Into port. Rubber wheels on the metal deck. Push start the Corolla. Feet planted firmly behind the car. Within the metal cavern filling and always filling with carbon dioxide. Shoulder down and push toward the cave opening, the ferry workers yelling, toward the sunlight and down the ramp to freedom.
Into the five o'clock traffic. Into the congestion, the blocked intestines of city streets. Past the parliament's beehive buzzing and up the hill to Karori. To 61 Standen Street. And standing in the street I bid farewell to Chester Boyes. Chester in a hurry to get back to Rotorua and "sort out [his] life." Chester throwing my belongings on the sidewalk. Chester speeding away in the Corolla.
While I walk up the steps to re-unite with the lovely ladies of Carolina. Freckled faces in the domicile and the smiles of southern belles. Slide into the comfortable stasis of a house of a home. And pretend. Off the boat and afloat in Windy Welly. Put John Prine on the six disk changer and "come back, baby, come back. I want to play house with you."
And is that domesticity tap tap tapping at the door? Put the dog on a leash and walk him through the cemetery sprawl on the edge of suburbia. Through the garden of gravestones, the polished rock sprouting over the human seed. Lay them in the ground lying down. And I know your name, and yours. You a decade gone and six feet deep. Your name, and yours. And your age, and yours. And your family around you. On and on, the cemetery sprawl. Down the rows, the dog chewing grass growing from graves. Pull the leash. On and on.
Stop at the store for beans before heading home. Then it is a pot on the stove, greens in a bowl and the promise of a blockbuster DVD to acompany the bottle of red wine.
"Come back, baby, come back. I want to play house." With you. Long walks with Caro the morning after and for the rest of the week. Into town hand-holding, and hootie-hoo, how easy it is to fall into rhythm with a girl who knows how to dance. "Life is a stage," said the patron saint of writing Wild Willy. And: Good God! I'm with a fucking star.
Shoot.
Nothing to do in town but turn around. The shops closed and the empty streets feeling like a sepia-filtered photograph. Into and out of the library, our look-a-likes stalking behind us in the black-glass reflections of ground-floor office building windows. So it is. Back up the hill with the wind rising. Back up to beans and rice and another blockbuster and another bottle of wine. Back up.
To wake to sunshine and the pic-a-nic table lawn chair lay out. From the late morning to the early afternoon: lounging. Sun ray soaking, until we get the call we've been waiting for. All business from the cell phone receiver. But boy-o-boy what a pleasure.
Enter Robin Fail. And thus: the pointer finger of god poised above the play button on the highlight reel of the Wellington weekend. A highlight reel that is more a series of snapshots than it is a grouping of stories...
And which begins with Robins appearance at 61 Standen Street with her New Zealand "Mother" Mrs. Carolyn Stilwell, and a bottle of rose-colored champagne. Drink up. Cultured--cultivated--the five of us spinning yarns in the sitting room, legs crossed and laughing, pouring the pale pink liquid from wine glass to mouth as the sun slides through the bay window that looks out on the afternoon sky. Drink up.
Before she and robin head back to the city centre, Carolyn invites me to come stay with her at her family's home "in the gorge outside of Nelson." An offer that I then ignored with a smile while pocketing the piece of paper she handed me. While pocketing the piece of paper that contained her scrawled number. A piece of paper that is now secured firmly within a southern gothic novel, marking my progress through the word fields of Faulkner, and forever handy for I might need it now that the offer has been re-considered. Now that I've re-assessed my situation. Now that I'm headed south once again.
But on that first afternoon--after the introduction and the glass of champagne--I crumpled the piece of paper and stuffed it into my pocket and didn't think about it again for the next several days. Didn't think about it at all for the next several days.
For the next several days would be comprised of a series of snapshots strung together to complete a slide show. Yes, the highlight reel now rolling. The pointer finger of God having punched the play button. And away, and away, and away.
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