Jack grimaced when he examined the fresh new damage to the camper van. “I hope Hughie’s got insurance.”
“Probably not,” I said. “He’s got a publicist sleeping out of her car and fifteen K of mine in humiliation money.”
“I hear you,” Jack said.
We climbed into the camper van and caravanned with Hana and Sofia, Amanda in the Ridgeline with the camper trailer, and the film crew in their SUV, to the vehicular lanes with cars lining up to board the Interislander ferry. Jack and I didn’t converse much. With both arms planted on the steering wheel, he was doing his best to hold fast to the road as the winds gusted over forty miles per hour.
We angled into one of the lanes to check in with the booking agent, impervious to inclement weather, beaming from her booth. She checked our names against a list on her computer and motioned us on our way.
The treaded ramp that led up into the hold of the massive ferry barely accommodated the camper van. The mirrors on both sides had to be folded in, otherwise we would have sheared them off along with the footsteps and the left headlight shroud.
Before the corporate card had gone kaput, Hana had thoughtfully booked seats in the Plus Lounge. No way, she said, was I going to make the nearly four-hour Cook Strait crossing in steerage, and no way was she going to either. In the uncrowded upper deck lounge, I selected a table away from Amanda, who was grating on my nerves, and the film crew, who seemed to be getting a kick out of my wanton willingness to humiliate myself on camera. Hana and Sofia sequestered themselves in a booth as far away from the rest of us as possible. No doubt they had a lot to talk about.
The crossing was equal parts sublimely beautiful and terrifying. New Zealand is a developed, high net-worth nation, but it has an unexplored quality to it, a frontier openness, a place where you could bushwhack for days without crossing the path of another human being, which greatly appealed to me at the moment. But the skies were black mixed with every hue of gray, the diagonal rain blown by monsoon winds unrelenting. The ferry rocked, port to starboard, bow to stern, sometimes both ways simultaneously. Anxious, I straightened on unsteady feet and walked out onto the deck, where a few hardy Kiwis were taking in the storm, to breathe some fresh air. The gale-force winds nearly knocked me off my feet. I was afraid to take pictures with my iPhone for fear the wind would shear it from my hand and send it hurtling into the strait. Maybe that’s what I needed! The waters were white capped and the swells rose fifteen to twenty feet, causing the ferry to list violently. All of Nature’s fury was on display in that crossing. I later learned we were the last ferry and it had been shut down until the weather improved.
Safely back inside the Plus Lounge, I brooded over Hana’s leaving. Despite my brush with God, the planets were not aligning. I wondered if I could talk her out of it, but she seemed unyielding in her conviction to leave. I knew I couldn’t convince Jack to dispatch Amanda because the three of us were inextricably bound together in an unholy triune of various mercantile enterprises. Milena’s email, which I had practically memorized, played in my head like an insidious earworm, which wouldn’t stop playing and leave me in peace. I shut my eyes to its reality, summoned all my experience at suppressing emotional turmoil, and tried to fit all the broken pieces of my life together into some kind of recognizable whole. If I was smart, a part of me divined, I would pack it up, jet from Wellington back to Queenstown, reunite with Ella, ask her to marry me, secure my residency card, and live happily ever after in Aotearoa, forever gazing in awe at those snowcapped mountains from my Prophet’s Rock redoubt, knowing I was blessedly at the end of the world, the last place on earth that would succumb to lawlessness and revolution. But if I didn’t return to California, I would never know the child I had fathered. The book tour? The book tour. I was on a purgatorial ride that at least promised an end.
The “sailing” across Cook Strait was so rough car alarms kept triggering and announcements came frequently over the loudspeakers politely identifying cars by their make, model, and license number—“And would the owner please return to their vehicle and disable their alarm. Thank you.” By the tenth announcement, I almost wish they had come on and yelled, “And would the fucking idiot who didn’t turn his car alarm off please get his ass to his vehicle before we drive it off the ferry into Cook Strait!”
