When we were about halfway across Grafton Bridge I spotted three or four street kids ahead of us. At least I thought they were street kids, from their Lord of the Rings-ish hoodie shapes, and their milling. I remembered that they’d occupied the street above the cemetery during the Blackout. Maybe they’d got accustomed to the extra space. Street kids on a deserted city street on a dark night: spiffing, fan-bloody-tastic. I crossed over to avoid them. The client followed and we trotted along like person and shadow. I was the person. Just as we came off the bridge, with Karangahape Road stretching ahead and getting dimmer in the dusk, I stopped. I could hear a strange sound that resembled a cat—Ouww! But it wasn’t a cat. I looked sideways and realised we were standing above another entrance to the cemetery, and that the cemetery stretched under the bridge. I’d never noticed this before. The sound came again—Ouuuuww! After a while I knew it was a boy. I squinted down the path that led into the cemetery.
The client’s voice was hot and tight in my ear. ‘Keep. Going.’
‘Listen,’ I breathed.
The mewling again.
‘Let’s go!’ said the client.
We really needed to, and I turned. At that moment the owner of the voice, a tangle-haired boy, stepped out from behind bushes. He hesitated, looked back down the path that plunged into cemetery. ‘I fought it was you.’ It was the boy. Even in the half-light I could see he had a tender troubled face, and a jagged mark on the side of his temple. I think I gasped. He was alive.
‘GoGo!’ The client’s voice was ragged in my ear.
I mumbled a query after the street kid’s health. I mean, my last proper sighting of him had been when his so-called friends were kicking him in the head on Queen Street. ‘Is . . . that alright?’ Indicating his noggin. Then we’d be off like a robber’s dog, my shadow and me.
‘F-fine,’ the boy said. He had a stutter and an urban accent. F-fahn. I got it. He was a sandwich short of a picnic, you could tell from his uncomprehending expression, the odd way he held his head. His eyes looked hard and grey like concrete, but with something underneath. I thought of the cemetery, the long-decayed bones. No, I didn’t, I think that now. Ah, the benefit of hindsight.
The client was close to me. ‘You know him? What is this? Let’s go.’ His breath brushed my neck like a petal. Oh, he was a blinking rosebud. ‘GoGo, we’re going.’ I wasn’t scared. I’d been here all my life. He thought I came from some cushiony bloody background. I didn’t. The street kid tugged my sleeve. I looked down. His dirty hands. He just wanted more money. Couldn’t blame him.
‘He’s bullshitting you.’
‘Ain’t no b-bullshit,’ said the boy. He kept glancing back down the path. I could just make it out, a Jacobean pattern between the jutting graves and the little grey pockets of lawn. Stone angels arched their wings in the gloom. Everything was bathed in a pigeon-coloured light, and fine specks of pollen and insects filled the air. It was ethereal and somehow soothing. I felt torn, standing there, the client on one side, boy on the other. The client backed away onto the pavement. I could see the tense angle of his body. He was like a bloody heron. We were going. The boy stepped forward and took my hand. I snatched it away. It was rough and sticky, his hand.
‘S’alraht,’ he said. ‘Don’t want n-nuffeeng.’
There was a giggle from the darkness below. I froze. The client called out urgently. GoGo! I made a lunge for the street, but a figure leaped out from behind the bushes and I felt a vice grip my arm. There was pain in my shoulders and sweat and yelling, and I was half carried, half frogmarched down through the scratching poking bushes into the cemetery. I thought my heart would stop. Behind me the client was following, going demented. It got darker and darker on the way down.
I was deposited on a piece of grass. The client was beside me. I felt him grope for my arm. ‘Run!’ A burst of reggae, overblown and distorted, came from somewhere in the dark, a boom box followed by a shout. The client and I stumbled a couple of metres back in the direction we’d come from. Something whacked my shins, an agonising pain, and I heard the client groan, and we both tumbled. I lay, cupping my legs until the pain subsided. When I looked up, a new figure was barring our way. He was bigger than the slender boy, stocky and deeper-voiced.
‘Youse aren’t going anywhere.’
