I drove out of Prophet’s Rock Winery on a washboard dirt road that snaked downhill to Highway 8. The heater hadn’t warmed yet in my Prius rental, and I could still make out my breath. On the passenger seat to the left of me—I was driving on the right side of the vehicle and on the left side of the road here in New Zealand, and I still had nervous moments where I wasn’t sure if I was on the correct side of the road or not—was a hardcover of my novel A Year of Pure Feeling that Hugh Martin Press had just issued. It was a fledgling imprint and I was their first title. “Hughie,” as I had come to know the publisher—with whom I had only communicated virtually—was proud he had scored an author of my ostensible fame for his debut release. Like my legacy work, A Year of Pure Feeling was a confessional work that married truth and fiction. More comedic than its predecessor, but still very much a sequel, it was a meditation on where my life had taken me, the countries I had visited, the search for a semblance of home as, the puer aeternus I admit to being, I had never settled on one place to live. Until the blowout with Ella, I thought I had found a tiny sliver of heaven at Prophet’s Rock, as far away from humankind as I could get. I couldn’t remain at the guesthouse forever now that the book was finished and the owners were gently pushing me out, but with Ella’s and my plans to park an ADU high up on a hill on a patch of dirt overlooking my half hectare of Pinot the good folks at Prophet’s Rock had offered me, and move in together, I had fantasies of becoming a gentleman vintner/viticulturalist and continuing to write the books I wanted to write that Hugh Martin Press seemed eager to support. It was small, but it was something, a new start after the naughty days post-literary-movie success. But that was all thrown into chaos with one email. Fucking internet!
Mount Pisa in the distance was covered with a fresh blanket of snow. I noticed it had snowed lightly at Prophet’s Rock, but not enough to remain on the ground. As I descended to the valley floor, snaking through the defoliated vineyards, I kept thinking of legendary winemaker Rudi Bauer’s comments about the suffering vines. A mostly mammal-free country until recently, here and there rabbits, an invasive nonnative species, darted jaggedly across the dirt road when they heard my approach. At great expense, we were obliged to cover the rootstock with plastic sheathing from the ground to about a foot up the vine to prevent the rabbits from gnawing their way through the tender shoots and deracinating them. These were still young vines, not yet producing grapes of elegance and power, but promising one day to soar to epiphanic heights. Glancing out the window, I noticed vineyard workers silhouetted against the blinding sun, pruning the vines, like I had been doing with my half hectare, in preparation for spring budbreak, and training the canes along guide wires. More suffering for the vines. There was something pure in this glorious marriage of air and land. I wanted to somehow become one with it, lose consciousness, grow oblivious to all the havoc consciousness wreaks on us. I don’t know if it was me or if it’s the fate of humankind’s evolution, burdened now with a massive ego-consciousness that gets in the way of everything that is pure nature, or what, but I glimpsed storm clouds on the horizon. That unbidden anxiety welled up inside me and held its hand clutched to my throat. Why couldn’t I be happy in this starkly beautiful paradise known as Central Otago, with my half hectare of Pinot, my winemaker girlfriend, my special needs cat, Max, who radiated unadulterated love? How had it come about I had contaminated it all with a lacuna of my youth? If whoever created us was not a cruel numinous being, why did they continue to oppress us with the past? Why couldn’t we escape the past or have it calve off into the ocean as we ascended to greater heights? Age, I ruminated philosophically, yokes us irremediably to the past.
I stopped at the intersection of Highway 8 and the dirt road I had dreamed my way down and adjusted my rearview mirror. I had let a beard grow in because I had little interest in my appearance, and Ella claimed she liked it. Tiny discolorations speckled what remained of my face. The brow was knitted in perpetual apprehension, but it always had been because worry had never left me for more than a few days at a time when, at the age of seventeen, I gave up marijuana and surfing and woke to the frightening reality I wanted to be a writer and nothing else. My eyes were clear now that I had cut back on the drinking—liver; crucifying hangovers; unfamiliar hotel rooms with women who only came into focus when they recited their names for the benefit of my befogged memory. Age had coarsened my face into statuary, the temples were frosted gray, but the books were still coming, my one religion: art. There was still a coruscation of hope in my eyes. I was down—down under!—but I had not given up. The ideas for books continued to burble up from deep wells of lived experience, and I still felt a creative obligation to bring them to life.
