A GENTLEMAN TO THE RESCUE

A PETROL STATION, thank God. I pull in. Get the thought to say, Fill me up, please, with a sexual tone in my voice. Makes me smile and the darkness kind of backs off a way.

A middle-age guy takes his sweet time coming out. It’s a pump needs a key. Sign says: NO CHEQUES ACCEPTED. CASH ONLY OR MAJOR CREDIT CARDS. He takes a look at me. Cash or credit card? No howyoudo nothin’.

I wind the window down. Credit card. (Well, it is a credit card in a way. ’Cept it’s limited by how much cash is in the account.) He’s sizing me up on my car, which ain’t much size at all. It’s a Jap import, the Nips’ discards for us bottom-of-the-heap Kiwis to buy at rip-off prices.

Twenty bucks’ worth, please. He ain’t gonna like this. But he can’t siphon the petrol out, can he?

I seen movies with guys like this, who have a little petrol joint way out in the nevernevers, and they’ve always got a grudge against the outside world. Like priests of some weird religion gone strange from the isolation.

The pump stops. The face appears in my window, I hand him the card.

What’s this? he asks, with a detective’s disbelieving, you’re going to jail look.

You must have Eftpos, mate.

No, I don’t have Eftpos. Sign there the width of your windscreen says it’s cash, credit cards, no cheques. You owe me twenty bucks, lady.

So, take my card, put it through your machine. This is the twenty-first century, pal, don’t you have an Eftpos machine?

No, he hasn’t got an Eftpos machine. But I got a phone, lady, when he couldn’t mean less a lady. And I’m using it right now to call the cops.

Is this dude for real? I mean, I’m offering payment, I know I got fifty-two bucks of credit left there. And if he waited one more day, tomorrow the government social welfare puts another $192.50 into that bank account, it’ll show up on my credit.

Except he’s not waiting, he’s written down my car rego and gone inside to phone. Then this sort of car station-wagon pulls up. Out hops a very handsome young gentleman. He’s got his shirt collar turned up, which’d get him ’bout fifty metres down my street before someone smacked him over for being up himself. And if the collar wasn’t up he’d get smacked for being too handsome and too sure of himself. Or for driving a car too flash, too far out of their miserably efforted reach. Or for being white in black territory. Oh, he’s sure of himself all right. Where I come from and where I’ve never managed to get away from, the only sure is sure of your muscle power.

The proprietor comes out huffing and puffing, glaring at me and about to say something till he sees he’s got another customer. But then he decides eff it, and marches over to me, effin’ wanker in blue overalls lives way out here eking out a living harder than us low-class urban dwellers do, so it’s my fault. And his demons make his eyes bulge, I’ve triggered something irrational in him, maybe it’s the way I dress, maybe he doesn’t like part-Maori girls with blonde streaks in their hair, I don’t know. Sigh.

I’ll give you one more chance. You must have twenty dollars in cash on you.

But I don’t. (And my face is burning ’cos the handsome dude is looking at me. This is like at the supermarket.) Mr Petrol Pump stabs a finger at his sign: Read it. What does it say?

He can go eff himself.