The hair on the back of my neck bristled like a pig’s. The client went all authoritative. ‘Oh yes we are.’ But as we simultaneously made a frantic scrabble to get past the stocky guy, two other figures appeared above us on the path. One was short with a halo of hair, the other very thin and tall. In the dark, their shapes were all that defined them.
A new pulsing sound emanated from further down the darkness, a guitar body being slapped. I felt the client go slack beside me. There was a high-pitched giggle. I noticed that the skinny one dangled a shining machete casually like a towel. In that moment I was transformed into a gibbering wreck, shaking and pleading and crying. My knees were literally knocking together. Bang bang bang. They all ignored me.
‘Let’s go,’ said the haloed kid. He produced a torch. We trooped down the hill a few more metres, Halo in the lead with the dancing torch, then the stocky deep-voiced one who had barred our way, then the Boy, who had a bumpity gait, then me, then the client, and Skinny Arse bringing up the rear with his machete, I think, I didn’t really want to find out. I was certain this was the last thing I’d ever do. I thought of Art, how sad he’d be.
At the bottom of the path, a group of ten or so hooded figures were sitting in a circle, wedged between graves, around a fire. Dotted about were candles in jars, like fireflies (sorry to be Eurocentric). We milled around, the client and me and the tour party. I was sweating, even though I seemed to have come over all cold. I didn’t want to look at the client. To look at him would somehow make it more real.
‘It’s the rich chick,’ said Halo. I could see he was Maori and that Skinny Arse was Pakeha.
I caught a glimpse of the client’s uncomprehending face, and looked away again.
The Boy wobbled forward. He had a donkeyish gait. ‘Hey, I f-found her! She gave me a h-h-hundred dollars.’
It was me they were talking about? I was the rich chick? A tsunami of panic surged through me. I felt my bowels lose the plot, and I hung on, hoping I wouldn’t shit myself.
‘Fuck off, Ben,’ said Halo. To the client and me he said, ‘He’s mental.’ Well, I could work that out for myself. This Ben character seemed anxious, wringing his hands. He subsided into the shadows as if he had wounds to lick.
I could now make out a big guy sitting on a grave, higher than the street kids, stroking his beard. He was clearly in charge, not remotely a kid, about thirty, Maori. ‘Welcome,’ he said, and left off stroking his beard to gesture extravagantly at the graves. ‘Please, take a pew.’ There were giggles from the rest of the party.
The client and I sat lightly on the edge of a grave. I could feel him quivering beside me. On my other side were two hooded girls who said hello and cackled as if this was a great bloody joke. The stocky guy who’d accosted us on the path came forward with a rope and made a he-man grab for the client’s hands to tie them up. The big guy waved him away. Ah. Unnecessary. Skinny Arse said what the fuck to Stocky Guy. We could hear cars going by overhead on the bridge, and the dull roar of the distant motorway. The machete flashed in the torchlight. I was aware of the boys who’d led us down the path standing behind us, restlessly jostling and joshing each other. I wanted to weep but I didn’t. It’s amazing how quickly you can come to terms with the fact you’re going to die. You don’t know this unless you happen to be in that situation. But I can tell you, we’re fast learners, human beings, when it comes to dying.
The big bearded man twiddled his thumbs and contemplated us. ‘We probably won’t hurt you,’ he said, and smiled, ‘but of course we do want your money. That’s only fair.’
The client had his wallet out, pulling out wads of jittery notes. Halo counted it on a gravestone. It looked like a couple of hundred dollars. Halo stepped across the firelight to hand the money to the big man. He returned to rub his fingertips together under the client’s nose. The client, who I noticed at this point wasn’t a blithering wreck like me, handed over his nice Italian wallet. I remembered it from when he’d paid for the costume. The funny things you think. Halo dug two credit cards out of the client’s wallet, then turned to me with the same finger-rubbing exercise, like crushing herbs. I was shaking like the proverbial jelly. I managed to croak out that I’d dropped my bag up the path. This was true. Halo jerked his head at the sentries. Skinny Arse and the Torch Bearer headed up the path we’d come down.