“Come on, Miles, get up, let’s go,” Jack said, his hand on my shoulder shaking me awake.
“What?” I said groggily. Night was falling and the city of Wellington, perched on a hillside reminiscent of San Francisco, coruscated with lights. “We’re here?”
“We’re here,” Jack said.
Max was meowing when we got to our vehicle. I fed him a few treats, then took him out of his carrier and climbed into the passenger seat. Jack started up the camper van. We waited in a long line of cars to disembark.
The winds were monsoon strength when Jack rolled the damaged camper van off the ferry ramp. Jack and Amanda, who had been apprised of Hana’s giving notice, had taken over command of the tour and booked hotel rooms, as the weather was too severe to consider camping. Amanda, of course, viewed all of this as drama for Washed-Up Writers on a book tour from hell, taglines she and her doc crew were already spitballing with one another, ideating new ways to exploit my misfortune.
The hotel was located in downtown Wellington. It felt comforting to be inside the enclosure of a real room protected from the elements with real walls, with a hot shower, a proper bed, high-speed Wi-Fi, and a working toilet, and, most importantly, all alone, all alone with my eddying thoughts and apprehensions and catastrophist prognostications that were now sapping all my strength.
Together, we trooped in the buffeting winds and slashing rains to nearby Ortega Fish Shack and feasted on a scrumptious meal of blue cod and other delectable dishes, a vast improvement over the fare we had stocked in the camper van and the various fish-and-chips shacks we had frequented due to Hughie’s dodgy credit card and Hana’s tight budget. If I weren’t ruing the departure of Hana, I would have surmised the tour conditions were improving, but they weren’t. At some point I was going to have to apprise Amanda of my not wanting to go forward with Washed-Up Writers, but I was too exhausted from the ferry crossing, too emotionally wrung out from Hana’s early-morning confession, the stiff-legged march through barbarous winds to a restaurant Amanda had selected, I didn’t have the energy to spill my concerns and have to listen to her, being the producer she was, expostulate, convince me we had a winner.
Hana wasn’t with us at Ortega Fish Shack and her absence, to me, was palpable. How I had let Jack insinuate Amanda into my life, my book tour, my realm, was further cause for disquietude. I needed to sleep on it.
The morning dawned a cold cobalt blue, the sky ragged with torn banners of swiftly moving clouds. Tree branches and debris littered the streets of quaint Wellington. The winds were still maritime and end-of-the-world fierce, and the overhead cantilever stoplight poles bowed and juddered and creaked in the face of the bomb cyclone’s fury.
I fed and petted a meowing Max and told him I loved him a hundred times, because that’s how emotionally vulnerable I was feeling, until he quieted, and then, assured he was settled, I went into the bathroom. When I came out of the shower, towel knotted at my waist, there was a voice text from Hana on my phone: “Hughie was taken to urgent care last night, but he should be back home later today. We have the Welsh Dragon Bar tonight.”
The storm continued, unabated. Placid New Zealand was testing me. Was it retribution for its beauty?
From my carry-on bag, I produced my hand grinder, Panama beans from an Arrowtown roastery that had served me well, filters, and V-60 dripper and, with the supplied water kettle, brewed a nearly perfect pour-over. Provided milk—those Kiwis think of everything!—added the right creamy touch. I went online and surveyed the news on my few media subscriptions. Floods, droughts, species of all ilk going extinct at alarming rates, political unrest, wars with thermonuclear connotations, human rights abuses, microplastics in oceans and marine life. I closed my laptop, ambled over to the window, and gazed out. Tattered patches of blue were being consumed by another wave of storms, and soon the sun had returned to memory. No wonder Hughie had been rushed to urgent care. His author was in town. His publicist had quit. The Cougars of Christchurch had probably lawyered up to sue him for a reimbursement of their hefty appearance fee. Dude was sitting on some serious kakapo guano.
