Opportunity (6 page)

They sat me on a plastic chair next to Mr Ling. They held
bills of lading in front of me and asked me what they were for.
I told them I didn't know. A bit later they took me and Mr
Ling to the police station, in separate cars. I went on saying I'd
been hired to carry out light office duties. I tried to impress on
them how stupid I was. I acted hurt and pompous, as though
I thought the menial tasks I performed were vitally important
to the running of John John G. Shipping. None of them
mentioned my father — I suppose he'd disguised his
connection to the place. And I hoped nice Mr Ling wouldn't
divulge the staggering sum I was being paid for doing
practically nothing. 'What's this all about?' I kept asking. They
let me out eventually, with threats, and warnings of a bruising
rerun. 'We'll be in touch,' they said.

By the time I got out the day had gone. The day had
disappeared while I was sweating it out at Central Police. The
town hall clock told me it was 4 a.m. I had no money and no
coat. It was freezing, and, unusually, there was thick mist
hanging in the streets. It took me a long time to walk home,
and then I remembered I'd thrown away my keys.
That
was a
stupid thing to have done. I couldn't get into the building.

Workmen had been reshaping the path, and there was a
patch of broken stones and concrete. I was looking around in
it for something to throw up onto the balcony, when a man
walked out of the fog. I straightened up, a bit of concrete in
my hand. I remember thinking how extremely pale he was. I
waited for him to pass but he stopped. He was about thirty,
with a round face and curly hair. He was wearing a suit. He
said something about himself. He clutched his arms to his
stomach. I told him to go away. And he attacked me. Just like
that. Or was something else said? Perhaps I swore at him and
he . . . Anyway he attacked me. He stumbled forward and
took hold of my shoulders. I hit him with the stone I had in
my hand. It wasn't very heavy — maybe as big as half a brick.
He clawed my face. I hit him in the head. He bent over,
staggering. And then I ran away.

When the sun came up I was walking along Tamaki Drive.
I had a scratched eye, laddered stockings, and half the buttons
wrenched from my shirt. One of my shoes flip-flopped against
my foot, the heel left somewhere on Quay Street.

It was high tide. On the harbour side the water glimmered
all silvery and cold, the sky was high and pale and tinged with
rose. Over in Judges Bay the water was deep green and still
under the pohutukawas. I looked at the water and thought
how beautiful it was — the rippled silver, the slow green.
When the dawn came an idea had got into my head. There
was something missing. The man at the waterfront — I
couldn't remember what he'd said. Something about himself.
Or about his body. Had he told me he was hurt? Out in the
harbour a current — smooth water crossing ripples — formed
a snaky question mark. Was it possible he had asked for my
help? I laughed. You came to the wrong place, mister. Sorry
about that. I turned into Ngapipi Road. Still about a mile to
go. Where was I heading? Back to the big house I'd left a year
before. I couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

I knocked on the door. Piles of leaves lay along the path.
The lawn had been mown, the hedges trimmed, the summerhouse
freshly painted. Looking around, I was having to re-work
the picture I'd built up in my mind over the year, a scenario
I'd relished during my quiet hours at John John G. Shipping:
that of Rania, now abandoned, gone speechlessly to rack and
ruin. Instead, when she wrenched open the door and stood
staring down her nose with the highest, snootiest Arabian
disgust, she looked more burnished and coppery than ever.
She looked like an ad.

'Pooh,' she kept saying after I'd persuaded her to let me in.
'What please is that horrible smell?'

'Police stations.'

'Pooh!'

I waited, patiently. 'Can I have a shower?'

'Pooh!'

Eventually I was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in one
of her old robes, while she pretended to look through the
fridge. 'Nothing much here,' she said with sprightly malice.
'But you're not exactly fading away!'

I settled for one of her powerful coffees, and an International
Gold. 'How are things with you, Rania?' I asked.

Her expression went dark. 'Your father left me with nothing.
No money. How could I pay the bills?'

'So what did you do?' I could tell she hadn't had to scrimp
or save. Her face, her hair, her clothes, all bore evidence of the
costliest attention.

She smiled coldly. 'I have a business.'

'What sort of business?'

'Gentlemen's club.'

'A brothel?'

'Sauna, massage, brothel. Sure. Very good business. Ling
and I . . .'