We all sat in a silence punctuated by the odd giggle. A glowing joint danced like a bug as it was passed around the circle. I was trembling uncontrollably. Nearby a stone angel benignly watched over some poor sod’s grave.
Ben wobbled forward again, creased head to foot with anxiety. ‘She’s a r-rich bitch.’
The others immediately told him to shut the fuck up. The two hooded girls next to me laughed.
I shook my head. ‘I’m not rich. Believe me.’
‘She is,’ said Ben to the big man, who nodded but didn’t look at him. Ben turned to me. ‘I s-saw you, all dressed up.’ He mimed a shrugging approximation of fancy clothes. The others went into hysterics, and Ben’s face solidified into a kind of rictus. He shook his hands in front of him like a cheerleader’s pompoms.
I was gulping colossally again and again.
•
After what seemed like enough time to die and be reincarnated, Skinny Arse came back holding my black squishy handbag triumphantly aloft like a thing he’d killed. It gave me a lurch to see it in his hands, as if he had a pet of mine. When Halo snatched it, Skinny Arse muttered, What the fuck. Halo rummaged through it and found my money card. He shook his head over the few dollars and said, Is that fucking all, that’s fucking typical.
When Halo asked the client for his PIN number, he said, I misremember. I felt his voice vibrate into me. The machete was produced and the client recited his number like a choir boy. I gave mine. Halo wrote them with a biro on the back of his hand. He turned to us again. If you go to the cops, he said, and did the slit-throat gesture understood throughout the world as curtains. He may as well have been speaking Esperanto. I continued my quaking. Halo and Torch Bearer disappeared back up the path. We could hear their whoops disappearing into the bush. Skinny Arse stayed behind this time, dangling the machete and saying, What the fuck.
The big man turned to us majestically. ‘I’m Walrus, by the way. Now, how can we entertain you while they’re doing the banking?’
The others all cracked up at this great witticism, but it seemed it was a serious question. A guitar was produced and someone did a few prongy chords to tune up. The client and I sat hunched like birds. It was probably about half past nine. The singing began. ‘How Bizarre,’ dirgy and hypnotic.
A way into it, the girl next to me buzzed close to my ear. ‘It’s not too late to run. I’d get the hell out of it if I were you.’
I looked quickly at the client but he hadn’t heard. Then up the path. It was now pitch-black. A car screamed past on the motorway up above.
‘No, don’t,’ said the other girl. And an aside: ‘She’ll regret it.’
Walrus leaned back and looked cock-eyed at the client. ‘So what do you do for a crust? Shane.’
He knew his name. Well, there were the cards.
‘Banking,’ said the client, his voice like a bloody fantail.
There was an explosion of laughter. We could hear the word banking being repeated around the circle, to more laughter. I expected Walrus to ask me what I did for a living but he didn’t.
There was more singing. The trees were shaking in the firelight. Figures leaped about in the shadows like Matisse’s flipping dancers. I mean flippin’ dancers. There was crackling from the fire and cackling of the street kids. Except for Ben, who sat apart wringing his hands. I could hear low conversations, and was straining to hear in case it was about our demise. Someone said, What do you call Maoris on Prozac? Once were worriers. I tried to ignore the client, and I’m sure he was ignoring me. If we looked at each other, the worst would happen, I was certain of it.
A few minutes later, Halo and Torch Bearer came blatting back down the path, looking cocky and important. They swooped past the client and me, and Halo showed Walrus the stack of cash he had in his mitts, which must’ve come from the client’s account. I had about forty dollars in mine. Halo had a high-level conference with the Walrus, who nodded and looked over at us from time to time. During this conversation, Halo eyeballed the client and once again did the international sign for it’s all over, cunt.
Halo came and stood over me menacingly. ‘What other cards you got?’
I shook my head.
He bellowed, ‘Where’s your other money?’
I was going to die.
Ben shambled forward from the shadows. ‘She’s l-lying,’ he said. ‘She’s a r-rich bitch.’
Someone scragged his hair. ‘Go back to sleep, Ben.’
