Part One
If I say that this is a story, you might be more willing to accept it. Suspension of disbelief, and all. So, may I tell you a story?
It centres on the friend of a friend. I’ll call him Tod, because that was the name of a boy I knew at school, who was only ever unfailingly kind, and didn’t ever seem to notice that he was a boy and I was a girl. There was a glow of safety and happiness in his company; even when he called me Emu because I was so much taller than him; and even when he read aloud — unbidden, eccentric — from the A-E volume of the encyclopedia he took into the playground at lunchtime. What child, even in the 1970s, toted around an encyclopedia? Tod: in memory of a small, plump, bespectacled boy with a gentle, intelligent sense of humour, comfortably and insistently himself, even at the age of 8.
Tod of the pseudonym, Tod the adult, was someone I met at a party when I was still in my 30s. I suppose the name I’ve given him might be a form of rescue. Perhaps part of me wants to grant him a past that might ground him, some day. I learned he was passing through town on his way south; heading to a conference, or a concert (or maybe both) in Queenstown. We first spoke when I veered towards bowls of crackers and dip provided on a windowsill. I’d started to feel the freefall-effect of wine on an empty stomach. He was leaning against the wall near the window.
"The purple hummus is pretty psychedelic on the taste buds," he said.
"I’ve been making sure nobody double-dips. I wanna keep eating it."
I associated his warm drawl with California: concrete promenades; palm trees; heat blazing off car hoods; adults rollerblading, limbs smooth-muscled as thoroughbred horses; white people tanned as walnuts; coloured people with baroque, breathtaking hairstyles that glistened like small sculptures celebrating the sun.
"Thank you!"
My excessive enthusiasm came from recently having been poleaxed by gastro from a children’s birthday party. Communal food was still slightly alarming; only the plummeting elevator-effect of the wine argued its case. Also, there was something about Tod that I already liked.
It’s strange, isn’t it? With some people, even before you’ve had a full conversation, clocked their politics or interests, you notice an undercurrent: mingled warmth and wonder. It’s a little like seeing a new folding mechanism with perfectly oiled hinges; there is a fleet burst of joy at the intricacy, the ingenuity: satisfaction at the perfect solution to a problem you hadn’t consciously noticed.
I scooped up a second serving of dip, already not-hungry, but waiting for that relaxed drawl again.
Another bloke darted over like a seagull at picnic leavings.
"Nice to see a woman with appetites," he said, eyebrow cocked.
We’d met elsewhere; he was muscly, brash, coppery-headed; his innuendo acceptable, apparently, because it was done with an outdoor adventure-ad jawline, and a wordsmith reputation. So, you know, any suspect comment must be dressed in a self-aware millefeuille of irony.
"He’s amaaaazing," another woman said.
"He’s written a book on caving, did you know? Is there anything he can’t do?"
Caver-man laughed.
"Ah well, I was never much good at biochem. It’s my kleptonite."
"Steal that joke?" I asked, but only Tod got it.
His mouth pursed, conspiratorial. He tipped his empty glass at me.
"Want a top-up?"
Scandalised, the Spelunkster gripped Tod’s arm.
"Did you ask to pull her top up?"
Someone else brayed; Tod and I slipped out to the kitchen, where the bench was crowded with drink choices. A ladybird crept along the outer edge of the mixers, spirits and wine bottles.
"It must seem like the New York skyline to her," I said.
Tod smiled, readied drinks, and helped the ladybird find her way on to a rose leaf from a bouquet someone had brought the host. He opened a kitchen window, then, as if she were a small red candle flame, he blew at the ladybird, crying, "Bon voyage!" as she flew outside. He leaned against the bench.
"You from Dunedin?" he asked.
"Ah ... short answer, yes."
"Longer answer?"
"Born here, didn’t really live here until a few years ago."
"And before this?"
"London for eight years. How about you?"
"I was born in California."
I felt a ridiculous ebullience — I’d guessed.
"I lived in California for a few years as a child."
"Seriously? Whereabouts?"
"San Diego."
"No way."
He pointed his beer bottle at me as if it shone torchlight, and he was checking for cracks in the tale.
"Yes way."
"I was born in San Diego."
I crossed my arms.
"You’re razzing me."
"Why would I do that? Wow."
He took a sip of his Emerson’s; bared his teeth a little, as if it carried whisky burn, not the tingling spice of beer. Maybe he was used to Budweiser: lizard’s piss, as my dad used to call it.
"So what brings you here?" I asked.
