Shane arrives at work dressed in his colourless overalls, sleepy and bleary eyed. It is a forty-minute drive from his house on the beachfront to the Apakura plant. He was out of bed at five but still hadn’t had time for a shower. When he sits down at his terminal he finds a new email waiting for him in his inbox. It is from his old flatmate, Dan, now a law clerk down in Wellington.
I came to this city looking for a life less interesting, Dan writes. I wanted to find something blander than instant noodles and duller than reality television. Well, now I’m sick of it. Looking forward to the visit. We’ll paint your crappy little town a shade of beige.
‘Fuck,’ Shane mutters, softly. ‘Fuck.’ He had forgotten that Dan was coming up for the long weekend. Shane doesn’t want to see Dan. Shane doesn’t want to see anyone except Kumiko, and the chances of her visiting seem bleaker every day.
Kumiko had not approved of Apakura. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she had said.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Shane had asked. ‘There’s a Warehouse. Two McDonald’s, a KFC, a couple of pubs. What more do you need?’
He told her that Apakura wasn’t all that small. Okay, no bookstores, but they had a library. No galleries, but there were sometimes craft shows down at the community hall. Sure, there weren’t any jobs, but he’d be making more than enough to cover their basic expenses. And then there was the weather, the beach, the landscape …
‘We’ll see,’ Kumiko had said.
Everything goes smoothly until three o’clock. Then something breaks down. Things are always breaking down.
‘What’s wrong with the conveyor belt?’ Shane asks one of the operators.
The operator shrugs. ‘It’s fucked,’ he says. Most of the operators are Maori and middle-aged. They have all worked at the plant since they left high school. Most of the process supervisors are like Shane: young white men with degrees in chemical engineering.
‘I know it’s fucked; what’s wrong with it?’ Shane asks. Then, trying to be friendly, he adds a belated ‘mate …’
‘It’s the fifth roller, mate,’ the operator says.
‘Yeah …?’
‘It. Is. Fucked. Mate.’ Some of the other operators laugh.
‘I’ll call maintenance,’ says Shane.
Shane shares his flat with two other process supervisors from the plant, Tim and Shipley. He knew them both from university, back in Canterbury. When Shane comes home from work, Tim is waiting for him in the kitchen.
‘Are these yours?’ asks Tim, pointing at two glasses left in the sink.
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you want to put them in the dishwasher?’
‘Not particularly.’ Shane takes a clean glass from one of the cupboards and pours himself some water. He drinks it down, then puts the glass in the sink.
‘Maybe I should just put all these in the dishwasher then, eh?’ Tim says.
‘That’d be nice,’ says Shane.
Shane sits on the couch in their living room, between Tim and Shipley, watching TV. A reality show is on; they watch some people in a flat bickering over dishes left in the sink. One of their windows opens out onto the beachfront. It is still light outside, though the sky has a melancholy early evening look, and they can see a young woman walking her dog by the sea.
‘Look at that,’ Shipley says, nudging Shane.
‘What?’
‘That …’
The girl has long hair; it dances round her face in the wind. They are too far away to tell what colour it is, exactly.
‘Hot,’ says Shipley.
‘Fucking hot,’ says Tim.
The girl walks on, further down the beachfront, out of sight.
‘I’d’ve done her,’ says Shipley.
‘Yeah,’ says Shane.
‘Anyone see her face?’ says Tim.
‘No,’ says Shane.
‘I could have done her,’ says Shipley.
Later on, Shane gives Kumiko a call. The phone at her flat rings and rings and then he gets the answering machine. He leaves a message, trying to sound laid-back.
‘… so call me sometime,’ he says. ‘Or whatever. You know.’
The next morning is bright and sunny. All of Shane’s mornings in Apakura have been bright and sunny. ‘How’s it going?’ he asks one of the operators at the plant.
‘What?’ the operator says. ‘How should I know?’
‘You don’t know …?’