Ben. ‘Wasn’t asleep.’ He flapped his hands.
‘She’s not rich,’ said the client. Everyone looked at him, and he jumped a bit, all nervy. He told them I didn’t have two pennies to rub together, a quaint expression.
Halo turned his attention to the client. ‘Who the fuck asked you, cunt?’ (They called him cunt all the time, but not me, I suppose because I had one.)
Everyone laughed like hyenas. I felt the client move beside me. I wished he wouldn’t tremble.
‘She’s r-rich,’ said Ben. ‘She gave me a h-hundred dollars.’
Halo turned on Ben. ‘Shut the fuck up about your fucking hundred. You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.’
Ben flapped his hands and groaned in anxiety.
Halo pointed to the client and announced to the group, ‘He’s the rich one. In’t that right, Walrus?’
Walrus was stroking his beard and watching the proceedings. He wouldn’t be drawn.
Then Halo loomed over the client. ‘Gis your other cards then.’
The client reached into his jacket and pulled out a card folio.
‘Now he tells us,’ said the Walrus and this statement caused uproarious laughter. It was like the bloody comedy hour.
They discussed the limits on the cards, how much they’d be able to get out tonight. The fire crackled, the guitar pulsed. The odd burst of song. ‘Tihei mauri ora.’
‘We should kill the bastard,’ said Halo.
I felt the client jump like a wire beside me.
‘Don’t be a cunt,’ said Stocky Guy.
I put my hand on the client’s back and he shrugged it off. I whispered, Are you okay? and he replied, Don’t talk to me. Walrus was looking on and I suppose was pleased with the way we were divided. But we were already divided. I heard a bird fly up into the dark as if disturbed by something. Just the one.
Halo and Torch Bearer gathered the client’s other cards and went up the path a second time.
Walrus leaned back on his grave and twiddled his thumbs. A few of the boys were tumbling in a play-fight routine like kittens. The girls were doing cat’s cradle, leaning towards the firelight. A boy went by and groped one of them and she pushed him away with her cat’s-cradle hands—Get fucking off me. Ben came and sat near the girls. He’d gone all soft and sleepy. At one point I saw him sitting with his back to a girl who put down her wool and started combing his hair. He relaxed. I heard someone say, How you get virgin wool? Ugly sheep.
A joint went around. The sentries didn’t smoke. I wished they did. But it was still pitch-black out there, of course, so we were, in effect, prisoners of the darkness. The joint was passed to the client and me. They must’ve thought we were crazy. The girls looked at the stars and were saying, There’s the Southern Cross, There’s Orion’s Belt. Someone was cutting open a can of corned beef with a knife, and soon wads of white bread with beef inside it were passed around and everyone was wolfing them down. My guts were tight as a fist. There were more jokes. Why did the chicken? What do you get when you cross? There’s Mars. But it was clouding over.
Walrus ate his sandwich ruminatively. He stretched and pointed out a tall grave to the client and me. ‘Governor Hobson,’ he said. ‘Captain William Lieutenant Governor Hobson.’
As if I gave a rat’s arse.
Ben, chewing his sandwich, was looking at me. ‘I f-found you.’
I think I nodded.
‘I f-found them, didn’t I, Walrus?’ with his tripping way of talking.
Walrus patted him on the back.
One of the girls went behind a gravestone with the boy who had pawed her earlier and you could hear them at it, quite loud, shrieking and carrying on. The other girl didn’t seem to have any admirers.
When Halo and Torch Bearer came back a second time they had a wad of money. They counted it out on a grave. ‘Bit more like it,’ said Halo.
What do you call?
Ben turned from where the girl was combing his hair. ‘She’s n-not his missus.’
Torch Bearer snarled out the side of his mouth, ‘What you talking about, idiot? He’s mental,’ he added, for the client’s benefit, and mine.
Ben flapped his hands and the girl patted them to soothe him. ‘I s-saw her,’ he said. ‘On Queen Street. Told youse. That,’—he pointed to the client—‘’s not her hubby.’