What if I had told Ella the truth? I wondered. Would she have flipped out? Launched into an inquisition? Disbelieved the truth as my flickering memory recalled it? Maybe she would have accepted it, gone into problem-solving mode, figured out a way I could get back into New Zealand if I had to decamp to California to face the music—I had a daughter (!). Then, too, was there a part of me who wanted to embark on this book tour, return to the US, and leave my life behind at Prophet’s Rock? I had burned bridges, and I kept burning bridges because somewhere deep inside me there existed the truth that change was the via regia to the next book. Did I, in fact, see the email as my escape route and was fantasizing its inevitability? Could I heartlessly do that to Ella? But if I told her I had a daughter—shaking my head at the revelation—I would no doubt be barraged with all manner of questions, speculations, doomful prognostications about our future. Better to keep it on the down-low, let her wrestle with the unknown, cruel as that sounded, and see how it played out.
I readjusted the mirror, turned onto Highway 8, and headed in the direction of the small town of Cromwell (quaint, pleasant, friendly; no doubt hiding darker truths). Every time I came off a dirt road, I had to exhort myself to turn in to the left lane. Once, at the last moment, I saw an eighteen-wheeler bearing down on me and veered sharply out of its path as a horn blared indignantly. To my right sparkled Lake Dunstan. Formerly a river, it had been dammed to generate hydroelectric power. Seeing the wide body of water with birds floating peacefully on it, it occurred to me New Zealand was far from the megadrought crisis afflicting California, a drought that was causing uncontrollable Nagasaki fires, biblical flash floods during now-frequent thunderstorms, not to mention crop failures, Lake Mead shrinking to a puddle, a revolution brewing as the desertification of the densely populated Southwest of America grew increasingly alarming. And still the rich demanded Eden in the hell of the apocalypse. Did I want to return? (I was on another one of my monologuing rolls! Where was Max?)
It was a tranquil drive along Lake Dunstan into Cromwell until I glanced down at the book that had caused me tremendous anguish to write. The pitch for A Year of Pure Feeling had been turned down by every publisher in America. My agent, who pressured me for a sequel to my legacy work, grew disenchanted when I told him about the Kiwi opportunity and the four-figure advance. She argued that because my first book had been adapted into a wildly successful movie, she could have easily gotten me six figures. Was I insane? “Do you not like money?” It was all about brand recognition, sequels, cannibalizations of intellectual property, an economic reality I wanted no part of. More reflections along Lake Dunstan. Craning my imagination back to my youth, the books I read, and the movies that transported me that would never get written or made today, I felt a deep sorrow for the artistic losses we would never know we had lost because they had never seen the light of day.
My agent ghosted me and I negotiated the deal with Hugh Martin Press for the pathetic amount of $5,000 with blah blah if it was ever issued in paperback, with more blah blah if it was ever adapted into a movie or a TV series. I was elated to see it in print. It was never about the money for me; it was always about the work. If, in this tsunami of content, only a few thousand people read it, it still existed as a literary record of whatever value. It would go into my archive. It would be there if anyone wanted to discover it one day. But Hughie Martin had big plans for it. He saw a book tour as potentially churning excitement and sales. “It has limited series written all over it,” he enthused from his offices in Wellington, which I later learned were in a wing of his compound in a wooded bedroom community. But the book tour required coordination, planning, and that’s why I was driving into Cromwell on this cold June morning. I was en route to meet my publicist.
I parked in the Cromwell Heritage Precinct, a charming restored enclave of craft shops masoned out of stone and dating back to the mining days, and strolled across the street into Grain and Seed Cafe.
“Hi, Miles,” greeted a young woman who worked behind the counter pulling shots for flat whites. “What brings you in today?”