‘Course I don’t. Haven’t heard anything about Sid in ages.’ Some of the other operators start to snigger.
‘Who’s Sid?’
‘You know, the All Black. Why’d you ask about him if you don’t know who he is?’
‘I didn’t ask about him,’ Shane says. ‘I asked “how’s it going”.’
‘Sounded like how’s Sid Going.’
‘Oh. Right …’
‘You talk funny, mate,’ says the operator.
Shane drives back through Apakura after work. It’s getting late and the pavements are ruled by roving packs of fourteen-year-olds, cruising up and down between the two McDonald’s. Sixteen-year-old boys in low-slung cars dominate the streets. They drive around, convoy-style, trying to shake the police cars and do a few drags. Shane sees a young pregnant woman carrying a load of groceries home. He sees another waiting at a bus stop. As he pulls into his driveway he spots a third, walking along the beachfront. They are all by themselves.
He follows a succession of thumps and bangs into the living room. ‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
Shipley puts down his hammer. ‘I’m building a bar,’ he says.
‘That’s a bar?’ Shane looks at the haphazard collection of planks and supports. ‘It doesn’t look like a bar.’
‘It will,’ Shipley says. ‘Once I’ve sanded it down. We can have drinks off it.’
‘Let’s have a drink now.’
‘Not now. When it’s finished.’
Shane takes a beer from the fridge and carries it out onto the back porch. The third pregnant teenager is still out on the beach. She sits cross-legged, her heavy belly drooping down to the sand. Shane lets his gaze drift out across the bay. The night is still clear enough to see white ripples of foam in the blackness of the waves. Shane drinks his beer slowly. He is down to the flat dregs at the bottom of the can when Tim joins him on the porch with a six-pack.
‘Hey,’ says Tim. ‘Kumiko called while you were out. Didn’t leave a message.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You gonna call her?’
‘In a minute.’
‘You didn’t wipe out the shower this morning.’
‘I know.’ Shane finishes his beer, crushes the can and throws it onto the beach. Kumiko had liked beer but always hated finishing her cans. She claimed that the heat of her hands made the beer at the bottom too warm, and that the leftover spittle from her backwash made it watery. ‘The bottom of the can tastes like warm spit,’ she used to say. He had always finished her cans for her. Shipley swaggers out onto the porch, wiping sawdust from his hands.
‘The bar is done,’ he says, then sees the pregnant girl on the beach. ‘Look at that. Another one.’
Tim had already been looking at her for some time. ‘Would you guys fuck a pregnant chick?’ he asks.
‘Every hole’s a goal,’ says Shipley.
Shane breaks a beer off Tim’s six-pack and kicks his feet up against the porch railing.
‘Course he wouldn’t,’ says Tim. ‘He’s got a girlfriend.’
‘Hey,’ says Shipley, ‘I’ve got a girlfriend.’
‘Sure you have …’
‘Yeah,’ Shane says softly. ‘Y’wouldn’t have to worry about knocking her up …’
The pregnant girl starts to scrabble and kick in the sand, trying to stand up. She might have overheard them, Shane can’t be sure.
‘She can’t get up,’ Tim says.
‘Too fucking heavy,’ says Shipley.
‘Like a fucking beached whale …’
‘Someone call Greenpeace …’
Half a minute passes.
‘Maybe we’d better go help her up,’ says Tim.
‘No.’ Shane drains his second beer and reaches across Shipley’s lap to claim another one. ‘Wait.’ Eventually, the pregnant girl climbs to her feet and totters off into the darkness. ‘That’s my girl,’ Shane says and drinks his beer.
‘Let’s go in and have some shots,’ Shipley says. ‘We can have them at the bar.’
‘Why can’t we have them out here?’ Tim asks.
‘It’ll be more fun at the bar.’
‘Will it?’
‘Sure it will,’ says Shane. ‘Let’s go in.’
