Opportunity (18 page)

We gathered in the sitting room after dinner, while Dad fed
the tape into the slot. I'd been up the road earlier and got
myself a bumper flagon of red. One of those double-sized
bottles, I'd thought, would be the way to get through Day
One. The film was
The Fugitive
, with Harrison Ford. It's a good
movie. I offered wine around, made a bit of suggestive smalltalk
with Lucy, brushing crumbs off her breast and so on, then
we all fell silent. Everything went well except that my mother
sighed a lot when I kept getting up to offer more drinks. Soon
I discovered everyone was saying no when I offered the bottle,
so I shut up and got busy with it myself. At one point I nodded
off, still on London time, then abruptly remembered myself
and got up with the bottle. I tripped over Will's legs. He said
'Fuck' loudly and made a big thing of rubbing his shin. Lucy
was sniggering. I looked over at her, delivered some searing
witticism, tripped over a cord and the TV went off. Mum
rushed off and came back with cloths. Dad knelt by the TV.

'More wine?' I waved the bottle at them. Some drops went
on the carpet. My mother made a high-pitched sound. Lucy
was snorting behind her hand. Suavely, I asked if she wanted
to go out for a cigarette while the technical problem was
sorted out.

'She doesn't smoke,' they all said. There was a bit of an
atmosphere.

I climbed over everyone and burst out the French doors. It
was nice out there on the deck in the soft night. I had a couple
of cigarettes, then went inside. The wine was all finished but I
had my eye on a bottle of gin in the kitchen.

To my surprise the TV was still off. 'What about the film?
Shall we press on?' I clapped my hands, refreshed by the
outside air.

My father was holding a wet cloth. He threw it down, his
shoulders hunched. Then he turned and made an inept fist
— the fist of a man who could never throw a real punch. 'I
should have exercised more discipline with you!' he shouted.

I looked at him in surprise. He was overwrought. Just when
it was all going so well. I turned on my heel and went silently
outside again. I was thinking: families. Always a drama. I sat
on a deckchair and smoked. I went back in and Will and Lucy
were sitting at the kitchen table. My parents had gone
upstairs.

'All right?' I said.

'Jesus, Sam,' Will said.

I winked at Lucy. Her mouth quivered. I stared hard at her,
severely — I knew this would bring her out in shrieks. She
was making a tiny noise in her nose, like air being let out of a
balloon . . .

'Oh,
shut up
, Lu,' my brother said.

***

I decided to get fit. I borrowed Will's bike and rode to the
top of One Tree Hill. It was beautiful up there, the suburbs
sprawled under the cloud shadows, the wind blowing in the
dry grass. I rode around the waterfront too, and one day I tried
to go for a run, with mixed results. Covering ground, biking
mostly, I looked at the places I used to live in long ago. The
old flat in Grafton, the big house in Mt Eden. My friends from
that time were all gone — some to London, some to Sydney,
other places. Some had families — kids. I was left behind in
an empty city; that was how it felt when I saw those old places.
Sometimes I stopped the bike and stood in a spot and stared,
and covered my face with my hands. I'd been transported
back to my youth but I was changed and everyone was gone.
It was almost too much for me. In the mornings I looked in
the mirror and saw what time had done to me. In Spain, I
had had no past. There was nothing to look back on, nothing
to remind me I wasn't young. I could live for the moment, in
unchanging happiness. Here, time whispered at me, it told me
terrible things. What have you made of yourself? Where are
your friends? Why have you been left behind? In the nights
I yearned for Spain; during the day I haunted the old places. I
visited them again and again — probing the wound.

There was one group of people who were still about, but
I was steering clear of them. For one thing, I didn't have much
money; for another, I knew what would happen if I hooked up
with those people I knew over in Ponsonby. I would end up
getting completely trashed.

I was sitting in a café at the top of Upland Road when
I heard tooting. A station wagon shot around the corner, a woman waving at
me out the window. I was pretty sure it was Lisa Green. I went home, guessing
she would ring. Sure enough, about an hour later Dad called me to the phone.

'You're staying at your parents' place,' Lisa said laboriously.

'So it would seem.'