'Mr Ling!'

'Ling is silent partner.' She hummed and looked out the
window.

'Oh really.' I told her why I'd been at the police station.
Then I regretted having told her, because I had to spend a long
time getting her to not throw me out.

'This is
my
house,' I protested, after a while.

'Not yet it isn't! Only when I die! I don't want trouble here!
Go away!'

'Don't be ridiculous.' I was weary. 'I want to go to bed.'

'No! Get out!'

'Oh, shut up, Rania,' I said. I went to my old room. I dragged
a chest of drawers in front of the door. I took out an empty
drawer and put it next to the bed, as a weapon. I crawled into
the cold sheets.

I dreamed Rania was coming at me, a satin cushion in her
hands. She said, intently, 'He's gone now. He's gone. There's
only
you and me
. . .'

For two days I hid in the upstairs room. In the mornings
she rattled the doorknob and threatened to call the police,
and told me to be out by the time she came back. When I
heard her convertible on the drive I went down to the kitchen.
In the evening we watched television together in the sitting
room. Rania lived on cigarettes and diet pills and sparkling
wine. On the third day I went out to the shops, and withdrew
some money from my bank account, slumping with relief
when they let me do it. I'd feared there might be some sort of
freeze on my funds. That night I cooked her a meal. She
watched me prepare it and waited for me to start eating, as
though suspecting I'd slipped in some poison. She had a few
mouthfuls and then lit a moody cigarette. I ate all mine and
then finished hers.

She stared at me. Then she drummed her fingers on the
table and said, 'So. Fatty boomsticks. You want a job?'

'In a brothel? No thanks.'

'Administration,' she said smoothly. 'Strictly no contact
work. Managing the girls.'

I thought about it. I was curious. 'Yeah, go on then. When
and where?'

'You come with me. Tomorrow.' She pulled her long black
hair away from her face. There were rich, raisiny shadows
under her eyes. Her eyes were black-lined and almond-shaped,
in the painted face. I looked at her: my Egyptian
stepmummy, with her hating eyes.

'And now I must go and watch
Antiques Weekly
,' she
announced, and swept from the room. I heard the fizz and
crackle of the TV. Her mad scent hung in the air.

The next morning we stood outside her brothel. It was
called The Land of Opportunity. It was a grand old stone
house with stained-glass windows, at the end of a row of
shops.

'We are strictly upmarket,' Rania said. 'Lot of doctors,
lawyers. Judges. Pillars of community. Top civil servants,
policemen . . .'

She ran on. Like most people in this game, she liked to
make it sound as if everyone did it, they just didn't admit it.
Especially people of great talent and distinction. 'Politicians,
captains of the industry, artists, television executives . . .'

I followed her up the stairs.

'Actors, diplomats, visiting dignitaries . . .'

We entered a velvety bar, with couches and heaped
cushions.

'And no Maoris,' Rania finished.

'No
Maoris
?'

'Customers maybe. If tidy. Girls, no.' Her eyes were slits.

'You can't do that. It's not . . . It's against the . . . Human
Rights Convention.'

'Is my place.'

'God. You're supposed to have left all that behind when you
came here. You can't go on like that.'

'Is classy place.'

'God, Rania!'

She told me what I had to do. I sat in a kind of nook up the
front and matched the girls with all the captains of industry
and diplomats and judges. Except of course there weren't any
of those. If you checked out the conversation in the lounge,
pre-date, you'd find it wasn't very intellectual. Or very classy.
Mostly the men were drunk, or needing to get drunk very
quickly; most were sweating yobs whose eyes bulged with all
the things they were planning to do, once they'd loosened up
enough there in the lounge. And none of them looked like
they had any money.

After a month I knew my way around. I was well established
in The Land of Opportunity. Rania seemed resigned to having
me back in the house, too. She and I went on arguing about
the race issue. I was pretty shocked by her attitude. I tried to
put it in her terms: 'Okay. Forget the civil rights question.
You're turning away good merchandise. I mean, they tend to
be better-looking, for a start.'

'Not than the Asians.'

'Okay, not better than the Asians. But better than the
whites. Better than all that pastiness and freckles and flab
you've got going out there.'