Later that night he calls Kumiko. This time he gets a recorded message from Telecom. The number you have dialled is no longer in use. Shane goes back into the living room and sits down with his flatmates at their makeshift bar. They drink Coruba and Coke, vodka with lemon, tequila and Red Bull. Okay, Shane thinks, whatever.
The next day is a holiday. Tim takes his hangover into town; Shipley and Shane hit the beach instead. Shane wants to learn to surf over the summer, but hasn’t got a board yet. There is a ‘surf shop’ in Apakura but it sells T-shirts and sunglasses. When payday rolls round he thinks he’ll go into Hamilton and see if he can find a board. Maybe a wetsuit too. Surfing might be fun; it might help to pass the time.
‘When’s your mate coming?’ Shipley asks, once they drag themselves out of the water.
‘Dan? Tonight. He’s driving up.’
‘Didn’t he used to go out with your girlfriend?’
‘Long time ago.’
‘Didn’t you guys get in a fight over her, last year?’
Shane smiles. ‘It wasn’t as serious as all that. Dan’s a good guy.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Punches like a fucking girl though.’
Dan arrives just after dinner. Shane hears car tyres crunching on the driveway gravel and walks outside to meet him. He watches Dan climb out of his car, grinning, carrying a bottle filled with clear liquid.
‘Hey man,’ Shane says.
‘Hey.’ Dan kicks the car door closed and walks towards him. For a moment, a flash of fading sunlight flickers across Dan’s glasses and Shane cannot see his friend’s eyes. ‘What’s it been?’ Dan asks. ‘A year?’
‘Eight months.’
‘Whatever. Here.’ Dan passes him the bottle. ‘This is for you.’
Shane looks at the label. The writing is in Italian. ‘What’s this stuff?’
‘Don’t ask me. The only thing I can read is the bit that says fifty-two per cent.’
Later in the evening, Shane, Dan and Tim all sit at the bar while Shipley stands on the other side, topping up their drinks (and his own) from the Italian bottle. Shane takes a sip. The liquid stings his lips and burns his tongue with an almost medicinal coldness. It tastes like almonds crushed in mouthwash. He mixes some lemonade into his glass.
‘Do you guys do anything round here besides drink?’ Dan asks.
‘Well … there’s the beach …’ Tim says.
‘But most of the time we just drink,’ says Shane.
‘You’ll have to show me some of the bars round here tomorrow,’ Dan says.
‘We don’t go to the bars,’ says Shane.
‘They’re not like the ones back home,’ says Tim.
‘Yeah, we’ve got our own bar right here,’ says Shipley. ‘Why go out?’
‘You can crash in the spare room,’ says Shane, after his flatmates have gone to bed.
‘Not yet,’ Dan says. ‘There’s a couch on your roof. I saw it from the driveway.’
‘Yeah, what about it?’
Dan straightens up with military precision and bounces stiffly against a wall. ‘Take me to your couch,’ he says.
Shane leads Dan up to his bedroom on the second storey. They climb out the window and round the side of the house to where the couch sits, facing the sea.
‘Wow! Fantastic!’ Dan shouts into the darkness. ‘A couch on the roof! Wow!’
‘You’d better be careful,’ Shane says, ‘considering your track record with heights and all …’ In the time that Shane has known him, Dan has taken drunken falls from the balcony of a two-storey house, the roof of a warehouse and the top of a concrete wall encircling an inner-city carpark. Once, during the last great era of their friendship, they split a bottle of vodka at a party in the top flat of a six-storey building. They drank the vodka Russian-style, in straight shots, toasting every glass. ‘To absent friends!’ ‘To peace in the Middle East!’ ‘To MacGyver and his mullet!’ Dan had gone out onto the balcony for some fresh air and later Shane found him hanging over the side of the railings, his legs kicking into space. He had to drag Dan back up by his belt. They didn’t remember what happened until the next morning, when Dan took off his shirt and found his chest covered in grazes from the concrete wall. Shane had laughed and then thrown up in the toilet bowl.