'Shall we have a drink or something?'

I agreed to meet her that night at the café up the road. I sat
at a table outside so I could smoke. She came walking up the
road. She was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, and she was
thinner than she used to be. We'd been at school together. We
had a thing, briefly, a long time ago; now she was married to
an engineer and had a baby son and a house and a mortgage
— all that. She showed me a picture of her son, Michael, and
her husband, James.

'What have you been doing?' she asked.

'Learning how to use email,' I told her, truthfully.

She fell about at that. 'Learning?'

'I've been leading a simple life,' I said with dignity.

'Obviously!'

I told her about my Spanish village, Freddie, the bar. She
bought drinks. She laughed a lot and stared at me, obviously
fascinated to see how I'd turned out. I got into my stride and
told her about Mimi who'd gone off heartbroken and found
the bass player of her dreams, and my new girlfriend who
used to be my flatmate but who'd ended up sharing my bed,
and about having my passport stolen by a transvestite and
being stuck in London with no money or ID, and staying with
my friend in Wanstead who'd practised Vortex Healing on my
back and given me a funny feeling and good luck, and how I'd
missed my father's birthday and how my father had shouted at
me after we'd watched
The Fugitive
.

'You're a fugitive,' she said, smiling at me.

She was always a bit sentimental. She had a weak spot for
me. She liked listening to me. Plus she thought it was
interesting, the way I lived. I had no permanent job, no money,
hardly any clothes, no house. I was a bit of a fugitive, it was
true. But from what? From the things I hadn't done.

She said, 'You're free. You're not trapped in things. But I
always wanted to be . . . anchored.'

'So are you anchored? Or trapped?'

'I'm not trapped,' she said quickly. She shook her head.

I said, 'I keep thinking, if my old friends were here, they'd
just pick me up on their motorbikes and we'd go off and do
lots of good things.'

She stared. 'But they're all gone,' she said. 'They've grown
up. Like me. They've got kids, families.'

Families! I told her about various tricky moments with my
parents. I talked about them destroying my dope in the
Wastemaster, all those years ago.

'That was the beginning of the rift,' I said darkly.

'But
no one's
parents let them keep dope in the airing
cupboard,' she said. 'You can't hold that against them now.'

'Oh, can't I?'

'No!'

'They should have sat down and smoked a joint with me.'

'Oh, rubbish!' She was laughing at me. 'Why don't you try
being kind to them, instead of waiting for them to be kind to
you? Turn it around, now you're old.'

'Old? I'm not old!'

'All this working in bars. You were so clever at school. Much
more than me. Remember how you got A-pluses for
everything? Literally!'

'Indeed,' I said politely.

'So why don't you go to university? It's not too late.'

'Oh, I could, I suppose,' I said, staring off. But it was too
late, of course.

She frowned, looking stupid and conscientious, like a social
worker. I gave her one of my most terrible smiles, and she
flinched and grinned madly.

I reminisced a bit more, since she seemed to like it. I told
her about the mountains of cocaine, the oceans of booze I'd
got through, in my years in Spain. I'd had a lot of wine by this
time and was yearning for something stronger. I thought
about a trip over to Ponsonby. The trouble was, I didn't have
any money.

The bar closed. I walked Lisa down the road. I sang her a
Spanish football song. I told her how I wanted to do a line of
coke. She didn't do drugs, never had — it was one of her
limitations. She'd never got over having a Bible-banger for a
mother. When we got to her gate I kissed her on both cheeks.
'That's how we do it in Spain,' I said.

She said fondly, drunkenly, 'I suppose I could drive you
home.'

'But that would be illegal!' I said.

I could hear her laughing in the dark as I reeled away.

Now I was wide awake. It was a hot night. I was fizzing with
wants
. I wanted an Everest of coke, an orgy, a fistfight. I
decided to walk home the long way, to cool off. I slouched
along the street. There were a lot of big houses. I wanted to go
to Ponsonby and get my hands on some drugs. I thought
about crashing back and asking Lisa for money. I knew she
would give it to me, because she liked me so much. But I
couldn't do that. I stopped. Something rose in my brain like a
hot wave, and I realised I was extremely drunk. I could see
across to Mt Hobson, the lights in the houses up the hillside.
I couldn't go home to the little single bed and the familiar
furniture and my parents' faces in the morning.