I held up my book. “Fresh off the press. Getting set for a tour to promote my new book.”
“Wow, I want to read it,” she trilled.
“I only have the one copy, but when I get more, I promise to bring you one, Rosie, and autograph it.”
“I’d love that. What would you like? Flat white?”
“Flat white is fine, Rosie,” I said, glancing around, searching for my publicist, whom I would only recognize from a picture Hughie had emailed me. I clatteringly pulled out a wooden chair at a table situated at the window. An elderly couple was parked across the opposite end of the small café engaged in a conversation I couldn’t make out. This time of year the only tourists on the South Island were in Wanaka and Queenstown, a moneyed crowd jetting in to ski and snowboard, drink and fuck, social media their exploits to phantasmal fame and fortune.
I glanced out the window. A faded red Subaru Outback pulled sharply into one of the parking spaces across the street, its tailpipe wheezing and rattling as the driver killed the engine and the vehicle coughed and choked to a stop. Out of the driver’s-side door a young woman uncoiled to a standing position, her eyes wedded to a cell phone, both hands cradling it as her thumbs bounced up and down in a flurry of keystrokes with a proficiency—while striding purposefully across the street!—I had never been able to master. No more than twenty-seven, I guessed, she was wearing tapered jeans; a black, vintage military frock coat ornamented with brass buttons open to a long-sleeve T-shirt; and incongruously incandescent white leather tennis shoes.
The woman from the Subaru blustered into Grain and Seed with an anxious look. When she saw me, her face exploded into a smile with pronounced white teeth offsetting middle-parted, curly black hair that cascaded over her shoulders. Her brooding lips were painted purplish red, her black eyes were almond shaped, and her nose was wide with flaring nostrils. Judging by her extraordinarily distinctive physiognomy and skin color, she was unmistakably Māori. Her military jacket and penetrating gaze lent her a more imposing aspect than her New Zealand–accented voice would make you picture if your eyes were closed and you were dreaming her—and in my halcyon youth I would have because she was that striking; but alas (sad emoji). She pounded across the planked floor and thrust out her hand. “Hi, I’m Hana Kawiti. You must be Miles.”
I nodded. “Nice to meet you, Hana.” I held her hand in mine. It was cold to the touch from the chill of the outdoors. When she shook mine in return, she crushed the delicate birdlike bones of one of my writing hands, perhaps in an effort to show me she, as well as our relationship, was all professional. “That’s quite a handshake, Hana,” I said. “Sit down. What would you like?”
“Mineral water is fine.”
I crossed the room and conveyed Hana’s order to Rosie, then returned to the table, trying to disguise the aches and pains of standing and sitting lest Hana have doubts I was fit to take on New Zealand’s East Coast in the dead of winter. Out of her large purse Hana had produced an iPad and was swiping around on it, ready for business.
“So,” she began.
“Hana,” I said, “hold your horses. Let’s just ease into this, okay, converse a little bit.”
“I loved your book,” she exulted. “Self-effacingly personal.”
“Thank you.”
“You have a lovely way with words.”
“Hughie told me he had to have his dictionary at hand.”
“Not me,” she said. She leaned forward a few inches. “I especially like your confessional honesty. Is that hard to write?”
“It can be. When you risk the personal and you get rejected, it hurts more than if you wrote a, I don’t know, serial killer thriller.”
She smiled warmly and met my eyes. Beauty and intelligence whorled in hers. “It’s not commercial fiction, and I admire that. You capture our country vividly.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Is Helen based on a real person?”
I smiled a reply. “All my characters are based on real people. Until they disappoint or no longer inspire me.”
She laughed. “I hope it works out.”
Bringing up the fictional Ella, Hana unwittingly drew me into a dark silence. “I suppose we’ll find out in the next book. If there is one.”
“There will be.” She leaned back in her chair.
“You didn’t find my story depressing?” I wondered self-consciously, self-deprecatingly, which was my wont.
“I found it uplifting.”
“Because the author was so despairing?”