‘Clear night,’ says Dan. ‘You can see pretty far. You’ve picked a nice spot, Shane. Very scenic. Do you like it up here?’
‘I like the weather,’ Shane says. ‘I like the job and I like the money. That’s all you have to like.’
‘Kumiko said you were doing well …’
‘You’re in touch with Kumiko?’
‘Course I am. Hasn’t she told you?’
Shane shifts round on the couch and looks at Dan. It is too dark to see his face. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘She told me. We talked last night. She said to say hi.’
‘That’s nice. Tell her I say hi when you next talk.’
Shane nods. ‘Let’s go back in. I have to work a shift tomorrow.’
‘But it’s a holiday …’
The plant is ticking along sluggishly when Shane arrives the next morning. The operators have been cut down to a skeleton crew and the conveyor belts are slowed to half speed. Shane spends most of the morning at his terminal, working on a new cooling system for the secondary vat. In the afternoon he walks around the factory floor. The operators are more friendly than usual. A few of them nod and smile at him and one of them calls out ‘How is it going, mate?’. All the senior management are at home and the mood round the processing centre is relaxed; no one has to play up for the bosses. While he inspects the machinery, Shane remembers how he got his job at the plant. It was just one of a dozen jobs at half a dozen companies that he applied for in his graduating year. ‘What do you know about this company?’ he asked one of his classmates, the night before he flew up for the interview.
‘They have a good process,’ she said.
The next day, one of his interviewers asked: ‘What attracts you to work at the Apakura plant, Shane?’
‘You have a very efficient process here,’ Shane said. ‘I think I could learn a lot from being a part of it.’
A month later he was offered the job. He had not been offered any other jobs and so he accepted it.
‘Why do you want to go and work in Apakura?’ Kumiko had asked. ‘You are not going to go and work in Apakura …’
‘I like their process,’ Shane had said.
When he inspects the main vat, Shane finds that production has halted. The operators are sitting around, talking and reading newspapers.
‘What’s the problem?’ Shane asks.
‘The vat’s fucked again,’ says one of the operators. ‘The dye’s not feeding in. Had to shut the whole thing down.’
‘Called maintenance?’
‘Yeah, but they’re all at home. Someone’ll be here in about an hour.’
‘An hour?’ Shane crouches down at the base of the vat and checks the connections on the pump. ‘It must just be one of these pipes.’
‘Hey mate, I’d be careful there …’ the operator starts to say. A flexi-plastic pipe springs loose in Shane’s hand, spraying his face and overalls with purple dye.
‘Jesus … Fuck …’ he says. The operators start to laugh.
After work, he meets Dan, Shipley and Tim in the larger of the town’s two McDonald’s.
‘Fuck,’ says Tim. ‘What happened to you?’
Shane had spent twenty minutes in the men’s room, trying to scrub the dye off with soap and water. He has succeeded in rubbing the bright purple down to a faded bruised colour, but it still covers half his face and neck.
‘Pipe sprayed me,’ he says. ‘All the operators were pissing themselves.’
‘You’ve had it now,’ Shipley says. ‘They’ll never stop giving you shit.’
‘Those whom we laugh at we most readily forgive and soon come close to loving,’ says Dan.
‘Yeah … whatever …’ says Shane.
‘That’s from I Claudius,’ Dan says, reproachfully.
‘Do I look like a member of the Book of the Month Club?’
They buy their burger combos and sit at a table near the window. Tim and Shipley squabble over the tomato sauce and throw French fries at each other, attracting some withering stares from the hipper fourteen-year-olds in the restaurant.
‘You taken a look around?’ Shane asks, tapping the window which looks out onto Apakura’s main drag.
‘Yeah,’ says Dan. ‘It’s a two-McDonald’s kind of town. I went swimming in the morning, though.’