Halo bundled up the money in a tight wad and delivered it to Walrus. Walrus received it like a sacrament, and stood up. Everyone stood up. It seemed they were all going somewhere. I felt the client’s head twitching like a bird.
‘We may as well have the clothes,’ said Torch Bearer.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Halo, as if the detail had slipped his mind. ‘Take them off.’
I turned to the client. In the firelight, he looked dazed, drunk.
‘Take them fucking off,’ said Halo. Skinny Arse rotated the machete.
The client had his outer clothes off in a jiffy. They were snatched away. I was still fumbling with the zip on the costume. My fingers like paper. Then it was in a puddle at my feet, I tripped, stood up. Someone whisked away the costume and my wrap. ‘And the shoes.’ The shoes went. No one said anything, but we were free to go. This caused general hilarity for some reason. Extinguished when Halo strode around the fire and told everyone to shut the fuck up. They all trooped off up the hill. Skinny Arse swished his machete as he went. It sang through the air and lopped off an azalea head and the flower landed a way away. We could hear the bristly thud.
Then they were gone.
•
‘Are you there?’ said the client, much later.
It was pitch-black. Now I felt the client’s hand reach for mine. We wrapped together in the darkness, whimpering. Relief is too weak a word. We tried to go up the path, but it was so dark you couldn’t tell up from down. We didn’t have a chance. There was nothing for it but to wait for dawn. We lay down in the leaves. The stones were around us, and I felt like Tess of the D’Urbervilles. We didn’t talk. Too scared, of course, in case they came back. After a while we shuffled together and lay like spoons. It was cold. I felt the shape of his body, and his breath, the place where his story had come from. I lay in that. I guess he lay in something coming from me. I couldn’t tell because all the boundaries had dissolved and they would never be rebuilt, I knew that.
The night went on for eternity. I thought about things. There wasn’t a lot else to do. I thought about the centre of the road, about the interstitial space, about sign, cosine, no sign, signifier. You can see how far gone I was. Looking out from the arms of the client, I could see as much blackness as I’d ever known. I was yawning it in and gulping it in, and there was no delineation between the client, the blackness, and me. I thought about the connections between everything. I remembered Saussure, Barthes, et al. I remembered how it seemed. They were great guys, S and B, even though they upset you so much. Someone had to say it, and they said it. I felt words being reinstated: discourse, hegemony, prolepsis, dialectic. They popped up; up they popped. I felt the cold wind of ideas rushing back into place. The notions raged like banshees. How to look at things—line them up on a wall, blow them apart, put them back together, run them down the middle of the road, turn them inside out, make them into polar opposites. How to read things, if you didn’t already know. You might have thought this was paradise, but it was death. This is how you read paradise: death. You needed the colon. You read it like a garment. Black dress, ripped gusset. What it really meant. Desperate hurry, sex. Now there was no excuse for not knowing.
I loved the client, but it was hopeless.
At one point, just before dawn, I turned my head and we kissed, and it was like a marriage, going on forever, full of love and compromise and argument and delight.
Birds. That’s what I heard. A bellbird. It was dawn.
The client and I stood up, creaking and brushing ourselves off. I looked down and saw that the grave we’d been curled up next to was none other than the final resting place of the Woolthamly ancestor, the one who bought the frigging farm for twelve blankets. You wouldn’t read about it.
The path was just visible, blurry, like the arms of a school blazer. We scrabbled up it like monkeys. It was gravelly, and my hands and fingernails were planed by it. I knew those bitty stones very well, almost more than I’ve known anything.
There was a pinkish dawn going on, and the birds. We were almost naked. We had been in great danger and now we were okay, picking our way barefoot up Symonds Street. There was no one about. We didn’t look at each other. It was wonderful.
The sun broke over the horizon as we reached the villa conversion, and spiked the back garden. The front was in shadow, cool and somehow trembling. I went around the back to get the spare key from under a pot plant, came back and jittered it in the lock. I stilled it. I tiptoed in, pulled on tracky clothes, got the car keys, drove the client home. It was all wordless, not a backward glance from the path of the Ponsonby cottage, and I drove away without checking the rear-view mirror.