"I moved to New Zealand five years ago," he said.
"I’m a marine biologist ... "
"But — Sea World. Scripps. Marine biologist mecca, right? Why not stay in California?"
As casually as if he were saying he had another appointment, he said, "Here’s where you wanna be, when climate shit really hits the fan."
He flipped a crimp-edged beer cap like a coin, caught it on the back of his hand: hollow side up.
"Whereabouts in San Diego did you live?"
"La Jolla and University City."
I said this as if I knew where to find them on a map, but they were a tumble of colours, faces, scents, shapes: everything in the vivid close-up of childhood; not mapped out as freeways, congestion, alternative routes; property values; discount stores; safe parts of town versus dodgy. None of the adult navigations and negotiations that a layered knowledge of a city means. I saw the watery, movie-set turquoise of a fountain pool we used to sneak in to, across private grounds; I saw grass that was hard to tell from billiard-table velvet; I saw cut-off denim shorts and hot-pink bikinis; tequila sunrise served in amber Pyrex tumblers; the ugly tortoiseshell shagpile carpet pop-corning with fleas at a rental house; my first prairie dogs, the colour of dusty peanut butter. I saw my father, rock-star sunglasses pushed back on his head, as he threw a Frisbee like a flat, glow-in-the-dark moon to my mother, who ran with my little sister on a sea-cooled strip of sand.
"I can’t believe it," said Tod, eyes shining.
"I was raised in University City. OK, OK, this is too wild. What schools did you go to?"
"La Jolla Elementary first, then Spreckles."
One odd thing: I felt a chill travel the side of my neck, right then, as if a single nerve channelled ice water — even before Tod paled and straightened slightly.
"I went to Spreckles," he said, frowning.
"What years were you there?"
"1978 to 19 ... 81, yeah, mid-1981. How about you?"
"Oh, right. A bit after that. I started in ’85."
I’d found it hard to guess his age. His hair was chestnut brown, but his sideburns were greying, while his smile lines were harshly scored, as if some other expression had helped to bed them in.
"That’s still quite a head-spin. I guess we might even know some of the same people. If kids I knew had younger siblings."
"Yeah."
His frown deepened and he turned aside a little, as if to leave, but faltered. Part of me wondered why he seemed disturbed, rather than swept up in the great symphony of happenstance; the fall of the dice again and again, across continents, ages, genders, decisions, the star dazzle scattered over our heads even now, waiting behind the summer’s domed, dusk-blue canopy ... I’d been sipping wine anxiously since the thread of ice had trickled under my skin. Clearly it was doing its work. Everything became both expansively mysterious, yet joined by delicate, thrumming fibres of exquisite beauty.
"Hey, sorry," he said.
"What was your full name?"
I told him. He looked down at his glass with a strange lurch — a braking of expression.
"Are you OK?"
"Yeah."
He took a while. He set the glass down.
"And yours?"
He finally looked at me again.
"I beg your pardon?"
A little hint of Ivy League formality there; as if he should be wearing a thin V-neck woollen jersey in powder yellow; freshly-pressed, skinny mustard chinos; white business shirt, extra starch in the collar. He wasn’t: he wore loose, port-coloured cotton trousers, rolled at the cuffs; his business shirt was "funked up" with little green tessellated monkeys. He wore unnaturally white sandshoes, with thick green glitter panels along the sides.
"I was asking for your name?"
"Tod Randell."
I held out my hand, mock pleased-to-meet-you. He slipped both hands into his pockets. Somewhere my private little inner song of harmony and correspondence had derailed.
"Listen, Emma," he said, manner newly cautious.
"Is that your maiden name, or your married name?"
"My birth name, and I’m married. End of conversation?"
Instinctive feminism in the grit of my voice: a pissed-off, don’t-tell-me-the-only-way-we-can-connect-is-sex tone.
He disregarded it; eyes flinty.
"So, why exactly were you in the States?"
"My father’s work. He was in immunology at Snell’s."
(I’ve changed the institution’s name, here. Paranoid and pointless, maybe, but say this gets syndicated online?)
"Whoah," he said, both palms out of his pockets now, in a double stop sign — as if I’d told him I planned to colonise Mars with dolphins and persimmon. In his view, I was either floridly, certifiably full of crazy horse-shit or ... I watched the way he tugged anxiously at the skin over his Adam’s apple. Or he knew something about immunology at Snell’s. I felt cold unease spread and branch up my scalp. I half wanted to hear what Tod knew, half dreaded it.
• Part Two tomorrow