‘Good,’ says Shane. ‘The beach is better than this.’
An attractive sixteen-year-old walks past the window. Tim winces. Shane groans. Dan looks at them both, amused.
‘I could have had her …’ Shipley says, stirring his thickshake.
After dinner, while they walk around Apakura, scoping out more attractive sixteen-year-olds (all the older girls leave town or wind up pregnant, Shane explains to Dan), Shipley describes his theory of spading and scoring.
‘One on one is like a duel, right? But when groups are involved, you’ve got to use small unit tactics. You’ve got to work together like a squad. Like in Aliens or Full Metal Jacket.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Shane asks.
‘Think about it, man. Someone’s got to be the hero, the squad leader. He’ll take the point, hit on the best-looking chick, direct the squad in its attack on the opposing force. Then you’ve got the grunts, who’ll follow his lead and move in on the less attractive friends. Finally, you’ve gotta have someone running clean-up; if there’s a real dog in the pack he’ll be the one to go for her …’
Shipley’s spiel comes to an end as they stop outside the door of a bar.
‘Well?’ says Dan. ‘Are we going in?’
That night they build a bonfire out on the beach and sit around it, drinking beer and trying to avoid the stinging sparks and ash. Shipley brags about the girlfriend he claims to have in Hamilton.
‘… I just have to call,’ Shipley is saying. ‘One phone call and she’ll drive all the way over here and do whatever I say.’
‘Right …’ says Tim.
‘Is there someone out here?’ says Dan. ‘I thought I saw something moving, up in the dunes.’
‘You wanna see?’ Shipley is saying. ‘I’ll call her if you want. I can call her right now …’
‘Give it a rest,’ Shane says. He had checked their answering machine when they returned to the flat. No messages from Kumiko. He was not feeling charitable towards any talk of phone calls.
‘You don’t believe me?’ Shipley says. ‘That’s fine … you don’t have to … doesn’t matter if you believe me or not …’
Shane and Dan walk back across the beach to the flat, to get some more beer from the fridge. ‘Sorry about Shipley,’ Shane says. ‘That boy can talk.’
‘Can he do anything else?’ Dan asks.
Shane laughs. ‘Not really. God, Kumiko really ripped into him when she was up here. She was all like, “Oh yeah Shipley, your invisible girlfriend …” That shut him up.’ They climb up onto the porch and Shane unlocks the back door.
‘Does Kumiko come up here often?’ Dan asks, as they each heft another dozen out of the fridge.
‘She visited once. Just after I moved.’
‘Once?’ says Dan. ‘Well … that’s not so bad. I mean, you’ve only been in Apakura for three months. And she’s been busy.’
‘How do you know she’s been busy?’
Dan shrugs and shifts around on his feet. ‘I just assumed she was. With the move and all …’
‘What move?’ asks Shane. ‘Where is she, Dan?’
‘In Wellington,’ Dan says.
‘Where’s she staying? With you?’ Shane drops his carton of beer on the kitchen counter. ‘She’s not staying with you.’
‘Jesus! Of course not.’ Dan starts to back away. ‘She’s in a flat or something. I only bumped into her after she moved up there.’
Shane tries to look at Dan, but Dan now stands beyond the light of the open fridge. The shadows beneath his glasses hollow out his eyes and face.
‘It’s probably nothing to worry about,’ he is saying. ‘She’s been flipping back and forth between Christchurch and Wellington for most of her adult life … And there are no jobs in Christchurch these days … You know that …’
Shane kicks the fridge door shut. He is still for a moment, in the darkness, then he turns and walks back out onto the porch.
After a while, Dan follows him, carrying the two cartons of beer.
‘She called,’ Shane says. ‘It was a couple of nights ago. I wasn’t in. She was probably calling to tell me that she’d moved.’
‘There, see?’ says Dan. ‘You guys are all right.’