I passed a café, its doors closed. I sat on a seat for a while,
looking down at the water in the Orakei Basin. I walked on
through the dark, still, leafy streets. There was an old Mercedes
parked in a driveway. I groped my way along the fence. In
front of it was a new Porsche. I went back to the older car and
tried the door. It opened. I got in and reached under the
dashboard, using my lighter to see. I did a bit of wrenching
and pulling, tearing my fingernails in the process. After a lot
of work and a fair bit of damage I got the right combination of
wires and started the engine.

The motor coughed, throbbed, steadied. I waited for a
moment. The house was at the far end of the long drive. No
lights came on; there was no sign of life. I backed the car out
and onto the road, and eased it away, into the rainy night.

At the bottom of the road workmen were moving a whole
house on a truck and I had to wait. A policeman walked
towards the car, looked in (my face fixed in nervous rictus, my
fingers white on the wheel), then waved me on, and I drove
through a slalom of flashing lights and traffic cones and away,
towards the west, seeking my line, the lifeline of coke that was
waiting for me.

Driving on Shore Road I lit a cigarette, and, as I glanced
into the mirror, gasped, froze and jammed my feet down on
the pedals. The car swerved and bucked, hit the kerb, juddered
along the gutter and mounted the pavement. It crashed into a
fence, throwing me forward onto the steering wheel.

There was someone sitting in the back seat.

I couldn't move. I let out a whimper. Blood dripped from
my nose. He didn't say anything. I could hear him behind me,
breathing.

'I'll get out,' I whispered, nodding to myself. I felt for the
door handle. There was still no sound but the breathing. I
panicked, wrenched the door open and fell out onto the
pavement. As I scrambled up I looked in the back and saw the
big, still head silhouetted against the window. He looked at
me.

It was a dog, a black Labrador. He must have been asleep on
the seat and had sat up, bewildered to find himself on the move.
Now he was peering at me enquiringly. I wondered why he
hadn't made any noise before, but when I got close I saw from
the white hairs on his muzzle that he was very old. I patted
him. He turned big innocent eyes on me. He pushed his cold
nose into my palm. I got in the back seat with him. I leaned on
his musty flank and wept. Oh, Jesus, old dog. Oh, life.

I got back in the driver's seat. I heaved a deep, trembling
sigh. My nose was bleeding down my shirt. The snout of the
car was wounded too, crushed up against the fence. I connected
the wires, started it and backed it onto the road. In the mirror
I could see my passenger's big, patient, noble head, swaying as
he kept himself upright.

I started driving westwards. But I thought about what
would happen if I left the old dog parked in a Ponsonby street.
There was no guarantee I'd find him again. Once I met my
people over there I would be entering the vortex. I would be
gone. He would be lost.

I would have to take him home. But I wasn't sure which
street I'd taken him from. I didn't fancy cruising around
looking while the roads were full of workmen and police. I
pulled over. We sat in silence. He let out a doggy little moan
and settled himself down on the seat.

I reached back and opened the door.

'Best you get out here, mate,' I said. 'Before we get any
further away.'

He raised his snout and gazed at me sadly.

'Go on, get out! Walkies. Find your way home.'

He made that weary little groan again and put his snout on
his paws. I slapped his flank. He didn't move.

Frustrated, I got out and reached in the back door, pulling
him. He was a dead weight.

'You stupid lump,' I said, furious. I hit him on the head. He
just looked at me. I hit him again. He flinched. I backed away.
I wiped my bloody nose on my shirt. I got in the car and said,
'I was going somewhere. Now I can't. Because of you, you
fucking cunt.'

He didn't move.

I thought about my family. My parents. Will and Lucy, their
baby.

'Sorry,' I said. I put my hands over my face.

I reached over and patted and stroked his head. 'We can't
go back to my parents' house,' I explained. 'So what do we do
now?' His eyes were large and liquid and trusting. He looked
out of the window.