She crinkled her nose at me, trying to figure out what I meant. “Your despair gave me hope. Your humor leavened your despair and delivered it to me like an arrow to the heart.”
I jolted back in disbelief at her lyrical, trenchant critique. Not what I expected coming from a publicist. “You sincerely thought that?”
She nodded with widening eyes.
There ensued an uncomfortable silence. The awkward moment was rescued by the arrival of our drinks. She poured a local sparkling water brand into a glass. I sipped my flat white. Without meeting eyes, we studied each other. From my jaded perspective, she seemed impossibly young for a publicist but had all the sand in the world in the top chamber of her hourglass, thus her wickedly optimistic smile. I had all the transgressions and mistakes of my past loaded on my shoulders and more than half the sand in the bottom chamber.
“You’re young for a book publicist,” I remarked.
“Am I?” She sounded defensive, and her lips curled outward in defiance.
“Have you had a lot of clients?”
“A few,” she said. “But none as famous as you.”
I smiled, colored red at the compliment, and looked away from her radiant youth out the window and to the lake shimmering beyond. “I’m not that famous,” I said. “I had to come across the equator to the end of the world to find a publisher.”
“You’re not alone, Miles.”
“Oh, I’m quite alone.”
“You are famous, though. In the wine world particularly, I’m told.”
I turned back to her. “I want to stay away from the wine world as much as we can, even if it trails me like a stray dog.”
“We’re going to stay away from the wine world then,” she said, parroting what I wanted to hear.
“You’re Māori,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Yes. My iwi’s on the North Island.” Iwi was Māori for tribe, and there were a hundred and three of them in Aotearoa New Zealand, all with their own distinctive rituals and idiomatic ways of speaking.
I nodded. “How’d you get into book PR, Hana?”
“I majored in marketing and communications at Victoria University.” Her professional tone suggested she feared I was interviewing her and that her job was hanging in the balance.
“I don’t know the Māori language at all, but I know it’s used interchangeably a lot, and I don’t want to be insensitive to that fact.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll help you.”
“Thank you.” I inhaled through my nose, then leaned forward on both elbows. “Look, Hana, I have an irreverent sense of humor. I’ve matured a little, but not as much as some would like.” She giggled and glanced away to hide her embarrassment at my admission. When she turned back to me, we locked eyes. “I’m not interviewing you, Hana. You’ve got the job. If Hughie thinks you’re right for this, I’m going with his judgment. I like what you said about my book. My biggest fear in meeting you was learning you hadn’t bothered to read it.”
“Of course. How could you think I wouldn’t?”
“You should meet some of the publicists in the States.”
She snorted a laugh. “Never been. Want to go someday. See LA.”
“You’d hate LA.”
“Would I?”
I nodded emphatically. “Unless you’d like to be stuck in gridlocked traffic for two hours trying to buy groceries and meet guys who are all writing screenplays.”
She laughed again. “I was a little nervous to meet you.”
“Don’t be. I’m the one who’s nervous. I’ve got to be on for these book-signing events.”
“I’ll get you through them.” She turned back to her iPad. “I wanted to brief you a bit on the schedule.”
“Okay.”
She returned a hand to her iPad, planted forearms on the table, and telescoped her head across it. “Hughie told me to get creative. I decided that readings and signings in bookstores are old school, past history. No one shows up at those.” She raised her eyes to mine. “What is hip here in Aotearoa is book clubs.”
“Book clubs? Hmm.”
“They’re more personal, we make more on the book sales, and they spread the word.”
“Book clubs?”
She nodded enthusiastically up and down with brightening eyes. “Yes. Book clubs. And I’ve got some fun ones lined up.”
“Do you?”
She nodded, a smile brightening her face. “Do you want me to run down the schedule of events with you?” she said, unconsciously swiping through screens on her iPad. Page one of her screen featured the cover of my novel, a lone man silhouetted against a lowering orange sun, gazing off at the horizon, where doom and gloom seemed to loom. I loved it!
“Enlighten me on the first one,” I said. “I don’t want to have a panic attack.”
She laughed. “Have you ever heard of the Tough Guy Book Club?”