They are quiet for a little while. ‘I tried to write her a letter,’ says Shane, eventually. ‘But all I could write about was the fucking weather.’
‘The weather is nice up here. It’s a beautiful night.’
‘Yeah. I really like these warm nights.’
‘Hey! What’s that?’ Dan points to a dark figure, walking up the beach towards them. ‘Is that Shipley?’
Shane shakes his head. As the figure walks closer, he sees that it is female. ‘Nah, it’s just this pregnant girl,’ he says, lowering his voice. ‘We’ve seen her hanging round the beach before, at night.’
‘There seems to be quite a few of them in Apakura,’ Dan says. ‘Haven’t they heard of a thing called contraception up here?’
‘Hey, keep it down, man,’ Shane says. ‘She can probably hear us.’ He looks back at the teenager just in time to see her right arm draw back and snap forward. What the fu— he starts to think, but then Dan pulls him aside and a rock smashes through the window behind them, bouncing down into the lounge. Shane and Dan look at each other, then walk back to the porch railing to look at the pregnant girl standing out on the beach. That was a good shot, Shane thinks. She must have played cricket or something at school. The girl turns away and starts to jog up the beach, heading towards the dunes. She clutches her belly with both hands for support.
‘Look,’ says Dan, ‘she’s making a very slow getaway.’
Shipley and Tim come running across from the bonfire. ‘We heard a crash,’ Tim starts to say, then sees the window. ‘Fuck …’
‘Fuck!’ Shipley says, and then shouts: ‘Fuck! Who did this? Who fucking did this?’
Shane grins. ‘It was your invisible girlfriend, Shipley,’ he says. ‘You should have treated her better.’
Shipley is about to make a retort, most probably by shouting ‘fuck’ again, but Dan quickly steps in and says: ‘No, seriously mate, it was that girl out on the beach. She threw a rock …’
‘Jesus, what a rock,’ Tim says, peering through the jagged hole. ‘It’s the size of a fucking baseball.’
‘Where’d she go?’ Shipley asks.
Dan points towards the dunes. Shipley starts to move off, but Shane catches his arm. ‘It’s just a window,’ he says. ‘It won’t cost much to fix.’
‘Fuck that!’ Shipley says. ‘I did not come up here to have my windows broken by some fucking slut. Let’s go after her, she can’t have gone far …’
‘I’m not going after her,’ says Shane. Shipley doesn’t move and the girl disappears into the dunes. The four of them are left standing on the porch, looking out across the bay.
In the morning, Dan loads up his car.
‘You sure you won’t stay for another day?’ Shane asks.
‘Thanks, but no,’ Dan says, chucking his bag into his boot and slamming it shut. ‘You know how it is, lots of paper still on the desk …’
‘You should come down to Christchurch for graduation week. I’ll be there, along with a lot of the old crowd. Could be good times.’
‘Yeah … Look, are you sure you don’t want Kumiko’s phone number?’
‘Don’t bother,’ says Shane. ‘I’ll get it from her when she calls. But tell her I say hi. Tell her about the great weather.’
Dan walks around and unlocks his car door. ‘I’ll try and make it down to Christchurch …’
‘Good.’ Shane holds his gaze.
‘… and if I talk to Kumiko before you do, I’ll ask her if she wants to come.’
‘You’re a mate, Dan,’ says Shane.
‘Yeah. I’d run clean-up for you any day.’ Dan gets into his car and backs out the driveway. He sounds the horn once and drives off. After a while, Tim walks out to join Shane.
‘About those cereal crumbs you left all over the bench …’ he starts to say.
‘Fuck off, Tim,’ says Shane. Somewhere, inside their house, the phone is ringing.
By the time Shane goes back to work at the plant all traces of purple have been scrubbed from his skin, but the operators still remember his accident. They laugh and nudge each other in the corridors and the cafeteria.
‘Morning, dyeface,’ an operator says as Shane walks past him. His smile, however, is not unfriendly.