An email notification appeared on my iPhone lock screen. I glanced down at it, and my heart performed an ellipsis in beats. I picked the phone up and swiped to the email and read:
“Dear Miles. Have you thought any more about coming to California? I need to know. —Milena.”
“I will let you know in a few days,” I typed with a single tremulous thumb, then archived her email so it wouldn’t be importuning me from my inbox.
I met Hana at nearby Peoples Coffee, a small café catering to the Wellington version of the Gen Z and Y crowd. She was late, reminiscent of the first time I met her a week ago—felt like a month!—tapping on her phone with both thumbs but moving forward as if she had eyes on her forehead and insect antennae to prevent her from tripping over obstacles. When she saw me she smiled without showing her teeth, held up a single finger, then angled over to the counter to place an order. She kept glancing at her phone. There was the real world, and then her other real world, and the two were locked in perpetual combat.
A few minutes later, Hana sat down across from me with a cup of tea. “How are you, Miles?”
“Finally got a full night’s sleep. Shockingly didn’t open any of Prophet’s Rock’s finest when I got back to my room.” I held out both hands. “Steady as she goes.”
She chuckled. “That’s good.” She sipped her tea, squinted, and gazed out at the street. “You’re going to be in Freedom Campground tonight,” she said. “It’s on the outskirts of Wellington.”
“This was Hughie’s decision? Because I’d prefer to stay in the hotel.”
“It was Amanda’s. For the TV show. She loves the idea of you in the camper van. Especially you and Max.”
“Lovely.” I sighed, nodded, drank my triple-shot flat white, debated a remonstrating email to Jack and Amanda on the Freedom Campground executive decision, but my mind was focused on Hughie and the upcoming visit. “How is Hughie doing?”
“Doctors thought he was having a heart attack, but it turned out it was low blood pressure. They’re conducting tests.”
“Hughie has low blood pressure and I have high blood pressure. How ironic.”
Hana laughed. “He wants to see you, though.” I nodded. “I’m not sure I’d bring up the Cougars appearance fee.”
“Or the camper-van bait and switch, or the declined corporate card . . . How convenient, that hospital visit,” I said, sarcasm biting into my voice.
Hana stared into her tea, waiting for the leaves to report deep insights back to her. “Hughie knows I’m leaving the tour, but he wants me to tell him in person,” she confided. She raised her head and blinked at me. “He knows Amanda, though, so you should be in good hands from here forward.”
“Is this what you wanted, Hana?” I said, anxiety clawing at my stomach with its sharp talons. “I did not engineer this, you realize. Jack’s producer girlfriend crashed the party, took over, like producers tend to do, and I feel awful you were sidelined. Can I make it up to you?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “Hughie said he would pay me through the contract. Plus, he gets Jack’s partner for free, and a TV show out of it. It’s a win-win for everyone.”
“Except for me.”
“Why? Didn’t you think I was doing a shitty job?”
“No, Hana, I didn’t. You’ve been pulling amazingly creative things out of that big brain of yours, and my God, looking back, what a tour it’s been.”
Hana blinked back tears. “I thought you thought I was a loser.”
“You’re not a loser, Hana. You rescued me from Wrekin and drove me to the Tasman. In the Beast!” She chuckled at the memory. “I will always retain fond memories of that. I would hire you in a heartbeat, but I’m retiring from the literary game.”
“No.”
I nodded in resignation.
Hana dropped her eyes back down into her tea, stirred it aimlessly.
“It’s not going to be the same without you at this Freedom Campground.” I looked at the passersby on the sidewalk, trying to suppress an emotion welling up in me, feeling it tinge my voice with sentimentality. “All alone in that camper.”
“You’ve got Max.”
“Yeah.” I threw back my flat white and rose noisily from my chair. “Speaking of which, I need to gather him up before Hughie’s. I can’t leave him in the hotel room. I forgot his cat Xanax.”