I shook my head. “No. Tough Guy Book Club?” I narrowed my eyes at her in mock suspicion.
Hana grew animated. “They originated in Australia. They bill themselves like a fight club for the mind, a book club for the thinking tough guy.”
“Seriously?”
“Aotearoa’s chapter is in Oamaru.” She threw an arm toward the window in the general direction of the Pacific. “The only chapter in New Zealand. They ordered a dozen books, and Garret, their president, who confirmed, said they have ‘questions’ for you.” She held up both hands in air quotes.
“I’ve got questions for them.”
Hana chuckled. “I’ll bet.”
“That sounds cool. Unique. A book club for tough guys.”
“Book clubs are big in New Zealand. They’re going to be our friend.”
“Is it in a home or a . . . ?”
She shook her head rapidly back and forth. “No. Fat Sally’s Pub and Restaurant.”
“Fat Sally’s Pub and Restaurant in Oamaru.” I enunciated each word. “You can’t make that up.”
“No. It’s very Kiwi.”
“Tough Guy Book Club, huh?”
“They bought a dozen units.”
“We’re off to a rousing start.”
“Hughie’s delighted.”
“I bet.”
“How’s Max?” she inquired.
“How’d you know about Max?”
She pointed at my iPhone where the home screen featured a photo of Max gazing soulfully into the camera lens. “I read your blog, Miles.”
“You’re probably the only one.”
“Oh, no. I’ve run analytics. You get some serious traffic.”
“I do?”
She nodded up and down. “I’m excited about this trip, aren’t you?”
“The Tough Guy Book Club, what author wouldn’t be? That’s creative, Hana. Was that your idea?”
She beamed. “Yes. You told Hughie you wanted the offbeat; the weirder the better. Material for your next book maybe?”
“You’re a prescient young lady.”
“And then after the Tough Guy Book Club . . .” she started, eyes back on her iPad, forefinger swiping to a spreadsheet.
I held up my hand. “That’s okay, Hana. I want it to be a mystery.”
She looked up from her screen. “Okay. A mystery it will be then.”
I inhaled through my nose and gazed out the window, holding the air in my expanded lungs. The road was calling again, and soon it would be real.
“Is there something wrong?”
“Slight change of plans,” I said to the window.
“What’s that?”
“My friend Jack wants to come on the trip.”
“Jack Manse. From Washed-Up Celebrities?”
I turned sharply to her. “You know him?”
“Miles,” she said, leaning forward again, “I’ve read everything I could get my hands on about you. I know you and Jack are great friends. I’ve read he was a model for the character in your now-famous debut novel.” She leaned back. “I think this is fantastic he’s coming. We’ve got you covered,” she said without elaborating. “Text me his contact info.”
“Okay.”
“Right now.”
I picked up my phone, ready to comply. I tapped Messages and started to scroll through my contacts. My eyes failed me. I fished around in my left pocket for my reading glasses case.
Hana extended an importuning hand. “Give it to me, and I’ll do it.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ll get it.” I knew she could do it five times as fast, but I feared if she tapped the wrong icon, pornographic photos of Ella and me might blossom on the screen. “What’s your number?”
“Just AirDrop it to me.”
“I don’t know how to do that?”
“Settings. General. AirDrop.”
I did as she instructed. We exchanged more fumbling back and forth until I had sent Jack’s contact info successfully over to her.
“One other thing,” I said. She waited, the young publicist, antennae eternally quivering, trained to extinguish fires before they raged into conflagrations. “Max?” She waited. “He’s coming too.”
She swallowed hard, pivoted. “That’s great, Miles! An author with his special needs cat. We’re going to get serious pub out of that!” Her delighted reaction took me aback. American publicists I’d worked with would have greeted my admission with Hell no. Hana laid a reassuring hand on my wrist. “Do you have a tracking collar?” I shook my head. “You need to get one. Don’t worry.” She wrote a note to herself on her iPad. “Tracking collar, and a carrier, and . . .” She looked up at me. “What kind of food does Max like?”