In the end she said she would have a few Maoris if they
pretended to be Arab. That was a good laugh, but Rania
seemed to believe it was possible. Or she pretended to. She
hired a Maori woman called Diana, who was very good-looking
and who, pretending with satirical insouciance to be
an Arab, got on well with Rania. When Diana was taking a
break they sat in the office together, smoking and watching
the lounge through the one-way glass. They were both brown
and narrow-eyed and mad and hard. Sometimes they were
joined by Mr Ling, for a session of mahjong. Mr Ling had
done some work on his identity: he now sported a perm, and
everyone called him Mr Long. In the evenings the place stank
of coffee and cigarettes and booze. And sex and crime. And
money.

A few months after Diana arrived, she brought her little
cousin Darlene in to work at The Land. Darlene was an
awkward girl with a witless, compulsive laugh. It was a chuckle,
characteristically Maori, but with the charm hammered out of
it — a dull, reflexive plea for peace-not-violence. I sat in my
nook listening to her. The laugh was unbelievable. What
terrible forces, what deprivation, had produced that abject
sound?

'I told the fulla eh, ih ih ih ih, stick it up yor arse, eh, ih ih
ih ih. Got a smoke? Ih ih ih. And he goes, nah, cuz, gunna
stick it up
yor
arse, ih ih ih.'

That was Darlene off duty. When she was entertaining
clients she was nice and polite and put on a few airs: 'And
where do youse fullas stay? Eh?
True
? Long way to come, eh?
My cousin's from there, eh. He's a mean bugger, eh. Ih ih ih
ih.'

She was a useful girl, just turned seventeen. She didn't
usually baulk at anything. But one night, when a stag party
had taken over the lounge and the men looked, to me in my
corner, like predatory animals, with their watchful, calculating
eyes, Darlene had some sort of meltdown or failure of courage.
Her laugh got higher and stranger, and more repetitive, until
it was like panting, like a full-blown panic attack. Diana got
up from her place on the couch. She drew Darlene to her
bosom and took her into my corner, whispering in her ear,
stroking her hands.

'Baby,' she said. 'Baby.' Darlene looked blankly at me, over
Diana's shoulder. Her breathing slowed. Her eyes closed.

Diana gave her a little shake. 'There now. Hush now. Okay,
kid? Okay?'

They hugged. Diana wiped Darlene's tears.

Then she forced a couple of pills down the girl, mopped her
makeup and booted her back to work. It was a bumper
evening. Rania and Mr Long were up all night afterwards,
talking tax evasion.

I had an idea after that, thinking about their faces — Diana's
and Darlene's. The eyes, the cheekbones, the beautifully
curved lips. I decided Diana was Darlene's mum. I put it to
Rania but she just looked at me over her champagne flute and
made a hissing sound between her teeth, '
Ssssssss
.' Mr Long
appeared at the door behind her, his face folded into a smile.
When he smiled his eyes disappeared. He lounged there in his
black suit, with his no-eyes smile.

At home one afternoon, I sat smoking in the summerhouse.
The days were lengthening, the light was bright, the winter
chill had gone. The garden was full of flowers. Above the
house the sky was delicately striped with cloud. I remembered
my father standing by the dropping buds of the camellia bush,
cupping his hand around his brown cigarette. I remembered
my dead mother. One memory: she was sitting on the couch,
it was raining, a man had just come to the door and gone, and
she was crying. I looked out at the liquid world and listened to
a story record while I waited for her to stop crying, and when
I moved my head the ripples in the windowpane made
trenches in the lawn. I remembered the man who came at me
out of the fog that time, down on the wharf. He said to
me . . . what did he say?
They took my. Please. I need your. I
need your
. . .

A car was nosing down the drive. It was Mr Long, in his
black Mercedes. Rania came out of the house. She walked
with him, talking. He nodded. Soon we would head across
town, to The Land. The girls would be waiting — the battered
merchandise, their use-by dates near expired. And the men,
the clients — they reminded me of something. They reminded
me of myself. Long ago, in all those back yards, the empty
houses in the drifting afternoons. The breaking and entering.
The searching, the rummaging. And then the emptiness of a
white courtyard, ribbons of light glancing off a pool, the
strewn pile of knick-knacks and trinkets. A kind of daze
afterwards, a confusion in the lull. What did the men want?
What did I want? What I stole I threw away. I didn't want it.
Not really. What was the thing we looked for, and couldn't
find?