, I'm so fucking confused ...
43
My family know nothing about me or my past.
44
State highway 85 writhes like an eel in its death throes as it follows the once arduous Pigroot wagon trail past abandoned goldmines and desolate goldfields. The last vestiges of winter blanket the jutting hills, softening the hidden nooks and crannies.
I'm driving, and I hate it.
The road winds treacherously along the Taieri Gorge, and I constantly brake and shift between gears. I'm a shit driver; I know it and so does everyone in this car, but I'm acting like I don't care, that this is nothing. Logging trucks, enormous and snaking, career full speed head on, and to let them pass, I keep edging into the loose gravel on the side of the road overlooking the drop into the gorge. The sudden loss of traction sickens me, and I pull the car—Baxter's old red-orange Ford fucking Falcon—back onto the road, trying to look cool in front of the others, while my palms sweat buckets onto the steering wheel.
The car is freezing, the winter air rushing around our ears, fluttering our hair. Baxter has the back window down, an escape for his cigarette smoke, even though the cunt knows I hate smoking, and this is his small condolence for my lack of sensitivity to his addiction. Except the fucking window won't go back up.
Little is skinning up another joint in the seat next to me. A bottle of hard-done-by Jack Daniels rests between his black-jeaned thighs. Baxter and Amy are giggling in the back seat, huddling under a blanket together to keep warm. That should be me in the backseat with her, and one of these other pricks driving, but I'm too paranoid, especially with Baxter and Little's track record with car accidents. No fucking way am I letting them behind the wheel. And like a soft cunt, I'm wearing a seatbelt, all nice and safe and strapped in.
Amy squeals and Baxter laughs. I can't see what they're doing from the rear view mirror, and I'm too scared to take my eyes off the road. Little leans back over the seat and swats at them with his hand.
'Stop it, ya dirty cunts,' he slurs.
I afford another glance in the rear view mirror, but all I can see is their faces, red and laughing.
Little leans towards me, his eyes fucked, spit on his lips. 'You don't mind, do ya, Stevie?'
I don't need to see the suggestive shapes Little makes with his fingers. I know what's going on. I'm the chump in the car. My mates are fucking my girlfriend—the only woman I've ever loved—and right now Baxter has his stinking cock out and on her or in her, or she's touching it or ...
I check the rear view mirror again. Amy's mouth opens slightly, a small loss of control. I know that look. I know when she does that.
Little's laughing and blowing smoke in my face. 'Eh, Stevie?'
The blanket. I have to get that blanket off them.
They've gone quiet in the back, and under the roar of the V8, I can hear them panting. I fucking know it. If I killed the engine right now, we'd all hear everything, every dirty thrusting furtive wet secret.
I reach back over the seat, fumbling for the blanket, desperate to unmask them, reveal their betrayal. My fingers claw, and I realise the seatbelt is constricting me, so I turn, taking my hands off the wheel for a second, just a second, so I can grab that fucking blanket and despise them openly, denounce them, let their world know what despicable creatures they are.
The tyres slide in the gravel. Little screams, and my head bounces off the ceiling as the car turns and tumbles over the bank ...
I don't know how long I've been sitting here. My hair is wet with blood. The car stinks of petrol. Little's door is missing, and so is he. In the back, Baxter is wedged between the seat and a half open door. He has no pants on, and his leg is crushed, soaking the blanket red. He's crying. I can't see Amy.
I unclick my seatbelt and force open my door.
'Stevie?' Baxter whimpers. 'Help me, man, you gotta help me.'
Little is sprawled nearby in loose rocks, his scalp is bleeding. He stirs and tries to rise, his eyes groggy, looking at me like Christ come to save him.
About twenty metres above us on the ban
k, Amy lies like a broken doll. Her knickers are around her ankles and I can see the black hair on her cunt as clearly as I can see the blood on my hands.
Baxter is pleading now, his voice verging on a whine.
I walk round and kneel down next to him. He reaches for me, but I push his hand out of the way. His eyes widen, then resume their neediness. I take a cigarette—a B&fuckingH because that's what hard cunts smoke—from the pile spread over his chest where his pack has spilled.
'Stevie? I'm hurting bad.'
I nod then walk away while lighting his cigarette. Little is staggering to his knees, blood spurting from his scalp in raspberry fountains.
I was hoping Baxter would say one of those tough guy lines, something like, 'Light me a cigarette, Stevie.' But he doesn't, he just whimpers some more. I throw the cigarette into the petrol pooling around the rocks. The car ignites, and Baxter screams in earnest. I'm spiralling out of control here, I can feel it consuming every atom in my body, but I can't stop. Little tries to run up the bank towards the road, so very far away, but he keeps tripping and sliding back through the loose stones, gibbering. Part of his brain is exposed. What's he going to say? He's a murderer; he's not going to say anything.
I reach the road before he does and flag down a passing log truck. Eventually helicopters arrive, and we are flown to the hospital in Dunedin. The three of them are admitted to intensive care. I'm treated for shock, bruises, and minor cut to the scalp.
Before it goes to court, I change my name and leave for Australia.
45
It's four in the morning and someone is standing next to my side of the bed.
I'm awake, nerves frozen, gut aching, and nauseous. My chest tightens, and my breath halts. An indistinct head leans in towards my face, bringing with it the stale smell of cigarette smoke. Outside in the street, the slow rumble of a V8 engine waits patiently.